Shoemaking and beet culture are as much sciences as physics, chemistry, and astronomy. Reading, writing, and reckoning are called elementary knowledge, and though I do not deny that they have an elementary value for the culture of the mind, yet I can truly say that I have met well-informed people who could neither read nor write. I wish to indicate by this that there are indeed high and low degrees of knowledge and science, but that such graduations have only a temporary, local, relative, subjective significance, while in the absolute all things are the same.
The scorn with which you may hear some people speak of the night of the absolute in which all cats are grey and all women beautiful Helenas shall not prevent us from repeatedly studying the absolute which I have again and again praised as the main topic of logic. Only remember, please, that you must not have any mystic idea of it. The absolute is the sum total of all that was, is, and will be.
The subjects as well as the objects of all science belong to the absolute, which is commonly called "world."
All other sciences have for their object limited parts, relative matters, while the science of the mind treats of all things, of the infinite. This is a point to which I referfrequently because it tends to make my lessons obscure. I am lecturing on the science of the intellect, but I speak of all things, of the universe, because I am obliged to demonstrate, not the relation of the mind to shoemaking or astronomy, but its general interrelations. I have to make plain its general conduct, and this leads necessarily to the all-embracing generality, to the absolute. We wish to learn the art of thinking, not on this or that subject, but the art of general world thought.
The intellect is a special part, the same as every other scientific or practical object. But it is that part which is not satisfied with piece work, which knows that it itself and all special things are attributes or predicates of the absolute subject, that it itself and all things are universally interrelated.
The human mind is sometimes called self-consciousness. But this name is too limited for such an unlimited thing, for the pathfinder of the infinite, for your, my, and every other consciousness of the world and of existence in general.
For centuries the question has been discussed whether there are innate ideas hidden in the intellect or whether it may be likened to a blank paper which experience impregnates with knowledge. This is the question after the origin and source of understanding. Whence comes reason, where do we get our ideas, judgments, conclusions? By the help of brown-study from the interior of our brain, from revelation, or from experience? It seems to me that you will quickly decide this matter when I ask you to consider that everything we experience, together with the intellect going through experiences, is a revelation of the absolute. Everything we know is experience. We may consider the mind as a sheet of blank paper, but in orderthat it may receive writing on its surface this internal paper is as necessary as the external world which produces the hand, the pen and the ink for this process of writing. In other words, all experience originates from the world organism. Not knowledge, but consciousness, world consciousness, is innate in the intellect. It has not the consciousness of this or that in itself, but it knows of itself the general, the existence as such, the absolute.
The science of the intellect has ever wrestled with one peculiar fact. It found knowledge which the mind had received from the outside, so-called empirical knowledge. But it also found knowledge which was innate, so-calleda prioriknowledge. That there is always a valley between two mountains, that gold is not sheet iron, that the part is smaller than the whole, that the angles of a triangle are together equal to two right angles, that circles are round, that water is wet, that fire is hot, etc., these are things of which we know that they are true in heaven and in hell, and in all time to come, although we have never been there with our experience. This plainly shows that we harbor a secret in our brains which the lovers of the mystical seek to exploit by making believe that their self-interested wisdom of God and high authority likewise belongs to the eternally innate truths. For this reason it is especially important for the proletariat to bring the controversy of the origin and source of understanding to a close.
Our logic asks: Does wisdom descend mysteriously from the interior of the human brain, or does it come from the outer world like all experience? We shall leave its descent from heaven out of the question.
The answer is: Science, perception, understanding, thought, require internal and external things, subject andobject, brain and world. Truth is here and truth is there. Truth is so divine that it is everywhere and absolute.
But how to explain that wonderfula prioriknowledge which exceeds all experience? For it is a fact that the intellect has not alone the faculty of knowing things in general, but also that of separating them into their parts and from one another and to name them. It cuts off slices, so to say. But not like the butcher who sees everything merely from the standpoint of his trade. You will remember from your own experience as well as from my repeated statements that the world is not a monotonous, but a multiform unit. This confused knot is dissolved and explained by intellectual separation, by classification. In the absolute everything is alike and unlike. But the intellect makes abstractions from the unlike. For instance, in conceiving of the term minerals, we pass over the distinction between gold and sheet iron. Then, when we continue the classification by subordinating gold and sheet iron as separate species to the general term of minerals, we know very well that gold and sheet iron are different kinds of the same general mineral nature. We know what the names indicate, and so long as they retain their meaning, we know that neither in heaven nor in hell can gold be sheet iron or sheet iron be gold. Water and fire are specialties taken from the universe and named. Is it a wonder, then, that these names have a special meaning and that we have the settled conviction that wherever sense instead of nonsense is master, fire burns, water wets, circles are round, and the sum of the angles of every triangle is equal to two right angles?
These illustrations are commonplace enough, indeed, but it seems to me that they clearly show the mere formality of the distinction between innate and experiencedknowledge. You will recognize that both of these kinds of knowledge are different and yet of the same kind, that both are mixtures of the internal and external. Knowledgea prioriceases to be a miracle when we understand that it comes out of the same fountain of experience asa posterioriknowledge, and in either case knowledge is acquired only by means of the intellect. Hence intellect connected with the world is the sole source of all wisdom, and external nature as well as our internal faculty of understanding are parts of the one general nature, which is the truth and the absolute.
"Only a gradual, slow, gapless development," says Noiré, "can free the thinking mind from the philosophical disease of wondering."
The art of dialectics or logic which teaches that the universe, or the whole world, is one being, is the science of absolute evolution. "In the whole constitution of all natural things," writes Lazare Geiger, "there is hardly anything more miraculous than the way in which the miracle avoids our glance and continuously withdraws into the distance to escape observation. In the place of the abrupt and strange things produced by imagination, reason puts uniformity and transition."
And we add that the science of reason, or logic, teaches simultaneously with the unity of the whole world, also that all things are alike miraculous, or that there is only one miracle, which is existence in general, the absolute. In other words, everything and nothing is miraculous.
In demonstrating that the most different things, such as heat and cold, and all radical distinctions, are only relative forms of universal nature, I prove the uninterruptedand matter of fact transition and the absolute graduality, the fusion, of all things.
I have tried to establish this proof in regard to the two kinds of knowledge and illustrated it with commonplace examples, because these have a popularizing effect. In order to meet the demands of more exacting minds, I shall presently take up the miracle of causality. The indubitable statement that everything must have its cause is regarded as the most miraculous innate knowledge, and is much misused for the purpose of bringing confusion into logic.
My Son:
If on my return from some voyage I were to tell you of all the things I havenotseen, you would justly doubt the order of my senses. Sane reason demands that the description of unfamiliar things be given in a positive, not in a negative manner. If that is so, is it not wrong to proceed negatively by trying to prove in explaining the nature of the intellect that it is not a miracle and no mysterious charm of wisdom? I answer: No. For the present, the intellect is still a sort ofignis fatuuswhich is magnified into a fiery man. In order to understand theignis fatuus, it is necessary to remove the fiery man. Logic must show that human reason is not a miracle, not a mystical receptacle of wisdom. The negative process is in such a case positively in order. Wherever a thing is obscured by prejudices, these must first be removed, in order that room may be made for the bare fact.
It was the famous Kant who posed the question: "How isa prioriknowledge possible?" How do wearrive at the knowledge of things which are not accessible to experience? The answer is that the intellect cannot accomplish such a miracle, and Kant substantiates this in a long-winded way and with admirable penetration. But he left a nasty hair in the soup.
He found that by the help of our reason we can explain only phenomena. The confusion between truth and phenomena had been handed down to him as an infirmity of ancient times. He worked diligently on its solution, but left some work for those coming after him. Originally the study of supernatural and the profane study of natural things were closely intermingled. Not until the obvious results of natural science became known, did thinkers accommodate themselves to the habit of leaving supernatural things to faith and limiting science to the study of natural phenomena. Science had so to say passed on to the practical order of business, not paying any further attention to the contrast between phenomena and truth. But the logic, which is innate in the human mind, cannot content itself with the dualistic split between faith and science. It demands a monistic system and does not desist until the primeval forests of faith are completely put under cultivation.
The logical impulse of culture caused Kant to continue what was begun by Socrates. Philosophy before Socrates searched for truth externally. While our logic teaches that everything is true, and truth is the universe, the Ionic philosophers made a sort of fetish out of the matter. Thales idolized the water as the thing of things, another the fire, a third numbers. This worship of the fetish was the worship of truth. The search for understanding starts out with misunderstanding. From religious to scientific culture, it is a step, not a leap. WhenSocrates turned to introspection and started out, with his "Know thyself," in submitting the prodigy of the human soul to critique, he made another important step.
You know that the "wisest of men" was not interested in air and water, in natural science of the strict order, but rather in the good, the true, and the beautiful, in the human in the narrower sense, in the realm of the spirit, in the soul. It was indeed unwise that he was interested to the verge of idolization, since in consequence of this interest in a special part, the other, the material part was being neglected. According to Goethe's statement that one thing is not fit for all, Socrates did right. He and all philosophical lights after him studied the intellect. What they missed was the now dawning understanding that the faculty of thought is not a prodigy but a special, and at the same time common, part of universal nature. While these philosophers looked for truth in any one special form of excellence, you are now invited to look for it in the total interrelation of things.
Science has ever endeavored to do away with miracles and prodigies. This could be accomplished only gradually, and the logicians have, therefore, remained more or less biased and confused. The great Kant was no exception. He looked for supreme truth, and for its sake he investigated the intellect. He is celebrated because he explained so well that this intellect feels no mission for anything transcendental, and cannot understand anything but phenomena. Still he permitted something transcendental to remain.
Kant is of the opinion that we perceive things as they appear, but not as they are "in themselves." Nevertheless we should believe that a mysterious truth is at the bottom of those phenomena, because we shouldotherwise arrive at the irreconcilable contradiction that there are phenomena without anything which could appear. The intellect, he holds, can operate only on the field of phenomena, and for this reason we should give up the endless grubbing after the transcendental. But we should leave one little room in the house of reason, one little chamber of faith, which points beyond experience up to the point where a mysterious truth guards God and His commands.
The subsequent philosophers, especially the Hegelian philosophy, opposed this separation which assigned to the intellect only the study of phenomena and to faith the absolute and infinite for veneration. But they did not yet succeed in completely mastering the matter, they did not fully arrive at an indubitably clear exposition of the fountain of understanding and of the unity of truth, so that reaction nowadays can again sound the retreat after the melody: "Back to Kant." You know that Lessing complained about the treatment of "a dead dog" accorded to Spinoza, and Marx added pointedly: "Hegel is more of a dead dog to-day than Spinoza was at Lessing's time." The enemies of the working class are the enemies of evolution. They wish to preserve the existing order of things and the good old time in which they feel at home. For this reason it is the mission of the proletariat to continue the work of logic. It is our duty to show clearly that the metaphysical truth which Kant opposed to the phenomena of nature and could not eliminate from the intellect, is nothing but just a metaphysical, a fantastically exaggerated, thing.
According to our logic, the universe is the truth and everything partakes of it. That such a truth is logical and such a logic true, is shown by the interconnection ofthings, so that this science is applicable to everything which the sciences respect as reasonable and true.
In order to help you in the understanding of the absolute and liberate your thought from all special miracles, I refer to Kant's critique of reason. It teaches that our intellect becomes a source of understanding only in connection with other phenomena of nature. Only his critique stuck fast in the mysterious fountain of causality. Thus he showed that he was only a seeker after logic, not its master. The conclusion that there must besomethingthat does appear where there are phenomena is certainly correct. But that which Kant was thinking of, something of a transcendental or metaphysical nature, led him to the radically wrong conclusion that there must be something different, peculiar, miraculous, mysterious, wherever there are phenomena.
The Kantian conclusion that there must be an absolute truth by itself behind a phenomenon, an absolute truth that exists independent of and disconnected with such phenomenon, was due to his fetish-like conception of truth. It is the first requirement for a correct use of the faculty of logical reasoning to know that truth is the common nature of the universe.
That a phenomenon must be based on nature, or an effect on a cause, is a fact identical with "causality" which I already promised to discuss in the preceding letter. This same problem may also be expressed in the words: Where there are predicates, there must be a subject that carries them. In order to make quite sure that I will not be misunderstood, I emphasize once more the fact that I am not raising any doubt as to the correctness of this conclusion, but only to the metaphysical application of this conclusion after the Kantian manner which consistsin making the same use of it as a clergyman who tries to prove that his theology is innate in reason.
Our conception of logic wishes to show that all causes and effects are matter of the same kind, and that our faculty of reasoning is a matter of fact thing which brooks no mysteries or metaphysical dreams.
Now let me illustrate the interconnection of all things, or the world-unit, by discussing the question of causality. We know that everything has its cause. We know that this is also true on the Moon or on Uranus, although we have not acquired this knowledge by experience on those world bodies. Thus it seemed that the intellect was a mysterious receptacle containing innate wisdom. The same receptacle also contains, for instance, the truth that all white horses are white and all black horses black. We do not know anything about the color of other horses in other countries, but the color of black and white horses we know even if we have never seen them in other countries. It is thus apparent that our intellect is an instrument which reaches beyond experience. For this reason there would seem to be no telling where the supply of such miraculous revelations would stop and into what mysterious worlds the intellect passing beyond the limits of experience would lead us.
In order that the human intellect may not appear transcendental, in order to give it its place in the general classification of natural forces, we must investigate the nature of causality and so-calleda prioriknowledge.
Kindly observe in the first place that a thing is just as wonderfulafterit is explained as it was before its explanation. A scientific explanation of a thing ought not to do away with our admiration, but only to reduce it to reasonable bounds. The intellect may very well be regarded as something wonderful, but its wondrous quality should be reduced to the measure of all things which are none of them any less wonderful. After you have explained what water is, after you have learned that it is composed of two chemical elements, after you have realized all its qualities thoroughly, it still remains a wonderful, divine, fluid.
"All things have their causes." What are all things? They are attributes, qualities of the universe. It is innate in the intellect to know that the world isonething, that all things belong, not to any different thing, but to one and the same subject. The intellect is by nature the absolute feeling of unity. It knows of itself that everything is interrelated and that the consciousness of causality is nothing else but the consciousness of cosmic interrelation. And I maintain that the innateness of the consciousness of cosmic interrelation in our brain is explained when we realize that it is an actual thing like all others, a phenomenon which has the same general nature as every other phenomenon.[7]
The fact is undeniable that a certain knowledge is innate in our consciousness. The only difficulty has been to explain this fact. At this point I call your attention to the exaggerated notion entertained in regard to explaining, and understanding, things. By explanations, a thing is not dissolved, but only classified.
The hatching of an egg is explained when youperceive that this process is part and parcel of a whole class of similar processes. If you modify the exalted idea of the effect of explanations in this sense, you must realize that the innate consciousness of the general interrelation of things is natural and intelligible and requires no other explanation than the humidity of the water, the gravity of bodies, or the color of black horses.
Even after it has been explained and understood, the intellect with its logic remains a wonderful thing. Just as clay is by its nature untransparent and pliable, or glass transparent and brittle, so consciousness has its peculiar innate qualities. In this way knowledge comes to the intellect not only by experience, but it is also a sort of receptacle full of wisdom. Still this receptacle would no more contain wisdom without experience than the eye would have impressions without light.
In order to straighten out the intricate windings of our subject, I recapitulate them. We wish to learn the proper use of our intellect, the conscious application of consciousness. To this end we analyze its hitherto hidden mystical nature. So long as we exalt this nature transcendentally to the clouds, we do not acquire its proper use. Therefore the first paragraph of our lesson reads: The intellect belongs in the same category with all things of the universe. And the second paragraph says: If we distinguish two classes of thought radiated by the human intellect, viz., innate thoughts, such as causality, and on the other hand thoughts which come through experience, we must remember that such a distinction is correct only when we realize that in spite of this classification in two kinds they really belong to the same kind. Innate and acquired wisdom, though served on two different plates, still are taken from the same general world dish.
From this it follows that the science of causality, though applicable to all the phenomena of the world, does not apply to the universe. If it is a fact that all wisdom is worldly, then one must not fly outside of the world with the concept of causality.
This is the salient point at issue.
All things are one thing, are interdependent, stand in the relation of cause and effect toward one another, or of genus and species. To say that all things have a cause means that they have a mother. The fact that every mother has a mother finds its final ending in the world mother or mother world, which is absolute and motherless and contains all mothers in its womb.
Causes are mothers, effects are daughters. Every daughter has not only a mother, grand-mother, and great-grand-mother, but also a father, grand-father, and great-grand-father. The origin, or the family relationship, of a daughter is not one-sided, but all-sided. In the same way all things have not one, but many causes which flow together in the general cause.
The intellect which has the innate knowledge that everything has its cause will accept the teaching that all causes in the world are founded in the absolute world cause and must return to it. It is the quintessence of logic not only to ascertain the true nature of the intellect, but also to elucidate the nature of the universe by the help of the intellect.
All things have a mother, but to expect that the world mother should logically have a mother is to carry logic to extremities and to misunderstand the intellect and its art of reasoning.
If you have recognized the faculty of understanding as a part of existence, you will not wonder at itsmiraculousness. Existence is wonderful. Its parts arise one out of the other, out of the universal interrelations of the one world. They all have their predecessors and causes. But what is true of the relative parts, is not true of the absolute whole.
I am the son of my father and the father of my son. I am at the same time father and son. In the same way all things are simultaneously cause and effect. Although father and son are two different persons, still the capacity of being father and son rest in the same person, and although cause and effect are to be distinguished as two things, still they are two relations of the same thing. Persons and things, causes and effects, are not independent entities, but relative entities, are interconnections or relations of the absolute.
The intellect is innate in us, and with it and through it also the consciousness of being, although it is innate in us only as the teeth of the child which grow after birth. Everything that we become aware of is known only as a part of the universe. In so far as this is wonderful, the consciousness of causality is miraculous. But, in fact, the knowledge of the causality of all things is innate wisdom the same as that of the color of all white and black horses. At the same time it must be observed that every innate knowledge is in part acquired, and every acquired knowledge in part innate, so that both kinds intermingle and form one category.
My whole argument aims to convince you that all things are worldly things, and their causality is only another name for the same thing, just as the Germanbrotis calledpainin French andbreadin English. Thus we derive the firm conviction that if there ispainin heaven there will be bread, and if there are things, there will becauses and effects, or interrelation with the unit of existence.
The mystery of causality is sometimes expressed by the statement that we possess the indubitable knowledge which extends beyond all experience that wherever a change takes place there must have preceded another change. Indeed, we have the faculty of recognizing the unity in the infinite multiplicity, and infinite multiplicity in the unity. Multiplicity, change, motion—who is to split hairs about them, who will make fine distinctions? The intellect is the photographic organ of the infinite motion and transformations called the "world." It is and possesses the consciousness of cosmic changes. Is it a wonder that it knows that there is interrelation in its things, that no part of the world, not a particle of its motion and transformations, stands alone by itself, that everything is connected and mutually dependent in and with the universe? Because this understanding is in a way innate in the intellect, therefore it understands that there is nothing but change, infinitely proceeding transformations. And if it detaches any single thing from this process, it knows that changes preceded it and changes will follow.
In short, we must not marvel at any single part of nature, not even at the intellect, but admire the whole universe. Then fetishism will at last end and a true cult, the cult of world truth, can begin.
The art of thinking, my dear Eugene, is not so easy. For this reason I keep on warning you against misunderstanding. I do not mean to advise you with the foregoing against admiring any single part of nature, or of art, a landscape or a statue. My teaching merely tends to moderate admiration by the reflection that the wholeworld is wonderful, that everything is beautiful, so that nothing ugly remains. The distinction between beautiful and ugly is only relative. Even when I say that the true worship of God, the cult of truth, cannot begin until idol worship ceases, you will appreciate the phrase and will not insinuate that I do not value the cultivation of science in the past, or that I hate idol worship to the extent of forgetting what I have emphasized repeatedly, viz., that idol worship is also worship of God, and error a paving stone on the way toward truth. The most minute thing is a magnitude. Everything is true, good, and beautiful, for the universe is absolute truth, beauty and goodness. I conclude with the words of Fr. von Sallet:
A sunny view of world and lifeIs balm for brain and heart,It is with health and beauty rife,With noblest works of art.But do not for a moment thinkThat it is captured in a wink.The golden harvest does not grow,Unless the early tempests blow.And only bitter woe and strainWill bright and lofty wisdom gain.
A sunny view of world and lifeIs balm for brain and heart,It is with health and beauty rife,With noblest works of art.But do not for a moment thinkThat it is captured in a wink.The golden harvest does not grow,Unless the early tempests blow.And only bitter woe and strainWill bright and lofty wisdom gain.
A sunny view of world and life
Is balm for brain and heart,
It is with health and beauty rife,
With noblest works of art.
But do not for a moment think
That it is captured in a wink.
The golden harvest does not grow,
Unless the early tempests blow.
And only bitter woe and strain
Will bright and lofty wisdom gain.
FOOTNOTE:[7]E. g. That of natural existence.—Editor.
[7]E. g. That of natural existence.—Editor.
[7]E. g. That of natural existence.—Editor.
My subject, dear Eugene, is the simplest in the world, but it requires thorough treatment for all its full understanding. So every letter is in a way but a repetition of the same argument. "It is remarkable," saysSchopenhauer, "that we find the few main theses of pre-socratic philosophy repeated innumerable times. Also in the works of modern thinkers, such as Cartesius, Spinoza, Leibniz, and even Kant, we find that their few main theses are repeated over and over."
Now I ask you to consider what I said in my first letters, viz., that the titles of the principal philosophical works reveal that philosophy is engaged in the study of logic, in the analysis of the intellect and the art of its use. You will then recognize that in the very nature of the subject my presentation of the matter lacks systematization. It has no real beginning and end, because its object, the intellect, is interconnected with the whole universe, which is without beginning and end, which has neither before nor after, neither above nor below.
You may venture that the relation of the intellect to the universe does not concern the intellect especially, but is a universal matter. That would be true.
But it is easy to show that the art of thinking and wisdom of the world are identical. And although the universal interrelation of things is germain to all things and subjects, yet its consideration is a special task of logic which treats all objects of thought summarily.
My subject therefore begins everywhere, even though it is a specialty. Hence I take the liberty to take my departure from any literature which I happen to study. In the present letter, I deal with "logical investigations" of the prominent Professor Trendelenburg. His is a bulky volume, but you need not fear that I shall weary you with its subtleties. As a rule I read only the preface of philosophical works of the second and third order, their introduction and perhaps the first few chapters. Then I am approximatelyinformed as to what I may expect from them further on. One frequently finds statements which, if they do not throw new light on the subject, still bring out in bolder relief some of the accomplishments of historical research in our field. And in order that the son may not trust to the father alone, which might lead to distrust, I connect my argument with some statements of Trendelenburg.
In the preface to the second edition the author complains of the "dull headache" which the Hegelian intoxication has left in Germany and says: "Philosophy will not resume its old power until it becomes consistent, and it will not become consistent until it grows in the same way that all other sciences do. In other words, it must not take a new departure in every brain and then quit, but it must approach its problems historically and develop them. The German prejudice must be abandoned, according to which the philosophy of the future is supposed to look for a new principle. This principle has already been found. It consists in the organic world conception, the fundaments of which are resting in Plato and Aristotle."
The Professor is right, but he overlooks that the philosophers, even of modern times, do not begin "each on his own account," do not have "each his own principle," or if they have, such a "false originality" is but the indifferent attribute of historical development which has handed the object of logic, the true art of thought, from generation to generation in an ever brighter condition.
I repeat this emphatically for pedagogic reasons, because I consider it essential to convince you and the reader that the apparent paradoxes which I state arethe objects of discussion since time immemorial. I also wish to stimulate you to a study of the master works of philosophy which show the cheering spectacle, in the persons of the most brilliant specimens of the human mind, of the onward march of this mind from darkness to light.
In order that the wheat contained in this human treasure box may not be concealed by the tares, I am endeavoring to throw light on the outcome of the historical development of philosophy, and for this purpose I continue to discuss the question by taking my departure in this instance from some further statements of Trendelenburg.
"It is a peculiarity of philosophical methods of reasoning to recognize a part in the whole, and it is tacitly assumed that the whole is descended from a thought which determines the parts. On the other hand, it is peculiar to empirical methods of analysis to study the parts without regard to their interrelation, or at best to collect them and put them together, and it is tacitly assumed that every point is something peculiar in itself which must be studied apart from all the rest."
"The aim of all human understanding is always to solve the miracle of divine creation by further creative thought. When this task is undertaken in detail, the detail study forces one on to other things: for things must go backwards toward their dissolution by the same force through which they arose out of the depths."
These sentences state the problem before us. Shall we use the intellect philosophically, or shall we use it empirically? We are striving to understand the parts and the whole, and this is identical with the research after a systematical world philosophy, or with the art of dialectics.Now we must state in the first place that thinking of any kind, whether it be philosophical or empirical, is of the same species, that the same kernel is contained in both forms. Roses are different flowers from carnations, but the flower nature is in both of them. Thus the nature of thought is contained in both philosophical and empirical thinking. The distinction is well enough, but their unity must not be lost sight of.
The philosophers, he says, seek to understand the detail by the whole; the empirical thinkers analyze the details without regard to interrelations. But both methods of research are different specimens of the same genus, and both of them are one-sided when their interconnection is overlooked. The empirical thinker who seeks to understand the details in their isolation, thinks philosophically, when he regards his special research as a contribution to the whole, and the philosopher, who seeks to understand the detail by the whole, thinks empirically when he rightly regards all details as attributes of the whole.
Trendelenburg, then, has expressed his case very obscurely. Both methods of study, if employed one-sidedly, entirely misconceive the art of thinking. The philosophers err when they regard the intellect as the only source of understanding and truth; it is only a part of truth and must be supplemented by all the rest of the world. On the other hand, the empirical thinkers err when they look for understanding and truth exclusively in the outer world, without taking into account the intellectual instrument by the help of which they lift their treasures. In fact, such one-sided philosophers exist only in theory; I mean there are some who imagine that truth could be one-sided. But in practice they all testify, much against their will, to the inevitable interconnection ofmatter and mind, of inside and outside. In the practical use of the intellect everybody shows that the part operates in the whole, and that the whole is active in its parts.
We knowa priorithat the universe is a whole. The universal existence can be conceived only as of one kind or nature. The mere thought that there might be something which does not partake of the nature of the universe is no thought, because it is a thought without sense or reason. The whole world is the supreme being, though I grant that we have but a vague conception of it. We have as yet no detailed, true, conception of the universe, but it is gradually acquired in the course of science. Still, our conception will never be perfect because details are infinitesimal and the absolute being is infinite growth.
As to details, we know them more or less accurately and yet not accurately, because even the most minute part of the infinite is infinite. All science has searched in vain for atoms. What our understanding knows, has always been nothing but predicates or attributes of truth, although they are true attributes and are truly understood by us.
I emphasize the inadequacy of all modes of thought and of all understanding in opposition to those who make an idol of science. I emphasize the truth of all perceptions in opposition to those knownothings who claim that truth cannot be understood, but can only be admired and worshipped. Hence it follows for our theory of understanding that intellect and reason and the art of thought are no independent treasure boxes which make any revelations to us. They are theoretical classifications which in practice are operative only in the universal interconnection of things. Understanding, perceiving, judging, distinguishing and concluding, etc., are unable to produce anytruths. They can only enlighten and clarify experience by logical classification and distinction. Because man produces works which are preceded by planning, therefore the philosophical mode of research has "assumed that the whole is descended from a thought." But this is an assumption of human origin, which is shown to be without foundation on closer analysis. The plans of our works are copies of natural originals and are "free creations of the mind" only in a limited sense. The artists are well aware of the natural descent of their thoughts and fictions. To regard the world as the outcome of thought is a perverse logic. It is the first condition of rational, proletarian, thought to recognize the intellect and its products as attributes of the world subject.
Just as in political history action and reaction follow one another, just as periods of economic prosperity are alternated by periods of depression, so we find in literature a periodical fluctuation between philosophical and anti-philosophical tendencies.
After Hegel had for a time thoroughly aroused the spirits, a time of apathy followed, so that this hero of thought who shortly before had been almost idolized could be attacked and reviled. For about a decade, a philosophical breeze has now once more been blowing. The subject of logic, the theory of understanding, is again the object of universal attention. This movement is stimulated by important discoveries in science, such as the heat equivalent of Robert Mayer, the origin of species byDarwin, etc., and natural science and philosophy may be compared to two miners who are digging a tunnel, so that sharp ears on both sides can hear the blows of the hammers and the clanging of the tools.
There is much truth in this picture, but it may also lead to misunderstandings. By the vivisection of frogs and rabbits, by boring into the brain, physiology will not discover the mind. No microscope, no telescope, will reveal the nature of reason and truth or the art of logical discernment.
Neither will Lazarre Geiger, Max Müller, Steinthal, and Noiré succeed in philology in solving the "last questions of all knowledge" by the help of any primitive arch-language.
At the same time, the value of the co-operation of these gentlemen is not denied, only I desire to point out that the comparison with the tunnel is not quite accurate. What Marx said of economic formulas, is true of logical formulas: "In their analysis neither the microscope nor chemical reagents are of any service. The power of abstraction must replace them both."
The two sciences will finally meet, not because each one of them digs away in its own one-sided fashion, but because the miners meet after working hours and exchange their experiences. And the philosophers may be the dominant party, because they are specialists in logic and therefore prepared to utilize anything which may serve their purpose, no matter from what side it comes. The other party, on the other hand, has its own specialties and promotes the cause of logic in a secondary and involuntary fashion.
Natural science has its own monism which is distinguished from philosophical proletarian monism in thatit does not appreciate the historical outcome of philosophical research. One of the most prominent representatives of the former is Noiré. He entitles one of his little works "Monistic Thought," but shows himself on its pages as a very unclear dualist. He speaks of the "dual nature of causality" and relates that the mind operates with a different causality than the mere mechanical one. He calls this other "sensory causality."
According to him the world has only two attributes: "Motion and sensation are the only true and objective qualities of the world.... Motion is the truly objective ... though it is admitted that it gives us only the phenomenon.... Sensation makes up the internal nature of things. Every subject, whether man or atom, is endowed with the two qualities of all beings, viz., motion and sensation."
Thereupon I have carefully looked for an explanation in Noiré's works, why he regards the nature of things as composed of an external and an internal quality, and why sensation should not be regarded as a sort of motion, but the only reason I could find was the dualistic nature of his "monistic" reasoning.
As Schopenhauer provided the whole world with a "will," so Noiré provides it with "sensation."
Kant and his "Critical Philosophy" held in their time that our intellect perceives only the phenomena of nature, while the mystic law of causality, according to him, points to a hidden being, which cannot be perceived but must be believed, which we may venerate but must leave undisturbed by science. Schopenhauer, his brilliant successor, who in spite of his brilliancy did not materially advance the cause of philosophy, mystified the problem of causality by his discovery that the nature of the world is will power.These teachings of Kant and Schopenhauer are dressed up anew and mixed with the recent discoveries of science by Noiré. But he entirely ignores the work of Schelling and Hegel, who by their criticisms have made evident the lack of logic in the Kantian separation of phenomenon (apparition) from noumenon (essence), of cause from effect.
You are familiar with the silly question whether Goethe or Schiller, Shakespeare or Byron, is the greater poet, and you will not think that I am trying to elevate Hegel above Kant or Kant above Hegel. They are just two cogs on the spinning wheel of history. If the second crushes what the first has cracked, such is the result of their succession.
Natural science is also a valuable co-operator in the solution of the world problem, not so much by digging in the logical tunnel itself, or making amateur excursions into the fields of philosophy or metaphysics, but because it elucidates and renders tangible the special object of logic in such far-embracing objects as the unity of natural forces or of animal species. The scientific presentation of this special object, however, requires a brain armed with the full equipment of the historical outcome of philosophy.
Now you must not believe that I am conceited enough to place my own little personality on the pedestal as the only true philosopher. I am too well aware of my shortcomings as a self-educated man. But seeing that I have striven earnestly and without prejudice since my young days to understand the high object of my studies, I feel in my heart a certain confidence in my qualification to deal with it. On the other hand, I know my lack of that sort of learning which is required in order to be able to present the scientifically much-courted nature of the human mindin such a form and with such emphasis as its sublime character deserves. And if I, nevertheless, come before the public on various occasions with my tentative works, I offer as an excuse that hitherto the Messiah has not appeared who will come after me and whose John the Baptist I should like to be.
You, my dear Eugene, will take me soberly and reduce my resounding words to their proper measure, when I, in the intoxication of enthusiasm, flow over like that now and then. You know that I am no hero worshipper. Though all research is but the product of individual minds, the mind of each man is a part of the universal mind which produces science. Now follows the point which forms the conclusion of all my letters: The intellect which produces science is indeed a part of man, but still more a part of the world, it is the universal world intellect, the reason of the absolute, the absolute reason.
The study of this intellect at work, not merely in shoemaking, in anatomy, or in astronomy, but in all fields, in the infinite, of its life in the absolute, is the means by which the art of logic is acquired. It is true that the infinite exists only in finite parts, and you cannot conceive of the infinite directly, you can perceive it only in its parts. And in perceiving them you must always remember that every part is an infinite piece of the infinite universe.
In his "Introduction and Proofs of a Monistic Theory of Understanding," Noiré, after enumerating the new points contained in his work, adds sneeringly that he is "not in a position to give any new clews as to the nature of the absolute." For this very reason I want to denounce his "Monism" as a shallow piece of work, which offers only the name instead of the essence.
The well-known Ernst Hæckel knows a great dealmore about this subject. In a lecture given at the twenty-fifth convention of natural scientists in Eisenach, he calls the monistic view of nature "a grand pantheistic one." The essence of all religion, according to him, consists in the "conviction of a final and unmistakably common cause of all things." And he continues: "In the admission that with the present day organization of our brain, we are unable to penetrate to the final cause of all things, the critical natural philosophy and dogmatic religion agree." Whether the professor is one of those natural philosophers who regard the human mind as too narrow for the understanding of the "unmistakably (hence somewhat understood) common cause of all things," is not quite clear to me, nor probably to the famous scientist himself. For he adds: "The more we progress in the understanding of nature, the more we approach that unattainable final cause." And further on: "The purest form of monistic faith culminates in the conviction of the unity of God and nature."
Now I ask: If nature, God, and absolute truth are one and the same thing, have we not learned something about the "final cause of all things?" What necessity is there in that case for speaking in such an abjectedly humble tone of human understanding, or to assign nothing but straw and husks to it, in the language of Hegel?
You see, then, that Hæckel has a higher estimate of absolute nature than Noiré who does not care to have anything to do with the nature of the absolute. But my object at this moment is to convince you that neither the one nor the other of these two, nor natural science, so-called, is directly digging in the tunnel which will give us light on the question of the limits of our understanding and the final cause of things. Our logic, on the otherhand, which treats the intellect as a part of nature, cultivates a natural science that includes the mere empirical natural science in the same way in which the day of twenty-four hours includes the day of twelve hours and the night.
Natural science proper deals mainly with tangible things. Light and sound, the objects of eye and ear, are still included in its studies. The objects of smell and taste stand on the dividing line. But the socalled sciences of the mind, such as grammar and politics, political economy and history, morals and law, and most decidedly logic, are entirely excluded.
Such a limitation is well enough, if we remember that it is purely formal. However, it must not overlook the bridge which leads from limited nature to universal, infinite, nature.
The monism of natural science has a far too narrow view of the universe. When it says that "all is motion," it says just as little or as much as Solomon with his "all is vain." Everything is crooked and straight, everything great and small, everything temporal and eternal, everything truth and life. But nothing is thus said to show the meaning of distinction in this world, to explain how rest exists in motion, and sense in nonsense.
In order to differentiate logically we must know that everything is everything, that the universe or absolute is its own cause and the final cause of all things, which embraces all distinctions, even that of causality and that between matter and mind.
"Philosophy should not try to be edifying," saidHegel. This means that religious feeling is far below scientific thought. But there is a reverse side to this sentence, viz., that thoughts which do not rise to the edifying interconnection of all things, no matter whether they remain stuck in some specialty on account of frivolousness or of narrowmindedness, are far below a wise world philosophy.
In a former letter I have already emphasized, and I hope to prove it more convincingly, that the conception of "God," or of the absolute, is indispensable for a logical world philosophy.
You know that in my dictionary the gods and divinities of all religions and denominations are "idols," and justly so, since they are all manufactured images. Instead of the entire universe, they worship a more or less unessential part of it.
The religions show by their idolatry, the sciences frequently by their little creditable indifference, that they have no conception of the intellect and its art of reasoning.
The universe is a familiar conception. Everybody uses it, and there is apparently little to say about it. But in fact it is the conception of all conceptions, the being of all beings, the cause of itself which has no other cause and no other being beside itself. That the whole world is contained in the universe is so obvious that you may wonder at my waste of words over such a matter-of-fact thing. But when you consider that the people have always searched for a world cause outside of the world, together with a beginning of the world and a transcendental truth, then you will see that they have not grasped the conception of the world as a whole, as a universe. And if that is admitted, then the proof that it is the causeof all causes, the beginning of all beginnings, and the truth of all truths, is not such a superfluous undertaking.
Now you may say that it is presumptuous to try to understand the whole universe at once. This objection is justified in a way, according to the interpretation of the words. Still I hope that it will be my justification to declare that it is not a question of understanding the universe in detail, but only in general, not each and everything in its differentiation, but only in a summary way. And it is only the edifying conception of the universe as a whole which will open for you the door to the understanding of the human mind, of thought, and the art of using it. We wish to understandtheconception; not this or that conception, but the whole conception, the conception of the whole. You will no longer indulge in the superstition that the faculty of thought or understanding is a thing apart from the world's interconnection. I presume that you have now learned enough about the art of thought to be sure not to think of anything without its worldwide interrelation. For so long as one imagines that a piece of wood or a stone is a thing in itself, without connection with light and air, with Earth, Moon, and Sun, he has a very barbarian conception of the things of this world.
I maintain that the understanding of the human faculty of reason and the art of its use are inseparable from the world concept. And I want this understood in the sense, that it is not a mistake to distinguish between the internal mind and the outside world, but that these are merely formal distinctions of the essentially indivisible and absolute universe.
The concept of this true God or divine, because universal, Truth shows on close analysis that it includes thespecial truth of the art of thought as well as all other sciences, and pre-eminently the science of thought, because this science must not limit itself to any special thing, but must be world wisdom by its very will and nature.
To understand the universe, then, means to become aware that this being of all beings has no beginning, no cause, no truth nor reason outside and beside itself, but has everything in and by itself. To understand the universe means to recognize that one is rushing beyond the worldly infinity into the realm of fantastic transcendentalism and abusing the intellect, when illogically applying such terms as beginning and end, cause and effect, being and not being, to the absolute universe. Such an illogical use of the faculty of thought is well illustrated and rebuked by the poet who questions and answers: