The Consequences of Monism 235Monism spins no metaphysics from merely abstract con-
cepts. For, in the concepts by themselves, it recognizes
only oneside of reality, which remains hidden to perceiv-
ing and makes sense only in connection with the percept.
Monism evokes the conviction in us that we live in the
world of reality, and that we need not seek outside our
world for a higher reality that we cannot experience. Be-
cause it recognizes the content of experience itself as re-
ality, it seeks absolute reality nowhere but in experience.
It is satisfied by that reality, because it knows that think-
ing has the power to guarantee it. What the dualist looks
for only behind the observable world, a monist finds with-
in this world itself. Monism shows that, in cognizing, we
grasp reality in its true form, not in a subjective picture
that interposes itself between ourselves and reality. For
monism, the conceptual content of the world is the same
for all human individuals (cf. p. 82 ff.). According to mo-
nistic principles, one human individual considers another
human individual to be of the same kind, because the
same world content expresses itself in both. In the unitary
world of concepts, there are not, for example, as many
concepts of the lion as there are individuals who think
about a lion; there is onlyone concept. The concept that
A adds to the percept of the lion is the same as that of B,
only it is grasped by means of a different perceptual sub-
ject (cf. p. 84). Thinking leads all perceptual subjects to
the common conceptual unity within all multiplicity. The
unitary world of ideas expresses itself in them as in a mul-
tiplicity of individuals. As long as we understand our-
selves merely through self-perception, we see ourselves