FOOTNOTE:[8]E. g., given with his consciousness.—Editor.
[8]E. g., given with his consciousness.—Editor.
[8]E. g., given with his consciousness.—Editor.
"There is a natural law of analogy which explains that all things belonging to the universe are members of the same family, that they are related to one anotherby bonds which permit of the greatest variety in individual differences and are not nullified even by the distance between extremes." If we grasp the meaning of these words in their full bearing, we recognize the outcome of philosophy up to date. They teach us how to use our intellect in order to obtain an accurate picture of the universe.
The intellect is also called by the name of faculty of discrimination. If in the science of the powers of this faculty we place ourselves on the standpoint of present-day natural knowledge, we possess the clear and plain insight that there are no exaggerated distinctions, no unrelated extremes, in the universe. The infinite is related to the finite. For all developed and perishable things are the direct offspring of the imperishable, of the eternal universe. General nature and its special parts are inseparably interlaced. There is nothing among all that has a name which is fundamentally different from other things known by name.
There will hardly be any objection against these sentences, until we proceed to draw their last consequences. If all things are related and without exception children of the universe, it follows that mind and matter must also be two yards of cloth from the same piece. Hence the difference between human understanding and other natural human faculties must not be magnified into that of irreconcilable extremes.
In order to become accustomed to scientific distinctions, the reader should consider that a man can remain under the sway of a belief in ghosts only so long as he ignores the relationship of all existing things. He believes in real ghosts whose reality is supposed to be radically different from his own. Sucha distinction is exaggerated and illogical, and whoever believes in it does not know how to discriminate scientifically and has not the full use of his critical faculties.
Just as common parlance opposes art to nature and then forgets that art is a part of nature, similarly as night is a part of day, so the language of the believer in ghosts does not know that reason and wood, mind and matter, in spite of all their differences, are two parts of the same whole, two expressions of the same universal reality. Everything is real and true, because in the last instance the universe is all, is the only truth and reality. So I call it a slip of the tongue to speak of natural nature as opposed to natural art or artificial nature, of imaginary reality as distinct from real reality. There ought to be a different name for the day of twelve hours than for the day of twenty-four hours, so that it might be better understood that day and night are not fundamentally different, but two prongs of the same fork.
Just as the faculty of thinking is innate in the child, and grows with its development, so mankind's faculty of thought grows and has hitherto expressed itself in a language which gave only instinctive conceptions of the composition of the human brain and of its functions. The construction of languages explains in a way the condition of the human mind which had only inadequate knowledge of itself so far. Those shortcomings of speech which I called slips of the tongue were not understood until sufficient progress had been made in the explanation of the process of thinking, and now these same shortcomings offer an excellent means of representing and demonstrating the results of enlightenment.
The mind is to give to man a picture of the world, the language is the brush of the mind. It paints by its construction the universal relationship of all things referred to in the beginning of this chapter, and it does so in the following manner: It gives to each thing not only its own name, but also adds to it another indicating its family, and another indicating its race, another for the species, the genus, and finally a general name which proclaims that all things are parts of the one indivisible unit which is called world, existence, universe, cosmos.
This diagrammatic construction of language furnishes us with an illustration of the graduated relationship of things and of the way in which the human race arrives at its knowledge, its perceptions or pictures.
We said that philosophy is that endeavor which seeks to throw light on the process of human thought. This work has been rendered very difficult by the unavoidable misunderstanding of the universal relationship just mentioned. The transcendentalists insist above all that the process of thinking and its product, thought, should not be classed among ordinary physics, not as a part of physical nature, but as the creature of another nature which carries the mysterious name of metaphysics. That such a nature and such a science is neither possible nor real is proven by the construction of language which normally describes everything as being closely related and corroborates this by its abnormal shortcomings which we called slips of the tongue.
The shortcomings of language which demonstrate the positive outcome of philosophy consist inoccasionally giving insufficiently significant names to things belonging to a group in which the distinction between individuals, species, genera, and families is not clearly defined. It is not discernible, for instance, whether the term "cat" applies to a domestic cat or to a tiger, because that term is used for a large class of animals of which the domestic cat is the arch-type.
But it may be that this illustration is not well chosen for the purpose of demonstrating that slip of the tongue which is supposed to give us an exact appreciation of the positive outcome of philosophy. Let us find another and better illustration which will be a transition from the inadequate to the adequate and thus throw so much more light on the obscurities of language.
Another and better example of the inadequacies of language is the distinction between fish and meat. In this case, we entirely lack a general term for meat, one kind of which is furnished by aquatic animals and the other by terrestrial animals.
Now let the reader apply this shortcoming of language to the distinction between physics and metaphysics, or between thought and reality. We lack a term which will fully indicate the relation between these two. Thoughts are indeed real things. True, there is a difference whether I have one hundred dollars in imagination or in reality in my pocket. Still we must not exaggerate this difference into something transcendental. Painted money or imagined money are in a way also real, that is in imagination. In other words, language lacks a term which will clearly express the different realities within the compass of the unit.
The understanding of these peculiarities of language is calculated to promote the insight and enlightenment in regard to that secret lamp which man is carrying in his brain and with which he lights up the things of this world. The cultivation of the theory of understanding, the critique of reason, has an elementary significance for the elucidation of all things. This is not saying that philosophy, that special science with which we are here dealing, is a universal science in the sense in which antiquity conceived of it. But it is universal nevertheless in the sense in which the alphabet and other primary topics are universal. Every one must use his brains and should therefore take pains to understand its processes. Though the knowledge of these does not make other efforts unnecessary, still it explains many ideas, it elucidates the nature of thinking which every one is doing and which is frequently used in a more ruthless manner than a dog would treat a rag.
The inertia which has prevented the one-sided idealists on the one hand and the one-sided materialists on the other from coming to a peaceful understanding may be traced to one of those slips of the tongue. We lack the right terms for designating the relationship between spiritual phenomena, such as our ideas, conceptions, judgments and conclusions and many other things on one side and the tangible, ponderable, commensurable things on the other. True, the reason for this lack of terms is the absence of understanding, and for this reason the dispute is not one of mere words, although it can be allayed only by an improvement of our terminology.
Büchner, in his well-known work on"Force and Matter," likewise overlooks this point, the same as all prior materialists, because they are as onesidedly insistent on theirmatteras the idealists are on theiridea. Quarrel and strife mean confusion, only peace will bring light. The contrast between matter and mind finds its conciliation in the positive outcome of philosophy which teaches that all distinctions must be reasonable, because neither our instrument of thought nor the rest of nature justify any exaggerated distinctions. In order to elucidate the moot question, nothing is required but the insight that ideas which nature develops in the human brain are materials for the work of our understanding, though not materials for the work of our hands. Philosophy has made material efforts to grasp the understanding and its conceptions and is still making them in the same way in which chemistry is working for the understanding of substances and physics for the understanding of forces.
Substances, forces, ideas, conceptions, judgments, conclusions, knowledge and perceptions, according to the positive outcome of philosophy, must be regarded as differences or varieties of the same monistic genus. The differentiation of things no more contradicts their unity than their unity contradicts their differentiation. Darwin expanded the conception of "species" and thus contributed to a better understanding of zoology. Philosophy expands the conception of species still far beyond the Darwinian definition in teaching us to consider the species as little generalities and the largest genus, the absolute or the cosmos as the all in one, the all-embracing species.
In order to closely connect the worm and the elephant, the lowest and the highest animal, the vegetableand the animal kingdom, the inorganic and the organic, as members of the same species or genus in a reasonable way, we must keep account of the gradations in nature, the transitions, the connecting links and connecting ideas. Embryology, which shows that the life of the highest animal develops through the stages of the animal genus, has greatly promoted the understanding of the common nature of all animals.
"The continuity in the natural gradation of things is perfect, because there are no gradations which are not represented, because there are no differences between the various grades which nature does not fill by an intermediary form.... There is no abrupt difference in nature, no metaphysical jump, no vacuum, no gap in the order of the world," says a well-known author of our times whose name I shall not mention, because I wish to base my argument on the acknowledged facts rather than on names of authorities.
What Darwin taught us in relation to animal life, viz., that there are no fundamental differences between species, that is taught by philosophy in regard to the universe. The understanding of the latter is rendered difficult by the habit of making a transcendental distinction between matter and mind.
Whether we say that philosophy has the understanding for the object of its study, or whether wesay that philosophy investigates the method of utilizing subjective understanding in order to arrive at genuine, correct, excellent, objective knowledge, that is only a matter of using different terms for the same process. It makes no difference whether we designate the object of our special science as a thing or as a process. It is much more essential to understand that the distinction between the thing and its action is in this instance of little consequence.
According to modern natural science all existence is resolved into motion. It is well known now that even rocks do not stand still, but are continuously active, growing and decaying.
The understanding, the intellect, is an active object, or an objective action, the same as sunshine, the flow of waters, growing of trees, disintegration of rocks, or any other natural phenomenon. Also the understanding, the thinking which takes place consciously or unconsciously in the human brain, is a phenomenon of as indubitable actuality as the most material of them. It cannot in the least shake our contention of the materially perceptible nature of intellectual activity that we become aware of this activity by an internal, not by an external, sense. Whether a stone is externally perceptible or thought internally, what difference does this slight distinction make in the incontestable fact that both perceptions are of equal material, natural and sense-perceptible kind? Why should not the action of the brain belong in the same category as the action of the heart? And though the movement of the heart be internal and that of the tongue of the nightingale external, what is to prevent us from considering these two movements from the higherviewpoint of natural or material processes? If the function of the heart may be referred to as material, why not the function of the brain? True, the present usages of language are in conflict with this mode of thought. But it must be remembered that every science comes into conflict with usages of language by progressive development. The discovery of every new thing in plant and animal life compels the discoverer to invent a new term or change the meaning of an old one. The term material has not had a well defined, but rather an indefinite meaning so far. Now, since it is necessary, in order to understand the function of the brain to remove it from the class of transcendental or metaphysical conceptions and assign to it a place among the material things, the question arises: What will be the most appropriate term for it? The material and the spiritual are both two species of the same genus. How are we to designate the species, how the genus? For the sake of complete clearness, we require three different names, one for each species and a common general name. But since we are much less concerned about the name than about the understanding of these facts which cannot be well explained without terms, we do not insist dogmatically on calling the understanding material. It is sufficient to point out that the function of the heart and of the brain both belong to the same class, no matter whether this class be called material, real, physical, or what not. So long as language has not established a definite meaning for these terms, all of them serve equally well and are equally deceptive.
The positive outcome of philosophy which culminates in placing the theory of understanding in thesame class with all other theories, cannot be easily demonstrated on account of a natural confusion of thought which arises from an equally natural confusion of language. In the special department of handicraft as well as in that of scientific brain work the terminology is well systematized, while in the general affairs of life and science there is a confusion which is as great in the matter of conceptions as in that of applying the terms by which those awkward conceptions are expressed.
Wherever understanding is clear, there the language is also clear. The man who does not understand shoemaking does not understand its terminology. This is not saying that the understanding of a trade and the understanding of its terminology are identical, but only indicating their actual connection.
If the reader has had a glimpse of the enormity of the work of more than two thousand years of philosophy in order to state what little we know today of its achievement in the science of understanding, he will not be very much surprised at the difficulties we here meet with in finding terms for its demonstration.
The function of the brain is as material as that of the heart. The heart and its function are two things, but they are dependent one upon the other so that one cannot exist without the other. The function may partly be felt. We feel the heart beating, the brain working. The working of the heart may even be felt by touch, which is not the case with the working of the brain. But it would be a mistake to imagine that our knowledge of the function of the heart is exhausted by our perception of it through the touch. Once we have overcome the habit of making exaggerated distinctionsbetween things, and have learned to consider the differences of things as well as their interconnection, we can easily understand that the science of the function of the heart is an infinite science which is connected with all others. The heart cannot work without the blood, the blood cannot exist without food, and this is connected with the air, the plants, the animals, the sun, and the moon.
The function of the brain and its product, the understanding, is likewise inseparable from the universal interdependence of things. The health of the blood which is produced by the action of the heart is no more and no less a material phenomenon than the total knowledge of science which appears as a product of brain life.
Although we represent the doctrine of the material nature of understanding as the positive outcome of philosophy, this is not proclaiming the victory of that narrow materialism which has been spreading itself particularly since the eighteenth century. On the contrary, this mechanical materialism wholly misunderstands the nature of the problem. It teaches that the faculty of thought is a function of the brain, the brain is the object of study and its function, the faculty of thought, is fully explained as a brain quality or function. This materialism is enamored of mechanics, idolizes it, does not regard it as a part of the world, but as the sole substance which comprises the whole universe. Because it misunderstands the relation of thing and function, of subject and predicate, it has no inkling of the fact that this relation which it handles in such a matter-of-fact way, but not at all scientifically, may be an object worthy of study. The materialist ofthe old school is too horny-handed to consider the function or quality of understanding as an object worthy of a separate scientific department. We, on the other hand, follow the suggestion of Spinoza, who required of the philosophers that they should consider everything in the light of eternity. In so doing we find that the tangible things, such as the brain, are qualities of nature, and that in the same way the socalled functions are natural things, substantial parts of the universe.
Not only tangible objects are "things," but also the rays of the sun and the scent of flowers belong to this category, and perceptions are no exception to the rule. But all these "things" are only relative things, since they are qualities of the one and absolute which is the only thing, the "thing itself," well known to every one by the name of the universe, or cosmos.
Since this work wishes to demonstrate the positive outcome of philosophy, the reader may ask the author what are his proofs that instead of the quintessence of thousands of years of philosophical work he is not offered the elaboration of any individual philosopher, or even that of the author himself.
In reply I wish to say that my work would be rendered uselessly voluminous by quotations from the works of the most prominent philosophical writers,without proving anything, since the words of one often contradict those of another.
What is said by Kant, Fichte, Schelling, or Hegel, in one place of any of their works, is at least considerably modified, if not contradicted, in another place of the same work. It is of little consequence, how and by whose help I have arrived at the positive outcome of philosophy as here rendered. Whether it is the actual outcome or not can be judged only by the expert, and every opinion is necessarily very subjective.
Under the circumstances I, as author, claim that my opinion is worth as much as any other, and the reader may therefore accept my assurance. As to the further value of that which I offer, it is a peculiarity of the subject under discussion that every reader carries it and its experiences within himself and may, without consulting any other author, at once draw his own conclusions about my views, provided he has acquired the necessary training in thought. What a traveler tells us about the interior of Africa must either be believed to the letter or verified by the accounts of other travelers. But what I say about logic will, I hope, find its corroboration in the logic of every reading brain.
The theory of understanding which has become the special object of philosophy, is nothing else, and cannot be anything else, but expanded logic. Many practical rules and laws of this department are known and recognized since the time of Aristotle. But the question whether there is one world or two, a natural and unnatural, or supernatural as it is called with preference, that is the point which has given much trouble tophilosophy and which will influence the health of logic so long as it is undecided.
Dr. Friedrich Dittes, director of the institute of pedagogy in Vienna, has published aSchool of Pedagogy, several editions of which have appeared, in which he gives much attention to logic. Dittes is a prominent pedagogue, well known through his writings. He confines himself in hisSchoolto teaching only that which is well established and accepted without a doubt. As a practical man who addresses himself mainly to teachers of primary grades, he would not place himself on the pinnacle of the outcome of philosophy, even if he could. He must confine himself to that which is well established, which is far removed from the disputes of the day. But it may here serve as a whetstone by the help of which we may give to the positive product of philosophy its latest and greatest sharpness.
He writes right in the beginning of the first part: "Our ideas are as manifold as the objects to which they refer. Several things may have many or few, or at least one quality, in common. Still they may also be totally different."
This last point, viz., that there may be things which are "totally" different from one another, is the one which is decidedly rejected by that science which has risen to the eminence of the positive acquisition of philosophy. There can be no natural things which are "totally" different from one another, because they must all of them have in common the quality of being natural.
It sounds very commonplace to say that there are no unnatural things in nature. Since the last witchwas burnt, everybody is sufficiently enlightened to know that. But the logical conclusions of natural monism have not yet been drawn. True, natural science, properly socalled, is busily engaged in arriving at them. But so much more strife is there in the "science of mind" and there is no other remedy but a well founded theory of understanding which teaches that nature is not alone absolute nature, but also the nature of the absolute. From this doctrine it necessarily follows that all things are not individually independent, but related by sex, dependent children, "predicates" of the monistic unity of the world.
"The arch fountain of the human spirit," says Dittes, "is perception.... Whether perception as such discloses to us the true nature of things, or whether it makes us familiar only with their phenomena, this is not to be discussed by logic." The practical pedagogue who confines himself to the education of children's brains or who wishes at most to influence such teachers as educate children's brains, is quite right in being satisfied with the old traditional Aristotlean logic. But in the school of the human race, this logic has not been sufficient. For this reason the philosophers have broached the question whether perception, "the arch fountain of the human spirit," is a true or a deceptive fountain. The product of the philosophical investigation which we here offer amounts to the declaration that the logicians are greatly mistaken about the "arch fountain." It is a cardinal error of ancient logic to regard perception as the ultimate source from which the human mind dips its knowledge. It is nature which is the ultimate source, and our perception is but the mediator ofunderstanding. And its product, recognized truth, is not truth itself, but merely a formal picture of it. Universal nature is the arch fountain, is the eternal and imperishable truth itself, and our perception, like every other part of universal existence, is only an attribute, a particle of absolute nature. The human mind, with whose nature logic is dealing, is no more an independent thing than any other, but simply a phenomenon, a reflex or predicate of nature.
To confound true perceptions or perceived truths with general truth, with thenon plus ultraof all truths, is equivalent to regarding a sparrow asthebird in general, or a period of civilization as civilization itself, which would mean the closing of the door to all further development.
Modern philosophy, beginning with Bacon of Verulam and closing with Hegel, carries on a constant struggle with the Aristotlean logic. The product of this struggle, the outcome of philosophy, does not deny the old rules of traditional logic, but adds a new and decidedly higher circle of logical perception to the former ones. For the sake of better understanding it may be well to give to this circle a special title, the special name of "theory of understanding," which is sometimes called "dialectics."
In order to demonstrate the essential contents of this philosophical product by an investigation of the fundamental laws of traditional logic and to explain it thereby, I refer once more to the teacher of elementary logic, Dittes.
Under the caption of "Principles of Judgment" he teaches: "Since judging, like all thinking, aims at the perception of truth, the rules have been sought afterby which this purpose might be accomplished. As universally applicable rules, as principles or laws of thought, the following four have been named:
(1) The law of uniformity (identity).(2) The law of contradiction.(3) The law of the excluded third.(4) The law of adequate cause."
(1) The law of uniformity (identity).
(2) The law of contradiction.
(3) The law of the excluded third.
(4) The law of adequate cause."
So much scholastic talk has been indulged in over these four "principles," that I can hardly bring myself to discuss them further. But since my purpose, the demonstration of the positive outcome of philosophy, consists in throwing a new light on the logic contained in these four so-called principles or laws, I am compelled to lay bare their inmost kernel.
The first principle, then, declares that A is A, or to speak mathematically, every quantity is equal to itself. In plain English: a thing is what it is; no thing is what it is not. "Characters which are excluded by any conception must not be attributed to it." The square is excluded from the conception of a circle, therefore the predicate "square" must not be given to a circle. For the same reason a straight line must not be crooked, and a lie must not be true.
Now this so-called law of thought may be well enough for household use, where nothing but known quantities are under consideration. A thing is what it is. Right is not left and one hundred is not one thousand. Whoever is named Peter or Paul remains Peter or Paul all his life. This, I say, is all right for household use.
But when we consider matters from the wider point of view of cosmic universal life, then this famous law of thought proves to be nothing but an expedient in logic which is not adequate to the nature of things, but merely a means of mutual understanding for us human beings.Hence the left bank of the Rhine is not the right, because we have agreed that in naming the banks of a river we will turn our backs to the source and our faces to the mouth of the river and then designate the banks as right and left. Such a way of distinguishing, thinking, and judging is good and practical, so long as this narrow standpoint is accompanied by the consciousness of its narrowness. Hitherto this has not been the case. This determined logic has overlooked that the perception which is produced by its rules is not truth, not the real world, but only gives an ideal, more or less accurate, reflection of it. Peter and Paul, who according to the law of identity are the same all their lives, are in fact different fellows every minute and every day of their lives, and all things of this world are, like those two, not constant, but very variable quantities. The mathematical points, the straight lines, the round circles, are ideals. In reality every point has a certain dimension, every straight line, when seen through a magnifying glass, is full of many crooked turns, and even the roundest circle, according to the mathematicians, consists of an infinite number of straight lines.
The traditional logic, then, declares with its law of identity, or in the words of Dittes "law of uniformity," that Peter and Paul are the same fellows from beginning to end, or that the western mountains remain the same western mountains so long as they exist. The product of modern philosophy, on the other hand, declares that the identity of people, woods, and rocks is inseparably linked to their opposite, their incessant transformation. The old school logic treats things, the objects of perception, like stereotyped moulds, while the philosophically expanded logic considers such treatment adequate for householduse only. The logical household use of stereotyped conceptions extends, and should extend, to all of science. The consideration of things as remaining "the same" is indispensable, and yet it is very salubrious to know and remember that the things are not only the same permanent and stereotyped, but at the same time variable and in flow. That is a contradiction, but not a senseless one. This contradiction has confused the minds and given much trouble to the philosophers. The solution of this problem, the elucidation of this simple fact, is the positive product of philosophy.
I have just declared that logic so far did not know that the perception produced by its principles does not offer us truth itself, but only a more or less accurate picture of it. I have furthermore contended that the positive outcome of philosophy has materially added to the clearness of the portrait of the human mind. Logic claims to be "the doctrine of the forms and laws of thought." Dialectics, the product of philosophy, aims to be the same, and its first paragraph declares: Not thought produces truth, but being, of which thought is only that part which is engaged in securing a picture of truth. The fact resulting from this statement may easily confuse the reader, viz., that the philosophy which has been bequeathed to us by logical dialectics, or dialectic logic, must explain not alone thought, but also the original of which thought is a reflex.
While, therefore, traditional logic teaches in its first law that all things are equal to themselves, the new dialectics teaches not only that things are equal to themselves and identical from start to finish, but also that these same things have the contradictory quality of being the same and yet widely variable. If it is a law of thoughtthat we gain as accurate as possible a conception of things by the help of thought, it is at the same time a law of thought that all things, processes, and proceedings are not things but resemble the color of that silk which, although equal to itself and identical throughout, still plays from one color into another. The things of which the thinking thing or human intellect is one are so far from being one and the same from beginning to end that they are in truth and fact without beginning and end. And as phenomena of nature, as parts of infinite nature, they only seem to have a beginning and end, while they are in reality but natural transformations arising temporarily from the infinite and returning into it after a while.
Natural truth or true nature, without beginning and end, is so contradictory that it only expresses itself by shifting phenomena which are nevertheless quite true. To old line logic this contradiction appears senseless. It insists on its first, second, and third law, on its identity, its law of contradiction and excluded third, which must be either straight or crooked, cold or warm, and excludes all intermediary conceptions. And in a way it is right. For every-day use it is all right to deal in this summary fashion with thoughts and words. But it is at the same time judicious to learn from the positive outcome of philosophy that in reality and truth things do not come to pass so ideally. The logical laws think quite correctly of thoughts and their forms and applications. But they do not exhaust thinking and its thoughts. They overlook the consciousness of the inexhaustibleness of all natural creations, of which the object of logic, human understanding, is a part. This object did not fall from heaven, but is a finite part of the infinite which actually has the contradictory quality of possessing in and withits logical nature that universal nature which is superior to all logic.
From this critique of the three first "fundamental laws of logic" it is apparent that the human understanding is not only everywhere identical, but also different in each individual and has a historical development. We are, of course, logically entitled to consider this faculty like all others by itself and give it a birthday. Wherever man begins, there understanding, the faculty of thought, begins. But we are philosophically and dialectically no less entitled, and it is even our duty, to know that the faculty of understanding, the same as its human bearer, has no beginning, in spite of the fact that we ascribe a beginning to them. When we trace the historical development of these two, of man and understanding, backward to their origin, we arrive at a transition to the animal and see their special nature merging into general nature. The same is found in tracing the development of the individual mind. Where does consciousness begin in the child? Before, at, or after birth? Consciousness arises from its opposite, unconsciousness, and returns to it. In consequence we regard the unconscious as the substance and the conscious as its predicate or attribute. And the fixed conceptions which we make for ourselves of the units or phenomena of the natural substance are recognized by us as necessary means in explaining nature, but at the same time it is necessary to learn from dialectics that all fixed conceptions are floating in a liquid element. The infinite substance of nature is a very mobile element, in which all fixed things appear and sink, thus being temporarily fixed and yet not fixed.
Now let us briefly review the fourth fundamental law of logic, according to which everything must have anadequate cause. This law is likewise very well worthy of attention, yet it is very inadequate, because the question what should be our conception of the world and what is the constitution of the most highly developed thinking faculty of the world requires the answer: the world, in which everything has its adequate cause, is nevertheless, including consciousness and the faculty of thought, without beginning, end, and cause, that is, a thing justified in itself and by itself. The law of the adequate cause applies only to pictures made by the human mind. In our logical pictures of the world everything must have its adequate cause. But the original, the universal cosmos, has no cause, it is its own cause and effect. To understand that all causes rest on the causeless is an important dialectic knowledge which first throws the requisite light on the law of the necessity of an adequate cause.
Formally everything must have its cause. But really everything has not only one cause, but innumerable causes. Not alone father and mother are the cause of my existence, but also the grand parents and great grand parents, together with the air they breathed, the food they ate, the earth on which they walked, the sun which warmed the earth, etc. Not a thing, not a process, not a change is the adequate cause of another, but everything is rather caused by the universe which is absolute.
When philosophy began its career with the intention of understanding the world, it soon discovered that this purpose could be accomplished only by special study. When it chose understanding, or the faculty of thought, as the special object of its study, it separated its specific object too far from the general existence. Its logic, in opposing thought to the rest of existence, forgot the interconnection of the opposites, forgot that thought is aform, a species, an individuality which belongs to the genus of existence, the same as fish to the genus of meat, night to the genus of day, art to nature, word to action, and death to life. It does not attempt to explore the essence of thought for its own sake, but for the purpose of discovering the rules of exploring and thinking correctly. It could not very well arrive at those coveted rules, so long as it idealized truth transcendentally and elevated it far above the phenomena. All phenomena of nature are true parts of truth. Even error and lies are not opposed to truth in that exaggerated sense in which the old style logic represents them, which teaches that two contradictory predicates must not be simultaneously applied to the same subject, that any one subject is either true or false, and that any third alternative is out of the question. Such statements are due to an entire misconception of truth. Truth is the absolute, universal sum of all existing things, of all phenomena of the past, present, and future. Truth is the real universe from which errors and lies are not excluded. In so far as stray thoughts, giants and brownies, lies and errors are really existing, though only in the imagination of men, to that extent they are true. They belong to the sum of all phenomena, but they are not the whole truth, not the infinite sum. And even the most positive knowledge is nothing but an excellent picture of a certain part. The pictures in our minds have this in common with their originals that they are true. All errors and lies are true errors and true lies, hence are not so far removed from truth that one should belong to heaven and the other to eternal damnation. Let us remain human.
Since old line logic with its four principles was too narrowminded, its development had to produce thatdialectics which is the positive outcome of philosophy. This science of thought so expanded regards the universe as the truly universal or infinite, in which all contradictions slumber as in the womb of conciliation. Whether the new logic shall have the same name as the old, or assume the separate title of theory of understanding or dialectics, is simply a question of terms which must be decided by considerations of expediency.
We took our departure from the fact that philosophy is searching for "understanding." The first and principal acquisition of philosophy was the perception that its object is not to be found in a transcendental generality. Whoever wishes to obtain understanding, must confine himself to something special, without, however, through this limitation losing sight of all measure and aim to such an extent that he forgets the infinite generality.
A modern psychologist who occupies himself with "Thoughts on Enlightenment," which topic is evidently related to ours, says: "Real and genuine enlightenment can proceed only from religious motives." Expressed in our language, this would mean: Every genuine understanding, every true conception or knowledge, must be based on the clear consciousness that the infinite universe is the arch fundament of all things.
Understanding and true enlightenment are identical."It is true," say the "Thoughts on Enlightenment," "that all enlightenment takes the form of struggles on account of the nature of him who is to be enlightened and of the object about which he is to be informed. But it is a struggle for religion, not against it." The author, Professor Lazarus, says in his preface that he does not wish the reader to base his opinion on any single detached sentence. "Every single sentence," he says, "may be tested as to its value, but the whole of my views on religion and enlightenment cannot be recognized from any single one of them."
As this wish is entirely justified and as our position is somewhat supported by his psychological treatment of enlightenment, we shall comply with his wish and seek to grasp the meaning of his statements on the religious nature of enlightenment in their entirety, not as isolated sentences.
We even go a step farther than Professor Lazarus, by extending to understanding what he says about enlightenment, viz., that genuine knowledge and enlightenment must, so to say, take their departure from religious motives. But we differ a little as to what motives are religious. Lazarus refers, so far as I can see, to ideas and the ideal, while we, thanks to the positive outcome of philosophy, understand the termsreligionandreligiousto refer to the universal interdependence of things.
Obviously the dividing line between heat and cold is drawn by the human mind. The point selected for this purpose is the freezing point of water. One might just as well have selected any other point. Evidently the dividing line between that which is religious and that which is irreligious is as indeterminate as that between hot and cold. Neither any university nor any usage of languagecan decide that, nor is the pope a scientific authority in the matter.
It is mainly due to the socalled historical school that a thing is considered not alone by its present condition, but by its origin and decline. What, then, is religion and religious? The fetish cult, the animal cult, the cult of the ideal and spiritual creator, or the cult of the real human mind? Where are we to begin and where to end? If the ancient Germans regarded the great oak as sacred and religious, why should not art and science become religious among the modern Germans? In this sense, Lazarus is correct. The "enlightenment" which was headed in France by Voltaire and the encyclopedists, in Germany by Lessing and Kant, the "enlightenment" which came as a struggle for reason and against religion, was then in fact a struggle for religion, not against it. By this means one may make everything out of anything. But this has to be learned first in order to recognize how our mind ought to be adjusted, so that it may perceive that not only everything is everything, but that each thing also has its own place.
We wish to become clear in our minds how it is possible, and reconcilable with sound conception, that such an anti-religious struggle as that carried on during that period of "enlightenment" can nevertheless be a struggle for and in the interest of religion. We wish to find out how one may abolish religion and at the same time maintain it.
This is easily understood, if we remember the repeatedly quoted dialectic rule according to which our understanding must never exaggerate the distinctions between two things. We must not too widely separate the religious from the secular field. Of course, the religious fieldis in heaven, while the secular is naturally in the profane universe. Having become aware that even religious imagination, together with its heaven and spirit creator, are profane conceptions in spite of their alleged transcendentalism, we find religion in the secular field, and thus this field has in a way become religious. The religious and the profane infinite have something in common, at least this that the indefinite religious name may also be applied to the secular or profane infinity.
"All culture, every condition of humanity or of a nation, has its roots as well as its bounds in history," says our Professor of psychology. Should not religion, which according to the words of a German emperor "must be preserved for the people," also have its bounds in history? Or does it belong to the infinite and must it exist forever? In order to free history of its bounds, it is necessary to avail ourselves of the positive outcome of philosophy and to demonstrate that nothing is infinite but the infinite itself, which has the double nature of being infinite and inseparable from the finite phenomena of nature. The whole of nature is eternal, but none of its individual phenomena is, although even the imperishable whole is composed of perishable parts.
The relation of the constant whole of nature to its variable parts, the relation of the general to the specialties composing it, includes, if we fully grasp it, a perfect conception of the human mind as well as of the understanding and enlightenment which it acquires. This mind cannot enlighten itself as to its special nature without observing how it came to enlighten itself as to the nature of other specialties. We then find that it has likewise enlightened itself on religious phenomena by recognizing them as a part, as a variation, of the general phenomenon of theconstant, eternal, natural universe. Hence secular nature, which is at the same time eternal and temporal, is the mother of religious nature. Of course, the child partakes of the nature of the mother. Religion, historically considered, arises from nature, but the determination of the date of the beginning of this specialty is left as much to the choice of man as that of the point where the cold and the warm meet. The general movement of nature, from which arise its specialties, proceeds in infinite time. Its transformations are so gradual that every determined point constitutes an arbitrary act which is at the same time arbitrary and necessary; necessary for the human being who wishes to gain a conception of it. A perfect conception of religion, therefore, goes right to the center of the question, to the point where the religious specialty reaches a characteristic stage, to its freezing point, so to say. From this standpoint, heat and cold may be sharply defined; likewise religion. If we say, for instance, that religion is the conception of a supernatural spirit who rules nature, and the reader thinks this definition somewhat appropriate, the simple demonstration of the achievements of philosophy in the field of understanding or dialectics proves that this religious conception is untenable in this world of the human mind which knows how to obtain a logical picture of its experiences.
To desire to preserve religion for the people as a sharply defined and finite thing is contrary to all logic and equivalent to swimming against the tide. On the other hand, it is equally illogical to identify religion after the manner of Lazarus with the conception of natural infinity or infinite nature, because that promotes mental haziness.
The laws of thought obtained by philosophical research give us considerable enlightenment about the infinitematerial process, the nature of which is sublime enough to be worthy of religious devotion, and yet special and matter-of-fact enough to wash the dim eyes with natural clearness.
We have already seen in preceding chapters that we must first define our standpoint before we can decide which is the right or left bank of a river. So it is also in the matter of abolishing and maintaining religion for the people. It can be done the moment we extend the discussion to the realm of infinity. The conception of infinity, called substance by Spinoza, monad by Leibniz, thing itself by Kant, the absolute by Hegel, is indeed necessary in order to explain anything, not only by the fourth root, but by the infinite root of the adequate reason. To that extent we are agreed that enlightenment, or understanding as we say, is not alone a struggle against religion, but also for it. In the theory of understanding acquired by philosophy, there is contained a decisive repeal of religion. Nevertheless we say with Lazarus: "The power of enlightenment and its aim are not expressed in negation, not in that which is not believed, but in that which is believed, venerated, and preserved." And yet every enlightening perception, every understanding resulting from enlightenment, is a negation. In seeking enlightenment, for instance, on understanding, it is necessary, in order to prove that it is a natural phenomenon, to deny the religious element in so far as it assumes the existence of a divine chief spirit whose secondary copy the human spirit is supposed to be. Or, in order to gain enlightenment on the nature of the universe, in order to realize that it is a truly universal universe, we are compelled to deny the existence of every "higher" world, including the religious. But if we desire to become enlightened as tohow it is that religion may not alone be denied, but also preserved, we must transfer its origin from an illogical other world into the natural and logical universe. Thus religion becomes natural and nature religious.
If worship is confined to the idolization of the sun or the cat, every one realizes the temporality of the matter. And if we restrict worship to the adoration of the great omnipotent spirit, every one realizes the temporality of this adoration who has acquired an accurate conception of the small human spirit. If, on the other hand, we extend religious worship to everything which has ever been venerated, or will ever be venerated, by human beings, in other words, if we extend the conception of religion to the entire universe, then it assumes a very far-reaching significance.
This is the essence of enlightenment on religion: That we may at will expand or contract our conceptions, that all things are alike to the extent of representing only one nature, that all fantastical ideas, all good and evil spirits and ghosts, no matter how "supernaturally" conceived, are all natural.
The essential thing in the enlightenment acquired by philosophical study is the appreciation of the fact that understanding, enlightenment, science, etc., are not cultivated for their own sake, but must serve the purpose of human development, the material interests of which demand a correct mental picture of the natural processes.
We have chosen the religious idea for discussion in this chapter so that it may serve as a means of illustrating the nature of thought in general. We regard it as the merit of philosophy to have unveiled this nature.
Professor Lazarus is quite a pleasing companion. He is a fine thinker, saturated with the teachings of thephilosophers, not overfond of any particular school, and only about two hands' breadth removed from our position. But this is just enough to demonstrate by his shortcomings the advantages of our position which proves that the part of the human soul performing the work of thinking is understood by us at least two hands' breadth better than by this prominent psychologist.
"The function of enlightenment is to recognize that no phenomenon can be an effect which has not another phenomenon as its cause, and to search for the sole cause of every effect, noting all its parts and their consecutive divisions."
These words describe the mental work performed by the human brain fairly well, but still they require a little addition, to the effect that the mental work is no exception from any other phenomena, all of which have not alone their special, but also one general cause. The cause of all causes, of which religion is making an idol, must be profaned, so to speak, by the cult of science, so that the above definition of Lazarus regarding enlightenment would read as follows: The sole and true cause of all effects is the universe, or the general interdependence of all things. But this is not by far the full scope of enlightenment. It is further necessary, as Lazarus well says, to note "all its parts and their consecutive divisions." We further add: The universal cause must be understood not alone in its consecutive parts, but also in its co-ordinate parts. It is only then that understanding, enlightenment, become perfect. We then find that after all the relation between cause and effect, or the relation between the universal truth and its natural phenomena, is not a very trenchant one, but a relative one.
"Enlightenment advances in various, in all, fields ofmental life. Religious enlightenment has long been recognized as the most essential, justly so, and for many reasons, the chief of them being that religious enlightenment is the most important and hence the most bitterly contested."
Thus religious enlightenment is a part of universal, cosmic, enlightenment. It is a confusing expression to say that it is confined to "all fields of mental life." We believe to be shedding more light on the question by saying that there is enlightenment in all fields, not alone in the mental, but also in the cosmic, which unites both the material and mental. To classify this field, that is the exhaustive task of our understanding, that its exhaustive definition.
The processes of the human mind and their subjective composition cannot be analyzed in apurestate and without regard to their objective effects any more than handiwork can be explained without the raw material to be handled and the products derived therefrom, any more than any work can be described in apurestate without regard to the product.
That is the sad defect of old time logic which is an obstacle to its further advance: it literally tears things out of their connections and forgets the necessity of interdependence over the need of special study.
The instrument which produces thought andknowledge in the human brain is not an isolated thing, nor an isolated quality. It is connected not only with the brain and the nervous system, but also with all qualities of the soul. True, thinking is different from feeling, but it is nevertheless a feeling the same as gladness and sorrow. Thought is called incomprehensible and the heart unfathomable. It is the function of science, of thinking and thought, to fathom and comprehend what as yet is not fathomed and not comprehended.
Just as thinking and understanding are parts of the human soul, so the latter is a part of physical and intellectual man. Together with the physical development of man, of the species as well as of the individual, the soul also develops and with it that part which is the special object of the theory of understanding, viz., thought and thinking. Not alone does physical development produce intellectual development, but, vice versa, the understanding reacts on the physical world. The one is not merely a cause, nor the other merely an effect. This obsolete distinction does not suffice for the full understanding of their interrelations. We pay a tribute to the "thoughts on enlightenment" of Professor Lazarus quoted in the previous chapter by acknowledging that they throw so much light on a certain point that little more than the dot over the "i" is required in order to clear up a bad misunderstanding about the relation of cause and effect.
Since the time of Aristotle this relation has been called a category. We have already noted the statement which characterizes the age of enlightenment as one in which the causal category, or let us say the distinction between cause and effect, became the dominant issue. Other periods live with their understanding, with their thoughts, in other categories. Though the ancient Greeks knew thedistinction between cause and effect, yet it was far from being the dominant point of view in their search after scientific understanding. Instead of regarding, as we do today, everything as effects which were produced by preceding causes, they saw in every process, in every phenomenon, a means which had a purpose. The category of means and purpose dominated the Greeks. Socrates admired the knowledge of nature displayed by Anaxagoras, the stories he could tell of sun, moon, and stars. But as Anaxagoras had omitted to disclose thereasonable purposeof the processes of nature, Socrates did not think much of such a natural science. At that period the means and the purpose were the measure of reason, the handle of the mind, the category of understanding; today causes and effects have taken their places.
Between the golden age of Greece and the era of modern science, the socalled night of the Middle Ages, the epoch of superstition, extends. If then you started out on a voyage and first met an old woman, it meant misfortune for you. Wallenstein cast the horoscope before he directed his troops. "Understanding" was gathered from the flight of a bird, the cry of an animal, the constellations of stars, the meeting with an old woman. The category of that period was thesignand itsconsequences.
And according to Lazarus, these things were believed by brains which were by no means dull. "I refer to a name which fills us all with veneration: Kepler believed in astrology, in thecategory of the sign and its consequence, together with the thinkers of the thousand years before him and of his own century. Astrology was a science for many centuries, promoted together with astronomy ... and by the same people."
The peculiar thing in this statement is the reference tothe category of sign and consequence as ascience. This category has no longer a place in modern science.
May not our modern viewpoint, the category in which our present day science thinks, the category of cause and effect, be equally transitory?
The ancients have accomplished lasting scientific results in spite of their "purposes." Mediæval superstition with its "signs," its astrology and alchemy, has likewise bequeathed to us a few valuable scientific products. And, on the other hand, even the greatest partisans of modern science do not deny that it is marred by various adventurous vagaries.
The categories of means and purposes, of signs and consequences, are still in vogue today and will be preserved together with that of causes and effects. The knowledge that this latter category is likewise but a historical one and exerts but temporarily a dominating influence on science belongs to the positive outcome of philosophy, and Professor Lazarus, with all his advanced standpoint, has remained behind this result by about a yard.
Kindly note that it is not the extinction of the relation between cause and effect which we predict, but merely that of its dominance.
Whoever skips lightly over the current of life, will be greatly shocked when reading that we place the fundamental pillar of all perception, the category of cause and effect, in the same passing boat in which the prophets and astrologers rode. One is very prone to belittle the faith of others by the name of "superstition" and honor one's own superstition by the title of "science."
Once we have grasped the fact that our intellect has no other purpose than that of tracing a human picture ofcosmic processes, and that its penetration of the interior of nature, its understanding, explaining, perceiving, knowing, etc., is nothing else, and cannot be anything else, that moment it loses its mysterious, transcendental metaphysical character. We also understand then, that the great spirit above the clouds who is supposed to create the world out of nothing, could very well serve the mind as a means of explaining things. And it is the same with the category of cause and effect, which is a splendid means of assisting explanation, but still will not suffice for the requirements of all time to come.
The perception that the great spirit above the clouds is a free invention of the small human mind has become so widely spread that we may well pass on over it to other things.
Among the questions now on the order of business is the one whether the "causes" with which modern science operates so widely are not in a way creators in miniature which produce their effects in a sleight-of-hand way. And this erroneous notion is, indeed, the current conception.
If a stone falls into the water, it is the cause of the undulations, but not their creator. It is only a co-operator, for the liquid and elastic qualities of the water also act as a cause. If the stone falls into butter, it creates at best but one undulation, and if this stony creator falls on the hard ground, it is all up with the creation of undulations. This shows that causes are not creators, but rather effects which are not effected, but effect themselves.
The category of cause and effect is a good help in explanation, so long as it is accompanied by the philosophical consciousness that the whole of nature is an infinite sea of transformations, which are not created by one great or many small creators, but which create themselves.
A well-known philosophical author expresses himself in the following manner: "During the first weeks of its existence, the child has no perception either of the world without, or of its own body, or of its soul. Hence its feeling is not accompanied by the consciousness of an interaction between these three factors. It does not suspect its causes." We see that soul, body, and outer world are called the three factors of feeling. Now note how each one of these three causes or factors is, so to say, the store house of innumerable factors or causes, all of which cause the feeling of the child. The soul consists of many soul parts, the body of many bodily parts, and the outer world consists of so many parts that it would consist of ten times more parts, if there were any more than innumerable.
There is no doubt that the child's feeling, or any other, does not exist independently, but is dependent on the soul, the body, and the outer world. This constitutes the indubitable interrelation of all things. In the winding processes of the self-agitated universe, the category of cause and effect serves as a means of enlightenment, by giving our mind its help in the systematization of processes. If the drop of a stone precedes, the undulations of the water follow; if soul, body, and outer world are present, feeling follows.
The positive outcome of philosophy does not reject the services of the category of cause and effect. It only rejects the mystical element in that category in which many people, even among those with a "scientific education," still believe. There is no witchcraft in this matter, but simply a mechanical systematization and classification of natural phenomena in the order of their appearance. So long as water remains water and retains its liquid and elastic properties, and so long as a stone is a stone, aponderous fellow striking the water heavily, just so long will the splash of the stone be surely and inevitably followed by undulations of the water. So long as soul, body, and outer world retain their known properties, they will with unfailing precision produce feeling. It is no more surprising that we can affirm this on the strength of our experience than that we have a category of cause and effect. There exists nothing extraordinary but the condition of things, and in this respect all things are alike, so that human understanding, cause and effect, or any other category, are no more extraordinary than any other condition. The only wonder is the universe, but this, being a universal wonder, is at the same time trivial, for nothing is so familiar as that which is common to all.
By the help of the viewpoint of cause and effect, man throws light on the phenomena of nature. Cause and effect serve to enlighten us about the world.
The way, the method, by which this enlightenment is produced, is the special object of our study. We do not deny that cause and effect serve us as a means, but only as one of many. We honor the category of cause and effect far too much when we regard it asthepanacea. We have seen that formerly other viewpoints served the same purpose and still others exist today, some of which have a prospect of being valued more highly in the future than cause and effect. This category serves very well for the explanation of processes which follow one another. But there are other phenomena which occur side by side, and these must also be elucidated. For such a purpose, the category of genus and species is quite as serviceable. Haeckel speaks somewhat slightingly of "museum zoologists and herbarium botanists," because they merely classify animals and plants according to genera and species. Themodern zoologists and botanists do not simply consider the multiplicity of animals and plants which exist simultaneously, but also the chronological order of the changes and transformations, and in this way they have gained much more of a life-picture of the zoological and botanical world, a picture not alone of its being, but also of its growing, of arising and declining. Undoubtedly the knowledge of the museum zoologists and herbarium botanists was meager, narrow, mechanical, and modern science offers a far better portrait of truth and life. Still this is no reason for overestimating the value of analysis by cause and effect. This method supplements the category of genus and species. It assists in enlightening, it helps in the process of thought, but it does not render other forms of thought superfluous.
It is essential for the theory of understanding, to recognize the special forms of thought of old and new times as peculiarities which have a common nature. This common nature of the process of thought, understanding, enlightenment, is a part of the universal world process, and not greatly different from it.
The conception of a cause partly explains the phenomena of the universe; but so does the conception of a purpose and of a species, in fact, so do all conceptions.
In the universe all parts are causes, all of them caused, produced, created, and yet there is no creator, no producer, no cause. The general produces the special, and the latter in turn produces by reaction the general.
The category of the general and the special, of the universe and its parts, contains all other categories in the germ. In order to explain the process of thought, we must explain it as a part of the universal process. It has not caused the creation of the world, neither in atheological nor in an idealist sense, nor is it a mere effect of the brain substance, as the materialists of the eighteenth century represented it. The process of thought and its understanding is a peculiarity of the universal cosmos. The relation of the general to the special is the clear and typical category underlying all other categories.
One might also apply other names to this category, for instance, the one and the many; the essence and the form; the substance and its attributes; truth and its phenomena, etc. However, a name is but a breath and a sound; understanding and comprehension are what we want in the first place.