XI BUDDHISM AND THE PROBLEM OF THOUGHT The fact that a world exists simultaneously involves its existence _as such_, _i.e._ as our idea. All speculations and theories about the world are thus of a secondary nature. Their existence were a sheer impossibility if the world, apart from its being in existence at all, were not also existent _as such_, as idea, conceptually. In the foreword to his _Kritik der reinen Erfahrung_, R. Avenarius says:-- “This work makes the attempt to comprehend all theoretical relations whatsoever ... as consequences of one single, simple postulate.” This “single, simple postulate for all theoretical relations” is the _possibility_ of such a thing, _i.e._ the fact that conscious ideas, concepts, exist. _The concept is the problem of all thought_; and to seek to master the world epistemologically before one has mastered the concept, is sheer waste of time. Now, in the matter of concept thought is in this awkward plight, that the former offers nothing objective that can be made to serve as a point of departure in any possible attempt at comprehension. This simple consideration alone implies that every attempt to come at the fact “concept” inductively, _i.e._ with the implements of science, is hopeless, indeed absurd. And each fresh attempt in that direction only supplies another proof of the truth of the Buddha’s teaching that all mental life perforce is bound up with ignorance as to itself. In what follows I shall endeavour very briefly to sketch the various mistaken paths that here have been traversed. As everywhere, so also with regard to the fact “concept,” the two antitheses faith and science stand ranged over against each other. As everywhere, so also here, the fact “concept” presents no problem to faith. Just because I am endowed with a soul, a “force in itself,” I possess the power, the ability to form concepts. As everywhere, so also here, the paradoxical character of faith makes itself palpably manifest: the fact of the formation of concepts is by it accepted as proof that an inconceivable in itself must be present. Opposed to it stands science, which seeks to explain and is bound to explain how such an occurrence as the formation of concepts has ever been able to come about. Her task falls into two main divisions. On the one hand, there is the demonstrating of the subjective, antecedent conditions of the concept; this is done in the physiology of the different organs of sense. On the other hand, there is the demonstrating of the objective, antecedent conditions of the concept--objects, the external world.