Insofar as psychic life is perceived in terms of its contents, it is finite. It consists then of these ideal contents, which now have the form of life. But the process reaches beyond them. We conceive, feel, desire this and that—such are clearly defined contents, something logical realized only now, something in principle completely definite and definable. Yet as we experience it, we feel something else to be present, something unformulable, indefinable: we feel of every life as such that it is more than every assignable content. It swings out beyond every content, regarding it at once from within (as is the nature of logical description of content) and from without. We are in this content and at the same time outside of it. In taking up this content into the form of life, we have by that very fact more than the content.

DEFINE: Distinguishes the finite, definite contents of psychic life from the unformulable, indefinable excess that characterizes life as such.

QUESTION: This suggests a Non-Kantian theory of psychic life without a rigid inner-outer boundary — worth exploring the philosophical lineage here.

Georg Simmel, on individuality and social…, loc. 829