Novalis provides some insights into the kind of thinking Dr. Charlton frequently refers to as primary thinking or direct knowing (bold added):
72. On non-sensory or immediate knowledge.
All meaning is representative, symbolic -- a medium. All sense perception is at secondhand. The more particular, the more abstract, one could say, the idea, the description, or the imitation, the less it resembles the object or the stimulus, the more separate and independent is the meaning.
If the meaning did not need an external cause at all it would cease to be meaning and would be a congruous being. As such its forms can again be more or less similar and corresponding to the forms of other beings.
Were its forms and their sequence to perfectly resemble the sequence of forms of another being then there would be the purest harmony between them.
Meaning is a tool -- a means. Absolute meaning would be means and end at the same time. Thus every thing is itself the means whereby we can come to know it -- to experience it or have an effect on it.
Thus in order to feel and come to know a thing completely I would have to make it my meaning and object at once -- I would have to vivify it -- make it into absolute meaning, according to the earlier definition.
If however I were neither able nor willing to do this completely, then I would have to make a part of it -- specifically an individual part quite peculiar to the thing -- an element of the meaning.
What would now ensue? I would acquire mediated and immediate knowledge and experience of the thing at the same time -- it would be representative and not representative, perfect and imperfect -- my own and not my own, in short it would be both antithetical and synthetic knowledge and experience of it.
The element or meaning would be at once an element and a non-element, because through vivifying it I would in a sense have severed it from the whole. If I call the whole thing world, then I would have an integral part of the world in myself, and the rest of it outside myself. I would appear to myself in a theoretical respect, with regard to this meaning, as dependent and under the influence of the world.
I would further, in connection with this meaning, be obliged to cooperate as an element of the world -- for otherwise I would accomplish my intention only incompletely in vivifying it. I would find my meaning, or body, determined partly by itself and partly by the idea of the whole -- by its spirit -- the world soul, and this so that both are inextricably united -- so that properly speaking one could refer neither to the one nor the other exclusively.
My body would seem to me not specifically different from the whole -- but only a variant of it. My knowledge of the whole would thus have the character of analogy -- but this would refer in the closest and most immediate way to the direct and absolute knowledge of the element. Both together would comprise an antithetical synthetic knowledge. It would be immediate, and by means of the immediate it would be mediated, at once real and symbolic.
All analogy is symbolic. I find my body determined and made effective by itself and the world soul at the same time. My body is a small whole, and thus it also has a special soul; for I call soul the individual principle whereby everything becomes one whole.
I know myself to be as I will and will myself to be as I know -- because I will my will --because I will absolutely. Thus within myself knowledge and will are perfectly united.
While I want to understand my will -- and particularly also my deed -- I notice that I also have a will and can do something without knowing about it -- further, that I can and do know something without having willed it.
- from Logological Fragments I
72. On non-sensory or immediate knowledge.
All meaning is representative, symbolic -- a medium. All sense perception is at secondhand. The more particular, the more abstract, one could say, the idea, the description, or the imitation, the less it resembles the object or the stimulus, the more separate and independent is the meaning.
If the meaning did not need an external cause at all it would cease to be meaning and would be a congruous being. As such its forms can again be more or less similar and corresponding to the forms of other beings.
Were its forms and their sequence to perfectly resemble the sequence of forms of another being then there would be the purest harmony between them.
Meaning is a tool -- a means. Absolute meaning would be means and end at the same time. Thus every thing is itself the means whereby we can come to know it -- to experience it or have an effect on it.
Thus in order to feel and come to know a thing completely I would have to make it my meaning and object at once -- I would have to vivify it -- make it into absolute meaning, according to the earlier definition.
If however I were neither able nor willing to do this completely, then I would have to make a part of it -- specifically an individual part quite peculiar to the thing -- an element of the meaning.
What would now ensue? I would acquire mediated and immediate knowledge and experience of the thing at the same time -- it would be representative and not representative, perfect and imperfect -- my own and not my own, in short it would be both antithetical and synthetic knowledge and experience of it.
The element or meaning would be at once an element and a non-element, because through vivifying it I would in a sense have severed it from the whole. If I call the whole thing world, then I would have an integral part of the world in myself, and the rest of it outside myself. I would appear to myself in a theoretical respect, with regard to this meaning, as dependent and under the influence of the world.
I would further, in connection with this meaning, be obliged to cooperate as an element of the world -- for otherwise I would accomplish my intention only incompletely in vivifying it. I would find my meaning, or body, determined partly by itself and partly by the idea of the whole -- by its spirit -- the world soul, and this so that both are inextricably united -- so that properly speaking one could refer neither to the one nor the other exclusively.
My body would seem to me not specifically different from the whole -- but only a variant of it. My knowledge of the whole would thus have the character of analogy -- but this would refer in the closest and most immediate way to the direct and absolute knowledge of the element. Both together would comprise an antithetical synthetic knowledge. It would be immediate, and by means of the immediate it would be mediated, at once real and symbolic.
All analogy is symbolic. I find my body determined and made effective by itself and the world soul at the same time. My body is a small whole, and thus it also has a special soul; for I call soul the individual principle whereby everything becomes one whole.
I know myself to be as I will and will myself to be as I know -- because I will my will --because I will absolutely. Thus within myself knowledge and will are perfectly united.
While I want to understand my will -- and particularly also my deed -- I notice that I also have a will and can do something without knowing about it -- further, that I can and do know something without having willed it.
- from Logological Fragments I
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