universally valid scientific results in conjunction with the elaboration of the problem.
Assuming that the experiences were fundamentally different, and that only my experience existed, I still assert that universally valid propositions are possible. This implies that these sentences would also be valid for the experience of the Senegal Negro. Let us put this assertion to one side, and focus once again on the experience of the Senegal Negro. Even if he saw the lectern simply as a bare something that is there, it would have a meaning for him, a moment of signification. There is, however, the possibility of showing that the assumption of the transplanted unscientific (not culture-less) Negro seeing the lectern as simply something is non-sensical but not contradictory, i.e. not impossible in a formal-logical sense. The Negro will see the lectern much more as something 'which he does not know what to make of. The meaningful character of 'instrumental strangeness', and the meaningful character of the 'lectern', are in their essence absolutely identical.
In the experience of seeing the lectern something is given to me from out of an immediate environment [Umwelt]. This environmental milieu (lectern, book, blackboard, notebook, fountain pen, caretaker, student fraternity, tram-car, motor-car, etc.) does not consist just of things, objects, which are then [73] conceived as meaning this and this; rather, the meaningful is primary and immediately given to me without any mental detours across thing-oriented apprehension. Living in an environment, it signifies to me everywhere and always, everything has the character of world. It is everywhere the case that 'it worlds' [es weltet], which is something different from 'it values' [es wertet]. (The problem of the connection between the two belongs to the eidetic genealogy of primary motivations and leads into difficult problem spheres.)