The Positive Outcome of Philosophy Part 17

We found a while ago that the absolute world concept consisted of two parts, viz., the concept and the world. In the same way, the chemists teach us that water consists of two elements, each of which by itself does not make any water, while their compound makes pure water. But we do not need such distant ill.u.s.trations. My table in its present composition is something different from what it would be if the same pieces were put together in some other way and without a plan.

Therefore the world concept is a far more sublime concept than all the parts of which it consists. And in order to make this quite clear, I may honor this compound of the world and its concept by a special name, say "universe," so as to distinguish it from its component parts.

Now I declare, without fear of having the word turned in my mouth by any sophist, that the world embracing the thought, or the universe, is the absolute which includes everything, while the world and the thought of it, each by itself, are but cla.s.sifications or relative things.

We wish to understand thought, not empty abstract thought, but the universal world-embracing thought, the thought in a philosophical sense.

This is not mere thought, but living truth, the universe, the absolute, the supreme being.

It is with the universe and its parts as it is with a telescope and its concentric rings. Our intellect is a special ring which gives us a picture of the whole concentric thing. This photographer, as I have called it in a former letter, is not the object of our study for its own sake, nor for the sake of its pictures, but rather for the sake of the original, of the universe. It is as if somebody were to buy a portrait of some historically renowned person. No matter how much concerned the buyer would be with the picture, in the last a.n.a.lysis he is concerned with that person itself. So it is with the art of understanding the absolute, with world wisdom, which we study not for the sake of the wisdom, but of the world itself.

This lengthy discussion might have been cut short by simply speaking of the world instead of going to so much trouble on account of the world concept. But I should then miss my point, which is that the human intellect is a part of the world, and that the ideological distinction which separates this intellect from the rest of the world, requires for the whole an embracing term.

The absolute concept is the concept of the absolute, of the supreme being. To it applies all the true, good, and beautiful ever attributed to G.o.d, and it is also that being which lends logic, consistency, and form to all thought.

Plato is a philosopher who has thrown a wonderful light on the faculty of understanding, though he has not fully explained it. In his dialogue ent.i.tled "Gorgias," he makes Socrates say the following: "Does it seem to you that men want that with which they occupy themselves at any time, or that for the sake of which they undertake whatever they may be engaged in? Do those, for instance, who take some medicine prescribed by the physicians seem to want that which they do ... or to want that for the sake of which they take medicine, viz., health?... In the same way those who go on board of ships and trade do not want that which they are doing; for who would care to go to sea and face danger or conquer obstacles? That for which they go to sea is that which they want, viz., to become rich; they are going to sea for the sake of acquiring wealth."

Plato thus says that the immediate purposes of men are not their real purposes, but means to an end, means to welfare or for "good." He therefore continues: "It is in pursuit of good, then, that we go when we go, because we are after something better, and we stand still for the sake of the same good."

Now let us go a step farther than Socrates and Plato. Just as men's actions are truly done, not for the sake of some immediate purpose, but of the ulterior, of welfare, and just as their socalled ethical actions are justified only by the general wellbeing, so all things of the world are not substantiated by their immediate environment, but by the infinite universe. It is not the seed planted in the soil which is the cause of the growing plant, as the farmer thinks, but the Earth, the Sun, the winds, and the weather, in short, the whole of nature, and that includes the seed germ.

If we apply this reasoning to our special object, the faculty of understanding, we find that it is not a narrowly human, nor a transcendental, but a universal cosmic faculty. According to Homer, the immortal G.o.ds call things by other names than mortal men. But once you have grasped the concept of the absolute, you understand the language of the G.o.ds, you understand that the intellect by itself is but a minute particle, while in the interrelation with the universe it is an absolute and integral part of the universal absolute.

All things have a dual nature, all of them are limited parts of the unlimited, the inexhaustible, the unknowable. Just as all things are small and great, temporal and eternal, so all of them including the human mind are knowable and unknowable at the same time. We must not idolize the faculty of thought nor forget its divine nature. Man should be humble, but without bowing in doglike submission to a transcendental spirit, and he should be sustained by the sublime consciousness that his spirit is the true one, the spirit of universal truth.

Everything can be seen by eyes, including those of a hawk. Just as the eye is the instrument of vision, so the intellect is the instrument of thought. And just as spectacles and gla.s.ses are means of a.s.sisting the eye in seeing, so senses, experience, and experiments are means of a.s.sisting the intellect in understanding. With this equipment the intellect can a.s.similate everything in its conceptions. It understands "all," but "all" only in a relative sense. We understand all, just as we buy everything for money. We can buy only what is for sale. Reason and sunshine cannot be valued in money. We can see everything with eyes, and yet not everything. Sounds and smells cannot be seen. Just as everything is great and small, so everything is knowable and unknowable, according to the meaning given to "everything" in the language of men or G.o.ds.

That word has the dual meaning of applying to any particle and to the whole universe. So is the human mind universal, but only a universal specialty.

Look at that magnificently colored carnation. You see the whole flower, and yet you do not see all of it. You do not see its scent nor its weight. In the human language "whole" means a relative whole, which is at the same time a part. Every particle of the universe is such a dual thing. But in the language of the G.o.ds, which is spoken by philosophy, only the absolute universe is whole.

When the subject under discussion is not the intellect, but some other part of the world, for instance the eyes, the universal concept of the absolute is not so important, because the faculty of seeing, like the faculty of wealth, is in little danger of being metaphysically abused.

One knows that eyes which can see around a corner, or through a block of iron, or which can perceive the scent of a carnation, are as meaningless as a white sorrel. Even though our eyes cannot see the invisible, that does not prevent them from being a universal instrument which can see everything, that is everything visible.

If you understand this, you will also see through the miserable wisdom of the professors which wallows on its belly in the dust and cries with the faithful: O Lord, O Lord! similarly to Du Bois-Reymond, who cries out: _Ignorabimus_! It is true that the human mind is an ignoramus in the sense that it is ever learning, because there is inexhaustible material in nature. There is also something unknowable in every particle of nature, just as there is something invisible in every carnation. But the unknowable in the sense used by those ignorant people who cannot understand the human mind because they have a transcendental monster in their mind, such a monstrous unknowable exists only in the imagination of the idolators to whom the true spirit reveals itself as little as the spirit of truth.

Just as surely as we know that there cannot be in heaven any knife without a blade and a handle, nor any black horses that are white, just so surely do we know that the faculty of understanding can never and nowhere be the absolute, but must always be a special faculty. The concept of understanding, like the concept of a knife, is limited to a definite instrument. There may be all kinds of knives and intellects, but nothing exists that has escaped from its own skin or from the limitation of its own particular concept.

By this standard you may measure the silly thought of those who speak transcendentally of an unlimited faculty of understanding. They haven't any right idea of the mind nor of the universe, of the conceivable nor of the inconceivable, otherwise they would not speak in such a nonsensical sense of the "Limits of Understanding." In short, you see that the relative limitation or absoluteness of reason can only be understood by means of the concept of the absolute.

TWENTY-FIRST LETTER

The proletarian logic of the working cla.s.s searches after the supreme being. The working cla.s.s knows that it must serve but it wants to know whom to serve. Shall it be an idol or a king? Where, who, what, is the supreme being to which everything else is subordinate, which brings system, consistency, logic, into our thought and actions? The next question is then: By what road do we arrive at its understanding? Any transcendental revelation being of no use to us, there are only two ways open: Reason and experience.

Now it is a mistake of common logic to regard these two roads as separate, while, in fact, they are one and the same common road, which by the help of empirical reason or reasonable experience leads us to the point where we recognize that the supreme being to which everything is subordinate, is nothing special, not a part or a particle, but the universe itself with all its parts.

We take medicine for the sake of health, we make efforts for the sake of wealth. But neither health nor wealth are an end in themselves. What good is health to us, when we have nothing to bite? What good are all the treasures of Croesus, if health is lacking? Therefore health and wealth must be combined. Nor is that enough. There is a spirit in us that drives us farther ahead. There are still other treasures and requirements, for instance contentment is surely one of them. But the motive power of the world spirit is so infinite, that it is not satisfied until it has everything. Everything, then, in other words the whole world, that is the true end.

Socrates and his school, to whom I alluded in the preceding letter, wandered the way of separate reason for the purpose of finding the supreme being, the true, the good, the beautiful. The platonic dialogues paint a very magnificent picture of the truth that neither health nor wealth, neither bravery nor devotion, are "the greatest good," but that it is mainly a question of the understanding and use to which mankind put these things. Accordingly they are good or bad, they are but relative "goods." Love and faith, honesty and veracity, are good enough, but not _the_ good; they only partake of the good. What is sought is that which is under all circ.u.mstances absolutely good, true, and beautiful.

When Socrates asked his disciples to define the good or reasonable, they enumerated as a rule a series of good and reasonable specialties, while the master was continually compelled to instruct them, that his research was not aimed at those objects. They name important virtues, and he wants to know what absolute virtue is. They name good things, and he is looking for _the_ good, for pure goodness, while the good things have the bad quality of being good only under certain circ.u.mstances.

The Socratic school then finds out that only the understanding or the intellect can find the circ.u.mstances under which we may arrive at the absolute. Understanding, the human mind, philosophy, is to them the divine. Thus they arrive at their famous "Know thyself," which in their language means: Hold introspection and rack your brain. But they did not succeed in thus using the intellect as an oracle. Nor did the Christian philosophers of later times fare any better with that method, when they changed the t.i.tle of the object of their studies and subst.i.tuted G.o.d, Liberty, and Immortality, for the good, the true, and the beautiful.

In order to get out of the confusion resulting from the many names given to the object of logic in the course of history, it must be remembered that pagan as well as Christian research founded their quest for the absolute on the innate need of understanding the supreme being which was to be the pivot of all thought and action. Polytheism had to have a supreme G.o.d, no matter whether his name was Zeus or Jupiter. In consequence of this longing for unity it was very natural that the place of the many immortals was finally taken by one eternal father of all.

The philosophers are distinguished from the theologians only in so far as the former seek for the fulcrum of the world more on real than on imaginary ground.

After more than two thousand years of mediation by intermediary links, ancient philosophy has at last been transformed into modern democratic-proletarian logic which recognizes that the intellect is an instrument which leads to the supreme being on condition that it does not rack the brain but goes outside of itself and consciously connects itself with the world outside. This connection const.i.tutes the supreme being, the imperishable, eternal, truth, goodness, beauty, and reason.

All other things only "partake of it," to use Platonic language.

Although the Socratic school were handicapped by many fantastical attributes, still they were on the road towards true logic, as neither health nor wealth, nor any other treasure or virtue satisfied them. They did not care for true phenomena, but for truth itself. But truth is the universe, and man must understand that this is the only truth, in order to be able to use his intellect logically, to be reasonable in the highest and cla.s.sical sense of this word.

All the world speaks of logic and logical thought. But when you, my son, as a thinking man feel the need of getting out of phraseology and knowing exactly what words should mean, you will hardly find one book that will give you sufficient light on the subject of logic. The best book would be the Bible, perhaps. I mean that, when you inquire after beginning and end, purpose and destination, in short, after that which would give you and all things a definite support, when you search for the vortex around which everything revolves, then the Bible does not tell you about the beginning of this or that part of history, but speaks of the absolute beginning and end of all history, of the general purpose and general destination of all existence. That is what I call logic.

The free thinkers were not satisfied with religious mythology, they wanted to bring consistency and logic into their brains by their own studies. Plato and Aristotle have done good work along this line. So have the subsequent philosophers, Cartesius, Spinoza, Kant. The main impediment for all of them was the obstinate prejudice that man could have reason in his own brain. Of course, that is where he has it, but it is not reasonable reason. The intellect shut up in the skull has not wisdom in its keeping, as the ancients thought. Wisdom cannot be acquired by racking your brain. Hegel is right: Reason is in the brain, it is in all things, "everything is reasonable." I merely repeat, then, that the universe is the true reason.

You will not misunderstand the term "racking your brain." I am not an opponent of introspective thought, but only desire to call your attention to the fact that it has led to the wrong habit of separating thought from sight, hearing, feeling, of divesting the mind of the body.

Just as the Christian looked for salvation outside of the flesh, so the philosophers looked for reason or understanding outside of the connection with the rest of the world, outside of experience. It was especially the research after the nature of the intellect which imagined it had to creep inside of itself.

When studying the stars, we look at the heavens; when endeavoring to enrich our knowledge of plants, we gather flowers. But if we attempt to understand the mind, we must not rack our brain, nor dissect it with an anatomical knife. We shall indeed find the brain, but not the mind, not reason.

And even the brain is not so easily cut out, as many an overzealous materialist may think. The student of anatomy who pries into the nature of the brain substance knows very well that this substance is not contained in the head of this or that fellow, but must be sought in many heads before the average brain is found, which differs materially from that of Peter or Paul. This will show that your brain is not only your own, but also "partakes" of the universal brain, and you will easily conclude from this how much less your reason is yours alone. Hegel is right: Not only men, but everything is reasonable.

True, the most rotten conditions may be defended by such maxims. Hence the great logician Hegel has the bad name of having been, not a philosopher of the people, but a royal state philosopher of Prussia. I will neither blacken nor whitewash him, nor will I overlook that he left the great cause in a state of mystical obscurity. But I recognize that even the worst prejudices, the most perverted morals, laws and inst.i.tutions, have their reasonable justification in the times and conditions of their origin. Such an understanding is immediately followed by the further insight, that the most reasonable things, crushed by the wheel of time, will become rotten and unreasonable. In short, the "good" is not any special inst.i.tutions, but is found in the interrelations of the universe. Only the absolute is absolutely good.

And for this reason not only some conservative editors of capitalist papers, but also the revolutionary authors of the "Communist Manifesto,"

are genuine Hegelians.

TWENTY-SECOND LETTER

Dear Eugene:

Socrates teaches: When we walk, it is not walking, when we stand still, it is not standing which is our purpose. We always have something ulterior in view, until finally the general welfare is the true end of our actions, in other words, the "good." And on closer a.n.a.lysis you will find that your individual welfare, the socalled egoistic good, is not enough in itself.

You are not only related to your father, mother, brothers, sisters, relatives and friends, but also to your community, state, and finally to the entire population of the globe. Your welfare is dependent on their welfare, on the welfare of the whole.

I know very well that the horizon of the everyday capitalist minds does not reach farther than they can see from the steeple of their church.

They think according to the bad maxim: The shirt is closer to the skin than the coat. If I had to choose between the shirt and the coat, I should prefer to wear the coat without a shirt rather than to run around in shirt sleeves as the object of universal ridicule. The old man who plants a tree the fruits of which he will perhaps never see is not such a capitalist mind, otherwise he would sow seeds that would ripen during this year's summer.

At this juncture we must remember that the disciples of Socrates who looked for the absolute under the name of the "good," were in so far narrow as they conceived of it only from the moral, specifically human, standpoint, instead of at the same time considering its cosmic side.

Just as health and wealth belong together, and even these are not sufficient for human welfare which further requires all social and political virtues, so the good is not comprised in the interrelations of all mankind, but pa.s.ses beyond them and connects itself with the entire universe. Without the universe man is nothing. He has no eyes without light, no ears without sound, no morals without physics. Man is not so much the measure of all things; his more or less intimate connection with all things is rather the measure of all humanity. Not narrow morality, but the universe, the supreme being, is the good in the very highest meaning of the word, is absolute good, right, truth, beauty, and reason.