Tertium Organum

emotional understanding
is the aim of 
art.
In 
the combination of words, in their meaning, in rhythm, in music, in the 
combination of meaning, rhythm and music; in sounds, in colours, in lines, in 
forms - men create a new world and try to express in it that which they feel 
but cannot express and convey simply in words, i.e. in concepts. The 
emotional tones of life, i.e. the 'feelings' are best expressed in music. On the 
other hand, music is utterly incapable of expressing concepts, i.e. thoughts. 
Poetry aims at expressing the two together. The combination of feeling and 
thought of high intensity leads to a higher form of inner life, difficult to 
define in ordinary language. Thus, in art we already find the first experiments 
in a 
language of the future. 
Art marches in the vanguard of inner evolution, 
anticipating the forms it is to assume tomorrow. 
At the present moment an average man, taken as a standard, has three units 
of mental life -
sensation, representation
and 
concept. 
Observation further 
shows us that in some people at certain moments there appears, as it were, a 
fourth unit of mental life, which different authors and schools call by
different names, but in which the element of perception or the element of 
ideas is always connected with the emotional element. 
If Kant's idea is true, if space with its characteristics is a property of our 
consciousness and not a property of the external world, then the three­
dimensionality of the world must in some way be dependent on the 
constitution of our mental apparatus. 
Concretely, the question may be put in this way: What is the relation of the 
three-dimensional extension of the world to the fact that our mental apparatus 
contains sensations, representations and concepts, and that they stand exactly
in this order? 
We have a mental apparatus 
of this kind 
and the world is 
three­
dimensional. 
How to prove that the three-dimensionality of the world 
depends on this particular constitution of our mental apparatus? 
To prove or refute this 
conclusively
would be possible only through 
experience. 
If we were able to 
alter our mental apparatus
and observe that 
the 

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world around us changed 
with these alterations, this would prove to us the 
dependence of the properties of space on the properties of our mind. 
For instance, if the above-mentioned higher form of inner life, which now 
appears only accidentally, as it were, depending on some little-known 
conditions, could be rendered as definite, as precise, 
as obedient to our will
as 
a concept, and if, through this, the number of characteristics of space
increased, i.e. if space, instead of being three-dimensional, became four­
dimensional, this would confirm our supposition and prove Kant's idea that 
space with its properties is 
the form of our sense-perception. 
Or, if we could reduce the number of units of our mental life and 
deliberately deprive ourselves or some other man of 
concepts, 
leaving his or 
our mind to operate by representations and sensations alone; 
and if, through this, the number of characteristics of the space surrounding us 
diminished, i.e. if for that man the world were to become two-dimensional 
instead of three-dimensional and, with a further limitation of his mental 
apparatus, i.e. with depriving him of representations, it were to become one­
dimensional, this would confirm our surmise and Kant's thought could be 
regarded as proved. 
Thus, Kant's idea could be proved