The Positive Outcome of Philosophy Part 9

Dear Eugene:

In my first letter I acquainted you with my purpose, in the second I lifted the subject on my finger tips, so to say, to show it for a brief moment; in the third I showed that its color had inevitably a religious shade. Now, to continue, permit me to introduce another point to your consideration.

The great cause of the working cla.s.s has. .h.i.therto always been the beast of burden of a small and exclusive minority. This is most evident in the slave states of antiquity, in Egypt, Greece, Rome. Likewise in the feudal and guild systems of the middle ages the oppression of the ma.s.s of the people is sufficiently apparent. At present this condition of things is more visible in Eastern Europe, in Russia, Turkey, Bulgaria, Hungary, Eastern Prussia, etc., than in the industrial countries of the West. In the United States of America it is most obscured, so that there the people hardly realize their enslaved condition. In America, many of the upper ten thousand have made their way from the bottom up, and it happens more frequently than in Europe that the captains of industry laid their foundation by hard work. The shortsighted observers then easily forget out of sympathy for the hard beginning that there is sharper's practice at the end, and they indulge in the idle hope that every hard working beast of burden might transform itself into a happy millionaire by thrift and smartness.

You will probably ask: What has that to do with logic or the art of reasoning? Patience! You will admit that the emanc.i.p.ation of the nations from beastly toil, misery and suffering is the highest goal of the human mind. Nor will you deny that the thought is the most essential instrument for reaching this high goal. The accomplishments of thought are visible in the results of civilization. The proletariat of the present, also that of Russia, Turkey, East Prussia, partic.i.p.ates in these accomplishments of thought. It partic.i.p.ates not alone in the sense that its brains are better educated and cultured, but also that its food, clothing, and shelter have become more civilized through the progressive deeds of intellect.

You see, then, that the people's cause is connected with the faculty of thought, and the nature of the latter may be ill.u.s.trated as well by the example of the development of civilization. The complicated network of wheels in a watch may also serve to demonstrate the nature of that which language designates by many names, such as spirit, intellect, faculty of knowledge, reason, etc. Only it must be remembered that this mysterious something cannot be shown by itself, but only in connection with other things, whether they be the history of civilization or a watch. There will then be no contradiction in finding that the intellectual life appears more powerful and magnificent through the clockwork of the history of civilization than through any miniature product of thought.

In searching for the connection of things, one generally seeks to recognize the manner or the degree of the connection. But we, in this case, disregard the question as to how the things of this world are related to one another and to thought, and we simply make a note of the fact of the interdependence of thought and being, of nature and mind.

This fact of the universal interconnection of things contradicts the untrained prejudice. The uncultivated brain nurses the illusion that the earth, the trees on it, and the clouds and the sun above them are separate things. But it requires a better training of reason to understand that the earth, the tree, the clouds, and the sun, can be what they are only in the universal interconnection. I remember reading an article from Fichte, in a German school reader, which clearly showed that the disarrangement of an insignificant object during the process of thinking causes us to disarrange the whole history of the world in our thoughts. It is well known that one unfamiliar with political economy overlooks the fact that the business men not only carry on their trading for their private benefit, but are also members of the process of social production. It is overlooked that all labor, aside from being individual activity, is at the same time an organic part of social labor. And just as ignorance of economics overlooks the industrial interdependence, so ignorance of logic overlooks the cosmic interrelations.

Here is a drop of water. Look how different it is according to the different things with which it is connected. It cannot be what it is without a certain temperature. According to changes in temperature, it will a.s.sume either the form of ice or of steam. In fat the drop remains compact, in salt it divides infinitely, runs downhill in general and uphill in a loaf of sugar. According to the specific gravity of a certain fluid, with which it may come into contact, it either floats on the surface or sinks. Without a connection with the earth, its temperature and gravitation, this drop and all others would disappear in the fathomless abyss and have no existence. Thus the forms of things change according to their connections, and they are what they are only as parts of the universal interrelation.

What is true of a drop of water, is true of all things, all forces and substances, even of our thoughts. The human mind lives and works only in connection with the rest of the material universe--and the recognition of the organic unity of all things is the fulcrum of my logic.

Old line metaphysical logic was so enamored of its object that the descent, the kins.h.i.+p, and the connection with the common things of this world seemed too ordinary for the exquisite spirit. That logic was transcendental, and therefore its chosen object likewise had to be in touch with a transcendental world. And though it was scientific enough to regard the tale of the creation of the first soul by the breath of G.o.d as a fable, it was nevertheless so prejudiced in favor of the extraordinary nature of the intellect that it did not abandon, for thousands of years, the hope of finding in that intellect a source which would reveal transcendental matters. Formal logic now entirely discards this hope of a fantastical world, but at the same time it misunderstands the natural connection between the spirit and the common world. It isolates the instrument of thought and leaves the question undecided whether this instrument has a natural, supernatural, or no connection at all. It overlooks that just as logic is real, so reality is logical, and does not see that the back door which leads to illogical heaven by way of faith deserves the disdain of science.

Thought, intellect, are really existing, and their existence is a uniform part of the universal existence. That is the cardinal point of sober logic.

The fact that the thoughts are of the same worldly substance as the other parts of the universe, that they are parts of common nature and not a transcendental essence, has already been expressed by Cartesius in the famous words: "_Cogito, ergo sum_," I think, therefore I am.

The fact of my thinking, says the philosopher, proves my existence. In order to come to an absolute conviction on the nature of truth and error, he sets out by doubting everything. And then he says that he cannot doubt the existence of his thoughts. He thus placed the spirit on the basis of real life, delivered it of its transcendentalism, and that const.i.tutes his everlasting merit.

However, not alone Cartesius, but also your own experience testifies to the inseparable connection between thinking and being. Have not your thoughts been connected always and everywhere with some worldly or real object? If you attempt to isolate thought in order to ponder over it, you can only do so because that thought has been experienced by you and therefore was in every instance attached to some worldly object. True, you have thought of Greek G.o.ds, brownies, and mermaids. But you, an amateur in painting, are familiar enough with that part of the mind which is called imagination in order to admit that even this eccentric part of the mind does not only act, and therefore, exist in reality, but also derives all its products from reality, so that even its most fantastical vagaries and illusions are still real pictures, reflections of reality.

But how is it that I require such a mult.i.tude of words in order to state over and over again that the thought has a real existence and is a uniform part of the universe? Simply because from time immemorial the confusion in matters of logic is so great that the human spirit is in the same breath exalted to heaven, and yet its thoughts regarded as nothing real, nothing true. This is made plain by the fact that a sharp distinction is commonly made between that which is real and that which is only imagined, and this difference is exaggerated to such an extent that it appears as if the idea, which indeed is only in the brain, has no real existence at all.

In order that you may understand the interrelations of the things of the universe, I must warn you against this exaggeration and prove that the intellect has a real existence which is connected with the universe or reality. Botany, which occupies itself with plants, does not only teach us to divide them into cla.s.ses, orders, and families, but it also does more by showing us what place in the entire realm of nature is occupied by the vegetable kingdom, by pointing out the differences which distinguish the plants from the inorganic mineral kingdom or the organic animal kingdom. Formal logic similarly dissects the spirit into its parts, makes distinctions between conceptions, ideas, judgments, conclusions, divides these into subdivisions, cla.s.sifies conceptions according to species, separates abstract and concrete thought, knows many varieties of judgments, registers three, four, or more modes of conclusion. But at the same time this formal logic recoils from touching on the question as to how the universal spirit is related to the universe, what role it plays in the general existence, whether it is part and parcel of nature or transcendental. And yet this is the most interesting part, the part which logically connects the intellect and the science of the intellect with all other sciences and things.

Logic must teach us how to distinguish. It is not a question, however, of distinguis.h.i.+ng sheet iron from gold, or a greyhound from a pug-dog, for this is done by special lines of knowledge. Logic must rather enlighten us about that part of the faculty of distinguis.h.i.+ng which is generally required in all branches of knowledge, whereby truth and error, imagination and reality are recognized. To this end I feel impelled to advise you not to overlook that even error and imagination belong to the one infinite and absolutely coherent reality. For the purpose of distinguis.h.i.+ng true imagination from actual reality, it must be remembered that just as rye bread and cream puffs agree in belonging to the general category of baker's products, so imagination and truth, thought and reality, are two different kinds of the same nature.

To sum up the contents of this letter, let me point out that its beginning shows the connection of the intellect with the development of the people, while its conclusion explains the wider connection of the mind with the universal existence.

FIFTH LETTER

A man not trained in logical thinking is handicapped by the absence of a monistic method of thought. Monistic is synonymous with systematic, logical, or uniform.

If we call a cream puff a tidbit and rye bread a food without remembering that every food is a tidbit and every tidbit food, and if we ignore the fact that both of them, in spite of their difference, belong to the same category and are, therefore, related, then we lack logic.

And logic is lacking whenever the fact is ignored that all things without exception: substances, forces, or qualities of the world, are chips of the same block, finite parts of the infinite, which is the only truth and reality.

That insects, fishes, birds, and mammals form one and the same animal kingdom, is an old story which has long been patched up by the logical instinct. Darwin did not only enrich the natural sciences, but also perform an invaluable service for logic. In proving how amphibia developed into birds, he bored a hole into the hitherto fixed order of cla.s.sification. He brought motion, life, spirit into the zoological swamp.

In case you should not be familiar enough with Darwin's work to understand my allusions, I will enter a little more deeply into the matter in a few sentences. The zoologists knew well enough that all species of animals belonged to the animal kingdom; but this cla.s.sification was a mechanical affair. Now the "Origin of Species,"

which demonstrates that the zoological cla.s.sification is not constant but variable, which outlines the actual transition from one species of animals to another, reveals at the same time that this alignment of all animal species in one kingdom is not only a logical mechanism, but also a fact of actual existence. This cla.s.sification of all animals from the minutest to the most gigantic in one kingdom appeared before the time of Darwin as an order which had been accomplished by thought alone, while after him it was known as an order of nature.

What the zoologists did to the animal kingdom, must be done by the logician to existence in general, to the cosmos. It must be shown that the whole world, all forms of its existence, including the spirit, are logically or monistically connected, related, welded together.

A certain narrow materialism thinks that everything is done and said when the inter-connection between thought and brain is pointed out. A good many things may still be discovered by the help of the dissecting knife, microscope, and experiment; but this does not make the function of logic superfluous. True, thought and brain are connected, just as intimately as the brain is related to the blood, the blood with oxygen, etc.; but moreover thought is connected quite as intimately with all other things as all physical objects are.

That the apple is not alone dependent on the stem which attaches it to the tree, but also on suns.h.i.+ne and rain, that these things are not one-sidedly but universally connected, this is what logic wants to teach you particularly in regard to the spirit, the thought.

If a traveler in Africa had to report a new animal species, he would not make special mention of the fact of its existence, because that is obvious. And though he were to relate things about the most abnormal existence, we should still know that this abnormality is only a deviation in degree which does not overstep the bounds of existence in general. But the human intellect is a greater novelty than the most wonderful animal species of the interior of Africa.

You know my sharpwitted friend Englander. When I told him that I was writing articles on the human mind, he advised me not to bother my head about it. He said that this was a subject no man knew anything about.

And when the learned Mr. Hinze, whom you also know, wanted to prove the inevitability of religious faith and the inadequacy of all science, he always asked the pathetic question: What is consciousness? And he used to take on an expression, as if he had presented a book with seven seals. Now I don't want to cla.s.s the professors of logic with such men.

But it is a fact that the great mult.i.tude, among them many scientists, are quite unfamiliar with the truth that the existence of the blue sky and of the green trees is a uniform part of the same generality with the existence of our intellect.

For this reason it is necessary to prove that the intellect exists in the same way that all other things do. For it is denied and misunderstood, not only by those who regard the spirit as a being of a transcendental nature, but also by those who admit the existence of the true contents of an ideological concept, but not of thought itself. In short, the matter is so obscure that I feel sure that you will likewise be as yet in doubt whether there are not two kinds of ideological concepts, one of them real, the other unreal.

For two thousand years logic has proclaimed the sentence that thought is a form to be filled with real contents. True thought "must coincide with reality." It is true that there is a germ of sense in this statement, but it is misunderstood. The central point of logic is overlooked. Every thought must not only have a real content, but it is also necessary, in order to distinguish true thoughts or perceptions from untrue, to realize that thought is always and everywhere a part of reality and truth, even when it contains the most singular imaginations and errors.

Just as the domestic cat and the panther are different species of cats and yet belong to the same genus of cats, so true and false thoughts, in spite of all their differences, are of the same genus. For truth is so great that it comprises absolutely everything. Truth, reality, the world, the all, the infinite and the absolute are synonymous expressions. A clear conception of truth is indispensable for the understanding of logic. And in the last a.n.a.lysis it is simply using different words for the same thing, when I base the quintessence of logic, its fulcrum, cardinal, salient, or distinctive point on the spirit intimately united to nature or on the concept of a uniform world, truth, or reality. I cannot give you a clearer view of truth than by quoting at this place the famous words of Lessing: "If G.o.d were to offer me the ever active striving for truth in his left hand and truth in his right hand, I should grasp his left and say: Father, keep truth, it is for you alone." This statement is somewhat highflown and mystical, and Lessing was no doubt somewhat embarra.s.sed by mystical thinking. Still there is a sober truth in these words, which is quite clear and to the point.

"Truth itself" is the universe, the infinite and inexhaustible. Every part of it is a finite part of the infinite and is, therefore, finite and infinite, perishable and imperishable at the same time. Every part is a separate part and connected inseparably with the whole. The human mind, among others, is such a part.

The universal existence, or truth, is the inexhaustible object of the human mind. The fact that in the study of logic the human mind has itself for an object must be explained to the student by pointing out that in this case the subject and the object are both things like all other things, in other words, are a part of truth, a part of natural existence.

"Truth itself" cannot be wholly conceived by the human brain, but in parts. For this reason we possess only the ever active striving for truth; for this reason, furthermore, the conception or knowledge can never be completely identical with reality, but can be only a part of it.

Now permit me to say a few words which do not sound as would those spoken on the throne of logic, but which are expressed in popular language. If you conceive some real object, whether a church steeple or a thimble, then this object exists twice, viz., in reality and in conception. On the other hand, a certain creation of imagination has only a simple fantastical existence. Such a popular way of thinking is undoubtedly correct. It is incorrect only when the fact is universally ignored that all modes of existence belong to the same genus, the same as a domestic cat and a panther, so that the existence of a thing in our brains, and outside of them in the heavens, on earth, and in all places has a logical meaning only when it is the same existence in spite of all multiplicity. An existence not partaking of the general nature of all existence would be an illogical, nonsensical, thing.

Now, I think you will have no difficulty in understanding me when I say that a church steeple in imagination and the same church steeple in reality are not two church steeples, but that imagination and reality are forms of the same existence.

Ancient logic ordered a medal and had stamped on its face: The thought must be identical with the reality. We now stamp on its reverse side: (1) The thought is itself a part of reality and (2) the reality outside of thought is too voluminous and cannot enter thought even with its smallest particle. What good, under these circ.u.mstances, is the old inscription, especially since it does not teach us at all how the ident.i.ty between thought and its real object is to be attained, known, or measured?

If you, my dear Eugene, should become confused by these statements instead of enlightened, you should have patience and consider that a thing which is to be illuminated by logic must, of course, be first obscure. I believe that I have served you in some way by simply raising a doubt in your mind as to the soundness of the popular way of speaking and if I thus have convinced you of the confusion and inadequacy of the plausible idea of the ident.i.ty of thought and reality.

True, a thought must agree with its object just as a portrait should.

But what good will it do a painter to have his special attention called to this fact?

Have you ever seen a portrait or a copy that did not agree in some respect with the original? I am convinced that this has never been your experience any more than a portrait which was a complete likeness of its object. Your experience will be sufficiently cultivated to know that it can always be a question only of a more or less. I would seriously recommend to you to reflect on the relativeness of all equality, similarity, and ident.i.ty. By far the greater part of humanity is in this respect barbarously thoughtless. It is very difficult to grasp for the logically untrained brain that two drops of water or twins are only relatively alike or unlike, just as are man and woman, negro and white man, and that all existence is just as alike as it is unlike.

It is with the thinker as it is with the painter. They both search for a likeness of reality and truth. In painting as in understanding there are excellent pictures and bad ones. In this respect one may make a distinction between true and false thoughts, but you must also know that even the unsuccessful portrait has some likeness, and that even the most accurate likeness is yet far from being in perfect harmony and identical with its object.

Reality, truth, universal nature, stands in the pulpit and preaches: "I am the Lord, thy G.o.d. Thou shalt not make any graven image to wors.h.i.+p it." You must have a far too sublime conception of truth to entertain the idea that any painter or thinker might encompa.s.s it fully within the limit of a picture, no matter how good a likeness it may be.

Now, that we have recognized the human mind as a part of actual reality and truth, we see at the same time that undivided reality, the sum of all that is, represents absolute truth which comprises everything. In their capacity of parts of the universe, true and false thoughts, good and bad men, heaven and h.e.l.l, and all other things, are all pieces of the same cloth, bombs of the same caliber.

SIXTH LETTER