attitude of knowledge, doubt, belief, etc., he calls a character. "If I observe that I first presumed or guessed something, then believed it and finally knew it, I have, in the relation content-character, the content as constant and the character as variable. If I observe what different things I have believed in at different periods of my life, I have the character as constant and the content as variable."[1] Evidently, experience appears in this distinction as a character, for in the question, did you experience that, or did you imagine it or dream it? the idea of experience stands for certainty, sure knowledge of fact.
The shifting value of the reality-feeling is readily illustrated by the religious questionings and doubts of many persons. At the outset there is frequently no question about God at all; everything is sure, and as yet unquestioned. No question has ever occurred, just as no genuine question has ever occurred about the reality of my fellow being. It is misleading to say that one believes in this stage. One simply knows. There is perfect adjustment, perfect satisfaction; no problem appears anywhere. There is an experience of genuine insight. Many persons who go through painful religious experiences start from a situation like this, others always remain in it,—others attain to it. It is our attitude toward our intimate friends,—we know them, we are sure of them, they are the most real facts in our lives.
But this condition of perfect mental and organic stability does not always continue. The time comes when one believes in God,—one no longer claims direct insight and certain knowledge. God exists, yes,—one is sure of that, and one is sure of God,—but one doesn't know so many things about God. The 'fidential' is beginning to be attenuated. God becomes more and more an object of doubt; if not less knowable, at least less known, and known about, and therefore not to be depended upon with the same quiet assurance as before. Finally one asks the question does God exist, anyway? The idea began as the idea of something that was an object of experience and knowledge, with nothing problematic about it. Then the reality-feeling began to fade. The idea took on a slightly problematic tone, it became problematized, and this problematic quality became more and more characteristic. The idea is different somehow, a little strange. A quality of difference or otherness has come over it. Finally what was known and experienced as real turns completely into a problem. And then the problem gradually ceases to exist. The idea of God is at last understood to be a superstition to be explained on historical and anthropological grounds. The idea has become deproblematized. And yet God was at the
- ↑ Avenarius, 'Der Menschliche Weltbegriff,' p. 1.
