But can we say that this act of positing or apprehending itself is an act of sense perception?

This can be said even less than that. And no matter what faculties of the human soul we go through, we will not be able to identify with any of them the act of positing itself that interests us. It is quite specific. And again, call it reason, reason, sense perception, intuition, imagination, thought, fantasy, idea, etc., etc., neither will it gain nor detract from it. Many people, seizing on the fact that this is not a rational act, immediately begin to reproach it for being irrational, unfounded and arbitrary intuition, subjective imagination. This, of course, is only helplessness. The fact that there are no logical definitions and conclusions does not at all imply that there is pure and blind irrationality here. On the contrary, it is a very sighted act, even the most sighted, because it is precisely this act that grasps the thing as a thing, the thing itself. It cannot be called unfounded either; It is quite real and quite justified. There is nothing fantastic in it either. On the contrary, it is precisely he who grasps the thing as a thing. It is usually thought that everything logical is justified, and everything extra-logical is unfounded and blind. Perhaps pure irrationality, animal or otherwise, is really unfounded and blind. But the act of positing and apprehending oneself is by no means pure irrationality. I repeat: this is a very specific act; and it must be understood as directly and without proof as without proof we agree to the fact of a logical construction or a purely sensuous, animal sensation.

(c) Thirdly, it is not necessary to call any thing considered as a thing a symbol of oneself. Bearing in mind that the very thing itself has no definition, is devoid of all attributes and categories, and that at the same time the thing is dissectible, possesses attributes, has its own formalized history, we have on this basis called each thing a symbol of itself. Again, you can avoid using such terminology as much as you like. These may be called simply things, ideas, signs, and expressions of a thing, a real or objective thing, matter, concreteness, reality, etc., etc. The fact remains that the real thing is at once and simultaneously something indistinguishable and something distinguishable. And this fact can be eliminated only by eliminating the thing itself.

(d) Fourthly, from the above survey of philosophical systems with complete persuasiveness, which admits of no objections, there follows another circumstance, which must also be said that it does not depend on the world view, but only on the desire or unwillingness to reason consistently.

For if there are one, another, a third, etc., things, do all things exist together? It would seem that there is nothing to answer this question; But still, for some reason, many people do not like this question. Do all things exist or do they not exist? I don't know how this question could be answered in the negative. Well, of course there are. If separate things exist, why should they not exist together? Thus all things exist together and therefore form a whole. Now let us ask ourselves: does this whole have its own or does it not? I do not know here how this question could be answered in the negative. Since each two as a whole is not what each is separately and what is a mechanical combination of them, how can all things, taken as a whole, be the same as their whole? It is clear that everything as a whole is different from everything as a simple mechanical sum of all things. But then, obviously, the very whole of it as a whole will be even more different from it. In addition, if we have really taken all the things and there is nothing else left, then this will be what can rightfully be called absolutely everything, or absolute everything. And, therefore, there is necessarily some absolute self, the absolute self, which differs from the sum of all things in the same way as the individual self differs from the sum of all the attributes and properties of a thing. And it is clear that each separate thing, as well as all things taken together, are nothing but symbols of this absolute itself.

I think that the majority of the readers of this book are deeply convinced that to draw such conclusions is peculiar only to the world-view, and to a very definite world-view at that. I know that these conclusions can serve and have served many times to one or another worldview. But I categorically assert that the two theses put forward here have nothing to do with any world outlook in themselves, and are only the simplest and most elementary attitudes of the most ordinary life experience. The first thesis is that if there are several things, then this set of them can be considered as a whole. And the second thesis: every totality of anything, in order to be an aggregate, must have itself. The first thesis cannot be refuted, for the totality of things differs from each such thing, taken separately, only in that it is precisely a totality. The second thesis also cannot be refuted, because it differs from a thing simply that it is precisely itself, that it is a thing fixed precisely as a given thing. To reject the absolute self is not to admit that things can be united, and to deny that things are just that. However, it is hardly a worldview only that simple everyday attitude that things are united in the totality of things and that things are just that.

Again, call it God, the world, nature, matter, idea, personality, impersonal All, supreme monad, absolute, consciousness, intelligence, indifference, being-possibility, actual infinity, the unknowable Self, the universe, the demiurge, etc., and nothing will change at all. The fact established here is not any world view (although it can serve a world view, and, moreover, it seems almost no world view), but it is only a direct everyday perception, which cannot be refuted without refuting man's elementary and vital life reactions.

f[129]) The philosophical systems we have cited still agree on a great deal, but the few points of similarity just mentioned are enough to imagine the general course and direction of possible coincidences. Let us note here a number of the simplest circumstances.

The above systems of philosophy are based on the positing of a thing as a thing. This simple premise compels us, again before any conception of the world, to qualify a long series of philosophical teachings as purely abstract, as having some significance only in the order of abstraction, but not in the order of adequate reflection in thought of living reality. In fact, the very thing removes in itself absolutely all the antitheses that are inherent in a given thing. It is their absolute synthesis; and it is only by way of mental abstraction that one can single out certain partial moments in it. But, as we know, the very thing can also appear; and in its appearance, when the latter is adequate, it nevertheless continues to contain all its antitheses in an indistinguishable form. In this form we ourselves call the manifested itself a symbol, or a concrete, living thing.

(f) In fact, let us take, for example, the antithesis of the ideal and the real. A considerable part of the whole history of philosophy is concerned with the task of uniting the ideal and the real, or of giving priority in this antithesis to one of the two members. In fact, these epochs in the history of philosophy are simply hypnotized by abstract methods and do not know how to see simple and living things. Indeed, is it possible to conceive of a thing which has no idea, i.e., no meaning and no significance? After all, to have your own idea means to be yourself. If these boards that I see through my window did not contain their own specific idea of being the roof of the neighboring house, then they would remain a pile of boards, and nothing more. But these boards embody the idea of the roof of the house, and only if this idea is there is really a roof. Further, could one imagine that the roof of the neighboring house, which I see through the window, does not consist of boards, as boards are of sawn wood? Is it possible to imagine a wooden thing without wood, without its material, without its wooden matter? Of course not. Therefore both the idea of the roof and the matter of the roof are equally necessary to the roof itself. But at the same time, the roof itself is not at all a mere idea of a roof, nor merely the matter of the roof. It is the roof itself, whether it is to be understood as something of itself (in which case it will be given in a folded form), or whether it is understood as a symbol (in which case it will be in a dissected and unfolded form). But no matter how we divide and decorate the roof, the ideal and the real are always merged into one indistinguishable being; everything in it may be different, but as long as the roof is a roof, the ideal and the real in it are indistinguishable.

It is clear that if idealism is understood as the doctrine of bare ideas, and materialism as the doctrine of the existence of matter alone, then the antithesis of idealism and materialism is the result of abstract philosophical methods, nourished by a passion for the exaltation of the dead sides of reality for the sake of one or another abstract metaphysics. Both abstract methods take only one side of things and do not take the other, and the things themselves do not and cannot take at all.

(g) Related to this is the antithesis of essence and phenomenon. Of course, for the purposes of analysis, the establishment of these categories is very important, just as the study of the individual organs of the body is necessary in order to master anatomy. However, this value is by no means infinite and not the last. Is it really possible to conceive of a living thing without any essence, but only as a phenomenon or without any phenomenon, but only as an essence? If we want to define a thing as a thing, i.e., to take it as a given itself (unfolded) or as a symbol (unfolded), then there can be no talk of a choice between essence and phenomenon. Of course, there is an essence in things. Without it, things would be nothing, i.e., there would be no things at all. What is the essence of this object standing near the wall? The essence of this item is to serve as a place to store books. Only when you know what this essence is, you can judge!" about this thing. Otherwise, you can't even call a wardrobe a wardrobe. Further, is there a wardrobe without the wood from which it is made? It's ridiculous to ask. Only a very abstract philosophy, then, can fail to admit that essence and phenomenon coincide in one indistinguishable identity, that the thing itself is neither the phenomenon nor the essence of the thing, but simply the thing itself. And it is this self that we postulate, proceeding from the fact that it is precisely the essence of the thing and the appearance of the thing that are indistinguishable in it.

(h) Another prejudice helps us to overcome the previous review of apophatic teachings. Is a thing finite or infinite? Needless to say, absolutely everyone thinks that between the one and the other there is an impassable abyss, so impassable that the finite can never be infinite, under any circumstances, and the infinite can never and in no way be finite. At the very least, we can find examples in the history of philosophy when attempts are made to show that the infinite passes into the finite, or that the finite becomes infinite. In fact, from the point of view of the symbol itself, the finite and the infinite are again only maximal abstractions, admittedly often convenient for one purpose or another, but not for the purpose of reflecting living reality.

First of all, these categories are not independent if only because they are correlative. Since you think the finite, then you are obliged to think the infinite; and vice versa. We are not talking about factual thinking, but about principled thinking. Having two rubles of money in your pocket, you can, of course, not think of an infinite number of rubles; And when you think of the infinite universal space, you do not in fact yet think of it as finite. However, this separation of the finite and the infinite is achieved here only by introducing an accidental material content alien to these categories themselves. Of course, to have two rubles does not mean to have an infinite number of rubles. But let us discard these rubles; and let us discard even the very quantities to which the categories of the finite and the infinite are applied here; And let's take these categories themselves. Then it will immediately become clear that one is absolutely inconceivable without the other, that one is the boundary for the other, and that the limiting and the limited coincide absolutely in the boundary.