When speaking of food in general, we may mention fruits, cereals,
vegetables, meat and bread and classify them all, in spite of their
difference, under this one head. In the same way, we use, in this work,
the terms reason, consciousness, intellect, knowledge, discernment,
understanding, as referring to the same general thing. For we are
discussing the general nature of the thought process rather than its
special forms.
"No intelligent thinker of our day," says a modern physiologist,
"pretends to look for the seat of the intellectual powers in the blood,
as did the ancient Greeks, or in the pineal gland, as was the case in
the middle ages. Instead we have all become convinced that the central
nerve system is the organic center of the intellectual functions of the
brain." Yes, true enough, thinking is a function of the brain and nerve
center, just as writing is a function of the hand. But the study of the
anatomy of the hand can no more solve the question: What is writing?
than the physiological study of the brain can bring us nearer to the
solution of the question: What is thought? With the dissecting knife, we
may kill, but we cannot discover the mind. The understanding that
thought is a product of the brain takes us closer to the solution of
our problem, in as much as it draws it into the bright light of reality
and out of the domain of fantasy in which the ghosts dwell. Mind thereby
loses the character of a transcendental incomprehensible being and
appears as a bodily function.
Thinking is a function of the brain just as walking is a function of the
legs. We perceive thought and mind just as clearly with our senses as we
do pain and other feelings. Thought is felt by us as a subjective
process taking place inside of us. According to its contents this
process varies every moment and with each person, but according to its
form it is the same everywhere. In other words, in the thought process,
as in all processes, we make a distinction between the special or
concrete and the general or abstract. The general purpose of thought is
understanding. We shall see later that the simplest conception, or any
idea for that matter, is of the same general nature as the most perfect
understanding.
Thought and understanding cannot be without subjective contents any more
than without an object which suggests individual reflection. Thought is
work, and like every other work it requires an object to which it is
applied. The statements: I do, I work, I think, must be completed by an
answer to the question: What are you doing, working, thinking?
Every definite idea, all actual thought, is identical with its content,
but not with its object. My desk as a picture in my mind is identical
with my idea of it. But my desk outside of my brain is a separate object
and distinct from my idea. The idea is to be distinguished from thinking
only as a part of the thought process, while the object of my thought
exists as a separate entity.
We make a distinction between thinking and being. We distinguish between
the object of sense perception and its mental image. Nevertheless the
intangible idea is also material and real. I perceive my idea of a desk
just as plainly as the desk itself. True, if I choose to call only
tangible things material, then ideas are not material. But in that case
the scent of a rose and the heat of a stove are not material. It would
be better to call thoughts sense perceptions. But if it is objected that
this would be an incorrect use of the word, because language
distinguishes material and mental things, then we dispense with the word
material and call thought real. Mind is as real as the tangible table,
as the visible light, as the audible sound. While the idea of these
things is different from the things themselves, yet it has that in
common with them that it is as real as they. Mind is not any more
different from a table, a light, a sound, than these things differ among
themselves. We do not deny that there is a difference. We merely
emphasize that they have the same general nature in common. I hope the
reader will not misunderstand me henceforth, when I call the faculty of
thought a material quality, a phenomenon of sense perception.
Every perception of the senses is based on some object. In order that
heat may be real, there must be an object, something else which is
heated. The active cannot exist without the passive. The visible cannot
exist without the faculty of sight, nor the faculty of sight without
visible things. So is the faculty of thought a phenomenon, but it can
never exist in itself, it must always be based on some sense
perception. Thought appears, like all other phenomena, in connection
with an object. The function of the brain is no more a "pure" process
than the function of the eye, the scent of a flower, the heat of a
stove, or the touch of a table. The fact that a table may be seen,
heard, or felt, is due as much to its own nature as to that of another
object with which it enters into some relation.
But while each function is limited by its own separate line of objects,
while the function of the eye serves only for the perception of the
visible, the hand for the tangible, while walking finds an object in the
space it crosses, thought, on the other hand, has everything for its
object. Everything may be the object of understanding. Thought is not
limited to any special object. Every phenomenon may be the object and
the content of thought. More than this, we can only perceive anything
when it becomes the object of our brain activity. Everything is
therefore the object and content of thought. The faculty of thought may
be exerted quite generally on all objects.
We said a moment ago that everything may be perceived, but we now modify
this to the effect that only perceivable things may be perceived. Only
the knowable can be the object of knowledge, only the thinkable the
object of thought. To this extent the faculty of thought is limited, for
it cannot replace reading, hearing, feeling, and all other innumerable
activities of the world of sensations. We do, indeed, perceive all
objects, but no object may be exhaustively perceived, known, or
understood. In other words, the objects are not wholly dissolved in the
understanding. Seeing requires something that is visible, something
which is, therefore, more than seeing. In the same way, hearing requires
something that can be heard, thinking an object that can be thought of,
something which is more than our thoughts, something still outside of
our consciousness. We shall learn later on how we arrive at the
knowledge that we see, hear, feel, and think of objects, and not merely
of subjective impressions.
By means of thought we become aware of all things in a twofold manner,
viz., outside in reality and inside in thought, in conception. It is
easy to demonstrate that the things outside are different from the
things in our thoughts. In their actual form, in their real dimensions,
they cannot enter into our heads. Our brain does not assimilate the
things themselves, but only their images, their general outlines. The
imagined tree is only a general object. The real tree is different from
any other. And though I may have a picture of some special tree in my
head, yet the real tree is still as different from its conception as the
special is different from the general. The infinite variety of things,
the innumerable wealth of their properties, has no room in our heads.
I repeat, then, that we become aware of the outer world in a twofold
way, viz., in a concrete, tangible, manifold form, and in an abstract
form, which is mental and unitary. To our senses the world appears as a
variety of forms. Our brains combine them as a unit. And what is true of
the world, holds good of every one of its parts. A sense-perceived unit
is a nonentity. Even the atom of a drop of water or the atom of any
chemical element, is divisible, so long as it exists at all, and its
parts are different and distinct. A is not B. But the concept, the
faculty of thought, makes of every tangible or sense-perceived part an
abstract whole and conceives of every whole or quantity as a part of the
abstract world unit. In order to understand the things in their
entirety, we must take them practically and theoretically, with body and
mind. With the body we can grasp only the bodily, the tangible, with the
mind only the mental, the thinkable. Things also possess mental quality.
Mind is material and things are mental. Mind and matter are real only in
their inter-relations.
Can we see the things themselves? No, we see only the effects of things
on our eyes. We do not taste the vinegar, but the relation of the
vinegar to our tongue. The result is the sensation of acidity. The
vinegar is acid only in relation to our tongue. In relation to iron it
acts as a solvent. In the cold it becomes hard, in the heat liquid. It
acts differently on different objects with which it enters into
relations of time and space. Vinegar is a phenomenon, just as all things
are. But it never appears as vinegar by itself. It always appears in
connection with other phenomena. Every phenomenon is a product of a
subject and an object.
In order that a thought may appear, the brain or the faculty of thought
is not sufficient in itself. It requires, besides, an object which
suggests the thought. From this relative nature of our topic it follows
that in its treatment we cannot confine ourselves "purely" to it. Since
reason, or the faculty of thought, never appears by itself, but always
in connection with other things, we are continually compelled to pass
from the faculty of thought to other things, which are its objects, and
to treat of their connections.
Just as the sight does not see the tree, but only that which is visible
of the tree, so does the faculty of thought assimilate only the
perceivable image of an object, not the object itself. A thought is a
child begotten by the function of the brain in communion with some
object. In a thought is crystalized on one side the subjective faculty
of thought, and on the other the perceivable nature of an object. Every
function of the mind presupposes some object by which it is caused and
the spiritual image of which it is. Or vice versa, the spiritual content
of the mind is derived from some object which has its own existence and
which is either seen or heard, or smelled, or tasted, or felt, in short,
experienced.
Referring back to the statement that seeing is limited to the visible
qualities of some object, hearing to its audible qualities, etc., while
the faculty of thought has everything for its object, we now understand
this to mean that all objects have certain innumerable, but concrete,
qualities which are perceptible by our senses, and in addition thereto
the general spiritual quality of being thought of, understood, in short,
of being the object of our faculty of thought.
This mode of classifying all objects applies also to the faculty of
thought itself. The spirit, or mind, is a bodily function connected with
the senses which appear in various forms. Mind is thought generated at
different times in different brains by different objects through the
instrumentality of the senses. We may choose this mind as the object of
special thought the same as all other things. Considered as an object,
mind is a manysided and sense-perceived fact which in connection with a
special function of the brain generates the general concept of "Mind" as
the content of this special thought process. The object of thought is
distinguished from its contents in the same way in which every object is
distinguished from its mental image. The different kinds of motion
perceived by the help of the senses are the object of a certain thought
process and supply to it the idea of "motion." It is easier to
understand that the mental image of some object perceived by the senses
has a father and a mother, being begotten by our faculty of thought by
means of some sense-perceived object, than it is to grasp the existence
of that trinity which is born when our present thought experiences its
own existence and thus creates a conception of its own self. This has
the appearance of moving around in a circle. The object, the content and
the function of thought apparently coincide. Reason deals with itself,
considers itself as an object and is its own content. But nevertheless
the distinction between an object and its concept, though less evident,
is just as actual as in other cases. It is only the habit of regarding
matter and mind as fundamentally different things which conceals this
truth. The necessity to make a distinction compels us everywhere to
discriminate between the object of sense perception and its mental
concept. We are forced to do the same in the case of the faculty of
thought, and thus we find it necessary to give the name of "Mind" to
this special object of our sense perceptions. Such an ambiguity of terms
cannot be entirely avoided in any science. A reader who does not cling
to words, but rather seeks to grasp the meaning, will easily realize
that the difference between being and thinking applies also to the
faculty of thought, that the fact of understanding is different from the
understanding of understanding. And since the understanding of
understanding is again another fact, it will be permitted to call all
spiritual things facts or sense perceptions.
Reason, or the faculty of thought, is therefore not a mystical object
which produces the individual thought. On the contrary, it is a fact
that certain individual thoughts are the product of perception gained in
contact with certain objects and that these in connection with a certain
brain operation produce the concept of reason. Reason as well as all
other things of which we become aware has a two-fold existence: one as a
phenomenon or sense-perception, the other as a concept. The concept of
any thing presupposes a certain sense-perception of that thing, and so
does the concept of reason. Since all men think as a matter of fact,
every one has himself perceived reason as a part of reality, as a
phenomenon, sense-perception or fact.
Our object, reason, by virtue of the fact that it partakes of the nature
of the senses, has the faculty of transforming the speculative method,
which tries to dip understanding out of the depths of the spirit without
the help of sense-perception, into the inductive method, and vice versa
of transforming the inductive method, which desires to arrive at
conclusions, concepts, or understanding exclusively by means of
sense-perception, into the speculative method, by virtue of its
simultaneous spiritual nature. Our problem is to analyze the concept of
thought, or of the faculty of thought, or of reason, of knowing, of
science, by means of thought.
To produce thoughts and to analyze them is the same thing inasmuch as
both actions are functions of the brain. Both have the same nature. But
they are different to the same extent that instinct differs from
consciousness. Man does not think originally because he wants to, but
because he must. Ideas are produced instinctively, involuntarily. In
order to become fully aware of them, to place them within the grasp of
knowing and willing, we must analyze them. From the experience of
walking, for instance, we derive the idea of walking. To analyze this
idea means to solve the question, what is walking generally considered,
what is the general nature of walking? We may answer: Walking is a
rythmical motion from one place to another, and thus we raise the
instinctive idea to the position of a conscious analyzed idea. An object
is not consciously, theoretically, understood, until it has been
analyzed. In examining what elements constitute the concept of walking,
we find that the general attribute of that experience which we agree in
calling "walking" is a rythmical motion. In actual experience steps may
be long or short, may be taken by two feet or by more, in brief may be
varied. But as a concept walking is simply a rythmical motion, and the
analysis of this concept furnishes us with the conscious understanding
of this fact. The concept of light existed long before science analyzed
it, before it was understood that undulations of the ether form the
elements which constitute the concept of light. Instinctive and
analytical ideas differ in the same way in which the thoughts of every
day life differ from the thoughts of science.
The analysis of any idea and the theoretical analysis of any object, or
of the thing which suggested the idea, is one and the same. Every idea
corresponds to some real object. Ludwig Feuerbach has demonstrated that
even the concepts of God and immortality are reflections of real objects
which can be perceived by the senses. For the purpose of analyzing such
ideas as animal, light, friendship, man, etc., the phenomena, the
objects, such as animals, friendships, men, and lights, are analyzed.
The object which serves for the analysis of the concept "animal" is no
more any single animal, than the object of the concept "light" is any
single light. These concepts comprise classes, things in general, and
therefore the question, or the analysis, of what constitutes the animal,
the light, friendship, must not deal with any concrete, but with the
abstract elements of the whole class.
The fact that the analysis of a concept and the analysis of its object
appear as two different things is due to our faculty of being able to
separate things into two parts, viz., into a practical, tangible,
perceptible, concrete thing and into a theoretical mental, thinkable,
general thing. The practical analysis is the premise of the theoretical
analysis. The individually perceptible animals serve us as a basis for
the analysis of the animal concept, the individually experienced
friendships as the basis for the analysis of the concept of friendship.
Every idea corresponds to an object which may be practically separated
into its component parts. To analyze a concept is equivalent, therefore,
to analyzing a previously experienced object by theoretical means. The
analysis of a concept consists in the understanding of the common or
general faculties of the concrete parts of the analyzed object. That
which is common to the various modes of walking, the rythmical motion,
constitutes the concept of walking, that which is common to the various
manifestations of light constitutes the concept of light. A chemical
factory analyzes objects for the purpose of obtaining chemicals, while
science analyzes them for the purpose of obtaining their concepts.
The special object of our analysis, the faculty of thought, is likewise
distinguished from its concept. But in order to be able to analyze this
concept, we must analyze the object. It cannot be analyzed chemically,
for not everything is a matter of chemistry, but it may be analyzed
theoretically or scientifically. As we have already stated, the science
of understanding deals with all objects. But all objects which this
science may wish to analyze theoretically, must first be handled
practically. According to their special natures, they must either be
handled in various ways, or carefully inspected, or scrutinized by
intent listening, in short they must be thoroughly experienced in some
way.
It is a fact of experience that men think. The object or suggestion is
furnished by facts, and we then derive the concept instinctively. Thus,
to analyze the faculty of thought means to find that which is common or
general to the various personal and temporary processes of thought. In
order to follow this study by the methods of natural science, we require
neither physical instruments nor chemical reagents. The sense
perception which is indispensable for every scientific understanding, is
so to say present in this case _a priori_, without further experience.
Every one possesses the object of our study, the fact of thought faculty
and its experience, in the memories of himself or herself.
We have seen that thought like any other activity as well as its
scientific analysis is everywhere developing the general or abstract out
of particular and concrete sense perceptions. We now express this in the
following words: The common feature of all separate thought-processes
consists in their seeking the general character or unity which is common
to all objects experienced in their manifold variety by sense
perceptions. The general element which is common to the different
animals, or to the different manifestations of light, is that which
constitutes the general animal or light concept. The general is the
nature of all concepts, of all understanding, all science, all thought
processes. Thus we arrive at the understanding that the analysis of the
faculty of thought reveals its nature of finding that which is general
and common to concrete and distinct things. The eye studies the visible,
the ear the audible, and our brain that which is generally conceivable.
We have seen that thought like any other activity requires an object;
that it is unlimited in the choice of its objects, because all things
may become the objects of thought; that these objects are perceived in
manifold forms by various senses; and that they are transformed into
simple ideas by extricating that which they possess in common, which is
similar, which is general in them. If we apply this experienced
understanding of the general method of thought processes to our special
object, the faculty of thought, we realize that we have thus solved our
problem, because all we were looking for was the general method of the
thought process.
_If the development of the general out of the concrete constitutes the
general method by which reason arrives at understanding, then we have
fully grasped reason as the faculty of deriving the general out of the
concrete._
Thinking is a physical process and it cannot exist or produce anything
without materials any more than any other process of labor. My thought
requires some material which can be thought of. This material is
furnished by the phenomena of nature and life. These are the concrete
things. In claiming that the universe, or all things, may be the object
of thought, we simply mean that the materials of the thought process,
the objects of the mind, are infinite in quantity and quality. The
materials which the universe furnishes for our thought are as infinite
as space, as eternal as time, and as absolutely manifold as the nature
of these two forms of being. The faculty of thought is a universal
faculty in so far as it enters into relations with all things, all
substances, all phenomena, and thus generates thought. But it is not
absolute, since it requires for its existence and action the previous
presence of matter. Matter is the boundary, beyond which the mind cannot
pass. Matter furnishes the background for the illumination of the mind,
but is not consumed in this illumination. Mind is a product of matter,
but matter is more than a product of mind, being perceived also through
the five senses and thus brought to our notice. We call real, objective
products, or "things themselves" only such products as are revealed to
us simultaneously by the senses and the mind.
Reason is a real thing only in so far as it is perceived by the senses.
The perceptible actions of reason are revealed in the brain of man as
well as in the world outside of it. For are not the effects tangible by
which reason transforms nature and life? We see the successes of science
with our eyes and grasp them with our hands. It is true that science or
reason cannot produce such material effects out of themselves. The world
of sense perceptions, the objects outside of the human brain, must be
given. But what thing is there that has any effects "in itself?" In
order that light may shine, that the sun may warm, and revolve in its
course, there must be space and other things which may be lighted and
warmed and passed. In order that my table may have color, there must be
light and eyes. And everything else which my table is besides, it can be
only in contact with other things. Its being is just as manifold as
those various contacts or relations. In short, the world consists only
in its interrelations. Any thing that is torn out of its relations with
the world ceases to exist. A thing is anything "in itself" only because
it is something for other things, by acting or appearing in connection
with something else.
If we wish to regard the world in the light of the "thing itself," we
shall easily see that the world "itself" and the world as it appears,
the world of phenomena, differ only in the same way in which the whole
differs from its component parts. The world "itself" is nothing else but
the sum total of its phenomena. The same holds good of that part of the
world phenomena which we call reason, spirit, faculty of thought.
Although we distinguish between the faculty of thought and its phenomena
or manifestations, yet the faculty of thought "itself," or "pure"
reason, exists in reality only in the sum total of its manifestations.
Seeing is the physical existence of the faculty of sight. We possess the
whole only by means of its parts, and we can possess reason, like all
other things, only by the help of its effects, by its various thoughts.
But we repeat that reason does not precede thought in the order of time.
On the contrary thoughts generated by perceptible objects serve as a
basis for the development of the concept of the faculty of thought. Just
as the understanding of the world movements has taught us that the sun
is not revolving around the earth, so the understanding of the thought
process tells us that it is not the faculty of thought which creates
thought, but vice versa, that the concept of this faculty is created out
of a series of concrete thoughts. Hence the faculty of thought
practically exists only as the sum total of our thoughts, just as the
faculty of sight exists only through the sum of the things that we see.
These thoughts, this practical reason, serve as the material out of
which our brain manufactures the concept of "pure" reason. Reason is
necessarily impure in practice, which means that it must connect itself
with some object. Pure reason, or abstract reason without any special
content, cannot be anything else but the general characteristic of all
concrete reasoning processes. We possess this general nature of reason
in two ways: In an impure state, that is as practical and concrete
phenomenon, consisting of the sum of our real perceptions, and in a pure
state, that is theoretically or abstractly, in the concept. The
phenomenon of reason is distinguished from reason "itself" just as the
real animals are distinguished from the concept of the animal.
Every actual reasoning process is based on some real object which has
many qualities like all things in nature. The faculty of thought
extracts from this many-sided object those properties which are general
or common with it. A mouse and an elephant, as the objects of our
reasoning activity, lose their differences in the general animal
concept. Such a concept combines many things under one uniform point of
view, it develops one general idea out of many concrete things. Since
understanding is the general or common quality of all reasoning
processes, it follows that reason in general, or the general nature of
the reasoning process, consists in abstracting the general ideal
character from any concrete thing perceptible by the help of the senses.
Reason being unable to exist without some objects outside of itself, it
is understood that we can perceive "pure" reason, or reason "itself,"
only by its practical manifestations. We cannot find reason without
objects outside of it with which it comes in contact and produces
thought, any more than we can find any eyes without light. And the
manifestations of reason are as varied as the objects which supply its
material. It is plain, then, that reason has no separate existence "in
itself," but that on the contrary the concept of reason is formed out of
the material supplied by the senses.
Mental processes appear only in connection with perceptible phenomena.
These processes are themselves phenomena of sense perception which, in
connection with a brain process, produce the concept of the faculty of
thought "itself." If we analyze this concept, we find that "pure" reason
consists in the activity of producing general ideas out of concrete
materials, which include so-called immaterial thoughts. In other words,
reason may be characterized as an activity which seeks for unity in
every multiplicity and equalizes all contrasts whether it deals with the
many different sides and parts of one or of more objects. All these
different statements describe the same thing in different words, so that
the reader may not cling to the empty word, but grasp the living
concept, the manifold object, in its general nature.
Reason, we said, exists in a "pure" state as the development of the
general out of the special, of the abstract out of concrete sense
perceptions. This is the whole content of pure reason, of scientific
understanding, of consciousness. And by the terms "pure" and "whole" we
simply indicate that we mean the general content of the various thought
processes, the general form of reason. Apart from this general abstract
form, reason, like all other things, has also its concrete, special,
sense form which we perceive directly through our experience. Hence our
entire process of consciousness consists in the experience of the
senses, that is in the physical process, and its understanding.
Understanding is the general reflection of any object.
Consciousness, as the Latin root of the word indicates, is the knowledge
of being in existence. It is a form, or a quality, of existence which
differs from other forms of being in that it is aware of its existence.
Quality cannot be explained, but must be experienced. We know by
experience that consciousness includes along with the knowledge of being
in existence the difference and contradiction between subject and
object, thinking and being, between form and content, between phenomenon
and essential thing, between attribute and substance, between the
general and the concrete. This innate contradiction explains the various
terms applied to consciousness, such as the organ of abstraction, the
faculty of generalization or unification, or in contradistinction
thereto the faculty of differentiation. For consciousness generalizes
differences and differentiates generalities. Contradiction is innate in
consciousness, and its nature is so contradictory that it is at the same
time a differentiating, a generalizing, and an understanding nature.
Consciousness generalizes contradiction. It recognizes that all nature,
all being, lives in contradictions, that everything is what it is only
in co-operation with its opposite. Just as visible things are not
visible without the faculty of sight, and vice versa the faculty of
sight cannot see anything but what is visible, so contradiction must be
recognized as something general which pervades all thought and being.
The science of understanding, by generalizing contradiction, solves all
concrete contradictions.