Page:Schlick - Gesammelte Aufsätze (1926 - 1936), 1938.djvu/202

 apparatus (eyes and optical centers) do not function properly; for in reality the statement that there is something wrong with his perceptive faculties is identical with the statement that the structures which determine the general character of his conscious life are connected or disconnected in a way which differs in a well defined manner from the lives of normal human beings. The latter statement might be formulated more shortly that the structure of the world of experience shows a well defined typical difference in the two cases. All these assertions, inspite of their different wording, have exactly the same meaning. In this way we are always confronted with the same result: wherever it may at first seem necessary or possible to speak of content a closer examination shows that it is unnecessary and impossible. Everything we can possibly say and — which is more — everything we can possibly want to say is always said without mentioning content. Content cannot be mentioned, it is inexpressible.

If you should object that in this very sentence and in all the explanations presented on these pages I myself have continually been trying to say something about content I may remind you that I am deliberately using incorrect language at present, hoping to convince you in the end that I am not guilty of such a very crude contradiction.

It would be nonsense to regard the inexpressibility of content as a wonderful discovery or as a new deep insight. On the contrary, that nobody seriously denies it. It may not be stated expressis verbis, but it reveals itself in our every day actions. Even the man in the street would not try to explain to a blind person the essence of colour. The man in the street knows that the content which e.g. he believes to be indicated by the word "fear" cannot be communicated but must be learned by the experience of being afraid (one of Grimm's fairy tales treats of this subject), and so forth. It is important to notice that he knows such communication or expression to be impossible not because he has tried to do it in many ways and has failed each time, but because he cannot even try it, he can see no possible way of going about it; he is like a man who is asked to translate a sentence into a language with which he is not acquainted: the impossibility of this is not an empirical, but a logical one.