But in the hope that you will, at least during our present investigation, keep these foreign images away from your mind, and resist that blind operation of an association of ideas, I will drop this doubtful point of sensuous representation, and solely make use of your confession concerning the freedom of argument.
It seems, then, that there are two kinds of actuality, which are both equally actual, but of which the one makes itself, while the other must be made by him for whom it is to be, and is not unless he so makes it?
R. So it appears.
A. Let us consider the matter a little. You say the hand of the clock has actually moved during your argumentation. Would you be able to say this, would you know this, unless you had looked againat the hand after your argument, and had now drawn your conclusion from the actual perceptionthat it occupied another place?
R. Certainly not.
A. Do not forget this; it is very important to me. All reality of the first kind—however much it may proceed in its course without your knowledge and co-operation, or may exist in itself, i.e. unrelated to any possible consciousness, a point which we shall not discuss here—all such reality is at least for you, and as an event of yourlife, only in so far as you at some time direct your attention to it, throw yourself into it, and take hold of that reality with your consciousness. When we consider this well, your assertion that the hand of the clock has moved from one place to another, from the time of one of your perceptions to that of a second perception—without which latter perception the hand would never have come into your consciousness again—and during this intermediate time while you did not observe it, can only signify: you would have perceived the hand moving if you had directed your attention to it.
Hence, by this assertion of an event outside of your life, you only assert a possibleevent within your life, a possible continuous flow of this life from the first perception of the hand to the second perception. You supply and add a series of possible observations between the end points of your two actual observations. Now, if I pledge you my word that I shall always speak only of a reality for you, and never replace it by a reality unrelated to you, nor speak or assert anything of this latter sort of reality, will you then allow me to consider the continuation of an external reality, without any act of your own, as merely the continuation of your own possibleconsciousness and life, since you have seen that it becomes reality for you, after all, only in this manner?
A Reader(who, perhaps, may even be a celebrated philosopher). I will hear nothing more of such stuff. Have I not sufficiently hinted to you that this is pure insanity? I always proceed from a reality in and for itself, from an absolute being. I cannot go higher, and will not. The distinction which you make between a reality in itself and a reality for us, and the abstraction in the former which you undertake, and which, as I now apprehend, is the corner-stone of your system, you must first demonstrate to me!
A. Indeed? You are able to speakof a reality without knowingof it, without seizing it, at least dimly, in your consciousness, and relating it to your consciousness? You can do more than I can. Put down the book; it is not written for you.
A second and fairer Reader. I will accept your limitation to speak only of a reality for us, on condition that you remain true to it, and speak of reality in itself neither good nor evil. But as soon as you transcend your limits and draw a conclusion to the disadvantage of the latter, I also shall leave you.
A. Not more than fair. If we then presuppose this view, that only our relation to reality and actuality is to be considered, our consciousness would appear about as follows: All reality, whatever name it may have, becomes reality for us only through our immersing and forgetting ourself in certain determinations of our life, and this forgetting of ourself is precisely that which gives to these determinations wherein we forget ourselves the character of reality, and which gives us lifeat all.