likewise invented already by Parmenides, although not yet so clearly
applied as by his disciple Zeno is the idea of the Infinite. Nothing
Infinite can exist; for from such an assumption the contradictory
idea of a perfect Infinitude would result. Since now our actuality,
our existing world everywhere shows the character of that perfect
Infinitude, our world signifies in its nature a contradiction against
logic and therewith also against reality and is deception, lie,
fantasma. Zeno especially applied the method of indirect proof; he
said for example, "There can be no motion from one place to another;
for if there were such a motion, then an Infinitude would be given as
perfect, this however is an impossibility." Achilles cannot catch up
the tortoise which has a small start in a race, for in order to reach
only the point from which the tortoise began, he would have had to run
through innumerable, infinitely many spaces, viz., first half of that
space, then the fourth, then the sixteenth, and so on _ad infinitum._
If he does in fact overtake the tortoise then this is an illogical
phenomenon, and therefore at any rate not a truth, not a reality, not
real "Being," but only a delusion. For it is never possible to finish
the infinite. Another popular expression of this doctrine is the
flying and yet resting arrow. At any instant of its flight it has a
position; in this position it rests. Now would the sum of the infinite
positions of rest be identical with motion? Would now the Resting,
infinitely often repeated, be Motion, therefore its own opposite?
The Infinite is here used as the _aqua fortis_ of reality, through
it the latter is dissolved. If however the Ideas are fixed, eternal
and entitative--and for Parmenides "Being" and Thinking coincide--if
therefore the Infinite can never be perfect, if Rest can never become
Motion, then in fact the arrow has not flown at all; it never left its
place and resting position; no moment of time has passed. Or expressed
in another way: in this so-called yet only alleged Actuality there
exists neither time, nor space, nor motion. Finally the arrow itself is
only an illusion; for it originates out of the Plurality, out of the
phantasmagoria of the "Non-One" produced by the senses. Suppose the
arrow had a "Being," then it would be immovable, timeless, increate,
rigid and eternal--an impossible conception! Supposing that Motion was
truly real, then there would be no rest, therefore no position for the
arrow, therefore no space--an impossible conception! Supposing that
time were real, then it could not be of an infinite divisibility; the
time which the arrow needed, would have to consist of a limited number
of time-moments, each of these moments would have to be an _Atomon_--an
impossible conception! All our conceptions, as soon as their
empirically-given content, drawn out of this concrete world, is taken
as a _Veritas æterna,_ lead to contradictions. If there is absolute
motion, then there is no space; if there is absolute space then there
is no motion; if there is absolute "Being," then there is no Plurality;
if there is an absolute Plurality, then there is no Unity. It should
at least become clear to _us_ how little we touch the heart of things
or untie the knot of reality with such ideas, whereas Parmenides and
Zeno inversely hold fast to the truth and omnivalidity of ideas and
condemn the perceptible world as the opposite of the true and omnivalid
ideas, as an objectivation of the illogical and contradictory. With all
their proofs they start from the wholly undemonstrable, yea improbable
assumption that in that apprehensive faculty we possess the decisive,
highest criterion of "Being" and "Not-Being," _i.e.,_ of objective
reality and its opposite; those ideas are not to prove themselves
true, to correct themselves by Actuality, as they are after all really
derived from it, but on the contrary they are to measure and to judge
Actuality, and in case of a contradiction with logic, even to condemn.
In order to concede to them this judicial competence Parmenides had to
ascribe to them the same "Being," which alone he allowed in general
as _the_ "Being"; Thinking and that one increate perfect ball of the
"Existent" were now no longer to be conceived as two different kinds
of "Being," since there was not permitted a duality of "Being." Thus
the over-risky flash of fancy had become necessary to declare Thinking
and "Being" identical. No form of perceptibility, no symbol, no simile
could possibly be of any help here; the fancy was wholly inconceivable,
but it was necessary, yea in the lack of every possibility of
illustration it celebrated the highest triumph over the world and
the claims of the senses. Thinking and that clod-like, ball-shaped,
through-and-through dead-massive, and rigid-immovable "Being," must,
according to the Parmenidean imperative, dissolve into one another and
be the same in every respect, to the horror of fantasy. What does it
matter that this identity contradicts the senses! This contradiction
is just the guarantee that such an identity is not borrowed from the
senses.
13
Moreover against Parmenides could be produced a strong couple of
_argumenta ad hominem_ or _ex concessis,_ by which, it is true, truth
itself could not be brought to light, but at any rate the untruth of
that absolute separation of the world of the senses and the world of
the ideas, and the untruth of the identity of "Being" and Thinking
could be demonstrated. Firstly, if the Thinking of Reason in ideas is
real, then also Plurality and Motion must have reality, for rational
Thinking is mobile; and more precisely, it is a motion from idea to
idea, therefore within a plurality of realities. There is no subterfuge
against that; it is quite impossible to designate Thinking as a rigid
Permanence, as an eternally immobile, intellectual Introspection of
Unity. Secondly, if only fraud and illusion come from the senses,
and if in reality there exists only the real identity of "Being" and
Thinking, what then are the senses themselves? They too are certainly
Appearance only since they do not coincide with the Thinking, and
their product, the world of senses, does not coincide with "Being."
If however the senses themselves are Appearance to whom then are
they Appearance? How can they, being unreal, still deceive? The
"Non-Existent" cannot even deceive. Therefore the Whence? of deception
and Appearance remains an enigma, yea, a contradiction. We call these
_argumenta ad hominem:_ The Objection Of The Mobile Reason and that
of The Origin Of Appearance. From the first would result the reality
of Motion and of Plurality, from the second the impossibility of the
Parmenidean Appearance, assuming that the chief-doctrine of Parmenides
on the "Being" were accepted as true. This chief-doctrine however only
says: The "Existent" only has a "Being," the "Non-Existent" does not
exist. If Motion however has such a "Being," then to Motion applies
what applies to the "Existent" in general: it is increate, eternal,
indestructible, without increase or decrease. But if the "Appearance"
is denied and a belief in it made untenable, by means of that question
as to the Whence? of the "Appearance," if the stage of the so-called
Becoming, of change, our many-shaped, restless, coloured and rich
Existence is protected from the Parmenidean rejection, then it is
necessary to characterise this world of change and alteration as a
_sum_ of such really existing Essentials, existing simultaneously
into all eternity. Of a change in the strict sense, of a Becoming
there cannot naturally be any question even with this assumption. But
now Plurality has a real "Being," all qualities have a real "Being"
and motion not less; and of any moment of this world--although these
moments chosen at random lie at a distance of millenniums from one
another--it would have to be possible to say: all real Essentials
extant in this world are without exception co-existent, unaltered,
undiminished, without increase, without decrease. A millennium later
the world is exactly the same. Nothing has altered. If in spite of
that the appearance of the world at the one time is quite different
from that at the other time, then that is no deception, nothing merely
apparent, but the effect of eternal motion. The real "Existent" is
moved sometimes thus, sometimes thus: together, asunder, upwards,
downwards, into one another, pell-mell.
14
With this conception we have already taken a step into the realm
of the doctrine of _Anaxagoras._ By him both objections against
Parmenides are raised in full strength; that of the mobile Thinking
and that of the Whence? of "Appearance"; but in the chief proposition
Parmenides has subjugated him as well as all the younger philosophers
and nature-explorers. They all deny the possibility of Becoming and
Passing, as the mind of the people conceives them and as Anaximander
and Heraclitus had assumed with greater circumspection and yet still
heedlessly. Such a mythological Originating out of the Nothing, such
a Disappearing into the Nothing, such an arbitrary Changing of the
Nothing into the Something, such a random exchanging, putting on and
putting off of the qualities was henceforth considered senseless; but
so was, and for the same reasons, an originating of the Many out of the
One, of the manifold qualities out of the one primal-quality, in short
the derivation of the world out of a primary substance, as argued by
Thales and Heraclitus. Rather was now the real problem advanced of
applying the doctrine of increate imperishable "Being" to this existing
world, without taking one's refuge in the theory of appearance and
deception. But if the empiric world is not to be Appearance, if the
things are not to be derived out of Nothing and just as little out of
the one Something, then these things must contain in themselves a real
"Being," their matter and content must be unconditionally real, and
all change can refer only to the form, _i.e.,_ to the position, order,
grouping, mixing, separation of these eternally co-existing Essentials.
It is just as in a game of dice; they are ever the same dice; but
falling sometimes thus, sometimes thus, they mean to us something
different. All older theories had gone back to a primal element, as
womb and cause of Becoming, be this water, air, fire or the Indefinite
of Anaximander. Against that Anaxagoras now asserts that out of the
Equal the Unequal could never come forth, and that out of the one
"Existent" the change could never be explained. Whether now one were
to imagine that assumed matter to be rarefied or condensed, one would
never succeed by such a condensation or rarefaction in explaining the
problem one would like to explain: the plurality of qualities. But if
the world in fact is full of the most different qualities then these
must, in case they are not appearance, have a "Being," _i.e.,_ must
be eternal, increate, imperishable and ever co-existing. Appearance,
however, they cannot be, since the question as to the Whence? of
Appearance remains unanswered, yea answers itself in the negative! The
earlier seekers after Truth had intended to simplify the problem of
Becoming by advancing only one substance, which bore in its bosom the
possibilities of all Becoming; now on the contrary it is asserted:
there are innumerable substances, but never more, never less, and never
new ones. Only Motion, playing dice with them throws them into ever
new combinations. That Motion however is a truth and not Appearance,
Anaxagoras proved in opposition to Parmenides by the indisputable
succession of our conceptions in thinking. We have therefore in the
most direct fashion the insight into the truth of motion and succession
in the fact that we think and have conceptions. Therefore at any rate
the _one_ rigid, resting, dead "Being" of Parmenides has been removed
out of the way, there are many "Existents" just as surely as all
these many "Existents" (existing things, substances) are in motion.
Change is motion--but whence originates motion? Does this motion leave
perhaps wholly untouched the proper essence of those many independent,
isolated substances, and, according to the most severe idea of the
"Existent," _must_ not motion in itself be foreign to them? Or does
it after all belong to the things themselves? We stand here at an
important decision; according to which way we turn, we shall step into
the realm either of Anaxagoras or of Empedocles or of Democritus. The
delicate question must be raised: if there are many substances, and if
these many move, what moves them? Do they move one another? Or is it
perhaps only gravitation? Or are there magic forces of attraction and
repulsion within the things themselves? Or does the cause of motion
lie outside these many real substances? Or putting the question
more pointedly: if two things show a succession, a mutual change of
position, does that originate from themselves? And is this to be
explained mechanically or magically? Or if this should not be the case
is it a third something which moves them? It is a sorry problem, for
Parmenides would still have been able to prove against Anaxagoras the
impossibility of motion, even granted that there are many substances.
For he could say: Take two Substances existing of themselves, each with
quite differently fashioned, autonomous, unconditioned "Being"--and
of such kind are the Anaxagorean substances--they can never clash
together, never move, never attract one another, there exists between
them no causality, no bridge, they do not come into contact with one
another, do not disturb one another, they do not interest one another,
they are utterly indifferent. The impact then is just as inexplicable
as the magic attraction: that which is utterly foreign cannot exercise
any effect upon another, therefore cannot move itself nor allow
itself to be moved. Parmenides would even have added: the only way of
escape which is left to you is this, to ascribe motion to the things
themselves; then however all that you know and see as motion is indeed
only a deception and not true motion, for the only kind of motion which
could belong to those absolutely original substances, would be merely
an autogenous motion limited to themselves without any effect. But
you _assume_ motion in order to explain those effects of change, of
the disarrangement in space, of alteration, in short the causalities
and relations of the things among themselves. But these very effects
would not be explained and would remain as problematic as ever; for
this reason one cannot conceive why it should be necessary to assume a
motion since it does not perform that which you demand from it. Motion
does not belong to the nature of things and is eternally foreign to
them.
Those opponents of the Eleatean unmoved Unity were induced to make
light of such an argument by prejudices of a perceptual character. It
seems so irrefutable that each veritable "Existent" is a space-filling
body, a lump of matter, large or small but in any case spacially
dimensioned; so that two or more such lumps cannot be in one space.
Under this hypothesis Anaxagoras, as later on Democritus, assumed that
they must knock against each other; if in their motions they came by
chance upon one another, that they would dispute the same space with
each other, and that this struggle was the very cause of all Change.
In other words: those wholly isolated, thoroughly heterogeneous and
eternally unalterable substances were after all not conceived as
being absolutely heterogeneous but all had in addition to a specific,
wholly peculiar quality, also one absolutely homogeneous substratum: a
piece of space-filling matter. In their participation in matter they
all stood equal and therefore could act upon one another, _i.e.,_
knock one another. Moreover all Change did not in the least depend on
the heterogeneity of those substances but on their homogeneity, as
matter. At the bottom of the assumption of Anaxagoras is a logical
oversight; for that which is _the_ "Existent-In-Itself" must be wholly
unconditional and coherent, is therefore not allowed to assume as its
cause anything,--whereas all those Anaxagorean substances have still
a conditioning Something: matter, and already assume its existence;
the substance "Red" for example was to Anaxagoras not just merely red
in itself but also in a reserved or suppressed way a piece of matter
without any qualities. Only with this matter the "Red-In-Itself" acted
upon other substances, not with the "Red," but with that which is
not red, not coloured, nor in any way qualitatively definite. If the
"Red" had been taken strictly as "Red," as the real substance itself,
therefore without that substratum, then Anaxagoras would certainly not
have dared to speak of an effect of the "Red" upon other substances,
perhaps even with the phrase that the "Red-In-Itself" was transmitting
the impact received from the "Fleshy-In-Itself." Then it would be clear
that such an "Existent" _par excellence_ could never be moved.
15
One has to glance at the opponents of the Eleates, in order to
appreciate the extraordinary advantages in the assumption of
Parmenides. What embarrassments,--from which Parmenides had
escaped,--awaited Anaxagoras and all who believed in a plurality of
substances, with the question, How many substances? Anaxagoras made the
leap, closed his eyes and said, "Infinitely many"; thus he had flown
at least beyond the incredibly laborious proof of a definite number
of elementary substances. Since these "Infinitely Many" had to exist
without increase and unaltered for eternities, in that assumption was
given the contradiction of an infinity to be conceived as completed
and perfect. In short, Plurality, Motion, Infinity driven into flight
by Parmenides with the amazing proposition of the one "Being," returned
from their exile and hurled their projectiles at the opponents of
Parmenides, causing them wounds for which there is no cure. Obviously
those opponents have no real consciousness and knowledge as to the
awful force of those Eleatean thoughts, "There can be no time, no
motion, no space; for all these we can only think of as infinite,
and to be more explicit, firstly infinitely large, then infinitely
divisible; but everything infinite has no 'Being,' does not exist," and
this nobody doubts, who takes the meaning of the word "Being" severely
and considers the existence of something contradictory impossible,
_e.g.,_ the existence of a completed infinity. If however the very
Actuality shows us everything under the form of the completed infinity
then it becomes evident that it contradicts itself and therefore has no
true reality. If those opponents however should object: "but in your
thinking itself there does exist succession, therefore neither could
your thinking be real and consequently could not prove anything," then
Parmenides perhaps like Kant in a similar case of an equal objection
would have answered: "I can, it is true, say my conceptions follow upon
one another, but that means only that we are not conscious of them
unless within a chronological order, _i.e.,_ according to the form of
the inner sense. For that reason time is not a something in itself
nor any order or quality objectively adherent to things." We should
therefore have to distinguish between the Pure Thinking, that would
be timeless like the one Parmenidean "Being," and the consciousness
of this thinking, and the latter would already translate the thinking
into the form of appearance, _i.e.,_ of succession, plurality and
motion. It is probable that Parmenides would have availed himself
of this loophole; however, the same objection would then have to be
raised against him which is raised against Kant by A. Spir ("Thinking
And Reality," 2nd ed., vol. i., pp. 209, &c). "Now, in the first place
however it is clear, that I cannot know anything of a succession as
such, unless I have the successive members of the same simultaneously
in my consciousness. Thus the conception of a succession itself is
not at all successive, hence also quite different from the succession
of our conceptions. Secondly Kant's assumption implies such obvious
absurdities that one is surprised that he could leave them unnoticed.
Cæsar and Socrates according to this assumption are not really dead,
they still live exactly as they did two thousand years ago and only
seem to be dead, as a consequence of an organisation of my inner
sense." Future men already live and if they do not now step forward as
living that organisation of the "inner sense" is likewise the cause
of it. Here above all other things the question is to be put: How can
the beginning and the end of conscious life itself, together with
all its internal and external senses, exist merely in the conception
of the inner sense? _The_ fact is indeed this, that one certainly
cannot deny the reality of Change. If it is thrown out through the
window it slips in again through the keyhole. If one says: "It merely
seems to me, that conditions and conceptions change,"--then this very
semblance and appearance itself is something objectively existing and
within it without doubt the succession has objective reality, some
things in it really do succeed one another.--Besides one must observe
that indeed the whole critique of reason only has cause and right of
existence under the assumption that to us our _conceptions_ themselves
appear exactly as they are. For if the conceptions also appeared to us
otherwise than they really are, then one would not be able to advance
any solid proposition about them, and therefore would not be able to
accomplish any gnosiology or any "transcendental" investigation of
objective validity. Now it remains however beyond all doubt that our
conceptions themselves appear to us as successive."