Let us try to draw some conclusions from the foregoing. Certainly, while logic can be useful, it would be unjustifiable recklessness to refuse its services. Nor are the conclusions devoid of interest, as we shall see. First of all, when you speak, never trouble to be consistent with what you said before: that will put an unnecessary check upon your freedom, which, without that additional fetter, is already chained in words and grammatical forms. When you are listening to a friend or reading a book, do not assign great value to individual words or even to phrases. Forget separate thoughts, and give no great consideration even to logically arranged ideas. Remember that though your friend desires it, he cannot express himself save by ready-made forms of speech. Look well to the expression of his face, listen to the intonation of his voice—this will help you to penetrate through his words to his soul. Not only in conversation, but even in a written book, can one over-hear the sound, even the timbre of the author's voice, and notice the finest shades of expression in his eyes and face. Do not fasten upon contradictions, do not dispute, do not demand argument: only listen with attention. In return for which, when you begin to speak, you also will have to face no dispute, nor to produce arguments, which you know well you neither have nor could have. So you will not be annoyed by having pointed out to you your contradictions which you know well were always there, and will always be there, and with which it is painful, nay quite impossible, for you to part. Then, then—and this is most important of all—you will at last be convinced that truth does not depend on logic, that there are no logical truths at all, that you therefore have the right to search for what you like, how you like, without argument, and that if something results from your search, it will not be a formula, not a law, not a principle, not even an idea! Only think: while the object of search is 'truth,' as it is understood nowadays, one must be prepared for anything. For instance, the materialists will be right, and matter and energy are the basis of the world. It does not matter that we can immediately confound the materialists with their conclusions. The history of thought can show many cases of the complete rehabilitation of opinions that have been cast off and reviled. Yesterday's error may be to-morrow's truth, even a self-evident truth. And apart from its content, wherein is materialism bad? It is a harmonious, consistent, and well-sustained system. I have already pointed out that the materialistic conception of the world is just as capable of enchanting men as any other—pantheistic or idealistic. And since we have come so far, I confess that in my opinion no ideas at all are bad in themselves: so far I have been able to follow with pleasure the development of the idea of progress to the accompaniment of factories, railways, and aeroplanes. Still, it seems to me childish to hope that all these trivialities—I mean the ideas—will become the object of man's serious seeking. If that desperate struggle of man with God and the world were possible, of which legend and history tell—think of Prometheus alone—then it was not for truth and not for the idea. Man desires to be strong and rich and free, the wretched, insignificant creature of dust, whom the first chance shock crushes like a worm before one's eyes,—and if he speaks of ideas it is only because he despairs of success in his proper search. He feels that he is a worm, he fears that he must again return to the dust which he is, and he lies, pretending that his misery is not terrible to him, if only he knew the truth. Forgive him his lie, for he speaks it only with his lips. Let him say what he will, how he will; so long as we hear in his words the familiar note of the call to battle, and the fire of desperate inexorable resolution burns in his eyes, we will understand him. We are used to decipher hieroglyphs. But if he, like the Germans of to-day, accepts truth and the norm as the final goal of human aspiration, we shall also know with whom we have to deal, were he by destiny endowed with the eloquence of Cicero. Better utter loneliness than communion with such a man. Yet such communion does not exclude utter loneliness; perhaps it even assists the hard achievement.
The familiar expression, 'to look into another's soul,' which by force of habit at first sight seems extremely intelligible, on closer observation appears so unintelligible that one is forced to ask whether it has any meaning at all. Try to bend, mentally, over another's soul: you will see nothing but a vast, empty, black abyss, and you will only be seized with giddiness for your pains. Thus, properly speaking, the expression 'to look into another's soul' is only an abortive metaphor. All that we can do is to argue from the outward data to the inward feelings. From tears we deduce pain, from pallor, fear, from a smile, joy. But is this to look into another's soul? It is only to give room to a series of purely logical processes in one's head. The other's soul remains as invisible as before; we only guess at it, perhaps rightly, perhaps mistakenly. Naturally this conclusion irritates us. What a miserable world it is where it is quite impossible to see the very thing that we desire above all to see. But irritation is almost the normal spiritual state of a man who thinks and seeks. Whenever it is particularly important to him to be sure of something, after a number of desperate attempts he is convinced that his curiosity cannot be satisfied. And now the mocking mind adds a new question to the old: Why look for another's soul when you have not seen your own? And is there a soul? Many have believed and still do believe that there is no soul at all, but only a science of it, called psychology. It is known that psychology says nothing of the soul, considering that its task is confined to the study of spiritual states—states, by the way, which have as yet hardly been studied at all.... What is the way out? One can answer irony with irony, or even with abuse. One can deny psychology the right to be called a science and call the materialists a pack of fools, as is often done. Incontestably, anger has its rights. But this has sense and meaning only while you are among people and are listened to. Nobody wants to be indignant alone with oneself, when one is not even reckoning upon making use of one's indignation for literary purposes: for even a writer is not always writing, and is more often preoccupied with transitory thoughts than with his forthcoming works. One prefers to approach the enchanted cave, though for the thousandth time, with every possible precaution. Perhaps it is only upon the approach of an outside soul that another's soul becomes invisible, and if she be caught unawares she will not have time to disappear. So that ponderous psychology, which like any other science always proclaims its plans and methods aloud before undertaking anything, is utterly unsuited to the capture of a thing so light and mobile as the human soul. But let us leave psychology with the honourable name of science; let us even respect the materialists, while we endeavour to track down the soul by other means. Perhaps in the depth of the dark abyss of which we spoke, something might be found, were it not for the giddiness. Therefore it is not so necessary to invent new methods as to learn to look fearlessly into the depths, which always appear unfathomable to the unaccustomed eye.
After all, unfathomability is not so entirely useless to man. It was driven into our heads as children that the human mind could compass only those things which are limited. But this only proves that we have yet another prejudice to get rid of. If it comes to giving up the right of abusing the materialists and of being taught by psychology, and something else into the bargain—well, we are used to that. But in return we may at last be granted a glimpse of the mysterious 'thou,' and perhaps the 'I' will cease to be problematical as well. Patience is a sickening thing; but remember the fakirs and the other worthies of the same kind. They succeed by patience alone. And apparently they arrive at something; but not at universal truths, I am ready to vouch for that. The world has long been weary of universal truths. Even 'truth' pure and simple makes no whisper in my ear. We must find a way of escape from the power of every kind of truth. This victory the fakirs tried to win. They can produce no arguments to prove their right, for the visible victory was never on their side. One conquers by bayonets, big guns, microscopes and logical arguments. Microscopes and logic give the palm to limitation. And yet, though limitation often strengthens, it also happens that it kills.
The modern theory of knowledge, though it always consciously takes its rise from Kant, has in one respect quite disregarded the master's commandment. It is very strange that the theorists of knowledge, who usually cannot agree among themselves upon anything, have as it were agreed to understand the problem of knowledge quite otherwise than Kant. Kant undertook to investigate our cognitive faculties in order to establish foundations, in virtue of which certain existing sciences could be accepted, and others rejected. One may say that the second purpose was chief. Hume's scepticism made him uneasy only in theory. He knew beforehand that whatever theory of knowledge he might invent, mathematics and the natural sciences would remain sciences and metaphysics be rejected. In other words, his aim was not to justify science but to explain the possibility of its existence; and he started from the point of view that no one can seriously doubt the truths of mathematics and natural science. But now the position is different. The theorists of knowledge direct all their efforts towardsjustifyingscientific knowledge. Why? Does scientific knowledge really need justification? Of course there are cranks, sometimes even cranks of genius, like our own Tolstoi, who attack science; but their attacks offend no one, nor do they cause alarm.
Scientists continue their researches as before; the universities flourish; discovery follows discovery. And the theorists of knowledge themselves do not spend sleepless nights in the endeavour to find new justifications for science. Yet, I repeat, though they can come to an understanding about practically nothing else, they amaze us by their unanimity upon this point—they are all convinced that it is their duty to justify science and exalt her. So that the modern theory of knowledge is no longer a science, but an apology. And its demonstrations are like those of apology. Once science must be defended, it is necessary to begin by praising her, that is by selecting evidence and data to show that science fulfils some mission or other, but indubitably a very high and important one, or, on the other hand, by painting a picture of the fate that would overtake mankind, if it was deprived of science. Thus the apologetic element has begun to play almost as large a part in the theory of knowledge as it has done hitherto in theology. Perhaps the time is at hand when scientific apologetics will be officially recognised as a philosophic discipline.
But,qui s'excuse s'accuse.It is plain that all is not well with science, since she has begun to justify herself. Besides, apologetics are only apologetics, and sooner or later the theory of knowledge will be tired of psalms of praise, and will demand a more complex and responsible task, and a real labour. At present the theorists start with the assumption that scientific knowledge is perfect knowledge, and therefore the premisses upon which it is builded are not subject to criticism. The law of causation is not justified because it appears to be the expression of a real relation of things, nor even because we have data at our disposal which could convince us that it does not and will never admit exceptions, that uncaused effects are impossible. All these things are lacking; but, we are told, they are not needed.
The chief thing is that the causal law makes science possible, while to reject it means to reject science and knowledge generally, all anticipation, and even, as some few hold, reason itself. Clearly, if one has to choose between a slightly dubious admission on the one side and the prospect of chaos and insanity on the other, there will be no long hesitation. Apologetics, we see, has chosen the most powerful of arguments,ad hominem.But all such arguments partake of one common defect; they are not constant, and they are double-edged.
To-day they defend scientific knowledge; to-morrow they will attack it. Indeed, it so happens that the very belief in the causal law begets a great disquiet and turmoil in the soul, which finally produces all the horrors of chaos and madness. The certainty that the existing order is immutable is for certain minds synonymous with the certainty that life is nonsensical and absurd. Probably the disciples of Christ had that feeling when the last words of their crucified Master reached them from the cross: 'My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?' And the modern theorists may explain triumphantly that when the law became the instrument of chaos and madness, it wasipso factoabolished. 'Christ has risen,' say the disciples of Christ.
I have said that the theorists may triumph; but I must confess that I have not found in any of them an open glorification of such an obvious proof of the truth of their teaching. Of the resurrection of Christ they say not a word—on the contrary, they make every effort to avoid it and pass it by in silence. And this circumstance compels us to pause and think. A dilemma arises: if you grant that the law of causation suffers no exception, then your soul will be eternally haunted by the last words of the crucified Christ; if you do not, then you will have no science. Some assert that it is impossible to live without science, without knowledge, that such a life is horror and madness; others cannot be reconciled to the thought that the most perfect of men died the death of a murderer. What shall we do? Without which thing is it impossible for man to live? Without scientific knowledge, or without the conviction that truth and spiritual perfection are in the last resort the victors of this world? And how will the theory of knowledge stand with regard to questions such as these?
Will it still continue its exercises in apologetics or will it at last understand that this is not its real problem, and that if it would preserve the right to be called philosophy, it will have not to justify and exalt the existing science, but to examine and direct some science of its own. It means above all to put the question: Is scientific knowledge really perfect, or is it perhaps imperfect, and should it therefore yield its present honourable place to another science? Evidently this is the most important question for the theory of knowledge, yet this question it never puts. It wants to exalt existing science. It has been, is now, and probably will long continue to be, apologetics.
Mill, seeking to prove that all our sciences, even the mathematical, have an empiric origin, brings forward the following consideration. If on every occasion that we had to take twice two things, some deity slipped one extra thing into our hands, we should be convinced that twice two is not four but five. And perhaps Mill is right: perhaps we should not divine what was the matter. We are much more concerned to discover what is practically necessary and directly useful to us than to search for truth. If a deity with each four things slipped a fifth into our hands, we should accept the additional thing and consider it natural, intelligible, necessary, impossible to be otherwise. The very uniformity in the sequence of phenomena observed by the empirical philosophers was also slipped into our hands. By whom? When? Who dares to ask? Once the law is established no one is interested in anything any more. Now we can foretell the future, now we can use the thing slipped into our hands, and the rest—cometh of the evil one.
Every one knows that Schopenhauer was for many years not only not recognised, but not even read. His books were used for waste-paper. It was only towards the end of his life that he had readers and admirers—and, of course, critics. For every admirer is at bottom a most merciless and importunate critic. He must understand everything, make everything agree, and of course the master must supply the necessary explanations. Schopenhauer, who did not have the experience of being a master till his old age, at first behaved very benevolently to his disciples' questions and patiently gave the explanations required. But the further one goes into the forest, the thicker are the trees. The most loyal perplexities of his pupils became more and more importunate, until at last the old man lost patience. 'I didn't undertake to explain all the secrets of the universe to every one who wanted to know them,' he once exclaimed, when a certain pupil persisted in emphasising the contradictions he had noticed in Schopenhauer. And really—is a master obliged to explain everything? In Schopenhauer's words we are given an answer, not ambiguous. A philosopher not only cannot be a teacher, he does not want to be one. There are teachers in schools, in universities: they teach arithmetic, grammar, logic, metaphysics. The philosopher has quite a different task, one which does not in the least resemble teaching.
There are many ways, real and imaginary, of objectively verifying philosophic opinions. But they all reduce, we know, to trial by the law of contradiction. True, every one is aware that no single philosophic doctrine is able to support such a trial, so that, pending a better future, people consider it possible to display a certain tenderness in the examination. They are usually satisfied if they come to the conclusion that the philosopher made a genuine attempt to avoid contradictions. For instance, they forgive Spinoza his inconsistency because of hisamor intellectualis Dei; Kant, for his love of morality and his praise of disinterestedness; Plato, for the originality and purity of his idealistic impulses; and Aristotle, for the vastyness and universality of his knowledge. So that, strictly speaking, we must confess that we have no real objective method of verifying a philosophical truth, and when we criticise other people's systems, we judge arbitrarily after all. If a philosopher suits us for some reason, we do not trouble him with the law of contradiction; if he does not, we summon him before the court to be judged with the utmost rigour of the law, confident beforehand that he will be found guilty on every count. But sometimes there arises the desire to verify one's own philosophic convictions. To play the farce of objective verification with them, to look for contradictions in oneself—I do not suppose that even Germans are capable of that. And yet one desires to know whether he does indeed possess the truth or whether he has only a universal error in his hands. What is to be done? I think there is a way. He should think to himself that it is absolutely impossible for his truth to be binding upon anybody. If in spite of this he still refuses to renounce her, if the truth can suffer such an ordeal and yet remain the same to him as she was before, then it may be supposed that she is worth something. For often we appreciate conviction, not because it has an intrinsic value, but because it commands a high price in the market. Robinson Crusoe probably had a totally different way of thinking to that of a modern writer or professor, whose books are exposed to the appreciation of his numerous confrères, who can create for him the renown of a wise man and a scholar, or utterly ruin his reputation. Even with the Greeks, whom we are accustomed to regard as model thinkers, opinions had—to use the language of economics—not so much a demand, as an exchange value.
The Greeks had no knowledge of the printing-press, and no literary reviews. They usually took their wisdom out into the market-place, and applied all their efforts to persuade people to acknowledge its value. And it is hard to maintain that wisdom, which is constantly being offered to people, should not adapt itself to people's tastes. It is truer to say that wisdom became accustomed to value itself to the exact degree to which it could count on people's appreciation. In other words, it appears that the value of wisdom, like that of all other commodities, not only with us, but with the Greeks before us, is a social affair. The most modern philosophy has given up concealing the fact. The teleology of the rationalists, who follow Fichte, as well as of the pragmatists who consider themselves the successors of Mill is openly based upon the social point of view, and speaks of collective creations. Truth which is not good for all, and always, in the home market and the foreign—is not truth. Perhaps its value is even defined by the quantity of labour spent upon it. Marx might triumph: under different flags his theory has found admission into every sphere of contemporary thought. There would hardly be found one philosopher who would apply the method of verifying truth which I have proposed; and hardly a single modern idea which would stand the test.
If you want to ruin a new idea—try to give it the widest possible publicity. Men will begin to reflect upon it, to try it by their daily needs, to interpret it, to make deductions from it, in a word to squeeze it into their own prepared logical apparatus; or, more likely, they will cover it up with thedébrisof their own habitual and intelligible ideas, and it will become as dead as everything that is begotten by logic. Perhaps this explains the tendency of philosophers to so clothe their thoughts that their form may hinder the approach of the general public to them. The majority of philosophic systems are chaotically and obscurely expounded, so that not every educated person can understand them. It is a pity to kill one's own child, and every one does his best to save it from premature death. The most dangerous enemies of an idea are 'deductions' from it, as though they followed of themselves. The idea does not presuppose them; they are usually pressed upon it. Indeed, people very often say: 'The idea is quite right, but it leads to conclusions which are not at all acceptable.' Again, how often has a philosopher to attend the sad spectacle of his pupil's deserting all his ideas, and feeding only upon the conclusions from them. Every thinker who has had the misfortune to attract attention while he was yet alive, knows by bitter experience what 'deductions' are. And yet you will rarely find a philosopher to offer open and courageous resistance to his continuators; and still more rarely a philosopher to say outright that his work needs no continuation, that it will not bear continuation, that it exists only in and for itself, that it is self-sufficient. If some one said this, how would he be answered? People could not dispute with him—try to dispute with a man who wants neither to dispute nor to demonstrate.
The only answer is an appeal to the popular verdict, to lynch law. People are so weak and naïve that they will at all costs see a teacher (in the usual sense of the word) in every philosopher. In other words, they really want to throw upon him the responsibility for their actions, their present, their future, and their whole fate. Socrates was not executed for teaching, but because the Athenians thought he was dangerous to Athens. And in all ages men have approached truth with this criterion, as though they knew beforehand that truth must be of use and able to protect them. One of the greatest teachings, Christianity, was also persecuted because it seemed dangerous to the self-appointed guardians, or, if you will, because it was really very dangerous to Roman ideals. Of course, neither Socrates' death nor the deaths of thousands of the early Christians saved the ancient culture and polity from decay: but no one has learned anything from the lesson. People think that these were all accidental mistakes, against which no one was secure in ancient times, but which will never again recur; and therefore they continue to make 'deductions' as they used from every truth, and to judge the truth by the deductions they have made. And they have their reward. Although there have been on earth many wise men who knew much that is infinitely more valuable than all the treasures for which men are ready even to sacrifice their lives, still wisdom is to us a book with seven seals, a hidden hoard upon which we cannot lay our hands. Many—the vast majority—are even seriously convinced that philosophy is a most tedious and painful occupation to which are doomed some miserable wretches who enjoy the odious privilege of being called philosophers. I believe that even professors of philosophy, the more clever of them, not seldom share this opinion and suppose that therein lies the ultimate secret of their science, revealed to the initiate alone. Fortunately, the position is otherwise. It may be that mankind is destined never to change in this respect, and a thousand years hence men will care much more about 'deductions,' theoretical and practical, from the truth than about truth itself; but real philosophers, men who know what they want and at what they aim, will hardly be embarrassed by this. They will utter their truths as before, without in the least considering what conclusions will be drawn from them by the lovers of logic.
Whence did we get the habit of requiring proofs of each idea that is expressed? If we put aside the consideration, as having no real meaning in the present case, that men do often purposely deceive their neighbours for gain or other interests, then strictly speaking the necessity for proof is entirely removed. It is true that we can still deceive ourselves and fall into involuntary error. Sometimes we take a vision for a reality, and we wish to guard against that offensive mistake. But as soon as the possibility ofbona fideerror is removed, then we may relate simply without arguments, judgments, or references. If you please, believe; if you don't, don't. And there is one province, the very province which has always attracted to itself the most remarkable representatives of the human race, where proofs in the general acceptation are even quite impossible. We have been hitherto taught that that which cannot be proved, should not be spoken about. Still worse, we have so arranged our language that, strictly speaking, everything we say is expressed in the form of a judgment, that is, in a form which presupposes not merely the possibility but the necessity of proofs. Perhaps this is the reason why metaphysics has been the object of incessant attack. Metaphysics evidently was not only unable to find a form of expression for her truths which would free her from the obligation of proof; she did not even want to. She considered herself the sciencepar excellence,and therefore supposed that she had more largely and more strictly to prove the judgments which she took under her wing. She thought that if she were to neglect the duty of demonstration she would lose all her rights. And that, I imagine, was her fatal mistake. The correspondence of rights and duties is perhaps a cardinal truth (or a cardinal fiction) of the doctrine of law, but it has been introduced into the sphere of philosophy by a misunderstanding. Here, rather, the contrary principle is enthroned: rights are in inverse proportion to duties. And only there where all duties have ceased is the greatest and most sovereign right acquired—the right of communion with ultimate truths. Here we must not for one moment forget that ultimate truths have nothing in common with middle truths, the logical construction of which we have so diligently studied for the last two thousand years. The fundamental difference is that the ultimate truths are absolutely unintelligible. Unintelligible, I repeat, but not inaccessible. It is true that middle truths also are, strictly speaking, unintelligible. Who will assert that he understands light, heat, pain, pride, joy, degradation?
Nevertheless, our mind, in alliance with omnipotent habit, has, with the assistance of some strained interpretation, given to the combination of phenomena in the segment of universal life that is accessible to us, a certain kind of harmony and unity, and this from time immemorial has gained repute under the name of an intelligible explanation of the created world. But the known, which is the familiar, world is sufficiently unintelligible to make good faith require of us that we should accept unintelligibility as the fundamental predicate of being. It is impossible to hold, as some do, that the only reason why we do not understand the world is that something is hidden from us or that our mind is weak, so that if the Supreme Being wished to unveil the secret of creation to us, or if the human brain should so much develop in the next ten million years that he will excel us as far as we excel our official ancestor, the ape, then the world will be intelligible. No, no, no! By their very essence the operations which we perform upon reality to understand it are useful and necessary only so long as they do not pass a certain limit. It is possible to understand the arrangement of a locomotive. It is also legitimate to seek an explanation of an eclipse of the sun, or of an earthquake. But a moment comes—only we cannot define it exactly—when explanations lose all meaning and are good for nothing any more. It is as though we were led by a rope—the law of sufficient reason—to a certain place and left there: 'Now go wherever you like.' And since we have grown so used to the rope in our lives, we begin to believe that it is part of the very essence of the world. One of the most remarkable thinkers, Spinoza, thought that God himself was bound by necessity.
Let any one probe himself carefully, and he will find that he is not merely unable to think but almost unable to live without the hypothesis of Spinoza. The work of Hume, who so brilliantly disputed the axiom of causal necessity, was only half done. He clearly showed that it is impossible to prove the existence of necessary connection. But it is also impossible to prove the contrary. In the result, everything remained as before: Kant, and all mankind after him, has returned to Spinoza's position. Freedom has been driven into an intellectual world, an unknown land,
'from whose bourneNo traveller returns,'
and everything is in its former place. Philosophy wants to be a science at all costs. It is absolutely impossible for her to succeed in this; but the price she has paid for the right to be called a science, is not returned to her. She has waived the right of seeking that which she needed wherever she would, and she is deprived of the right for ever. But did she really need it? If you glance at contemporary German philosophy you will say without hesitation that it was not needed at all. Neither by mistake, nor even in pursuit of a new title, did she renounce her great vocation: it has become an intolerable burden to her. However hard it may be to confess, it is nevertheless indubitable that the great secrets of the universe cannot be manifested with the clarity and distinctness with which the visible and tangible world is opened to us. Not only others—you will not even convince yourself of your truth with the obviousness with which you can convince all men without exception of scientific truths.
Revelations, if they do occur, are always revelations for an instant. Mahomet—Dostoevsky explains—could only stay in paradise a very short time, from half a second to five seconds, even if he succeeded in falling into it. And Dostoevsky himself entered paradise only for an instant. And here on earth, both of them lived for years, for tens of years, and there seemed to be no end to the hell of earthly existence. The hell was obvious, demonstrable; it could be fixed, exhibited,ad oculos.But how could paradise be proven? How could one fix, how express, those half-seconds of paradisic beatitude, which were from the outside manifested in ugly and horrible epileptic fits with convulsions, paroxysms, a foaming mouth, and sometimes an ill-omened sudden fall, with the spilling of blood? Again, believe, if you will: if you won't, don't. Surely a man who lives now in paradise, now in hell sees life utterly differently from others. And he wants to think that he is right, that his experience is of great value, that life is not at all as it is described by men of different experience and more limited emotions. How desperately did Dostoevsky desire to persuade all men of his rightness, how stubbornly he used to demonstrate, and how angry he was made by the consciousness that lived in the depths of his soul that he was impotent to prove anything. But a fact remains a fact. Perhaps epileptics and madmen know things of which normal men have not even the remotest presentiment, but it is not vouchsafed to them to communicate their knowledge to others, or to prove it. And there is a universal knowledge which is the very object of philosophical seeking, with which one may commune, but which by its very essence cannot be communicated to all, that is, cannot be turned into verified and demonstrable universal truths. To renounce this knowledge in order that philosophy should have the right to be called a science! At times men acted thus. There were sober epochs when the pursuit of positive knowledge absorbed every one capable of intellectual labour. Or perhaps there were epochs in which men who sought something other than positive science were condemned to universal contempt, and passed unregarded: in such an epoch Plato would have found no sympathy, but would have died in obscurity. One thing at least is clear. He whose chief interest and motive in life is in undemonstrable truths is doomed to complete or relative sterility in the sense in which the word is generally understood. If he is clever and gifted, men may perhaps be interested in his mind and talent, but they will pass his work with indifference, contempt, and even horror; and they will begin to warn the world against him.
'Look at him, my children,He is stern and pale and lean.He is poor and naked,And all men count him mean.'
Has not the work of the prophets who sought for ultimate truths been barren and useless? Did life hold them in any account? Life went its own way, and the voices of the prophets have been, are, and ever will be, voices in the wilderness. For that which they see and know, cannot be proved and is not capable of proof. Prophets have always been isolated, dissevered, separate, helpless men, locked up in their pride. Prophets are kings without an army. For all their love to their subjects, they can do nothing for them, for subjects respect only those kings who possess a formidable military power. And—long may it be so!
After all, not even the most consistent and convinced realist represents life to himself as it really is. He overlooks a great deal; and on the other hand he often sees something which has no existence in reality. I do not think there is any need to show this by example. For all our desire to be objective we are, after all, extremely subjective, and those things which Kant calls synthetic judgmentsa priori,by which our mind forms nature and dictates laws to her, do play a great and serious part in our lives. We create something like the veil of Maia: we are awake in sleep, and sleep in wakefulness, exactly as though some magic power had charmed us. And just as in sleep we feel for instants that what is happening to us is like a half-dream, an intermediate half-life. Schopenhauer and the Buddhists were right in asserting that it is equally wrong to say of the veil of Maia, the world accessible to us, either that it exists or does not exist. It is true that logic does not admit such judgments and persecutes them most implacably, for they violate its most fundamental laws. But it cannot be helped: when one has to choose between philosophy which is alluring and promising, and empty logic, one will always sacrifice the latter for the former. And philosophy without contradictory judgments would be either doomed to eternal silence, or would be churned into a mud of commonplace and reduced to nothing. Philosophers know that. The same is true of our own case: we must confess that we are at the same time awake and dreaming dreams, and at times we must own that though we are alive, yet we have long since been dead. As living beings we still hold to the accepted synthetic judgmentsa priori,and as dead, we try to do without them, or to replace them by other judgments which have nothing in common with the former but are even opposite to them. Philosophy is occupied in this work with extreme diligence, andin this and this aloneis the meaning of the idealistic movement which has never, since the time of Plato, disappeared from history. The problem is not for us to find another, primordial, better, and eternal world to replace the visible world accessible to all, as idealistic philosophy is usually interpreted by her official and, unfortunately, her most influential representatives. Interpretation of that kind too obviously bears the mark of its empiric utilitarian origin: they bring us as near to super-empiric reality as do the notions wherewith we define what is valuable in life. We might as well consider the super-empiric world as one of gold, diamond, or pearls simply because gold, diamonds, and pearls are very costly. But so it usually happens. God himself is usually represented as glimmering with gold and precious stones, as omniscient and omnipotent. He is called the King of Kings since on earth the lot of a crowned head is considered most enviable. The meaning and value of idealistic philosophy thus appears to be that she for ever ratifies all that we have found valuable on earth during our brief existence. Herein, I believe, is a fatal error. Idealistic philosophy, it is true, gave an excuse for falsely interpreting her, since she loved to be arrayed in sumptuous apparel. The religion of almost all nations has always sought for forms outwardly beautiful without stopping even before such an obvious paradox—not to put it more strongly—as a golden cross studded with diamonds. And for the sake of sumptuous words and golden crosses men overlooked great truths, and perhaps great possibilities. The philosophy of the schools also loved to array herself, so that she should not be behind the masters in this respect, and for the sake of dress she often forgot her necessary work. Plato taught that our life was only a shadow of another reality. If this is true, and he discovered the truth, then surely our first task is to begin to live a different life, to turn our back to the wall above which the shadows are walking and to turn our face to the source of light which created the shadows or to those things of which the visible outlines give only a remote resemblance. We must be awakened, if only in part; to this end what is usually done to a person sound asleep must be done to us. He is pulled, pinched, beaten, tickled, and if all these things fail, still stronger and more heroic measures must be applied. At all events, it is out of the question to advise contemplation, which may well make one still sleepier, or quietude, which leads to the same result. Philosophy should live by sarcasm, irony, alarm, struggles, despairs, and allow herself contemplation and quietude only from time to time, as a relaxation. Then perhaps she will succeed in creating, by the side of realistic dreams, dreams of a quite different order, and visibly demonstrate that the universally accepted dreams are not the only ones. 'What is the use?' I do not think this question need be answered. He who asks it, shows by the fact that he needs neither an answer nor philosophy, while he who needs them will not ask but will patiently await events: a temperature of 120°, an epileptic fit, or something of this kind, which facilitates the difficult task of seeking....
The law of causation as a principle of inquiry is an excellent thing: the existing sciences afford us convincing evidence of that. But as an idea in the Platonic sense it is of little value, at times at least. The strict harmony and order of the world have fascinated many people: such giants of thought as Spinoza and Goethe paused with reverent wonder in contemplation of the great and unchangeable order of nature. Therefore they exalted necessity even to the rank of a primordial, eternal, original principle. And we must confess that Goethe's and Spinoza's conception of the world lives so much in each one of us that in most cases we can love and respect the world only when our souls feel in it a symmetrical harmony. Harmony seems to us at once-the highest value and the ultimate truth. It gives to the soul great peace, a stable firmness, a trust in the Creator—the highest boons accessible to mortal men, as the philosophers teach. Nevertheless, there are other yearnings. Man's heart is suddenly possessed by a longing for the fantastic, the unforeseen, for that which cannot be foreseen. The beautiful world loves its beauty, peace of soul seems disgraceful, stability is felt as an intolerable burden. Just as a youth grown to manhood suddenly feels irritated by the bountiful tutelage of his parents, from which he has received so much, though he does not know what to do with his freedom, so is a man of insight ashamed of the happiness which is given to him, which some one has created. The law of causation, like the whole harmony of the world, seems to him a pleasant gift, facilitating life, but yet a degrading one. He has sold his birthright for peace, for undisturbed happiness—his great birthright of free creation. He does not understand how a giant like Goethe could have been seduced by the temptation of a pleasant life, he suspects the sincerity of Spinoza. There is something rotten in the state of Denmark. The apple of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, has become to him the sole purpose of life, even though the path to it should lie through extreme suffering.
And, strangely, nature herself seems to be preoccupied in urging man to that fatal path. There comes a time in our life when some imperative and secret voice forbids us to rejoice at the beauty and grandeur of the world. The world allures us as before, but it no longer gives pure happiness. Remember Tchekhov. How he loved nature! What immeasurable yearning is audible in his wonderful descriptions of nature! Just as though each time that he glanced at the blue sky, the troubled sea or the green woods, a voice of authority whispered to him: 'All this is yours no longer. You may look at it, but you have no right to rejoice. Prepare yourself for another life, where nothing will be given, complete, prepared, where nothing will be created, where there will be illimitable creation alone. And everything which is in this world shall be given to destruction, to destruction and destruction, even this nature which you so passionately love, and which it is so hard and painful for you to renounce.' Everything drives us to the mysterious realm of the eternally fantastic, eternally chaotic, and—who knows?—it may be, the eternally beautiful....
Whencogito ergo sumcame into Descartes' head, he marked the day—November 10, 1619—as a remarkable day: 'The light of a wonderful discovery,' he wrote in his diary, 'flashed into my mind.' Schelling relates the same thing of himself: in the year 1801 he 'saw the light.' And to Nietzsche when he roamed the mountains and the valleys of the Engadine there came a mighty change: he grasped the doctrine of eternal recurrence. One might name many philosophers, poets, artists, preachers, who like these three suddenly saw the light, and considered their vision the beginning of a new life. It is even probable that all men who have been destined to display to the world something perfectly new and original have without exception experienced that miracle of sudden metamorphosis. Nevertheless, though much is spoken of these miracles and often, in nearly all biographies of great men, we cannot strictly make any use of them. Descartes, Schelling, Nietzsche tell the story of their conversion; and with us, Tolstoi and Dostoevsky tell of theirs; in the less remote past, there are Mahomet and Paul the Apostle; in far antiquity the legend of Moses. But if I had chosen tenfold the number, if thousands even had been collected, it would still be impossible for the mind to make any deduction from them. In other words, all these cases have no value as scientific material, whereas one fossil skeleton or a unique case of an unknown rare disease is a precious windfall to the scientist. What is still more interesting, Descartes was so struck with hiscogito ergo sum,Nietzsche with his eternal recurrence, Mahomet with his paradise, Paul the Apostle with his vision, while we remain more or less indifferent to anything they may relate of their experiences. Only the most sensitive among us have an ear for stories of that kind, and even they are obliged to hide their impressions within them, for what can be done with them?
It is even impossible to fix them as indubitable facts, for facts also require a verification and must be proved. There are no proofs. Philosophic and religious teachings offered by men who have had extraordinary inward experiences, not only do not generally confirm, but rather refute their own stories of revelation. For philosophic and religious teaching have always hitherto assigned themselves the task of attracting all and sundry to themselves, and in order to attain this end they had to have recourse to such methods as have effect with the ordinary man, who knows of nothing extraordinary—to proof, to the authority of visible and tangible phenomena, which can be measured, weighed and counted. In their pursuit of proofs, of persuasiveness and popularity, they had to sacrifice the important and essential, and expose for show that which is agreeable to reason—things already more or less known, and therefore of little interest and importance. In course of time, as experimental science, so-called, gained more and more power, the habit of hiding in oneself all that cannot be demonstratedad oculos,has become more and more firmly rooted, until it is almost man's second nature. Nowadays we 'naturally' share but a small part of an experience with our friends, so that if Mahomet and Paul lived in our time, it would not enter their heads to tell their extraordinary stories. And for all his bravery, Nietzsche nevertheless passes quickly over eternal recurrence, and is much more occupied with preaching the morality of the Superman, which, though it at first astounded people, was after all accepted with more or less modification, because it was demonstrable. Evidently we are confronted with a great dilemma. If we continue to cultivate modern methodology, we run the risk of becoming so accustomed to it that we will lose not only the faculty of sharing all undemonstrable and exceptional experiences with others, but even of retaining them firmly in the memory. They will begin to be forgotten as dreams, they will even seem to be waking dreams. Thus we will cut ourselves off for ever from a vast realm of reality, whose meaning and value have by no means been divined or appreciated. In olden times men could add dreams and madmen's visions to reality; but we shall curtail the real indubitable reality, transferring it to the realm of hallucinations and dreams. I suppose even a modern man will feel some hesitation in coming over to the side of this methodology, even though he is incapable of thinking, with the ancients, that dreams are by no means worthless things. And if this is so, then the rights of experiences must not be defined by the degree of their demonstrability. However capricious our experiences may be, however little they agree with the rooted and predominant conceptions of the necessary character of events in the inward and outward life—once they have taken place in the soul of man, they acquire,ipso facto,the lawful right of figuring side by side with facts which are most demonstrable and susceptible of control and verification, and even with a deliberate experiment.
It may be said that we would not then be protected against deliberate frauds. People who have never been in paradise will give themselves out for Mahomets. That is true; they will talk and they will he. There will be no method of objective verification. But they will surely tell the truth also. For the sake of that truth we may make up our minds to swim through a whole ocean of lies. Yes, it is not in the least impossible to distinguish truth from lie in this realm, though, certainly, not by the signs which have been evolved by logic; and not even by signs, but by no signs at all. The signs of the beautiful have not yet been even approximately, defined, and, please God—be it said without offence to the Germans—they never will be defined, but yet we distinguish between Apollo and Venus. So it is with truth: she too may be recognised. But what if a man cannot distinguish without signs, and, moreover, does not want to?... What is to be done with him? Really, I do not know; besides, I do not imagine that all men down to the last should act in unison. When did all men act in agreement? Men have mostly acted separately, meeting in certain places, and parting in others. Long may it be so! Some will recognise and seek after truth by signs, others without signs, as they please, and yet others, in both ways.
Socrates said that he often used to hear from poets thoughts remarkable for their profundity and seriousness, but when he began to inquire of them more particularly, he became convinced that they themselves did not understand what they were saying. What did he really mean? Did Socrates wish to compare the poets to parrots or trained blackbirds who can learn by heart, with the assistance of a man to teach them, any ideas whatever, perfectly foreign to them. That can hardly be. Socrates hardly thought that what the poets say had been overheard by them from some one, and mechanically fixed in their mind, though it remained quite foreign to their soul. Most probably he used the word 'understand' in the sense that they could not demonstrate or explain the soundness and stability of their ideas,—they could not deduce them and relate them to a definite conception of the world. As every one knows, Socrates thought that not merely poets, but all men, from eminent statesmen down to ignorant artisans, had ideas, even a great many ideas, but they never could explain where they had got them, or make them agree among themselves.
In this respect poets were the same as the rest of people. From some mysterious source they had acquired truths, often great and profound, but they were unable to explain them. This seemed to Socrates a great misery, a real misfortune. I do not know how it happened—not a single historian of philosophy has explained it, and indeed very little interest has been taken in it—but Socrates for some reason decided that an unproven and unexplained truth had less value than a proven and explained one. In our times, when a whole theory, even a conception of the world, has been made of Socrates's idea, this notion seems so natural and self-evident that no one doubts it. But in antiquity the case was different. Strictly, Socrates thought that the poets had acquired their truths, which they were unable to prove, from a very respectable source, which deserved all possible confidence: he himself compared the poets with oracles, and consequently admitted that they had communion with the gods. There was, therefore, a most excellent guarantee that the poets were possessed of real, undiluted truth—the pledge of its purity being the divine authority. Socrates said that he himself had frequently been guided in his actions, not by considerations of reason, but by the voice of his mysterious 'demon.' That is, at times, he abstained from certain actions—his demon gave him never positive, but only negative advice—without being able to produce reasons, simply because the secret voice, more authoritative than any human mind, demanded abstinence from them.
Is it not strange that under such circumstances, at an epoch when the gods vouchsafed truths to men, there should have suddenly appeared in a man the unexplained desire to acquire truths without the help of the gods, and in independence of them, by the dialectic method so beloved of the Greeks? It is doubtful which is more important for us, to acquire the truth or to acquire for one's self with one's own effort, it may be a false, but one'sownjudgment. The example of Socrates, who has been a pattern for all subsequent generations of thinking men, leaves not the slightest doubt. Men do not need a truth ready made; they turn away from the gods to devote themselves to independent creations. Practically the same story is told in the Bible. What indeed was lacking to Adam? He lived in paradise, in direct proximity to God, from whom he could learn anything he wanted. And yet it did not suit him. It was enough that the Serpent should make his perfidious proposal for the man to forget the wrath of God, and all the dangers which threatened him, and to pluck the apple from the forbidden tree. Then the truth, which until the creation of the world and man had been one, split and broke with a great, perhaps an infinitely great, number of most diverse truths, eternally being born, and eternally dying. This was the seventh day of creation, unrecorded in history. Man became God's collaborator. He himself became a creator. Socrates renounced the divine truth and even spoke contemptuously of it, merely because it was not proven, that is, because it does not bear the marks of man's handiwork. Socrates really did not prove anything, but he was proving, creating, and in this he saw the meaning of his own life and of all human lives. Thus, surely, the pronouncement of the Delphic oracle seems true even now: Socrates was the wisest of men. And he who would be wise must, imitating Socrates, not be like him in anything. Thus did all great men, and all great philosophers.
Neo-Kantianism is the prevalent school of modern philosophy. The literature about Kant has grown to unheard-of proportions. But if you attempt to analyse the colossal mass that has been written upon Kant, and put the question to yourself, what has really been left to us of Kant's teaching, then to your great amazement you will have to reply: Nothing at all. There is an extraordinary, incredibly famous name—Kant, and there is positively not a single Kantian thesis which in an uninterpreted form would have survived till our day. I say in an uninterpreted form, for interpretations resolve at bottom into arbitrary recastings, which often have not even an outward resemblance to the original. These interpretations began while Kant was still alive. Fichte gave the first example. It is well known that Kant reacted, demanding that his teaching should be understood not in the spirit but in the letter. And Kant was, naturally, quite right. Of two things one: either you take his teaching as it is, or you invent your own. But the fate of all thinkers who have been destined to give their names to an epoch is similar: they have been interpreted, recast, till they are unrecognisable. For after a short time had elapsed, it became clear that their ideas were so overburdened with contradictions, that in the form in which they emerged from the hands of their creators, they are absolutely unacceptable. Indeed, all the critics who had not made up their minds beforehand to be orthodox Kantians, came to the conclusion that Kant had not proved a single one of his fundamental propositions. Something stronger may be said. By virtue of the fact that Kant, owing to the central position which he occupied, attracted much attention to himself and was forced to submit to very careful criticism, there gradually emerged a truth which might have been known beforehand: that Kant's teaching is a mass of contradictions. The sum-total of more than a century's study of Kant may be resumed in a few words. Although he was not afraid of the most crying contradictions, he did not have the smallest degree of success in proving the correctness of his teaching. With an extraordinary power and depth of mind, with all the originality, boldness, and talent of his constructions, he really provided nothing that might be indisputably called a positive acquisition of philosophy. I repeat that I am not expressing my own opinion. I am only reckoning the sum-total of the opinions of the German critics of Kant, of those same critics who built him a monumentaere perennius.
The same may be said of all the great representatives of philosophic thought beginning with Plato and Aristotle, and ending with Hegel, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. Their works astonish by their power, depth, boldness, beauty and originality of thought. While you read them it seems that truth herself speaks with their lips. And what strong measures of precaution did they take to prevent themselves from being mistaken! They believed in nothing that men had grown accustomed to believe. They methodically doubted everything, reexamined everything, tens, hundreds of times. They gave their life to the truth not in words, but in deed. And still the sum-total is the same in their case as in Kant's: not one of them succeeded in inventing a system free from internal contradictions.
Aristotle was already criticising Plato, and the sceptics criticised both of them, and so on until in our day each new thinker struggles with his predecessors, refutes their contradictions and errors, although he knows that he is doomed to the same fate. The historians of philosophy are at infinite pains to conceal the most glaring and noticeable trait of philosophic creation, which is, at bottom, no secret to any one. The uninitiated, and people generally who do not like thinking, and therefore wish to be contemptuous of philosophy, point to the lack of unity among philosophers as evidence that it is not worth while to study philosophy. But they are both wrong. The history of philosophy not only does not inspire us with the thought of the continual evolution of an idea, but palpably convinces us of the contrary, that among philosophers there is not, has not been, and will never be, any aspiration towards unity. Neither will they find in future a truth free from contradiction, for they do not seek the truth in the sense in which the word is understood by the people and by science; and, after all, contradictions do not frighten them, but rather attract. Schopenhauer begins his criticism of Kant's philosophy with the words of Voltaire: 'It is the privilege of genius to make great mistakes with impunity.' I believe that the secret of the philosophic genius lies here. He makes great, the greatest, mistakes, and with impunity. Moreover his mistakes are put to his credit, for the important matter is not his truths, or his judgments, but himself. When you hear from Plato that the life we see is only a shadow, when Spinoza, intoxicated by God, exalts the idea of necessity, when Kant declares that reason dictates laws to Nature,—listening to them you do not examine whether their assertions are true or not, you agree with each of them, whatever he says, and only this question arises in your soul: 'Who is he that speaketh as one having authority?'
Later on, you will reject all their truths, with horror, perhaps with indignation and disgust, even with utter indifference. You will not consent to accept that our life is only a shadow of actual reality, you will revolt against Spinoza's God, who cannot love, yet demands love for himself, Kant's categorical imperative will seem to you a cold monster,—but you will never forget Plato, or Spinoza, or Kant, and will for ever keep your gratitude to them, who made you believe that authority is given to mortals. Then you will understand that there are no errors and no truths in philosophy; that errors and truths are only for him above whom is set a superior authority, a law, a standard. But philosophers themselves create laws and standards. This is what we are taught by the history of philosophy; this is what is most difficult for man to master and understand. I have already said that the historians of philosophy draw quite a different moral from the study of the great human creations.
In his autobiography Spencer confesses that he had really never read Kant. He had hadThe Critique of Pure Reasonin his hands, and had even read the beginning, the Transcendental Aesthetic, but the beginning convinced him it was no use for him to read further. Once a man had made the unconvincing admission which Kant had made, by accepting the subjectivity of one form of perception, of space and time, he could not be seriously taken into account. If he is consistent, all his philosophy will be a system of absurdity and nonsense; if he is inconsistent,—the less attention does he deserve.
Spencer confidently asserts that, once he could not accept Kant's fundamental proposition, he not only could not be a Kantian any more, but he found it useless even to become further acquainted with Kant's philosophy. That he did not become a Kantian is nothing to grieve over—there are Kantians enough without him—but that he did not acquaint himself with Kant's principal works, and above all with the whole school that rose out of Kant, may be sincerely regretted. Perhaps, as a new man, remote from Continental traditions, he would have made a curious discovery, and would have convinced himself that it was not at all necessary to accept the proposition of the subjectivity of space and time in order to become a Kantian. And perhaps with the frankness and simplicity peculiar to him, which is not afraid to be taken for naïveté, he would have told us that not a single Kantian (Schopenhauer excepted), not even Kant himself, has ever seriously accepted the fundamental propositions of the Transcendental Aesthetic, and therefore has never made from them any conclusions or deductions whatever. On the contrary, the Transcendental Aesthetic was itself a deduction from another proposition, that we have synthetic judgmentsa priori.The original rôle of this, the most original of all theories ever invented, was to be a support and an explanation of the mathematical sciences. It had never had an independent, material content, susceptible of analysis and investigation. Space and time are the eternal forms of our perception of the world: to this, according to the strict meaning of Kant's teaching, nothing can be added, and nothing abated. Spencer, not having read the book to the end, imagined that Kant would begin to make deductions and became nervous. But if he had read the book to the end, he would have been convinced that Kant had not made any deductions, and that the whole meaning ofThe Critique of Pure Reasonindeed is that from the propositions of the Transcendental Aesthetic no deductions can be made. It is now about a hundred and fifty years sinceThe Critique of Pure Reasonappeared. No philosophic work has been so much studied and criticised. And yet where are the Kantians who attempt to make deductions from the proposition as to the subjectivity of space and time? Schopenhauer is the only exception. He indeed took the Kantian idea seriously, but it may be said without exaggeration that of all Kantians the least like Kant was Schopenhauer.
The world is a veil of Maia. Would Kant really have agreed to such an interpretation of his Transcendental Aesthetic? Or what would Kant have said, if he had heard that Schopenhauer, referring to the same Aesthetic in which he saw the greatest philosophic revelation, had admitted the possibility of clairvoyance and magic? Probably Spencer thought that Kant would himself make all these deductions, and therefore threw away the book which bound him to conclusions so absurd. It is a pity that Spencer was in such a hurry. Had he acquainted himself with Kant, he would have been convinced that the most absurd idea might serve a very useful purpose; and that there is not the least necessity to make from an idea all the deductions to which it may lead. A man is a free agent and he can deduce if he has a mind to; if he has not, he will not; and there is no necessity to judge the character of a philosophic theory by its general postulates. Even Schopenhauer did not exploit Kant's theory to the full, which, if it had really divined the truths hitherto hidden from men, would have not only put an end to metaphysical researches, but also have given an impulse and a justification to perfectly new experiments which from the previous standpoint were quite mad and unimaginable. For if space and time are forms of our human perception, then they do indeed hide the ultimate truth from us. While men knew nothing of this, and, simple minded, accepted the visible reality for the actual real, they could not of course dream of true knowledge. But from the moment when the truth was revealed to them through Kant's penetration, it is clear that their true task was to use every possible means to free themselves from the harness and to break away from it, while consolidating all those judgments which Kant calls synthetic judgmentsa priorifor all eternity.
And the new, the critical metaphysics, which should take account of the stupid situation in which these had hitherto found themselves who saw in apodeictic judgments eternal truths, had a great task to set herself: to get rid at all costs of apodeictic judgments, knowing them for false. In other words, Kant's task should not have been to minimise the destructive effect of Hume's scepticism, but to find a still more deadly explosive to destroy even those limits which Hume was obliged to preserve. It is surely evident that truth lies beyond synthetic judgmentsa priori,and that it cannot at all resemble ana priorijudgment, and in fact cannot be like a judgment of any kind.
And it must be sought by methods quite different from those by which it has been sought hitherto. To some extent Kant attempted to describe how he represented to himself the meaning hidden beneath the words: 'Space and time are subjective forms of perception.' He even gave an object-lesson, saying that perhaps there are beings who perceive the world otherwise than under the forms of space and time: which means that for such beings there is no change. All that we perceive by a succession of changes, they perceive at once. To them Julius Caesar is still alive, though he is dead; to them the twenty-fifth century A.D., which none of us will live to see, and the twenty-fifth century B.C., which we reconstruct with such difficulty from the fragmentary traces of the past which have accidentally been preserved to us, the remote North Pole, and even the stars which we cannot see through the telescope—all are as accessible to them as to us the events which are taking place before our eyes. Nevertheless Kant, in spite of all temptation to acquire the knowledge to which such beings have access, notwithstanding his profound conviction of the truth of his discovery, did nothing to dispel the charm of forms of perception and categories of the reason, or to tear the blinkers from his eyes and see all the depth of the mysterious reality hitherto hidden from us. He does not even give a little circumstantial explanation why he considered such a task impracticable, and he confines himself to the dogmatic assertion that man cannot conceive a reality beyond space and time. Why? It is a question of immense importance. Compared with it all the problems ofThe Critique of Pure Reasonare secondary. How is mathematics possible, how are natural sciences possible?—these are not even questions at all compared to the question whether it is possible to free ourselves from conventional human knowledge in order to attain the ultimate, all-embracing truth.
Herein the Kantians display an even greater indifference than Kant himself: they are even proud of their indifference, they plume themselves upon it as a high virtue. They assert that truth is notbeyondsynthetic judgmentsa priori,but indeedinthem; and that it is not the Creator who put blinkers upon us, but we ourselves devised them, and that any attempt to remove them and look open-eyed upon the world is evidence of perversity. If the old Serpent appeared nowadays to seduce the modern Adam, he would retire discomfited. Even Eve herself would be no use to him. The twentieth-century Eve studies in a university and has quite sufficiently blunted her natural curiosity. She can talk excellently well of the teleological point of view and is quite as proof as man against temptation. I do not share Kant's confidence that space and time are forms of our perception, nor do I see a revelation in it. But if I had once accepted this apocalyptic assertion, and could think that there was some truth in it, I would not depart from it to positive science.
It is a pity that Spencer did not readThe Critique of Pure Reasonto the end. He would have convinced himself of an important truth: that a philosopher has no need to take into consideration all the deductions from his premisses. He need only have goodwill, and he can draw from the most paradoxical and suspicious premisses conclusions which are fully conformable to common-sense and the rules of decency. And since Kant's will was as good as Spencer's, they would have agreed perfectly in their deductions, though they were so far apart from each other in their premisses.
Schopenhauer was the first philosopher to ask the value of life. And he gave a definite answer: in life there is much more suffering than joy, therefore life must be renounced. I must add that strictly speaking he asked not only the value of life, but also the value of joy and suffering. And to this question he gave an equally definite answer. According to his teaching joy is always negative, suffering always positive. Therefore by its essence joy cannot compensate for suffering.
In all this philosophical construction, both in formulating and answering the questions, there is one tacit, particularly curious, and interesting and unexpressed postulate. Schopenhauer starts from the assumption that his valuation of life, joy and suffering, in order to have the right to be called truth, must contain something universal, by virtue of which it will in the last resort coincide with the valuation of all other people. Whence did he derive this idea? Psychologically the train of Schopenhauer's thought is intelligible and easily explained. He was used to the scientific formulation and solution of problems, and he transferred to the question which engaged him methods of investigation which by general consent usually conduct us to the truth. He did not verify his premissad hoc,and usually it is impossible to verify a premiss every time that a need arises for it. It is not even becoming to exhibit it, to speak of it. It is understood. If the fundamental sign of any truth is its being universal and obligatory, then in the given case the true answer to the question of the value of life can only be something which will be absolutely admissible by all men to all creatures with a mind. So Schopenhauer would probably have answered, if any one had questioned his right to formulate in such a general way the question of the value of life.
Still Schopenhauer would hardly be right. This, by the way, is being made clear by the objections which are put forward by his opponents. He is accused because his very statement of the question presupposes a subjective point of view—eudaemonism.
The question of the value of life, people object, is not at all decided by whether in the sum life gives more joy than pain orvice versa.Life may be deeply painful and devoid of joy, life may in itself be one compact horror, and still be valuable. Schopenhauer's philosophy was not discussed in his lifetime, so that he could not answer his opponents. But, if he were still alive, would he accept these objections and renounce his pessimism? I am convinced that he would not. At the same time I am convinced that his opponents would be no less firm and would go on repeating: 'The question is not one of happiness or suffering. We value life by a quite different and independent standard.' And in the discussion it would perhaps become clear to the disputants that the premiss mentioned above, which both accepted as requiring no proof and understood without explanation, does indeed require proofs and explanations, but is provided with neither. To one man the eudaemonistic point of view is ultimate and decisive, to another contemptible and degrading, and he seeks the meaning of life in a higher, ethical or aesthetic purpose. There are also people who love sorrow and pain, and see in them the justification and the source of the depth and importance of life. Nor do I mention the fact that when the sum-totals of life are reckoned different accountants reach different and directly contradictory results, or that insoluble questions arise concerning these, or other details. Schopenhauer for instance finds, as we have seen, that sufferings are positive, joys negative. And hence he concludes that it is not worth while to submit to the least unpleasantness for the sake of the greatest joy. What answer can be made? How can he be convinced of the contrary?
Nevertheless the fact is obvious: many people regard the matter in quite a different light. For the sake of a single happiness they are ready to endure a great many serious hardships. In a word, Schopenhauer's premiss is quite unjustified, and not only cannot be accepted as an indubitable truth, but must be qualified as an indubitable error. It is impossible to be certain beforehand that to the question of the value of life a single, universally valid answer can be given. So here we meet with an extraordinarily curious case from the point of view of the theory of knowledge. It appears that by the very essence of the matter no uniform answer can be given to one of the most important questions, perhaps the most important question of philosophy. If you are asked what is life, good or evil, you are obliged to say that life is both good and evil; or something independent of good and evil; or a mixture of good and evil in which there is more good than evil, or more evil than good.
And, I repeat, each of these answers, although they logically quite exclude each other, has the right to claim the title oftruth; for if it has not power enough to make the other answers bow down before it, at all events it has the necessary strength to repel its opponents' attacks and to defend its sovereign rights. Instead of a sole and omnipotent truth before which the weak and helpless errors tremble, you have before you a whole line of perfectly independent truths excellently armed and defended. Instead of absolutism, you have a feudal system. And the vassals are so firmly ensconced in their castles that an experienced eye can see at once that they are impregnable.
I took for my instance Schopenhauer's doctrine of the value of life. But many philosophic doctrines, although they issue from the premiss of one sovereign truth, display examples of the plurality of truths. It is usually believed that one should study the history of philosophy in order to be palpably convinced that mankind has gradually mastered its delusions and is now on the high road to ultimate truth. My opinion is that the history of philosophy must bring every impartial person, who is not infected by modern prejudices, to a directly opposite conclusion. There can be no doubt that a whole series of questions exists, like that of the value of life, which by their very essence do not admit of a uniform solution. To this testimony is often borne by men whose very last concern is to curtail the royal prerogative of sovereign truth: Natorp confidently asserts that Aristotle not only did not understand but could not understand Plato. 'Der tiefere Grund ist die ewige Unfähigkeit des Dogmatismus sich in der Gesichtspunkt der kritischen Philosophie überhaupt zu versetzen.' 'Eternal incapability' —what words! And used not of any common-place person, but of the greatest human genius known to us, of Aristotle. Had Natorp been a little more inquisitive, 'eternal incapability' of that kind should have worried him at least as much as Plato's philosophy, on which he wrote a large book. For here is evidently a great riddle. Different people, according to the different constitution of their souls, are while yet in their mother's womb destined to have different philosophies. It reminds me of the famous Calvinistic view of predetermination. Just as from before birth God has destined some to damnation, others to salvation; so to some it is given and from others withheld, to know the truth.