The surd of metaphysics Author:Paul Carus Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: and indivisible. Abstract concepts are mental symbols invented to represent certain features of reality. But although we can in our mind separate these features ... more »and distinguish them from other features, in the world of reality they cannot be cut out and separated from the rest or thought of as things-in-themselves. Granting the oneness of reality which dawns upon us instinctively before consciousness is fully matured, we are inevitably led to the conception that there may be many space-conceptions, yet there is but one form of reality, which implies that there is but one space and one time. FORM A FEATURE OF REALITY. Kant says, and in this we agree with Kant, that "all thought must directly by means of certain signs relate ultimately to Anscliauungen." The word An- schauung (literally: "onlooking," generally translated by "intuition") means the immediate presence of sense-perception. Says Kant: "The effect of an object upon our faculty of representation is called sensation, and that intuition (Anschauung) which refers to an object by means of sensation is called empirical intuition." For instance, I see a rose : the image of the rose which I see is the appearance or the phenomenon. Kant continues: "That which in the phenomenon corresponds to the sensation I term its matter, but that which effects that the contents of the phenomenon can be arranged under certain relations, I call its form." In other words matter is that which affects the senses and form is to be expressed in relations. The difference between the formal and the material is obvious. The formal is of great importance, nay, it is of paramount importance, but it is neither anything apart from the material nor is it a substance. Both concepts are disparate, though derived by mental abstraction from the ...« less