Page:Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion volume 3.djvu/180

sense, external and internal, which accompanies perception. But the material, however, in so far as it enters into the sciences, is not so left to itself as it is in the senses and in perception. On the contrary, the content of the sciences—the species, kinds, laws, forces, and so on—is built up out of that material, which is, perhaps, already called by the name of phenomena, by putting together through analysis what is common, the leaving aside of what is not essential, the retention of what is called essential, without any certain test having been applied to distinguish between what is to be regarded as non-essential and what as essential. It is admitted that what is perceived does not itself make these abstractions, does not compare its individuals (or individual positions, circumstances, and so on), or put what is common in them together; that therefore a great part of the activity of knowledge is a subjective affair, just as in the content which has been obtained a part of its definitions, as being logical forms, are the product of this subjective activity. The expression “predicate,” or mark (Merkmal), if people will still use this stupid expression, directly indicates a subjective purpose of isolating properties for our use in marking distinctions, while others, which likewise exist in the object, are put aside. This expression is to be called stupid, because the definitions of species and kinds directly pass for something essential and objective, and not as existing merely for us who mark distinctions. We may certainly also express ourselves by saying that the species leaves aside, in one kind, properties which it places in another, or that energy in one form of its manifestation leaves aside circumstances which are present in another, that these circumstances are thus shown by it to be unessential, and it of itself gives up the form of its manifestation, and withdraws itself into inactivity or self-containedness; that thus, for example, the law of the motion of the heavenly bodies penetrates to every single place and every moment in which the heavenly