The Act Of Knowing

Knowledge puts various things together — and makes them be one thing.

Knowledge determines how the things act and interact. That they behave according to certain rules, expressing constant relationship. It is this regular behavior, recurring always in the same manner, that constitutes the new certain thing of knowledge, the fact. Thus crystallized it becomes graspable and handy, making it a gain in knowledge.

So we have just described the key process of knowledge. We should replay it frequently before our mind’s eye, recapitulate it, internalize it. Only so we can really understand it.

In particular it is most important to realize this to be actually a process; something is happening, a change. Activity takes place. Without that there were no realization, no understanding, no knowledge. For it is this activity that brings together what formerly seemed to be totally unrelated. A transition takes place. And only when this transition becomes an unalterable habit the represented relation is firmly established. From now on it automatically replicates itself. Now it is clearly evident, without a doubt, that those things belong that way together — in this sense being one thing.