3. Idea, or Ordinary Thought.[1]
We can very easily distinguish between a picture (Bild) and an idea (Vorstellung). Something different is meant when we say “We have an idea,” from what is meant when we say, “We have a picture of God;” the same difference exists with regard to sensuous objects. A picture derives its content from the sphere of sense, and presents it in the immediate mode of its existence, in its singularity, and in the arbitrariness of its sensuous manifestation. But since the infinite number of individual things, as they are present in immediate, definite existence, cannot, even by means of the most detailed or ample representation, be rendered as a whole, the picture is necessarily always something limited; and in religious perception, which is able only to present its content as a picture, the Idea splits up into a multitude of forms, in which it limits itself and renders itself finite. The universal Idea (Idee), which appears in the circle of these finite forms, and only in these, and which is merely their basis, must as such remain concealed.
General idea or ordinary thought (Vorstellung), on the other hand, is the picture lifted up into the form of Universality, of thought, so that the one fundamental characteristic, which constitutes the essence of the object, is held fast, and is present before the mind which thus forms the idea. If, for instance, we say “world,” in this single sound we have gathered together and united the entire wealth of this infinite universe. If the consciousness of
- ↑ Note.—Throughout this section Vorstellung is generally translated as “idea,” with a small i, and without the article to distinguish it from the Idea (die Idee) which represents, to use the definition of Professor Wallace, thought in its totality as an organisation or system of reason, but this rendering has not been strictly adhered to here or elsewhere, and general idea, ordinary thought, popular conception, and other equivalents have been employed.—E.B.S.
