Tertium Organum

of others, 
i.e. the thoughts, feelings and desires of 

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another man. We deduce that he has got them from his words or by analogy with 
ourselves. We know that, with us, certain actions are preceded by certain thoughts and 
feelings. And so, when we observe the same actions in another man, we conclude that 
he has thought and felt as we do. Analogy with ourselves is our only criterion and 
method of judging and drawing conclusions about the psychological phenomena of 
other people, if we cannot communicate with them or refuse to believe what they tell us 
about themselves. 
Supposing I were, to live in the midst of people, without any means of 
communicating with them or drawing conclusions by analogy; I should then be 
surrounded by moving and acting automatons, the meaning, significance and causes of 
whose actions would be totally obscure for me. Perhaps I would explain their actions by 
'molecular motion', or by the 'influence of the planets', or by 'spiritualism', i.e. the 
actions of 'spirits', or by 'accident', an involuntary combination of causes; in any case I 
would not and could not see the 
psychological life 
of these people in those actions. 
Altogether, I can only judge about the existence of thought and feeling by analogy 
with myself. I know that certain phenomena in me are connected with my possessing 
thought and feeling. When I see the same phenomena in another man, I conclude that 
he also possesses thought and feeling. But I cannot have a 
direct
proof of the existence 
of psychological life in another man. Studying man only from outside, I should be in 
relation to him in exactly the same position as, according to Kant, we stand in relation 
to the surrounding world. We only know our means of perceiving it. 
The world in itself 
we do
not know. 
Thus I have two means of knowing a 
man in himself (i.e. 
his inner life) - analogy 
with myself and communication with him, 
exchange of thoughts. 
Without this a man 
for me is nothing but a 
phenomenon,
a moving automaton. 
The 
noumenon
of a man is his psychological life, all that this psychological life 
contains, and all that it connects man with. 
Both worlds are open for us in 'Man', although the noumenal world is open but 
slightly and imperfectly owing to the fact that it is perceived by us through the 
phenomenal world. 
Noumenal
means 
perceived by the mind
and the characteristic feature of the 
things 
belonging to the noumenal world
is the fact that 
they cannot be perceived by the same 
method as things of the phenomenal world.
We may speculate about the existence of 
things of the noumenal world, we may find them by means of mental deductions, we 
may discover them by analogy, we may feel them, enter into some 

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sort of communion with them - but we cannot see, hear, touch, weigh or 
measure them, we cannot photograph them or resolve them into chemical 
elements or into a number of vibrations. 
Thus psychological life with all its functions and all its content -thoughts, 
feelings, desires, will, does not belong to the world of phenomena. No 
element of psychological life can be perceived by us 
objectively.
It is just as 
impossible to see 
an emotion 
as such, as it is impossible to see 
the value of a 
coin.
You can see the inscription on a coin but you can never see its