him, and agree that their signs shall hold good. Here teaching is far from bringing about a belief in the signs, participation in their special and consecrated or even only aesthetic meaning. For it the signs are in and for themselves completely indifferent, they are nothing but signs, i.e., means for naming, without any “inner value”. It is thus that we distinguish the concepts, and we are not inquiring here how the kinds of teaching are really related to each other; but we easily see that it presents numerous transitions from the one genus into the other. On the other hand it is clear that the “free assent,” which Locke so earnestly recommends those who seek the truth to handle carefully, is founded more upon doubt than upon belief; but that it must before all be given to those concepts which are contained in judgments; that again it is this free assent which stamps concepts into conventionally valid means of knowledge. As a matter of fact free persons can, without being related as teacher and pupil, come to an agreement as to the validity of concepts and make compatible the meanings even of these words. But by the abstraction of science we express the thought—to which a wide reality corresponds—that the construction and coining of concepts is always originated by individuals of genius, who therefore to a certain extent, and primarily in their own school, occupy the position of legislators. Though in this sphere as in every other, tradition and blind belief play an important part, yet in a period of scientific life the development, transformation, and renovation of concepts, like the revolutions of industrial technics, is most widely open to observation. “The more of spiritual life a period contains, the more it will change the received condition of terminology” (Eucken).
Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 8.djvu/346
