ABSTRACT
The problem of the origins of the knowledge of other minds, past, present and future, includes a range of questions almost unnoticed hitherto, concerning the genetic order in the knowledge of the various essential group-forms which have to be distinguished in the study of human social groups. Thus it can be shown that a knowledge of the existence and character of mental life in the group comprising the 'community of irreplaceable spiritual persons' already presupposes a knowledge of the existence and nature of other people within 'society'. The socio-psychology and psycho-sociology of primitive thought, volition and feeling can only be elucidated, once it is established empirically what can be known in this field, by means of this philosophical theory of origin. Empirical psychology is unable by itself to determine the nature of internal awareness or to explain how this allows the object of awareness to be identified in a multiplicity of acts on the part of a multiplicity of percipients.
