INTRODUCTION

Systematization is the essence and the general expression of the

aggregate activity of science. Science seeks to classify and systematize

the objects of the world for the understanding of our brain. The

scientific understanding of a certain language, e. g., requires an

orderly arrangement of that language in general categories and rules.

The science of agriculture does not simply wish to produce a good crop

of potatoes, but to find a system for the methods of cultivation and

thus to furnish the knowledge by which success in cultivation can be

determined beforehand. The practical result of all theory is to acquaint

us with the system and method of its practice and thus to enable us to

act in this world with a reasonable certainty of success. Experience is,

of course, an indispensable condition for this purpose; but it alone is

not sufficient. Only by means of empirically developed theories, by

science, do we overcome the play of accident. Science gives us the

conscious domination over things and unconditional security in handling

them.

No one individual can know everything. The capacity of the individual

brain is no more adequate for the knowledge of everything that is

necessary than the skill and strength of the individual's hands are

sufficient to produce all he needs. Faith is indispensable to man, but

only faith in that which others know, not in what they believe. Science

is as much a social matter as material production. "One for all and all

for one."

But just as there are some wants of the body which every one has to

satisfy by himself, so every one has to know certain scientific facts

which are not the prerogative of any special science.

This is true of the faculty of human understanding. The knowledge and

study of this theory cannot be left to any particular guild. Lassalle

justly says: "Thinking itself has become a special trade in these days

of division of labor, and it has fallen into the worst hands, those of

our newspaper writers." He thus urges us not to acquiesce in this

appropriation any longer, not to submit any more to the harangues of

public opinion, but to resume thinking for ourselves. We may leave

certain objects of scientific research to professionals, but general

thought is a public matter which every one should be required to attend

to himself.

If we could place this general work of thinking on a scientific basis,

if we could find a theory of general thought, if we were able to

discover the means by which reason arrives at understanding, if we could

develop a method by which truth is produced scientifically, then we

should acquire for science in general and for our individual faculty of

judgment the same certainty of success which we already possess in

special fields of science.

Kant says: "If it is not possible to harmonize the various co-operators

on the question of the means by which their common aim is to be

accomplished, then we may safely infer that such a study is not yet on

the secure road of science, but will continue to grope in the dark."

Now, if we take a look at the sciences, we find that there are many,

especially among the natural sciences, which fulfill the requirements of

Kant, agreeing unanimously and consciously on certain empirical

knowledge and building further understanding on that. "There we know,"

as Liebig says, "what is to be called a certain fact, a conclusion, a

rule, a law. We have touchstones for all this, and every one makes use

of them before making known the fruits of his labors. The attempt to

maintain any proposition by lawyer's tricks, or the intention to make

others believe anything that cannot be proven, are immediately wrecked

by the ethics of science."

Not so in other fields, where concrete and material things are left

behind and abstract, so-called philosophical, matters are taken up, as,

for instance, questions of general conceptions of the world and of life,

of beginning and end, of the semblance and the essence of things, of

cause and effect, of matter and force, of might and right, of wisdom of

life, of morality, religion, and politics. Here we find, instead of

irrefutable proofs, mere "lawyer's tricks," an absence of reliable

knowledge, a mere groping amid contradictory opinions.

And it is precisely the prominent authorities of natural science who

show by their disagreements on such matters that they are mere tyros in

philosophy. It follows, then, that the socalled ethics of science, the

touchstones of which the boast is made that they never fail in

determining what is knowledge and what is mere conjecture, are based on

a purely instinctive practice, not on a conscious theory of

understanding. Although our time excels in diligent scientific research,

yet the numerous differences among scientists show that they are not

capable of using their knowledge with a predetermined certainty of

success. Otherwise, how could misunderstandings arise? Whoever

understands understanding, cannot misunderstand. It is only the absolute

accuracy of astronomical computations which entitles astronomy to the

name of a science. A man who can figure is at least enabled to test

whether his computation is right or wrong. In the same way, the general

understanding of the process of thought must furnish us with the

touchstone by which we can distinguish between understanding and

misunderstanding, knowledge and conjecture, truth and error, by general

and irrefutable rules. Erring is human, but not scientific. Science

being a human matter, errors may exist eternally, but the understanding

of the process of thought will enable us quite as well to prevent errors

from being offered and accepted as scientific truths as an understanding

of mathematics enables us to eliminate errors from our computations.

It sounds paradoxical and yet it is true: Whoever knows the general rule

by which error may be distinguished from truth, and knows it as well as

the rule in grammar by which a noun is distinguished from a verb, will

be able to distinguish in both cases with equal certainty. Scientists as

well as scribes have ever embarrassed one another by the question: What

is truth? This question has been an essential object of philosophy for

thousands of years. This question, like philosophy itself, is finally

settled by the understanding of the faculty of human thought. In other

words, the question of what constitutes truth is identical with the

question of the distinction between truth and error. Philosophy is the

science which has been engaged in solving this riddle, and the final

solution of the riddle by the clear understanding of the process of

thought also solves the question of the nature of philosophy. Hence a

short glance at the nature and development of philosophy may well serve

as an introduction to our study.

As the word philosophy is connected with various meanings, I state at

the outset that I am referring only to socalled speculative philosophy.

I dispense with frequent quotations and notes of the sources of my

knowledge, as anything that I may say in this respect is so well

established that we can afford to discard all scientific by-work.

If we apply the above-named test of Kant to speculative philosophy it

appears to be more the playground of different opinions than of science.

The philosophical celebrities and classic authorities are not even in

accord on the question: What is philosophy and what is its aim? For this

reason, and in order not to increase the difference by adding my own

opinion, I regard everything as philosophy that calls itself by that

name, and we select from the voluminous literature of philosophy that

which is common and general in all philosophers, without taking any

notice of their special peculiarities.

By this empirical method we find first of all that philosophy is

originally not a specialized science working with other sciences, but a

generic name for all knowledge, the essence of all science, just as art

is the essence of the various arts. Whoever made knowledge, whoever made

brain work his essential occupation, every thinker without regard to the

contents of his thoughts, was originally a philosopher.

But when with the progressive increase of human knowledge, the various

departments detached themselves from the mother of all wisdom,

especially since the origin of natural sciences, philosophy became

known, not so much by its content as by its form. All other sciences are

distinguished by their various objects, while philosophy is marked by

its own method. Of course, it also has its object and purpose. It

desires to understand the universal whole, the cosmos. But it is not

this object, this aim, by which philosophy is characterized; it is

rather the manner in which this object is accomplished.

All other sciences occupy themselves with special things, and if they

consider the universe at all, they do so only in its bearing on the

special objects of their study, the parts of which the universe is

composed. Alexander von Humboldt says in his introduction to his

"Cosmos" that he is limiting himself to an empirical consideration, to a

physical research, which seeks to elucidate the uniformity and unity by

means of the great variety. And all inductive sciences arrive at general

conclusions and conceptions only by way of their occupation with special

and concrete things. For this reason they claim that their conclusions

are based on facts.

Speculative philosophy proceeds by the opposite method. Thought, the

object of its study, may be some special question, yet it does not

follow this up in the concrete. It rejects as fallacious the evidence of

the senses, the physical experience gained by means of the eye and ear,

hand and brain, and limits itself to "pure" and absolutely abstract

thought, in order to understand thus by the unit of human reason the

multiplicity of the universe. In seeking for an answer to the question:

What is philosophy? which question we are specially discussing just now,

speculative philosophy would not start out from its actual material

form, from its wooden and pigskin volumes, from its great and small

essays, in order to arrive at a conception of its object. On the

contrary, the speculative philosopher turns to introspection and looks

in the depths of his own mind for the true concept of philosophy. And by

this standard he separates the impression of his senses into true or

erroneous. This speculative method has hardly ever dealt in tangible

things, unless we recognize this philosophical method in every

unscientific concept of nature which populated the world with spooks.

The rudiments of scientific speculation occasionally dealt with the

course of the sun and the globe. But since inductive astronomy

cultivates these fields with greater success, speculative philosophy

limits itself entirely to abstract discussions. And in this line of

research as well as in all others it is characterized by the production

of its results out of the idea or the concept.

For empirical science, for the inductive method, the multiplicity of

experiences is the first basis, and thought the second. Speculative

philosophy, on the other hand, seeks to arrive at scientific truth

without the help of experience. It rejects the socalled transient facts

as a foundation of philosophical understanding, and declares that it

should be absolute, exalted above time and space. Speculative philosophy

does not wish to be scientific physics, but metaphysics. It regards it

as its task to find by "pure" reason, and without the assistance of

experience, a system, a logic, or a theory of science, by which

everything worth knowing is supposed to be reeled off logically and

systematically, in about the same way in which we derive grammatically

the various forms of a word from its root. But the physical sciences

operate on the assumption that our faculty of understanding, to use a

familiar illustration, resembles a piece of soft wax which receives

impressions from outside, or a clean slate on which experience writes

its lines. Speculative philosophy, on the other hand, assumes that

certain ideas are innate and may be dipped and produced from the depths

of the mind by means of thought.

The difference between speculative and inductive science is that between

fantasy and sound common sense. The latter produces its ideas by means

of the outer world, by the help of experience, while fantasy gets its

product from the depth of the mind, out of itself. But this method of

production is only seemingly one-sided. A thinker can no more think

transcendental thoughts which are beyond the reach of experience, than a

painter can invent transcendental pictures, transcendental forms. Just

as fantasy creates angels by a combination of man and bird, or mermaids

by a composition of woman and fish, so all other products of fantasy,

though seemingly derived out of itself, are in fact only arbitrarily

arranged impressions of the outer world. Reason operates with numbers

and orders, time and measures, and other means of experience, while

fantasy reproduces the experiences without regard to law and in an

arbitrary form.

The longing for knowledge has been the cause of speculative attempts to

explain the phenomena of life and nature at a time when lack of

experience and observation made inductive understanding impossible.

Experience was then supplemented by speculation. In later times, when

experience had grown, previous speculation was generally recognized as

erroneous. But it nevertheless required thousands of years of repeated

disappointments on one side and numerous brilliant successes of the

inductive method on the other, before these speculative hobbies came

into disfavor.

Fantasy has certainly a positive power, and speculative intuition,

derived from analogy, very often precedes empirical and inductive

understanding. But we must remain aware of the fact that so much is

assumption and so much actual scientific knowledge. Conscious intuition

stimulates scientific research, while pseudo-science closes the door to

inductive research. The acquisition of the clear understanding of the

distinction between speculation and knowledge is a historical process,

the beginning and end of which coincides with the beginning and end of

speculative philosophy.

In ancient times, common sense operated in common with fantasy, the

inductive with the speculative method. The discussion of their

differences begins only with the understanding of the numerous

disappointments caused by the still inexperienced judgment which have

prevented an unobstructed view of the question up to modern times. But

instead of attributing these disappointments to lack of understanding,

they were charged to the account of the imperfection of the senses. The

senses were called impostors and material phenomena untrue images. Who

has not heard the lament about the unreliability of the senses? The

misunderstanding of nature and of its phenomena led to a serious rupture

with sense perceptions. The philosophers had deceived themselves and

thought they had been deceived by the senses. In their anger they turned

disdainfully away from the world of sensations. With the same uncritical

faith with which the semblance had hitherto been accepted as truth, now

uncritical doubt rejected the truth of sensations altogether. Research

abandoned nature and experience, and began the work of speculative

philosophy by "pure" thought.

But no! Science did not permit itself to be entirely led astray from the

path of common sense, from the way of truth of sense perceptions.

Natural science soon stepped into the breach, and its brilliant

successes gained for the inductive method the consciousness of its

fertility, while on the other hand philosophy searched for a system by

which all the great general truths might be opened up without

specialized study, without sense perception and observation, by mere

reason alone.

Now we have a more than sufficient quantity of such speculative systems.

If we measure them with the aforementioned standard of unanimousness, we

find that philosophy agrees only on its disagreements. In consequence,

the history of speculative philosophy, unlike the history of other

sciences, consists less of a gradual accumulation of knowledge, than of

a series of unsuccessful attempts to solve the general riddles of nature

and life by "pure" thought, without the help of the objects and

experience of the outer world. The most daring attempt in this line, the

most artificial structure of thought, was completed by Hegel in the

beginning of the nineteenth century. To use a common expression, he

became as famous in the world of science as Napoleon I did in the world

of politics. But Hegelian philosophy has not stood the test of time.

Haym, in his work entitled "Hegel and His Time," says of Hegelian

philosophy that "it was pushed aside by the progress of the world and by

living history."

The outcome of philosophy up to that time, then, was a declaration of

its own impotence. Nevertheless, we do not underestimate the fact that a

work occupying the best brains for thousands of years surely contained

some positive element. And in fact, speculative philosophy has a

history, which is not merely a series of unsuccessful attempts, but also

a living development. However, it is less the object of its study, less

the logical world system, which developed, than its method.

Every positive science has a material object, a beginning in the outer

world, a premise on which its understanding is based. Every empirical

science has for its fundament some material of the senses, some given

object, on which its understanding is dependent, and thus it becomes

"impure." Speculative philosophy seeks a "pure, absolute,"

understanding. It wishes to understand by "pure" reason, without any

material, without any experience. It takes its departure from the

enthusiastic conviction of the superiority of understanding and

knowledge over experience gained by sense perceptions. For this reason

it wishes to leave experience entirely aside in favor of absolutely

"pure" understanding. Its object is truth; not concrete truth, not the

truth of this or that thing, but truth in general, truth "in itself."

The speculative systems seek after an absolute beginning, an indubitably

self-supporting starting point, from which they may determine the

absolutely indubitable. The speculative systems are thus by their own

mentality perfectly complete and selfsufficient systems. Every

speculative system found its end in the subsequent knowledge that its

totality, its selfsufficiency, its absoluteness, was imaginary, that it

could be determined empirically and externally like all other knowledge,

that it was not a philosophical system, but a relative and empirical

attempt at understanding. Speculation finally dissolved into the

knowledge that understanding is by its very nature "impure," that the

organ of philosophy, the faculty of understanding cannot begin its

studies without a given point of departure, that science is not

absolutely superior to experience, but only so far as it can organize

numerous experiences. It followed from these premises that the object of

philosophy can be a general and objective understanding, or "truth in

itself," only in so far as understanding or truth in general can be

derived from given concrete objects. In plain words, speculative

philosophy was reduced to the unphilosophical science of the empirical

faculty of understanding, to the critique of reason.

Modern conscious speculation takes its departure from the experienced

difference between semblance and truth. It denies all sense phenomena in

order to find truth by thinking, without being deceived by any

semblance. The subsequent philosophers, however, found every time that

the truths of their predecessors, gained by this method, were not what

they pretended to be, but that their positive result consisted simply in

having advanced the science of the thought process to a certain extent.

By denying the actuality of the senses, by endeavoring to separate

thought from all sense perceptions, by isolating it, so to say, from its

sensory cover, speculative philosophy, more than any other science, laid

bare the structure of the mind. The more this philosophy advanced in

time, the more it developed in its historical course, the more

classically and strikingly did this kernel of its work spring into view.

After the repeated creation of giant fantasmagorias, it found its

solution in the positive knowledge that socalled pure philosophical

thought, abstracting from all concrete contents, is nothing but

thoughtless thought, thought without any real object back of it, and

produces mere fantasmagorias. This process of speculative deception and

scientific exposure was continued up to recent times. Finally the

solution of the main question, and the solution of speculation, was

introduced with the following words of Feuerbach: "My philosophy is no

philosophy."

The long story of speculative work was finally reduced to the

understanding of reason, of the intellect, the mind, to the exposure of

those mysterious operations which we call thinking.

The secret of the processes by which the truths of understanding are

produced, the ignorance of the fact that every thought requires an

object, a premise, was the cause of the idle speculative wanderings

which we find registered in the history of philosophy. The same secret

is today the cause of those numerous speculative mistakes which we

observe in passing over the words and works of naturalists. Their

knowledge and understanding is far developed, but only so far as it

refers to tangible objects. The moment they touch upon abstract

discussions, they offer "lawyers' proofs" in place of "objective facts."

For although they know intuitively and in a concrete case that this is a

truth, that a conclusion, and that a rule, they do not apply this

knowledge in general with consciousness and theoretical consistency. The

successes of natural science have taught them to operate the instrument

of thought, the mind, instinctively. But they lack the systematic

understanding which operates with conscious and predetermined certainty.

They ignore the outcome of speculative philosophy.

It will be our task to set forth in a short summary what speculative

philosophy has unconsciously produced of a positive nature by a tedious

process, in other words, to explain the general nature of the thought

process. We shall see that the understanding of this process will

furnish us with the means of solving scientifically the general riddles

of nature and of life. And thus we shall learn how that fundamental and

systematic world conception is developed which was the long coveted goal

of speculative philosophy.