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精神


Note.
The Japanese term seishin, rendered here as “spirit,” is roughly equivalent to the German term Geist and therefore might also be rendered “mind” or “psyche.” Due to the religious connotations of seishin found later in this work, we have translated it as “spirit".

Nature as a truly concrete reality does not come into being without having a unifying activity. Nature therefore possesses a kind of self, too.

Although there is only one reality, it appears in various forms in accordance with differing views of it. Nature conceived of as an objective reality totally independent of our subjectivity is an abstract concept, not true reality. The noumenal aspect of nature is the fact of direct experience in which subject and object have not yet separated.

At the same time that reality is a unified whole, it must include opposition.


Even psychology construes the self as the unifier of consciousness.

To the Greeks, all of nature was alive. Thunder and lightning were the wrath of Zeus on Mount Olympus, the voice of the cuckoo was Philamela’s lament of the past.

In the past, psychology was primarily intellectualist, although in recent times voluntarism has gradually come to the fore, with exponents like Wilhelm Wundt. From the newer perspective, consciousness is always constructive no matter how simple it may be.

At the same time that reality is a unified whole, it must include opposition.

As I stated before, reality is the activity of consciousness.

In contrast, things that do not constitute a system—such as dreams— are believed to be unreal.

The most powerful reality is the one that most thoroughly harmonizes and unifies various contradictions.