All our
conceptions are what the Germans call denkmittel, means by which we
handle facts by thinking them. Experience merely as such doesn't
come ticketed and labeled, we have first to discover what it is.
Kant speaks of it as being in its first intention a gewuehl der
erscheinungen, a rhapsodie der wahrnehmungen, a mere motley which we
have to unify by our wits. What we usually do is first to frame some
system of concepts mentally classified, serialized, or connected in
some intellectual way, and then to use this as a tally by which we
'keep tab' on the impressions that present themselves. When each is
referred to some possible place in the conceptual system, it is
thereby 'understood.' This notion of parallel 'manifolds' with their
elements standing reciprocally in 'one-to-one relations,' is proving
so convenient nowadays in mathematics and logic as to supersede more
and more the older classificatory conceptions. There are many
conceptual systems of this sort; and the sense manifold is also such
a system. Find a one-to-one relation for your sense-impressions
ANYWHERE among the concepts, and in so far forth you rationalize the
impressions. But obviously you can rationalize them by using various
conceptual systems.
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