We have already seen in preceding chapters that we must first define our
standpoint before we can decide which is the right or left bank of a
river. So it is also in the matter of abolishing and maintaining
religion for the people. It can be done the moment we extend the
discussion to the realm of infinity. The conception of infinity, called
substance by Spinoza, monad by Leibniz, thing itself by Kant, the
absolute by Hegel, is indeed necessary in order to explain anything, not
only by the fourth root, but by the infinite root of the adequate
reason. To that extent we are agreed that enlightenment, or
understanding as we say, is not alone a struggle against religion, but
also for it. In the theory of understanding acquired by philosophy,
there is contained a decisive repeal of religion. Nevertheless we say
with Lazarus: "The power of enlightenment and its aim are not expressed
in negation, not in that which is not believed, but in that which is
believed, venerated, and preserved." And yet every enlightening
perception, every understanding resulting from enlightenment, is a
negation. In seeking enlightenment, for instance, on understanding, it
is necessary, in order to prove that it is a natural phenomenon, to deny
the religious element in so far as it assumes the existence of a divine
chief spirit whose secondary copy the human spirit is supposed to be.
Or, in order to gain enlightenment on the nature of the universe, in
order to realize that it is a truly universal universe, we are compelled
to deny the existence of every "higher" world, including the religious.
But if we desire to become enlightened as to how it is that religion
may not alone be denied, but also preserved, we must transfer its origin
from an illogical other world into the natural and logical universe.
Thus religion becomes natural and nature religious.

If worship is confined to the idolization of the sun or the cat, every
one realizes the temporality of the matter. And if we restrict worship
to the adoration of the great omnipotent spirit, every one realizes the
temporality of this adoration who has acquired an accurate conception of
the small human spirit. If, on the other hand, we extend religious
worship to everything which has ever been venerated, or will ever be
venerated, by human beings, in other words, if we extend the conception
of religion to the entire universe, then it assumes a very far-reaching
significance.

This is the essence of enlightenment on religion: That we may at will
expand or contract our conceptions, that all things are alike to the
extent of representing only one nature, that all fantastical ideas, all
good and evil spirits and ghosts, no matter how "supernaturally"
conceived, are all natural.

The essential thing in the enlightenment acquired by philosophical study
is the appreciation of the fact that understanding, enlightenment,
science, etc., are not cultivated for their own sake, but must serve the
purpose of human development, the material interests of which demand a
correct mental picture of the natural processes.

We have chosen the religious idea for discussion in this chapter so that
it may serve as a means of illustrating the nature of thought in
general. We regard it as the merit of philosophy to have unveiled this
nature.

Professor Lazarus is quite a pleasing companion. He is a fine thinker,
saturated with the teachings of the philosophers, not overfond of any
particular school, and only about two hands' breadth removed from our
position. But this is just enough to demonstrate by his shortcomings the
advantages of our position which proves that the part of the human soul
performing the work of thinking is understood by us at least two hands'
breadth better than by this prominent psychologist.

"The function of enlightenment is to recognize that no phenomenon can be
an effect which has not another phenomenon as its cause, and to search
for the sole cause of every effect, noting all its parts and their
consecutive divisions."

These words describe the mental work performed by the human brain fairly
well, but still they require a little addition, to the effect that the
mental work is no exception from any other phenomena, all of which have
not alone their special, but also one general cause. The cause of all
causes, of which religion is making an idol, must be profaned, so to
speak, by the cult of science, so that the above definition of Lazarus
regarding enlightenment would read as follows: The sole and true cause
of all effects is the universe, or the general interdependence of all
things. But this is not by far the full scope of enlightenment. It is
further necessary, as Lazarus well says, to note "all its parts and
their consecutive divisions." We further add: The universal cause must
be understood not alone in its consecutive parts, but also in its
co-ordinate parts. It is only then that understanding, enlightenment,
become perfect. We then find that after all the relation between cause
and effect, or the relation between the universal truth and its natural
phenomena, is not a very trenchant one, but a relative one.

"Enlightenment advances in various, in all, fields of mental life.
Religious enlightenment has long been recognized as the most essential,
justly so, and for many reasons, the chief of them being that religious
enlightenment is the most important and hence the most bitterly
contested."

Thus religious enlightenment is a part of universal, cosmic,
enlightenment. It is a confusing expression to say that it is confined
to "all fields of mental life." We believe to be shedding more light on
the question by saying that there is enlightenment in all fields, not
alone in the mental, but also in the cosmic, which unites both the
material and mental. To classify this field, that is the exhaustive task
of our understanding, that its exhaustive definition.

XI

THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN CAUSE AND EFFECT IS ONE OF THE MEANS OF
UNDERSTANDING

The processes of the human mind and their subjective composition cannot
be analyzed in a _pure_ state and without regard to their objective
effects any more than handiwork can be explained without the raw
material to be handled and the products derived therefrom, any more than
any work can be described in a _pure_ state without regard to the
product.

That is the sad defect of old time logic which is an obstacle to its
further advance: it literally tears things out of their connections and
forgets the necessity of interdependence over the need of special study.

The instrument which produces thought and knowledge in the human brain
is not an isolated thing, nor an isolated quality. It is connected not
only with the brain and the nervous system, but also with all qualities
of the soul. True, thinking is different from feeling, but it is
nevertheless a feeling the same as gladness and sorrow. Thought is
called incomprehensible and the heart unfathomable. It is the function
of science, of thinking and thought, to fathom and comprehend what as
yet is not fathomed and not comprehended.

Just as thinking and understanding are parts of the human soul, so the
latter is a part of physical and intellectual man. Together with the
physical development of man, of the species as well as of the
individual, the soul also develops and with it that part which is the
special object of the theory of understanding, viz., thought and
thinking. Not alone does physical development produce intellectual
development, but, vice versa, the understanding reacts on the physical
world. The one is not merely a cause, nor the other merely an effect.
This obsolete distinction does not suffice for the full understanding of
their interrelations. We pay a tribute to the "thoughts on
enlightenment" of Professor Lazarus quoted in the previous chapter by
acknowledging that they throw so much light on a certain point that
little more than the dot over the "i" is required in order to clear up a
bad misunderstanding about the relation of cause and effect.

Since the time of Aristotle this relation has been called a category. We
have already noted the statement which characterizes the age of
enlightenment as one in which the causal category, or let us say the
distinction between cause and effect, became the dominant issue. Other
periods live with their understanding, with their thoughts, in other
categories. Though the ancient Greeks knew the distinction between
cause and effect, yet it was far from being the dominant point of view
in their search after scientific understanding. Instead of regarding, as
we do today, everything as effects which were produced by preceding
causes, they saw in every process, in every phenomenon, a means which
had a purpose. The category of means and purpose dominated the Greeks.
Socrates admired the knowledge of nature displayed by Anaxagoras, the
stories he could tell of sun, moon, and stars. But as Anaxagoras had
omitted to disclose the _reasonable purpose_ of the processes of nature,
Socrates did not think much of such a natural science. At that period
the means and the purpose were the measure of reason, the handle of the
mind, the category of understanding; today causes and effects have taken
their places.

Between the golden age of Greece and the era of modern science, the
socalled night of the Middle Ages, the epoch of superstition, extends.
If then you started out on a voyage and first met an old woman, it meant
misfortune for you. Wallenstein cast the horoscope before he directed
his troops. "Understanding" was gathered from the flight of a bird, the
cry of an animal, the constellations of stars, the meeting with an old
woman. The category of that period was the _sign_ and its
_consequences_.

And according to Lazarus, these things were believed by brains which
were by no means dull. "I refer to a name which fills us all with
veneration: Kepler believed in astrology, in the _category of the sign
and its consequence_, together with the thinkers of the thousand years
before him and of his own century. Astrology was a science for many
centuries, promoted together with astronomy ... and by the same people."

The peculiar thing in this statement is the reference to the category
of sign and consequence as a _science_. This category has no longer a
place in modern science.

May not our modern viewpoint, the category in which our present day
science thinks, the category of cause and effect, be equally transitory?

The ancients have accomplished lasting scientific results in spite of
their "purposes." Mediæval superstition with its "signs," its astrology
and alchemy, has likewise bequeathed to us a few valuable scientific
products. And, on the other hand, even the greatest partisans of modern
science do not deny that it is marred by various adventurous vagaries.

The categories of means and purposes, of signs and consequences, are
still in vogue today and will be preserved together with that of causes
and effects. The knowledge that this latter category is likewise but a
historical one and exerts but temporarily a dominating influence on
science belongs to the positive outcome of philosophy, and Professor
Lazarus, with all his advanced standpoint, has remained behind this
result by about a yard.

Kindly note that it is not the extinction of the relation between cause
and effect which we predict, but merely that of its dominance.

Whoever skips lightly over the current of life, will be greatly shocked
when reading that we place the fundamental pillar of all perception, the
category of cause and effect, in the same passing boat in which the
prophets and astrologers rode. One is very prone to belittle the faith
of others by the name of "superstition" and honor one's own superstition
by the title of "science."

Once we have grasped the fact that our intellect has no other purpose
than that of tracing a human picture of cosmic processes, and that its
penetration of the interior of nature, its understanding, explaining,
perceiving, knowing, etc., is nothing else, and cannot be anything else,
that moment it loses its mysterious, transcendental metaphysical
character. We also understand then, that the great spirit above the
clouds who is supposed to create the world out of nothing, could very
well serve the mind as a means of explaining things. And it is the same
with the category of cause and effect, which is a splendid means of
assisting explanation, but still will not suffice for the requirements
of all time to come.

The perception that the great spirit above the clouds is a free
invention of the small human mind has become so widely spread that we
may well pass on over it to other things.

Among the questions now on the order of business is the one whether the
"causes" with which modern science operates so widely are not in a way
creators in miniature which produce their effects in a sleight-of-hand
way. And this erroneous notion is, indeed, the current conception.

If a stone falls into the water, it is the cause of the undulations, but
not their creator. It is only a co-operator, for the liquid and elastic
qualities of the water also act as a cause. If the stone falls into
butter, it creates at best but one undulation, and if this stony creator
falls on the hard ground, it is all up with the creation of undulations.
This shows that causes are not creators, but rather effects which are
not effected, but effect themselves.

The category of cause and effect is a good help in explanation, so long
as it is accompanied by the philosophical consciousness that the whole
of nature is an infinite sea of transformations, which are not created
by one great or many small creators, but which create themselves.

A well-known philosophical author expresses himself in the following
manner: "During the first weeks of its existence, the child has no
perception either of the world without, or of its own body, or of its
soul. Hence its feeling is not accompanied by the consciousness of an
interaction between these three factors. It does not suspect its
causes." We see that soul, body, and outer world are called the three
factors of feeling. Now note how each one of these three causes or
factors is, so to say, the store house of innumerable factors or causes,
all of which cause the feeling of the child. The soul consists of many
soul parts, the body of many bodily parts, and the outer world consists
of so many parts that it would consist of ten times more parts, if there
were any more than innumerable.

There is no doubt that the child's feeling, or any other, does not exist
independently, but is dependent on the soul, the body, and the outer
world. This constitutes the indubitable interrelation of all things. In
the winding processes of the self-agitated universe, the category of
cause and effect serves as a means of enlightenment, by giving our mind
its help in the systematization of processes. If the drop of a stone
precedes, the undulations of the water follow; if soul, body, and outer
world are present, feeling follows.

The positive outcome of philosophy does not reject the services of the
category of cause and effect. It only rejects the mystical element in
that category in which many people, even among those with a "scientific
education," still believe. There is no witchcraft in this matter, but
simply a mechanical systematization and classification of natural
phenomena in the order of their appearance. So long as water remains
water and retains its liquid and elastic properties, and so long as a
stone is a stone, a ponderous fellow striking the water heavily, just
so long will the splash of the stone be surely and inevitably followed
by undulations of the water. So long as soul, body, and outer world
retain their known properties, they will with unfailing precision
produce feeling. It is no more surprising that we can affirm this on the
strength of our experience than that we have a category of cause and
effect. There exists nothing extraordinary but the condition of things,
and in this respect all things are alike, so that human understanding,
cause and effect, or any other category, are no more extraordinary than
any other condition. The only wonder is the universe, but this, being a
universal wonder, is at the same time trivial, for nothing is so
familiar as that which is common to all.

By the help of the viewpoint of cause and effect, man throws light on
the phenomena of nature. Cause and effect serve to enlighten us about
the world.

The way, the method, by which this enlightenment is produced, is the
special object of our study. We do not deny that cause and effect serve
us as a means, but only as one of many. We honor the category of cause
and effect far too much when we regard it as _the_ panacea. We have seen
that formerly other viewpoints served the same purpose and still others
exist today, some of which have a prospect of being valued more highly
in the future than cause and effect. This category serves very well for
the explanation of processes which follow one another. But there are
other phenomena which occur side by side, and these must also be
elucidated. For such a purpose, the category of genus and species is
quite as serviceable. Haeckel speaks somewhat slightingly of "museum
zoologists and herbarium botanists," because they merely classify
animals and plants according to genera and species. The modern
zoologists and botanists do not simply consider the multiplicity of
animals and plants which exist simultaneously, but also the
chronological order of the changes and transformations, and in this way
they have gained much more of a life-picture of the zoological and
botanical world, a picture not alone of its being, but also of its
growing, of arising and declining. Undoubtedly the knowledge of the
museum zoologists and herbarium botanists was meager, narrow,
mechanical, and modern science offers a far better portrait of truth and
life. Still this is no reason for overestimating the value of analysis
by cause and effect. This method supplements the category of genus and
species. It assists in enlightening, it helps in the process of thought,
but it does not render other forms of thought superfluous.

It is essential for the theory of understanding, to recognize the
special forms of thought of old and new times as peculiarities which
have a common nature. This common nature of the process of thought,
understanding, enlightenment, is a part of the universal world process,
and not greatly different from it.

The conception of a cause partly explains the phenomena of the universe;
but so does the conception of a purpose and of a species, in fact, so do
all conceptions.

In the universe all parts are causes, all of them caused, produced,
created, and yet there is no creator, no producer, no cause. The general
produces the special, and the latter in turn produces by reaction the
general.

The category of the general and the special, of the universe and its
parts, contains all other categories in the germ. In order to explain
the process of thought, we must explain it as a part of the universal
process. It has not caused the creation of the world, neither in a
theological nor in an idealist sense, nor is it a mere effect of the
brain substance, as the materialists of the eighteenth century
represented it. The process of thought and its understanding is a
peculiarity of the universal cosmos. The relation of the general to the
special is the clear and typical category underlying all other
categories.

One might also apply other names to this category, for instance, the one
and the many; the essence and the form; the substance and its
attributes; truth and its phenomena, etc. However, a name is but a
breath and a sound; understanding and comprehension are what we want in
the first place.

XII

MIND AND MATTER: WHICH IS PRIMARY, WHICH SECONDARY?

It is the merit of the philosophical outcome to have delivered the
process of understanding from its mystic elements. So long as cause and
effect are not recognized as a form of thought belonging to the same
species with many other forms of thought, all of which serve the common
purpose of illuminating the cosmic processes for the human mind by a
symbolized picture composed of various conceptions, just so long will
something mysterious adhere to the category of cause and effect.

Philosophy is particularly engaged in illuminating the understanding. It
has learned enough of its specialty to know that it is a part of the
universe performing the special function of arranging the world of
phenomena and its smaller circles according to relations of
consanguinity and chronology. Such an arrangement presents a scientific
picture of the world. The well-known diagram of conceptions used by
logicians, consisting of a large circle symbolizing the general, inside
of which smaller circles crossing and encircling one another represent
the specialties, is a fitting aid in explaining the method by which the
faculty of understanding arrives at its scientific results. Science in
general is the sum of all special kinds of knowledge, differing from
them in no greater degree than the human body from the various organs of
which it is composed. A bodily organ can no more exist outside of the
body than any particular knowledge can exist outside of the generality
of all sciences. No metaphysics is possible under this condition.

As surely as we know that two mountains cannot be without a valley
between them, just so surely do we know that nothing in heaven, on
earth, or in any other place can lie outside of the general circle of
things. Outside of the worldly world there can be no other little world.
A logically constituted human mind cannot think differently. And it is
likewise impossible to discover such an outside world by the help of and
within the limits of experience, because thought is inseparable from
experience and there can be no experience without thought. A man who has
a head upon his shoulders--and there can be no man without a
head--cannot experience any unworldly metaphysical world. The faculty of
experience, which includes the faculty of understanding or perception,
is merely empirical. Our settled conviction of the unity of the universe
is an inborn logic. The unity of the world is the supreme and most
universal category. A closer look at it at once reveals the fact that it
carries its opposite, the infinite multiplicity, under its heart or in
its womb. The general is pregnant with specialties.

This is a comparison, and comparisons limp. A mother has other qualities
beside that of motherhood, while the universe, or the absolute
generality, is nothing but the bearer, the cause, of all special and
separate things. It is "pure" motherhood which can no more be without
children than the children without a mother. In this way, no cause can
be without effects. A cause without an effect--let us dismiss it. The
child is as much a cause in motherhood as it is its effect and product.
In the same way the universe has never been, and could not be conceived,
without the many special children which it carries in its womb.

If thought wishes to make for itself a picture, a conception of the
cause of all causes, it must necessarily take cognizance of the effects.
Thought may very well separate one from the other, but cannot think
correctly without the consciousness that its separating and
distinguishing is only a formality. Imagining, conceiving, knowing,
perceiving, are so many formalities.[9]

But philosophy took its departure from the opposite, the wrong, view. It
regarded perceiving, understanding, as the main thing. It did not use
science as a formality, as something secondary, as something serving a
nature, a cause, a purpose, a higher reason, but it started with the
illogical and irrelevant assumption that the specialty of mind,
understanding, conceiving, judging, distinguishing, is the primary,
supreme, self-constituted cause and purpose, instead of being an element
in logic. Even in Hegel's logic, which, by the way, has given us much
light on the process of thought, this confounding of the original with
the copy is the cause of an almost impenetrable mysticism.

Not nature, but science is to those idealist philosophers the source of
truth. The "true idea" surpassed everything with them. This "idea" is
forced by Hegel to roll about, and wind, and twist as if it were not a
natural child, but a metaphysical dragon. But we cannot deny that in
these twistings and windings of the Hegelian dragon the condition of the
mind is exposed in all its peculiarities and nakedness.

According to Hegel's theosophical opinion I do not become aware of my
friend in material intercourse and bodily touch. Hegel's mark of a true
friend is not that he proves true in life, but that he corresponds "to
his idea." The "idea" of true friendship is for the idealist the measure
of friendly truth, just as Plato measures the ideal or true condition of
states and cooking pots of this valley of sorrows by the standard of an
"idea" of the state, or an "idea" of the cooking pot, supposed to be
derived from some other world.

It is surely a valuable gift of nature that the human mind can form its
ideals. But it is a gift that has also caused much trouble and which
requires for its higher development the clear understanding that ideals
are constructed out of real materials. Without this understanding the
human race will never succeed in making a reasonable use of its ideal
faculty. The beautiful ideal of true friendship may stimulate us to
emulation. But the knowledge that it is nothing but an ideal which in
reality is always mixed with a little falseness serves as no mean
antidote against sentimental transcendentalism. And the same holds true
of truth, liberty, justice, equality, brotherhood, etc.

The striving after an ideal is very good, but it does no harm to be
conscious of the fact and clearly see that any ideal can never be
realized without some admixture of its opposite. What is it that Lessing
says? "If God were to offer me the search for truth in his left hand,
and truth in his right, I should grasp his left hand and say: Father,
keep truth, it is for you alone."

It has not been the task of philosophy to give us a true mind picture of
the world. This it cannot do, this cannot be done by any scientific
specialty. It may be done by the totality of sciences, and even by them
only approximately. Even with them striving is a higher truth and of
higher value than knowing. I repeat, then: It is not the particular task
of philosophy to furnish a true picture of the world, but rather to
investigate the method by which the human mind arrives at its world
pictures. That is its work, and it is the object of this book to sketch
its outline.

A sketch is in itself an inexact piece of work. I may be blamed for
jumbling together such terms as world, cosmos, universe, nature, or such
others as ideas, judgment, conclusion, thought, mind, intellect, etc.,
and for using them as synonyms when many of them have already been
assigned their fixed meaning in the classification of science. But this
is the point which I emphasize, that the method of science, of thought,
has the twofold nature of making fixed terms and still remaining
pliable.

Science not only defines what this or that is, but also how it moves,
how it originates, passes away, and still remains; how it is fixed and
yet at the same time moving. The real being of which science treats,
viz., the universe, is not alone present, but also past and future, and
it is not alone this or that, but it is everything. Even nothing is
something belonging to the aggregate life.

This dialectic statement is rather incomprehensible to the
unphilosophical brain. Nothing and something are conceptions so widely
diverging from one another in the unphilosophical mind that they seem
far more apart than heavenly bliss is supposed to be separated from
earthly misery, according to the declarations of clergymen. Clergymen
are transcendental logicians, and it is likewise transcendental to
regard nothing as an absolute nothing. It cannot be denied that it is at
least a conception or a term. Therefore, whether little or much, it is
something. We cannot get out of existence, out of the universe, any more
than Münchhausen can pull himself out of a swamp by his pigtail.

There can be no absolute nothing, because the absolute is synonymous
with the universe, and everything else is relative. So it is also with
nothing. It simply has the significance of not being the main thing. To
say: This is nothing means it is not that which is essential at this
time and place. This man is nothing simply means that he is not a man
out of the ordinary, and it does not at all signify that he is nothing
at all.

The category of being and not being, like all categories,[10] which
appear as something fixed to the sound but ill-informed mind, is really
something shifting. Its poles fuse and flow into one another, its
differences are not perfectly radical. These categories give us an
illustration of the mobile universe, which is a unit composed of its
opposite, multiplicity.

The positive outcome of philosophy has for its climax the understanding
that the world is multifarious, and that this multiplicity is uniform in
possessing the universal nature in common. The sciences must represent
these objects in such a contradictory way, because all things live in
reality in this contradiction. What the museum zoologists and the
herbarium botanists have accomplished on the field of zoology and botany
in the category of space, has been accepted by the Darwinians with the
addition of the variety of those subjects in the category of time.
Either class of scientists categorizes, classifies, systematizes. The
chemists do the same with substances and forces, and so does Hegel with
his categories of being and not being, quantity and quality, substance
and attribute, thing and quality, cause and effect, etc. He makes all
things flow into one another, rise, pass, move, and he is right in doing
so. Everything moves and belongs together.

But that which Hegel missed and which is added by us consists in the
further perception that the flow and the variability of the categories
just quoted is only an illustration of the necessary variability and
interaction of all thoughts and conceptions, which are, and must be,
nothing but illustrations and reflexes of the universal life.

However, the idealist philosophers who have all of them contributed
materially toward this ultimate special knowledge, are still more or
less under the mistaken impression that the process of thinking is the
true process and the true original, and that the true original, nature
or the material universe, is only a secondary phenomenon. We now insist
on having it understood that the cosmic interaction of phenomena, the
universal living world, is the truth and life.

Is the world a concept? Is it an idea? It may be conceived and grasped
by the mind, but it does and is more than that. It surpasses our
understanding in the past, the present, and the future. It is infinite
in quantity and quality. How do we know that? We say in the same breath
that we do not know everything which is passing, has passed, and will
pass in the world; we do not understand the whole, and yet we claim to
have fully understood that this whole universe is not a mere idea, but
something absolute, something more than a conception or an intuitive
knowledge, something real and true, something infinite. How do we solve
this contradiction?

The science of the limitation of the individual and of the collective
human intellect is identical with the universal concept; in other words,
it is innate in the human intellect to know that it is a limited part of
the absolute universe. This intellectual faculty of ours is no less
natural and aboriginal than the faculty of trees to become green in
summer and that of the spiders to spread their nets. Although the
intellect is a limited part of the unlimited and aware of this fact, yet
its faculty of knowing, understanding, judging, is a universal one. No
intellect is possible or conceivable which can do more than the
instrument of thought given by nature to the human race. We may indeed
conceive of a mental giant. But when we take a closer look, every one
will perceive that this mental giant cannot get outside of the
traditional race of thinkers, unless he is supposed to be the creature
of imagination.

Thinking, knowing, understanding, are universal. I can perceive all
things in about the same way that I can see all cobble stones. I can see
them all, but I cannot see everything that they are composed of, I
cannot see, for instance, that they are heavy and ponderable. In the
same way all things may be perceived, but not everything that belongs
to them. They do not dissolve in understanding, in other words,
understanding is only a part of the universe, all of which may be
perceived, but the understanding of which is not the whole, since our
intellect is but a part of the universe.

Everything may be understood, but understanding is not everything. Every
pug-dog is a dog, but every dog is not a pug-dog. The conflict of
idealism and materialism rests on this same conflict between genus and
subordinate species. The idealist incarnate contends that all things are
ideas, while we strive to make him see that ideal things and material
things are two species of the same genus, and that they should be given
a common family or general name beside their special name, on account of
their common nature and for the purpose of a sound logic. Wherever this
understanding has been acquired, the quarrel between idealists and
materialists appears in the light of a mere bandying of words.

Everything is large, everything is small, everything extended through
space and time, everything cause and everything effect, everything a
whole and a part, because everything is the essence of everything,
because everything is contained in the all, everything related,
everything connected, everything interdependent. The conception of all
as the absolute, the content of which consists of innumerable
relativities, the concept of the all as the universal truth which
reflects many phenomena, that is the basis of the science of
understanding.

FOOTNOTES:

[9] A By means of which we picture and explain the monistic
interrelation of all things, called universe, nature and
cosmos.--EDITOR.

[10] That is, like all categories that are subdivisions of the absolute
being, of general existence, pertaining only to the phenomena or
specialties which, however, in their entirety constitute the absolute
being or monistic nature.--EDITOR.

XIII

THE EXTENT TO WHICH THE DOUBTS OF THE POSSIBILITY OF CLEAR AND ACCURATE
UNDERSTANDING HAVE BEEN OVERCOME

A contemporaneous professor of philosophy, Kuno Fischer, of Jena, says:
"The problem of modern philosophy is the understanding of things." But
this problem does not occupy modern philosophy alone; it was also
considered by ancient philosophy. Even more, it belongs to the whole
world. All the world, I mean the whole human world, and especially the
sciences, search after understanding. I do not say this for the purpose
of setting the Professor right, for I acknowledge that he is a fairly
deserving philosopher. If I cared to go through his works, I should
surely find other passages which state the problem of philosophy more
accurately and concretely, to the effect that philosophy does not strive
merely for the indefinite "understanding of things," but rather for the
special understanding of that particular thing which bears the name of
"understanding." Philosophy at the climax of its development seeks to
understand "understanding." It has seriously attempted the solution of
this problem so long as men think, so far as our historical records go.

After that which we have already said about the beginning and the end of
things and about their immortality, it will be easily understood that
the thing called understanding has no more historical beginning than all
the rest. The known grows out of the unknown, the conscious out of the
unconscious. Our modern consciousness, though agreeably cultivated, is
still an undeveloped, unconscious consciousness. Nevertheless,
development has gone far enough to make it plain that understanding is
anti-religious. Especially the understanding of understanding, the
outcome of positive philosophy, has a pronounced anti-religious, and to
that extent "destructive," tendency. But one should not have an
exaggerated idea of this destruction. Here, under this sun, nothing is
destroyed without leaving the basis for the growth of new life from the
ruins. It belongs to the conception of the universe to understand that
it is the main conception required for the conception of conception, for
the understanding of understanding.

The history of philosophy begins with the decay of heathen religion, and
the history of modern philosophy with the decay of Christian religion.
Since religion must be preserved for the people according to the
official declarations of the rulers, the official professors are not
clear and accurate expounders of the positive outcome of philosophy. No
matter how great the work of Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant, and Hegel may be,
yet the followers of Kant and Hegel have no freedom of research, and
Kuno Fischer, although very close to the root of the subject, is
nevertheless doomed to remain in the mystification of the function of
conceiving and of understanding. His profession clouds his judgment.

"Nature," says this professor, "is regarded as the first object of
understanding, as the principle from which everything else follows. In
this respect modern philosophy is naturalistic. It is taken for granted
that nature can be understood, or that the possibility of understanding
things is given. Modern philosophy makes this assumption
dogmatically.... The Kantian philosophy, on the other hand, assumes a
critical, not a dogmatic, attitude toward the possibility of
understanding." (System of Logic and Metaphysics, by Kuno Fischer,
second edition, pages 104 and 109.) In this latter, critical, stage,
the subject is kept rather hot by the professors of philosophy. The
critics are still engaged in exclaiming: Be amazed, oh world! How is
understanding possible?

In the first place, there is nothing to be amazed at. Why is not the
"naturalistic" philosopher consistent by recognizing his special object,
understanding, as a natural object?

The "supposition" that an understanding of things is possible, is
neither a supposition nor anything "dogmatic."

The philosophers should abandon their old hobby of trying to prove
anything by syllogisms. Nowadays, a case is not substantiated by words,
but by facts, by deeds. The sciences are sufficiently equipped, and thus
the "possibility of understanding" is demonstrated beyond a doubt.

"But," say the critics who are so wise that they hear the grass growing,
"are those perceptions which are produced by the exact sciences really
perceptions? Are they not simply substitutes? Those sciences recognize
only the phenomena of things; but where is the understanding which
perceives the truth?"

We shall offer it to them. You are naturalists. Well, then, nature is
the truth. Or are you spiritualists who make a metaphysical distinction
between the truth and the phenomenon? To understand means to distinguish
and judge. The semblance must be distinguished from the truth, but not
in an excessive manner. It must be remembered that even the most evil
semblance is a natural phenomenon, and the sublimest truth is only
revealed by phenomena, just because it is natural.

But the old logic cannot stand any contradictions. Semblance and truth
are contradictions for it and they cannot be reconciled by it. But the
irreconcilable simply consists in entertaining, in this monistic world,
thoughts which are supposed to be totally different. Hence old style
logic lacks entirely the mediating manner of thought which does not
elevate understanding and its faculty of thought to the skies, but is
satisfied to regard it as a very valuable, but still natural, quality.

The old logic could not construct any valid rules of thought, because it
thought too transcendentally of thinking itself. It was not satisfied
that thought is only a faculty, a mode of doing, a part of true nature,
but the nature of truth was spiritualized by it into a transcendental
being. Instead of grasping the conception of spirit with blood and
flesh, it tries to dissolve blood and flesh into ideas. That would be
well enough, if such a solution of the riddles were meant to have no
other significance than that of symbols.

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 God 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 God 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 God
concept without annoying the reader. Yet it is very essential for a
thorough understanding of the human mind to point out that the God
concept and the universe concept are analogous concepts. Not in vain
have the first minds of modern philosophy, such as Cartesius, Spinoza,
Leibniz, occupied themselves so closely with the God concept. They
invented the socalled ontological proof of the existence of God. 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 analyzed 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 God, 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 God? The Grecian gods 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 compass,
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 God 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 gods rule in heaven and imagination on earth.

To get rid of errors meant originally to lose gods 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 assumed
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 assumed
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 accumulated changes. By classifying this contradictory,
infinitely general and infinitely individual nature in groups according
to time and space, in classes, 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 space. 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 space. 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, classify, 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 classifications, 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 assurance 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 shines 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 space.

It is sometimes said that this is too much for our intellect, that we
cannot understand this. It is true that we cannot squeeze this into any
of our categories, of our fundamental conceptions, unless we place the
category of illimited and indeterminable and infinite truth at the
beginning of them. If that is not quite clear and plain, it should
serve to teach us that the category of clear and plain human
understanding is destined to recognize its function as a subordinate
factor of nature.

Such an understanding of understanding, such a higher consciousness
standing ever behind us, promotes a meek pride or a proud meekness which
is well distinguished from the mental poverty of theologians, from the
transcendental distinction between God and the world, between creator
and creature. To us the perishable soul is not a narrow-minded servant
for whom the plans of the imperishable monster soul are
incomprehensible. A philosophically educated and self-understanding mind
is a part of absolute nature. This mind is not only a limited human
mind, but the mind of the infinite eternal, omnipotent universe from
which it derived the faculty of knowing everything knowable. But when
this mind demands the ability to absolutely know everything, it demands
that knowledge should be everything, it becomes transcendental and
insolent, it misconceives the relation of science to infinity. The
latter is more than science, it is the object of science.

XV

CONCLUSION

The philosopher Herbart declares: "If the meaning of a word were
determined by the use to which it is put by this or that person, then
the term _metaphysics_ would be ambiguous and scarcely comprehensible.
If one wishes to know what meaning of this term has been handed down to
us by tradition, he should read the ancient metaphysicians and their
followers, from Aristotle to Wolff and his school. It will then be found
that the concepts of being, of its quality, of cause and effect, of
space and time, have been the objects of this science everywhere ...
that it has been attempted to analyze them logically and that this has
led to all sorts of disputes. These disputes ... determined the concept
of metaphysics."

Such a declaration is right enough to furnish, by the help of a little
criticism on our part, a sketch of the positive outcome of philosophy.

Metaphysics has always been the principal part of philosophy. In the
first sentence of his "Handbook for the Elements of Philosophy," Herbart
defines philosophy as the "analysis of ideas." According to this,
metaphysics would have to analyze the special ideas of being, etc. Now
it must be remembered that the idea of being is not so much a special
concept as the general idea which comprises all ideas and all things.
Everything belongs to being, and to understand that is too much for
metaphysics. Hence it came into difficulties. Now our authority has just
explained to us that the concept of metaphysics was not so much
determined by the work it accomplished as by disputes. It did not work,
but only made the logical attempt to analyze the concept of being. In so
doing it led to disputes and did not distinguish itself very much as a
science. The latter, Kant has told us in his preface to his "Critique of
Pure Reason," is recognized by its agreements, not by its disputes.

The metaphysical disputes were overcome by philosophic science, which is
the study of ideas or understanding, by arriving at a clear and plain
theory of understanding, the demonstration of which I have here
attempted.

The faculty of understanding had been transmitted to us by our
superstitious ancestors as a thing of another world. But the illusion of
another world is a metaphysical one and led to disputes about the idea
of being.

The positive outcome of philosophy assures us and demonstrates that
there is only one world, that this world is the essence of all being,
that there are many modes of being, but that they all belong to the same
common nature. Thus philosophy has unified the concept of being and
overcome metaphysics and its disputes.

Universal being has only one quality, the natural one of general
existence. At the same time this quality is the essence of all special
qualities. Just as the concept of herbs includes all herbs, even weeds,
so the concept of being comprises not only that which is, but also that
which is not, which was once upon a time and which will be in the
future.

To free the concept of being from its metaphysical disputes, is a very
difficult thing for those who attribute an extravagant meaning to the
first principle of logic which says: "Any subject can have only one of
two radically different predicates, because it cannot be at the same
time A and not-A."

All previous science of understanding has really revolved around this
statement. It is based on something plausible, but still more on
misunderstanding. Only when we have become aware of what has finally
been the outcome of the science of understanding, only when this
statement is backed up by the positive product of philosophy, does this
stubbornly maintained and much contested statement receive a lasting
value by its just modification.

In the first place, a "subject" is not a fixed, but a variable concept.
In the last analysis, as we have sufficiently explained in this work,
there is only one sole universal subject which is nowhere radically
different.

The first principle of the old and tried Aristotlean logic tells us that
a man, a subject, who is lame cannot move about with alacrity. But I
have a friend who was totally lame and who today jumps about briskly;
there is no contradiction in this. But if I tell another man about my
lame friend and in the course of my story have this lame subject all of
a sudden jumping over chairs and tables, then such a thing is
_inconceivable_ and I contradict myself. Such a contradiction is a
violation of all logic, but not because agility and lameness are totally
different predicates which cannot be attributed to the same subject, nor
because the contradiction cannot exist. Being is full of contradictions,
but they are not simultaneous or without mediation. A logical speech or
story must not forget to mediate. By mediation, all contradictions are
solved. And this is the outcome of philosophy.

In discordant metaphysics, being and not being are irreconcilable and
mutually exclusive contradictions. Metaphysics is in doubt whether this
common existence is real or only apparent, or whether there is not
somewhere in a heaven above the clouds an entirely different life. But
philosophy is now fully aware that even the most fictitious being is so
positively real that any negation which appearances may attribute to it
is outclassed by affirmation to the utter discomfiture of the former.
Being and its affirmation is absolute, negation and not being are only
relative. Being is everywhere and always dominant, so that there is no
non-existence. Though we may say that this or that is nothing, yet we
must remain conscious that anything we may call nothing is still
something very positive. There cannot be any ignorance which does not at
least know a little. There is no evil which cannot be transformed into
good. The things that have been, will be, and are, all of them are.
There is no non-existence. It is at least a word, though it does not
convey any meaning. The world and our language are of so positive a
character that even a meaningless word still means something. Nothing
cannot be expressed.

The superstition of another "true" world which floats above this world
of phenomena or is secretly hidden behind it has so vitiated logic that
it is now difficult to remove the discordant metaphysical "concept of
being" from the human mind. The belief in something absolutely different
will not easily disappear. It is especially difficult to demonstrate
that conceived things are of the same nature as real things, that both
of them really belong to true nature.

Conceived things are pictures, real pictures, pictures of reality. All
the limbs of an imaginary dragon are copied from nature. Such creations
of imagination are distinguished from truths only by their fanciful
composition. To connect nature and human life according to the given
order, that is the whole function of understanding. Knowing, thinking,
understanding, explaining, has not, and cannot have, any other function
but that of describing the processes of experience by division or
classification. The famous scientist Haeckel may call this
contemptuously "museum zoology" and "herbarium botany," but he simply
shows that he has not grasped the secret of the intellect, but still
wonders at it in a metaphysical way, the same as his predecessors.

What Darwin ascertained about the "origin of species" and about the
transitions and evolutions in organic life is a very valuable expansion
of museum zoology. Whoever expects anything else from the nature of
intellectual faculties, shows that he is not familiar with the outcome
of philosophy, that he has not emancipated himself from the vain
wondering and its accompanying edification, which the wonder of human
intelligence caused to primitive ignorance.

Understanding has hitherto been in error about itself and was,
therefore, inadequately equipped for the task of giving a true account
of its relatives, of the phenomena of nature and life. Nevertheless it
has acquired training in the course of culture and has progressively
accomplished better things. Its errors have never been valueless, and
its truths will never be sufficient. That this is so, is not due to the
defective condition of our intelligence, but to the inexhaustibleness of
being, the indescribable wealth of nature.

The self-conscious, philosophically trained understanding and
intelligence has now the means of knowing that the accuracy of all
investigation is limited, that for this reason all its future results
will be affected by error. But a science which is backed up by such an
enlightened understanding, is reconciled to its limitations and
transforms them into a hall of glory. Self-conscious limitation is aware
of its partnership in the absolute perfection of the universe.

The self-conscious intellect improved by the positive product of
philosophy knows that it can understand, describe, the whole world in a
natural, sensible way. There is nothing that can resist it. But in the
sense of a transcendental metaphysics, our understanding is not worthy
of that name. In return, this metaphysics is pure vagary in the eyes of
critical reason.

Taking its departure from fantastical ideals, from contradictions,
especially between being and not being, metaphysics has gradually
transformed itself in the course of civilization and become philosophy,
which in its turn has progressed step by step the same as all other
science.

Philosophy was at first impelled by the nebulous desire for universal
world wisdom and has finally assumed the form of a lucid special
investigation of the theory of understanding.

This theory is part, and the most essential part at that, of psychology
or the science of the soul. Modern psychologists have at least divined,
if not recognized, that the human soul is not a metaphysical thing, but
a phenomenon. Like Professor Haeckel, they also complain about the dead
classification in their specialty. The human soul is presented to them
as a multitude of _faculties_. There is the faculty of understanding, of
feeling, of perceiving, etc., without number and end. But how is life
infused into them? Where is the consistent connection?

There is, for instance, the conception and feeling of beauty in the
human soul. The beautiful again is divided into the artistically
beautiful and the ethically beautiful, and each of these into other
subdivisions. There is beside the beautiful also the pretty, the
charming, the graceful, the dignified, the noble, the solemn, the
splendid, the pathetic, the touching. Psychology also treats of the
ridiculous, of the joke, the wit, the satire, the irony, the humor, of a
thousand subtleties and distinctions, the ideological separation of
which it attempts just as do botany, zoology, and every other science in
their field.

To all of them, being is the object of study. What is the use of
metaphysics under these circumstances? Only because it had in mind a
different being, a transcendental one, could it induce Kant to sum up
all his studies in the question: How is metaphysics possible as a
science?

It is the merit of philosophy to have demonstrated that metaphysics is
possible only as fantastical speculation.

It is the business of metaphysics to treat being transcendentally. It is
the business of special sciences to classify being after the manner of
herbarium botany. Classical order is already present in the vegetable
kingdom, otherwise no specialist in botany could classify it.

But the objective arrangement of the vegetable kingdom in infinitely
more multiform than the subjective arrangement of botany. The latter is
always excellent, if it corresponds to the scientific progress of its
period. Whoever is looking for absolute botany or psychology, or for any
other absolute science, misunderstands the universally natural character
of the absolute as well as the relative special character of the human
faculty of understanding.

Philosophy familiar with its historical achievement understands being as
the infinite material of life and science which is taken up by the
special sciences and classified by them. It teaches the specialists to
remember throughout all their classifications according to departments
and concepts that all specialties are connected by life and not so
separated in life as they are in science, but that they are flowing and
passing into one another.

Thus our science of understanding finally culminates in the rule: Thou
shalt sharply divide and subdivide and farther subdivide to the utmost
the universal concept, the concept of the universe, but thou shalt be
backed up by the consciousness that this mental classification is a
formality by which man seeks for the sake of his information to register
and to place his experience; thou shalt furthermore remain aware of thy
liberty to progressively improve the experience acquired by thyself in
the course of time, by modifying thy classification.

Things are ideas, ideas are names, and things, ideas, and names are
subject to continuous perfection.

Stable motion and mobile stability constitute the reconciling
contradiction which enables us to reconcile all contradictions.

THE END