At the beginning of an epistemological inquiry we must, in accordance with the conclusions we have reached, put aside everything which we have come to know. For, knowledge is something which man has produced, something which he has originated by his activity. If the Theory of Knowledge is really to extend the light of its explanation over the whole field of what we know, it must set out from a point which has remained wholly untouched by cognitive activity—indeed which rather furnishes the first impulse for this activity. The point at which we must start lies outside of what we know. It cannot as yet itself be an item of knowledge. But we must look for it immediately prior to the act of cognition, so that the very next step which man takes shall be a cognitive act. The method for determining this absolutely first starting-point must be such that nothing enters into it which is already the result of cognitive activity.

There is nothing but the immediately-given world-picture with which we can make a start [305]of this sort. This means the picture of the world which is presented to man before he has in any way transformed it by cognitive activity, i.e., before he has made the very least judgment about it or submitted it to the very smallest determination by thinking. What thus passes initially through our minds and what our minds pass through—this incoherent picture which is not yet differentiated into particular elements, in which nothing seems distinguished from, nothing related to, nothing determined by, anything else, this is the Immediately-Given. On this level of existence—if the phrase is permissible—no object, no event, is as yet more important or more significant than any other. The rudimentary organ of an animal, which, in the light of the knowledge belonging to a higher level of existence, is perhaps seen to be without any importance whatever for the development and life of the animal, comes before us with the same claim to our attention as the noblest and most necessary part of the organism. Prior to all cognitive activity nothing in our picture of the world appears as substance, nothing as quality, nothing as cause or as effect. The contrasts of matter and spirit, of body and soul, have not yet arisen. Every other predicate, too, must be kept away from the world-picture presented at this level. We may think of it neither as reality nor as appearance, neither as subjective nor as objective, neither as necessary nor as contingent. We cannot decide [306]at this stage whether it is “thing-in-itself” or mere “idea.” For, we have seen already that the conclusions of Physics and Physiology, which lead us to subsume the Given under one or other of the above heads, must not be made the basis on which to build the Theory of Knowledge.

Suppose a being with fully-developed human intelligence were to be suddenly created out of Nothing and confronted with the world, the first impression made by the world on his senses and his thought would be pretty much what we have here called the immediately-given world-picture. Of course, no actual man at any moment of his life has nothing but this original world-picture before him. In his mental development there is nowhere a sharp line between pure, passive reception of the Given from without and the cognitive apprehension of it by Thought. This fact might suggest critical doubts concerning our method of determining the starting-point of the Theory of Knowledge. Thus, e.g., Eduard von Hartmann remarks: “We do not ask what is the content of consciousness of a child just awakening to conscious life, nor of an animal on the lowest rung of the ladder of organisms. For, of these things philosophising man has no experience, and, if he tries to reconstruct the content of consciousness of beings on primitive biogenetic or ontogenetic levels, he cannot but base his conclusions on his own personal experience. Hence, [307]our first task is to determine what is the content of consciousness which philosophising man discovers in himself when he begins his philosophical reflection.”1 But, the objection to this view is that the picture of the world with which we begin philosophical reflection, is already qualified by predicates which are the results solely of knowledge. We have no right to accept these predicates without question. On the contrary, we must carefully extract them from out of the world-picture, in order that it may appear in its purity without any admixture due to the process of cognition. In general, the dividing line between what is given and what is added by cognition cannot be identified with any single moment of human development, but must be drawn artificially. But this can be done at every level of development, provided only we divide correctly what is presented to us prior to cognition, without any determination by thinking, from what is made of it by cognition.

Now, it may be objected that we have already piled up a whole host of thought-determinations in the very process of extracting the alleged primitive world-picture out of the complete picture into which man’s cognitive elaboration has transformed it. But, in defence we must urge that all our conceptual apparatus was employed, not for the characterisation of the primitive world-picture, nor [308]for the determination of its qualities, but solely for the guidance of our analysis, in order to lead it to the point where knowledge recognises that it began. Hence, there can be no question of the truth or error, correctness or incorrectness, of the reflections which, according to our view, precede the moment which brings us to the starting-point of the Theory of Knowledge. Their purpose is solely to guide us conveniently to that point. Nobody who is about to occupy himself with epistemological problems, stands at the same time at what we have rightly called the starting-point of knowledge, for his knowledge is already, up to a certain degree, developed. Nothing but analysis with the help of concepts enables us to eliminate from our developed knowledge all the gains of cognitive activity and to determine the starting-point which precedes all such activity. But the concepts thus employed have no cognitive value. They have the purely negative task to eliminate out of our field of vision whatever is the result of cognitive activity and to lead us to the point where this activity first begins. The present discussions point the way to those primitive beginnings upon which the cognitive activity sets to work, but they form no part of such activity. Thus, whatever Theory of Knowledge has to say in the process of determining the starting-point, must be judged, not as true or false, but only as fit or unfit for this purpose. Error is excluded, [309]too, from that starting-point itself. For, error can begin only with the activity of cognition; prior to this, it cannot occur.

This last proposition is compatible only with the kind of Theory of Knowledge which sets out from our line of thought. For, a theory which sets out from some object (or subject) with a definite conceptual determination is liable to error from the very start, viz., in this very determination. Whether this determination is justified or not, depends on the laws which the cognitive act establishes. This is a question to which only the course of the epistemological inquiry itself can supply the answer. All error is excluded only when I can say that I have eliminated all conceptual determinations which are the results of my cognitive activity, and that I retain nothing but what enters the circle of my experience without any activity on my part. Where, on principle, I abstain from every positive affirmation, there I cannot fall into error.

From the epistemological point of view, error can occur only within the sphere of cognitive activity. An illusion of the senses is no error. The fact that the rising moon appears to us bigger than the moon overhead is not an error, but a phenomenon fully explained by the laws of nature. An error would result only, if thought, in ordering the data of perception, were to put a false interpretation on the “bigger” or “smaller” size of the [310]moon. But such an interpretation would lie within the sphere of cognitive activity.

If knowledge is really to be understood in its essential nature, we must, without doubt, begin our study of it at the point where it originates, where it starts. Moreover, it is clear that whatever precedes its starting-point has no legitimate place in any explanatory Theory of Knowledge, but must simply be taken for granted. It is the task of science, in its several branches, to study the essential nature of all that we are here taking for granted. Our aim, here, is not to acquire specific knowledge of this or that, but to investigate knowledge as such. We must first understand the act of cognition, before we can judge what significance to attach to the affirmations about the content of the world which come to be made in the process of getting to know that content.

For this reason, we abstain from every attempt to determine what is immediately-given, so long as we are ignorant of the relation of our determinations to what is determined by them. Not even the concept of the “immediately-given” affirms any positive determination of what precedes cognition. Its only purpose is to point towards the Given, to direct our attention upon it. Here, at the starting-point of the Theory of Knowledge, the term merely expresses, in conceptual form, the initial relation of the cognitive activity to the world-content. The choice of this term [311]allows even for the case that the whole world-content should turn out to be nothing but a figment of our own “Ego,” i.e., that the most extreme subjectivism should be right. For, of course, subjectivism does not express a fact which is given. It can, at best, be only the result of theoretical considerations. Its truth, in other words, needs to be established by the Theory of Knowledge. It cannot serve as the presupposition of that theory.

This immediately-given world-content includes everything which can appear within the horizon of our exp............