[p. 209]
|209| concrete are connected with it. – A concrete representation is analysed by laying out the determinations which are united in the concrete. The intelligible world receives its content from spirit, in general pure universal representations, e.g. being, nothing, quality, essence and the like.
§ 2
The first source of our cognition is experience. To experience there belongs in general that we have perceived something ourselves. A distinction must also be made, however, between perception and experience. Perception at first contains only a single object, which may by chance be constituted now thus, another time otherwise. If I now repeat the perception and in the repeated perception notice and hold fast what remains the same in all these perceptions, this is an experience. Experience contains chiefly laws, i.e. a connection of two appearances such that, when the one is present, the other always follows too. Experience, however, contains only the universality of such an appearance, not the necessity of the connection. Experience teaches only that something is so, and how it happens or is present, but not yet the grounds or the why.
Since there are very many objects regarding which we cannot ourselves have the experience, e.g. the past, we must also rely on the authority of others. Those objects too which we hold true on the authority of others are objects of experience. We believe on the authority of others what is probable. We often hold probable what is in fact improbable, but precisely the improbable is often the true. – (An event proves itself above all through the consequences and through the manifold connection of circumstances of which we have had experience ourselves. The men who relate something must have
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