(b) The Order Is Seen In

(b) The order is seen in.b) Die Ordnung wird hineingeschaut.

The last example of the first group already formed a transition to this group; whoever makes a mistake in reading aloud (not by a slip of the tongue) does, to be sure, take part in creating the striking result, but this activity is really already a “seeing into” the material offered by chance of the ruling idea. Silent misreading gives an easy continuation of our series of examples. Nevertheless I should like to put a word before the new group; I want, that is, to recall how differently one and the same object is perceived by different people, and by the same person in his changing moods and attitudes. The lake that spreads out before us, what can it not all be! The painter sees

in it, perhaps, a rewarding motif; the poet, Undine’s realm; the angler, a fishing water; the entrepreneur, an opportunity to found a spa or a shipping line; the wanderer plagued by heat, refreshment; the sailor, a ground for sport; the drowning man, death. One’s occupation of the moment can colour one’s gaze wholly in its own sense: when I have been occupying myself intensively with music, I see nothing but the heads of notes in the unevennesses of the wall; and Lichtenberg writes: “He always read Agamemnon for angenommen (supposed), so much had he read Homer.”