The Positive Outcome of Philosophy Part 27

The old logic contains long chapters about the proofs of truth. It is supposed to be "identical" with the idea and to be proven by ideas. This would be all right, if we remained conscious of the secondary relation in which the idea and understanding stand to truth. But old line logic is not conscious of this relation. On the contrary. Its consciousness distorts that relation. It elevates the mind to the first place and relegates blood and flesh to the last.

"The necessity of a conception is proven by the impossibility of its opposite. An idea is contradicted by proving its impossibility. This impossibility is demonstrated when it can be proven that a thing is at the same time A and not-A, or when it can be shown that a thing is neither A nor not-A. The first mode of proof is called _antinomy_, the second, _dilemma_."

In this representation of the logical proof much is said of the "thing,"

for instance this: A thing cannot be at the same time straight and crooked, true and untrue, light and dark. The excellence of this doctrine is easily apparent, because it is overlooked that the concept "thing" is not a fixed, but a variable one. If a straight line is a thing, and a crooked line another thing, and if these two things are held to be opposed to one another, then the above logic is the most justified in the world. But who claims that there are not many straight lines which are crooked at one end, which run straight on for a certain distance and then turn? Who will define to us what a line is? A line may be composed of 10, 20, 30, etc., parts, and each part is a line.

Before anything to the point can be said about the logical laws, it is necessary to say above all how it stands with the relation of the whole to its parts, of the universe to its subdivisions. The old theological question of G.o.d and his creatures, the old metaphysical question of the unity and the multiplicity, of truth and its phenomena, reason and consequence, etc., in one word, the question of metaphysical categories must be solved and settled before the definition of the minor factors of understanding, the questions of formal logic, can be attempted.

What is a "thing?" A clergyman would answer: Only G.o.d is something, everything else is nothing! And we say: Only the universe is something, and everything in it consists of vacillating, changing, precarious, varicolored, fluid, variable phenomena or relativities.

In our times, up to which the theologians have speculated so much and contributed so little to understanding, one can hardly touch on the G.o.d concept without annoying the reader. Yet it is very essential for a thorough understanding of the human mind to point out that the G.o.d concept and the universe concept are a.n.a.logous concepts. Not in vain have the first minds of modern philosophy, such as Cartesius, Spinoza, Leibniz, occupied themselves so closely with the G.o.d concept. They invented the socalled ontological proof of the existence of G.o.d. This proof if applied to the universe, testifies to its divinity. A metaphysical cloud pusher as well as the physical cosmos are fundamentally concepts of the most perfect being. It makes little difference whether we say that the concept of the universe, or of the cosmos, or of the most perfect being is innate in man. If this concept were not existing, it would lack the main thing required for its perfection. Hence the most perfect being must exist. And it does. It is the universe, and everything belongs to its existence. Nothing is excluded from it, least of all understanding. The latter is, therefore, not only possible, but a fact, which is proven by the very concept of the most perfect being.

This ought to be sufficient to help us over the doubts of the critics, especially over Kantian criticism, or rather dualism. Kant did not care to accept the dogma of the possibility of understanding without examination; he wished to investigate first. He then discovered that we may understand correctly, provided we remain with our understanding on the field of common experience; in other words, in the physical universe, and refrain from digressing into the metaphysical heaven. But he did not understand that the metaphysical heaven against which he warns us would be an obsolete standpoint in our days.

He still permits that transcendental possibility to remain and while he warns us not to stray into it with our understanding he omits to tell us to also keep away from it with our intuition. Kant struggles about between the "thing as phenomenon" and the "thing itself." The former is material and may be understood, the latter is supernatural and may be believed or divined. With this doctrine, he again made understanding, the object of modern philosophy, problematical, thus inviting us to investigate further.

This we have done, and it is now the positive outcome of philosophy to know clearly and definitely and understand that understanding is not only a part of this world of phenomena, but a true part of the general truth, beside which there is no other truth, and which is the most perfect being.

Philosophy took its departure from confused wrangling about that which is and that which is not, especially from the religious disappointments met by the Greek nation when its world of deities dissolved into phantasms. Humanity demands a positive, strong, unequivocal, reliable understanding. Now, in this world of ours, the solid is so mixed with the fluid, the imperishable with the perishable, that a total separation is impossible. Nevertheless our intellect catches itself continually making separations and distinctions. Should not that appear mysterious to it? The necessary and natural result was the problem of the theory of understanding, the special question of philosophy: Which is the way to an indubitably clear and positive understanding?

The summit of Grecian philosophy bears the name of Aristotle. He was a practical man who did not like to stray into the distance when he could find good things near by, and he did not concern himself about the descent of understanding. Its platonic origin from an ideal world went instinctively against his grain. He, therefore, took hold of the question at the nearest end and a.n.a.lyzed the positive knowledge available at that time. But since Grecian science and the knowledge of Aristotlean times were rather slim, his attempt to demonstrate logic did not produce any decisive results. But it had been discovered that it was possible to make positive deductions from fixed premises.

Aristotle clung to this. He showed clearly and definitely, excellently and substantially, how logical deductions should be made in order to arrive at positive understanding. All dogs are watchful. My pug-dog is a dog, therefore it is watchful. What can be more evident? Why, then, speculate about G.o.d, freedom, and immortality, when indubitable knowledge may be obtained by the formal method of exact deductions?

But Aristotle had overlooked something, or, being a practical man, perhaps overlooked it intentionally. The premise from which he deducted the watchfulness of dogs in general, was handed down by tradition and had been accepted on faith. But was it founded on fact? Could there not be some dogs who lacked the quality of watchfulness, and might not our pug-dog be very unreliable, in spite of all exact deductions? In the case of the pug-dog this would not be of very great moment. But what about the question of the beginning and end of the world, or the question of the existence of G.o.d? The Grecian G.o.ds had been outgrown by Aristotle.

The history of logic, and of philosophy in general, is interrupted by Christianity and by the decline of the antique world, until the reformation opens a new era. The Catholic church had, in its own way, thoroughly settled the great questions of the true nature of things, of beginning and end, reason and consequence. But when it, and with it Christianity, began to disintegrate, disbelief once more posed in the brains of the philosophers the old question: How do we obtain reliable and true understanding? Reliability and truth were at that time still identical.

Bacon and Descartes are the men who started the investigation. Both of them were disgusted with Aristotle and with his formal logic, particularly with the subtleties of scholasticism. It did not satisfy this new epoch to found positive understanding on traditional contentions and exact deductions therefrom. It is a radical epoch and, therefore, epoch-making. The new philosophers have the aim of unequivocal understanding in common with the ancient philosophers. Bacon still connects himself with the stock in trade of the past. His historian says of him that one should not reiterate that Bacon took his departure from experience, for this means nothing or nothing more than that Columbus was a mariner while the main thing is that he discovered America.... He wanted to find a new logic corresponding to the new life.... The inventive human mind has created the new time, the compa.s.s, the powder, the art of typography.... He wanted a new logic which corresponded to the spirit of invention. He, the philosopher of invention, was Lord Chancellor of England, was a man of the world. Not only himself, but also his science, was too ambitious, too full of energy, too world-embracing, for him to bury himself in solitude. That is a glory for a philosopher, but at the same time an obstacle for his special task, for the new logic. He recognized the import of his task only in its general outlines. But his contemporary and successor Descartes approached the matter more radically and pointedly.

Although in recent times the human mind had demonstrated its positive faculty of understanding in natural sciences, especially by inventions, still it was prejudiced by religious improbabilities in its great premises dealing with the essence of things and men, with the "good, true, and beautiful," as the ancients called it. In order to end his doubts, Descartes elevates radical doubt to the position of a principle and of a starting point for all understanding. Then he cannot doubt that he is at least searching for truth. He who does not believe in any understanding, any science, any inventions, cannot doubt at all events that the impulse for understanding is there. It, at least, is undeniable. _Cogito, ergo sum_--I think, therefore I am--that is a premise which cannot be shaken. The rest, thinks Descartes, may be deducted by Aristotlean methods.

With this thought, the philosopher of modern times relapsed into the old error that anything positively true could be ascertained with logical formulas. His consciousness of the thoughts stirring in his brain, I might say his flesh and blood, convinced him by matter-of-fact evidence of the reality of their existence.

This fact had hitherto been misunderstood. It is claimed that Descartes could convince himself only of the existence of his soul, of his thought, by evidence. No, my feeling, my sight, my hearing, etc., are just as evident to me as my thinking, and simultaneously with sight and hearing that which is heard and seen. The separation of subject and object can and must be merely a formality.

The Descartian thesis has been distorted into the statement that nothing is evident to man but his own subjective conception. And the ideology has been carried to the extreme of calling the whole world an idea, a phantasmagoria. True, Descartes needed G.o.d in order to be sure that his conceptions did not cheat him.

In order to prove that we no longer need such extravagant means in our times, I shall devote another chapter to this subject.

XIV

CONTINUATION OF THE DISCUSSION ON THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN DOUBTFUL AND EVIDENT UNDERSTANDING

Let us divide the history of civilization into two periods. In the first, the less civilized period, the doubtful perceptions predominate, in the second period the evident ones. Our special investigation of the correct way of evident understanding began in the first period in which the doubtful perceptions, commonly called errors, predominated. In this period, the G.o.ds rule in heaven and imagination on earth.

To get rid of errors meant originally to lose G.o.ds and heaven. The ideal world was the cause of metaphysics. Metaphysics which drew the investigation of the supernatural into the circle of its activity, did so for the purpose of enlightening the human mind. Thus its problem was from the outset of a twofold nature. It desires to throw light on the natural process of thought, which was temporarily unbalanced by a bent for the supernatural, and for this reason it first loses itself in the clouds.

While human reason has now become soberer, the meaning of the term "metaphysics" has also been sobered down. Our contemporaneous metaphysicians speak no longer of such transcendental things as the ancients did. Present day metaphysics occupies itself with such abstract ideas as the thing and nothing, being and coming into being, matter and force, truth and error.

Particularly the investigation of doubtful, erroneous, and evident or true understanding, which we here discuss, is a part of metaphysics.

The term metaphysics, then, has a double meaning, one of them transcendental and extravagant, the other natural and within sober limits. Our sober task of demonstrating the positive outcome of philosophy that acquired sober methods in dealing with understanding also compels us to face transcendental metaphysics, which sobers down in the course of time and develops into its opposite, into pure, bare, naked physics.

The divine has become human, the transcendental sober, and so understanding grows ever more unequivocal and evident in the progress of history.

In order to become clear on the problem of understanding, we must cease to turn our eyes to any one individual opinion, thought, knowledge, or perception. We must rather consider the process of understanding in its entirety. We then notice the development from doubt to evidence, from errors to true understanding. At the same time we become aware how unwise it was to entertain such an exaggerated idea of the contrast between truth and error.

Whoever searches for true and evident understanding will not find it in Jerusalem, nor in Jericho, nor in the spirit; not in any single thing, but in the universe. There the known emerges from the unknown so gradually that no beginning can be traced. Understanding comes into being and grows, is partly erroneous and partly accurate, becomes more and more evident. But there is never an absolutely true understanding any more than there can be an absolutely faulty one. Only the universe, but not any single thing, is absolute, imperishable, and impregnable.

In order to accurately define understanding, we must separate it from misunderstanding, but not too far, not excessively, otherwise the thing becomes extravagant. The limited formal logic teaches, indeed, that the same thing cannot be affirmed and denied at the same time, affirmation and denial being contradictions. But such a logic is very narrow. Herbs are not weeds. Weeds are the negation of herbs, and still weeds are herbs. An erroneous understanding is a negation of a true understanding, error is not truth, and still it exists in truth. There is no absolute error any more than perceptions are the truth itself. All perceptions are and remain nothing but symbols or reflections of truth.

We do not wish to confound error with truth and make a stew of them, but rather understand them both. The mixing is done by the man who opposes them as irreconcilable contradictions. Let us first note the mistake committed in so doing. By so opposing error and truth something is done which is not intended, not known. The intention is to confront the erroneous understanding with truth. For this purpose, error is a.s.sumed to be the same as erroneous understanding, which may be admitted; but true understanding and truth are two different things and must be kept separate, if we wish to arrive at clear and unmistakable results. If we formulate the question in this way: How do erroneous and true understanding differ, we are nearer to the desired clarity by two solar distances. We then find that error and understanding do not exclude one another, but are two species of the same genus, two individuals of the same family.

Two times two is not alone four; this is only a part of the truth; it is also four times one, or eight times one-half, or one plus three, or sixteen times one-quarter, etc. The man who first observed that the sun circled around the earth once a day, committed a mistake, yet he made a true perception. The apparent circulation of the sun in twenty-four hours around the earth is a substantial part of the understanding which illumines the relation of the motion of the sun and of the earth. No truth is merely simple, but it is at the same time composed of an infinite number of partial truths. The semblance must not be contradictorily separated from truth, in an extravagant sense, but is part of truth, just as all errors contribute toward true understanding.

In so far as all perceptions are limited, they are errors, partial truths. True understanding requires above all the backing of the conscious recognition that it is a limited part of the unlimited universe.

The cosmic relation of the whole to its parts, of the general to the special, must be considered in order to get a clear conception of the nature of the human understanding.

Understanding or knowledge, thinking, perceiving, reasoning, must, for the purpose of investigation, not be excessively separated from other phenomena. In a way, every object which is chosen for special study is isolated. In saying, "in a way," I mean that the separation of the objects of study from other world objects must be consciously moderate, not exaggerated. The separation of the intellect from other objects or subjects when investigating them, must be accompanied by the recognition that such a separation is not excessive, but only formal. In separating a board, for the purpose of studying its condition, from other boards or things and finding that it is black, I must still remember that this board is black only on account of its interdependence with the whole world process; that the blackness which it possesses is not of its own making, but that light, and eyes, and the whole cosmic connection belong to it. In this way every special perception becomes a proportionate part in the chain of universal perceptions, and this again a proportionate part of the universal life.

That this evident universal life is not a mere semblance, not a ghost, not a baseless imagination, but the truth, is made evident to the thinking man by his consciousness, reason, common sense. True, he has been deceived by them, sometimes. But it requires no logic, no syllogistic proof, to know that they are telling the truth in this respect.

It is nevertheless important to give this proof, because by it the peculiar nature of our intellect is revealed, of the object the study of which is the special concern of philosophy.

This proof, that the universe is the universal truth, was first attempted by philosophy in an indirect way, by casting about in vain for a metaphysical truth.

The philosopher Kant was no doubt the thinker who confined the use of understanding most strictly to the domain of experience. Now, if we recognize that this field is universal, we become aware that the a.s.sumed Kantian limitation is not a limitation at all. The human mind is a universal instrument, the special productions of which all belong to general truth. Though we make a distinction between the doubtful and the positive, the outcome of philosophy teaches us that it must be no excessive distinction, but must be backed up by the consciousness that all evidence is composed of probabilities, of phenomena of truth, of parts of truth.

The thinking understanding--this is the result of philosophy--is no more evident than anything else and derives its existence not from itself, but from the universal life. This universal life from which thought derives its perceptions, from which understanding derives its enlightenment, does not only exist as a general thing, but also in the form of infinitely varied individualities. And generalization, the relation of things, their number and extension, are no more, and no less, infinite than individualization and specialization. Every tree in the forest, every grain of a pile of sand, are individual, separate, distinct. Every particle of every grain of sand is distinctly individual. And the infinite individualization of nature goes so far that, just as the human individual is different every day, every hour, every moment, so is the individual grain of sand, even though its transformations were not to become noticeable until after thousands of years, by acc.u.mulated changes. By cla.s.sifying this contradictory, infinitely general and infinitely individual nature in groups according to time and s.p.a.ce, in cla.s.ses, genera, families, species, orders, and other subdivisions, we are discerning and understanding.

In the universe, every group is an individual and every individual is a group. The uniformity of nature is not greater than its variety. Both of them are infinite. We distinguish between time and s.p.a.ce. Every moment is composed of little moments. The smallest division of time cannot be denominated any more than the largest, just because there is no smallest and no largest in the universe, neither in time nor in s.p.a.ce. Atoms are groups. As smallest parts they exist only in our thoughts and thus give excellent service in chemistry. The consciousness that they are not tangible, but only mental things, does not detract from their usefulness, but heightens it still more.

It is the nature of human intelligence to divide, cla.s.sify, group. We divide the world into four cardinal points; we also divide it into two kingdoms, the kingdom of the mind and the kingdom of nature; the latter we again subdivide into the organic and the inorganic, or perhaps into the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms. In short, science seeks to illumine the universe by division. The question then arises: Which is the genuine and true division? Where does the variety of science, its undecided vacillation end, and when does understanding become stable?

The reader should remember that the things, the objects of understanding, are not fixed, but also variable objects, and that the whole universe is moving, progressing; that especially the human mind becomes more and more affluent from century to century, from year to year, and that for this reason science is not alone compelled to fix things, but also to remain in flow. The fixed and the fluid are not so widely separated in science any more, that the evidence could not be evident and yet at the same time a little doubtful.

Man and his understanding are progressive, and for this reason he must progress by experience in his cla.s.sifications, conceptions, and sciences.

The fixed, impregnable, socalled apodictical facts are nothing but tautologies, if seen at close range. After it has become common usage to call only heavy and tangible things bodies, it is an apodictical fact that all bodies are heavy and tangible. If the conceptions of vapor, water and ice are restricted by common usage and by science to the three stages of aggregation of the same substance, then we need not wonder at our firm a.s.surance that the water will always remain fluid in all time to come, also above the stars. This signifies nothing more than that we conceive of the things as solid which we call solid, and of those as fluid which we call fluid, but it does not change the fact that our faculty of understanding or perceiving gives us only an approximate picture of natural processes, in which the solid and the fluid are neither wholly opposed nor different, but where the positive and the negative gradually flow into one another.

The philosophers produced a very good conception of understanding by developing the concept of truth step by step and finally coming to quite exact results. But this "quite exact" must only be accepted in a reasonable sense, not in an extravagant one. Truth as the infinite, as the sum total of all things and qualities, is "in itself" quite right, but it cannot be accurately reproduced, not even by means of the mind, of reason, or understanding. The means is smaller than the purpose, is subordinate to purpose. So is our faculty of understanding only a subordinate servant of truth, of the universe. The latter is absolutely evident, true, indubitable, and positive. It does not vitiate the sublimity of this world in the least that it is veiled by appearances, by error, by untruth. On the contrary. Without sin there is no virtue, and without error there is no understanding, no truth. The negative, the weakness, the sin and error, are overcome, and thereby truth s.h.i.+nes in full splendor. The universe, the general truth, is a progressive thing.

It is absolute, but not at any fixed time or place, but only in the combined unity of all time and s.p.a.ce.