The Positive Outcome of Philosophy Part 21

AS TO HOW THE INTELLECT IS LIMITED AND UNLIMITED

Understanding taught by experience no longer muses about universal nature, but acquires a knowledge of it by special studies. By degrees philosophy, first unconsciously and lately clearly and plainly, has taken up the problem of ascertaining the limits of understanding.

This philosophical problem first a.s.sumed the form of polemics. It became opposed to the religious dogma which represented the human mind as a small, subservient, limited and restricted emanation of the unlimited divine spirit. This terrestrial emanation was regarded as too limited to understand and find its divine source. The study of the limits of the understanding has now emanc.i.p.ated itself from this dogma, but not to such an extent that there is no longer any mysterious obscurity floating around the understanding and intelligence, and especially around the question whether the human mind can penetrate only into some things while others will remain in the unscrutable darkness of faith and intuition, or whether it may penetrate boldly and without hindrance into the infinity of the physical and chemical universe.

We here desire to claim as a positive outcome of philosophy that it has at last acquired the clear and exact knowledge that a socalled infinite spirit, in the religious sense, is a fantastic, unscientific conception.

In the natural sense of the word, the human powers of understanding are universal and yet in spite of their universality they are, quite naturally, limited. The human understanding has its limits, why should it not? Only drop the illusion that a dark mystery is concealed beyond these limits.

The understanding is a force among others, and everything that is located alongside of other things is limited and restricted by them. We can understand everything, but we can also touch, see, hear, feel, and taste everything. We also have the power of moving about, and other qualities. One art limits another, and yet each is unlimited in its own field. The various human powers belong together and const.i.tute together the human wealth. Be careful not to separate the power of understanding from other natural powers. In a certain sense it must be separated, because it is the special object of our study, but it must always be remembered that such a separation has only a theoretical value.

Just as our power of vision can see everything, so our understanding can grasp everything.

Let us look a little closer at this statement.

How can we see everything? Not from any single standpoint. In that sense our powers of vision are limited. But what is not visible in the distance, becomes so on approaching nearer to it. What one eye cannot see, that of others can, and what is invisible to the naked eye, is revealed by the telescope and microscope. Nevertheless the vision remains limited, even though it may be the sharpest, and armed with the best artificial means. Even if we regard all the eyes of the past and future generations of humanity as organs of the universal human vision, this vision still remains limited. Nevertheless, no one will complain about the limits of human power, because we cannot see sounds with our eyes or hear the light with our ears.

The understanding of man is limited, just as his vision is. The eye can look through a gla.s.s pane, but not through a plate of iron. Yet no one will call any eye limited, because it cannot see through a block of metal. These drastic examples are very opportune, because there are certain wise men who reflectively lay their finger on their nose and call attention to the limits of our intellect in that sense, just as if the knowledge gained on earth by scientific means were only a nominal, not a real, understanding and knowing. The human intellect is thus degraded to the position of a subst.i.tute of some "higher" intellect which is not discovered, but must be "believed" to exist in the small head of a fairy or in the large head of an almighty being above the clouds. Would any one try to make us believe that there is a great and almighty eye that can look through blocks of metal the same as through gla.s.s? The idea of a spiritual organ with an infinite understanding is just as senseless. An unlimited single thing, an unlimited single being, is impossible, unless we regard the whole world, the world without beginning and without end, the infinite world, as a unit. Within this world everything is subject to change, but nothing can go beyond its genus without losing its name and character. There are various kinds of fire, but none that does not burn, none which has not the general nature of fire. Neither is there any water without the general nature of water, nor a spirit that is elevated above the general nature of spirits. In our days of clear conceptions the tendency toward the transcendental is mere fantastic vaporing.

It is not alone unscientific, it is fantastic, to think even afar of a higher power of thought or understanding than the human one. One might as well think of a higher horse which runs with eight, sixteen, or sixteen hundred legs and carries away his rider in a higher air at a higher speed than that of the wind or the light.

It is a part of the achievements of philosophy, of correct methods of thought, of the art of thought or dialectics, to know that we must use all conceptions, without exception, in a limited, rational, commonplace way, unless we wish to stray into that region where there are mountains without valleys and where every theory of understanding loses its mind.

It is true that all things, including our understanding, may be improved. Everything develops, why should not our intellects do so? At the same time we may know _a priori_ that our intellect must remain limited, of course not limited in the sense of the dunce, just as our eyes will never become so sharp that they can see through metal blocks.

Every individual has its limited brain, but humanity, so the positive achievements of philosophy have shown, has an intellect of as universal a power as any that can be imagined, required, or found, in heaven or on earth.

We maintain that philosophy so far has acquired something positive, has left us a legacy, and that this consists in a clear revelation of the method of using our intellect in order to produce excellent pictures of nature and its phenomena.

For the purpose of making the reader familiar with this method, with this legacy of philosophy, we must enter more closely into the essence of the instrument which lifts all the treasures of science. We are especially interested in the question, whether it is a finite or infinite and universal instrument with which we go fishing for truth. It is the custom to belittle the faculties of the human understanding, in order to keep it under the supremacy of the divine metaphysical augurs.

It is quite easy to see, therefore, that the question of the essence of our powers of understanding is intimately related to, or even identical with, the question of how we may be permitted to use them, whether they should be used only for the investigation of the limited, finite, or also for the study of the eternal, infinite, and immeasurable.

We object here to the tendency of belittling the human mind. About a hundred years ago, the philosopher Kant found it appropriate to draw the sword against those who played fast and loose with the human mind, against the socalled metaphysicians. They had made a miraculous thing of the instrument of thought, a matter for effusions. In order to be able clearly to state the outcome of philosophy, we must acquaint the reader with the fact that this instrument of thought, in its way, is one of the best and most magnificent things in existence, but that, at the same time, it is bound to its general kind or genus. The human understanding perceives quite perfectly, but we must not have an exaggerated idea of its perfection, any more than we would of a perfect eye or ear, that, be they ever so perfect, cannot see the gra.s.s grow or hear the fleas cough.

G.o.d is a spirit, says the bible, and G.o.d is infinite. If he is a spirit, an intellect, such as man, then it would be fair to a.s.sume that man's intellect is also infinite, or even is the divine spirit itself which has taken up its abode in the human brains. People cudgeled their brains with such confused conceptions, so long as the object of modern philosophy, the intellect, was a mystery. Now it is recognized as a finite, natural phenomenon, an energy or a force which is not the infinite, though it is, like all other matter and force, a part of the infinite, eternal, immeasurable.

Leaving all religious notions aside, the infinite, immeasurable, eternal, is not personal, but objective; it is no longer referred to as a masculine, but as a neuter. It may be called by many names, such as the universe, the cosmos, or the world. In order to understand clearly that the spirit which we have in our minds, is a finite part of the world, we must get a little better acquainted with this infinite, eternal world. Our physical world cannot have any other world beside it, because it is the universe. Within the universe there are many worlds, which all of them make out the cosmos, which has neither a beginning nor an end in time and s.p.a.ce. The cosmos reaches across all time and s.p.a.ce, "in heaven and on earth, and everywhere."

But how do I know what I state in such an offhand manner? Well, the knowledge of the universe, of the infinite, is given to us partly by birth and partly by experience. This knowledge is inherent in man just as language is, viz., in the germ, and experience gives us a proof of the infinite in a negative way, for we never learn the beginning or the end of anything. On the contrary, experience has shown us positively that all socalled beginnings and ends are only interconnections of the infinite, immeasurable, inexhaustible, and unfathomable universe.

Compared to the wealth of the cosmos the intellect is only a poor fellow. However, this does not prevent it from being the most perfect instrument for clearly and plainly reflecting the finite phenomena of the infinite universe.

IV

THE UNIVERSALITY OF NATURE

The positive outcome of philosophy concerns itself with specifying the nature of the human mind. It shows that this special nature of mind does not occupy an exceptional position, but belongs with the whole of nature in the same organization. In order to show this, philosophy must not discuss the human mind as if it were something separate from nature, but must rather deal with its general nature. And since this general nature of our intellect is the same of which every other thing partakes, it follows that nature in general, or the universe, or the cosmos, all of which is the same thing, are an indispensable object in the special study of the nature of the human mind.

We have already said that the experienced understanding of the present day no longer muses over nature in general in the fantastic and mere introspective manner as of old, but rather seeks to obtain a knowledge of it by special study. In so doing we do not forget that the study of specialties at the same time throws a light on the general relation of things, of which every species is but a part.

Since the human mind is a part of the whole of nature, viz., that part which has the desire and longing to obtain a conception of all the other parts, and more than that, to understand the interconnection between the parts and the undivided and infinite whole, it is easy to comprehend the fact that the philosophers have occupied themselves so much with the most real and most perfect being. Whether this being was called G.o.d, or substance, or idea, or the absolute, or nature, or matter, all of these terms cannot prevent us today from approaching infinite nature with sober senses, in order to gain, by its help, a lifelike picture of the human intellect, which is not a mystical being, but a reasonable part of the same nature that lives reasonably and intelligibly in all other parts of nature.

The inexperienced powers of distinction which did not understand their function, magnified the difference between the infinite and its finite phenomena out of all proportion. Now that we have made the philosophical experience that the general as well as the special nature of the human intellect admits only of moderate and bounded distinctions, we arrive at the conclusion that the immeasurable, all-perfect, and eternal being is composed of finite, commensurable, imperfect, and transient things in such a way that the universal being combines in itself all perfections as well as all imperfections. This contradictory universal being, this nature to which all contradictory attributes may be simultaneously a.s.signed, in a certain sense puts the old rule to shame that you cannot at the same time affirm and deny the predicate of any subject.

Nature comprises all and is all. Reason and unreason, being and not being, all these contradictions are contained in it. Outside of it there are no affirmations and no contradictions. Since the human mind eternally moves in affirmations and negations, in order to obtain a clear picture of things, it has an interminable task in understanding the interminable object.

Our brain is supposed to solve the contradictions of nature. If it knows enough about itself to realize that it is not an exception from general nature, but a natural part of the same whole--although it calls itself "spirit"--then it also knows and must know that its clearness can differ but moderately from the general confusion, that the solution of the problem cannot differ materially from the problem itself. The contradictions are solved only by reasonable differentiation, only by the science of understanding which shows that extravagant differences are nothing but extravagant speculations. The human understanding inclines to exaggerations in its untrained state, and it is a relic of untrained habits to differentiate in an absolute manner the spiritual from the rest of nature, to make a too extravagant distinction between it and the physical body. It is the merit of philosophy to have given us a clear doctrine of the use of the intellect, and this doctrine culminates in the rule not to make exaggerated, but only graduated distinctions. For this purpose it is necessary to realize that there is only one being and that all other socalled beings are but minor expressions of the same general being, which we designate by the name of nature or universe.

In consequence of the human bent to exaggeration, the human understanding has been regarded as a being of a different nature from that of natural beings which exist outside of the intellect. But it must be remembered that every part of nature is "another" individual piece of it, and, furthermore, that every other and different part is really nothing different but a uniform piece of the same general nature. The thing is mutual: The general nature exists only in its many individual parts, and these in their turn exist only in, with and by the general cosmic being.

Nature which is divided by the human understanding into East and West, South and North, and into a hundred thousand other named parts, is yet an undivided whole of which we may say with certainty that it has as many innumerable beginnings and ends as it is without beginning and end, as it is the infinite itself. It is well known that there is nothing new under the sun. Nothing is created, nothing disappears, and yet there is a continuous change.

The brain of man has a right and a left side, a top and a bottom, a front and a back part, an interior and an exterior. And the innermost of the brain again has two sides or qualities, a physical and a spiritual.

They are so little divided that the term brain has two meanings, designating now the physical brain, now its mental functions. In speaking here exclusively of the mind, we tacitly a.s.sume its inseparable connection with the physical body.

The material brain and the mental brain are two brains that together make one. Thus two, three, four, or innumerable things are yet one thing. The human understanding was endowed by nature with the faculty of embracing the infinite variety of the universe as a unit, as a single conception. The unity of nature is as true and real as its multiplicity.

To say that many are one and one many is not nonsense, but simply a truism which becomes clear when understanding the positive outcome of philosophy.

A reader unfamiliar with this our product of philosophy still follows the habit of regarding the physical body as something different from the mind. A distinction between these two is quite justified, but this manner of cla.s.sification must not be overdone. The reader should remember that he also is in the habit of regarding such heterogeneous things as axes, scissors, and knives as children of the same family by referring to them collectively as cutting tools. The outcome of philosophy now demands that we apply the same method to the object of our special study, the human brain. We must henceforth eschew all effervescent flights of imagination and regard the powers of the human mind as children of the same family as all other physical powers, whose immortal mother is the universe.

The universe is infinite not alone in the matter of time and s.p.a.ce, but also in that of the variety of its products. The human brains which it produces are likewise internally and externally of an infinite differentiation, although this does not prevent them from forming a common group uniform in its way.

To group the phenomena of nature, the children of the universe, in such a way by cla.s.ses, families, and species that they may be easily grasped, that is the task of the science of understanding, the work and const.i.tution of the perceiving human brain. To understand simply means to obtain a general and at the same time a detailed view of the processes and products of the universe by grouping them in a fashion similar to that used for the vegetable kingdom by botany and for the animal kingdom by zoology. It goes without argument that we, the limited children of the unlimited universe, are able to solve this problem only in a limited way.

However, this natural physical limitation of the human understanding must not be confounded with the abject misery which slavish and sentimental metaphysics attribute to it. The infinite universe is by no means n.i.g.g.ardly in its gifts to the human understanding. It opens its whole depths to our intellectual understanding and perception. Our intellect is a part of the inexhaustible universe and therefore partakes of its inexhaustible nature. That part of nature which is known by the name of intellect is limited only to the extent that the part is smaller than the whole.

V

THE UNDERSTANDING AS A PART OF THE HUMAN SOUL

The human intellect or understanding, the special object of all philosophy, is a part, and in our case the most prominent part, of the human soul. Gustav Theodore Fechner, a forgotten star on the literary firmament, posed the question of the soul in his time and attempted to answer it. In so doing he clothed the result of past philosophies in a peculiar garb which looked fantastic enough at first sight. He regards the outcome of philosophy merely as an individual product and he is so full of veneration for the ancient terms, such as _immortal souls_, _G.o.d_, _Christianity_, that he does not care to dismiss them, no matter how roughly he handles their essence.

Fechner extends the possession of a soul to human beings, animals, plants, stones, planets; in short, to the whole world.

This is simply saying that the human soul is of the same nature as all the rest of the world, or vice versa, that all natural things have the same nature as the human soul. Not only animals, but also stones and planets have something a.n.a.logous to our human soul.

Fechner is not fantastic at bottom, and yet how fantastical it sounds to hear him say: "I went out walking on a spring morning. The fields were green, the birds were singing, the dew sparkled, the smoke rose toward the clouds. Here and there a human being stirred. A glory of light was diffused over it all. It was only a small piece of the Earth. It was only a short moment of its existence. And yet, as I took all this in with an ever-widening understanding, I felt not alone the beauty, but also the truth that it is an angel who is thus pa.s.sing through the sky with his rich, fresh and blooming nature, his living face upturned to the heavens. And I asked myself how it is that man can ever become so stunted that he sees nothing but a dry clod in the Earth and looks for angels above and beyond it, never finding them anywhere. But people call this sentimental dreaming."

"The Earth is a globe, and what it is besides may be found in the museums of natural history." Thus writes Fechner.

Now there can be no objection to comparing the beautiful Earth and the stars around it with angels, any more than there can be to the lover calling his sweetheart an angel of G.o.d. The Earth, the Moon, and the stars are according to Fechner's terminology angelic beings with souls; mediators between man and G.o.d. He knows very well that this is nothing but a matter of a.n.a.logy and terminology, he is as atheistic as the most atheistic, but his fondness and reverence for the traditional terms lead him to attribute a soul to the material world and to give to this great and infinite soul a divine name.

If we waive this religious hobby of Fechner's, there still remains his peculiarity of using words and names in a symbolical sense. It is nothing but the old poetic way of calling a sweetheart's eyes heavenly stars and the stars of the blue heavens lovely eyes, which makes a snowy hill of a woman's breast, a zephyr of the wind, a nymph of a spring of water, and an erlking of an old willow tree. This poetic license has filled the whole world with good and evil spirits, mermaids, fairies, elfs, and goblins.