Although we know that reason is attached to perceptible matter, to
physical objects, so that science can never be anything else but the
science of the physical, still we may, according to the prevailing ideas
and usage of language, separate physics from logic and ethics, and thus
distinguish them as different forms of science. The problem is then to
demonstrate that in physics as well as in logic, as also in ethics, the
general or intellectual perceptions can be practically obtained only on
the basis of concrete perceptible facts.
This practice of reason, to generate thought from matter, to arrive at
understanding by sense perceptions, to produce the general out of the
concrete, has been universally accepted in physical investigation, but
only in practice. The inductive method is employed, and one is aware of
this fact, but it is not understood that the nature of inductive science
is the nature of science in general, of reason. The process of thought
is misunderstood. Physical science lacks the theory of understanding and
for this reason often falls out of its practical step. The faculty of
thought is still an unknown, mysterious, mystical being for natural
science. Either it confounds the function with the organ, the mind with
the brain, as do the materialists, or it thinks with the idealists that
the faculty of thought is an imperceptible object outside of its field.
We see modern investigators marching toward their goal with firm and
uniform steps, so far as physical matters are concerned. But they
aimlessly grope around in the abstract relations of these things. The
inductive method has been practically adopted by natural science and its
successes have secured a great reputation for it. On the other hand, the
speculative method has become discredited by its failures. There is,
however, no conscious understanding of these various methods of thought.
We see the men of physical research, when they are outside of their
special field, offer lawyer-like speculations in lieu of scientific
facts. While they arrive at the special truths of their chosen fields by
sense perceptions, they still pretend to derive speculative truths out
of the depths of their own minds.
Listen to the following statements of Alexander von Humboldt, which he
makes in the initial argument of his "Cosmos" in regard to speculation:
"The most important result of physical research by sense perception is
this: that it finds the element of unity in a multitude of forms; that
it grasps all the individual manifestations offered by the discoveries
of recent times, carefully scrutinizes and distinguishes them; yet does
not succumb under their mass; that it fulfills the sublime mission of
the human being, of understanding the nature of things which is hidden
under the cover of phenomena. In this way our aim reaches beyond the
narrow limits of the senses, and we may succeed in grasping the nature
by controlling the raw material of empirical observation through ideas.
In my observations of the scientific treatment of general cosmic
phenomena, I am not deriving unity out of a few fundamental principles
found by speculative reason. My work is the expression of a thoughtful
observation of empirical phenomena seen as one and the same nature. I am
not going to venture into a field which is foreign to me. What I call
physical cosmology does not, therefore, aspire to the rank of a rational
science of nature.... True to the character of my former occupation and
writings, which were devoted to experiments, measurements, and
investigations of facts, I confine myself in this work to empirical
observations. It is the only ground on which I can move with a measure
of security." In the same breath Humboldt says that "without the earnest
desire for the knowledge of concrete facts any great and universal world
philosophy would be merely a castle in the air" and in another place
that "an understanding of the universe by speculative and introspective
reason would represent a still more sublime aim" than understanding by
empirical thought. And on page 68 of volume I. he says: "I am far from
finding fault with endeavors of others the success of which still
remains in doubt, when I have had no practical experience with them."
Now natural science shares with Humboldt the consciousness that the
practice of reason in physical research consists exclusively in
"perceiving the element of unity in a multitude of forms." But on the
other hand, though it does not always admit its belief in speculative
introspection as frankly as Humboldt does, it nevertheless proves that
it does not fully understand the practice of science and that it
believes in a metaphysical as well as a physical science by using the
speculative method in the treatment of so-called philosophical topics,
in which the element of unity is supposed to be discovered by
introspective reason instead of an analysis of multiform sense
perceptions, and it demonstrates its lack of unity by being unaware of
the unscientific character of disagreements, by believing in a
metaphysical science outside of the physical domain. The relations
between phenomenon and its nature, cause and effect, matter and force,
substance and spirit, are certainly physical ones. But what is there of
unity that science teaches about them? Plainly then, the work of
science, like that of the farmer, has so far been done only practically,
but not scientifically, not with a predetermination of success.
Understanding, that is to say the practice of understanding, is well
applied in science, I readily admit. But the instrument of this
understanding, the faculty of thought, is misunderstood. We find that
natural science, instead of applying this faculty scientifically, simply
experiments with it. What is the reason for this? Natural science has
neglected the critique of reason, the theory of science, logic.
Just as the handle and the blade of a knife constitute its general
content, so we found that the general content of reason was the
universal, the general "itself." We know that it does not produce this
content out of itself, but out of given objects, and these objects are
the sum of all natural or physical things. The object of reason is,
therefore, an infinite, unlimited, absolute quantity. This infinite
quantity manifests itself in finite quantities. In the treatment of
relatively small quantities of nature the true essence of reason, the
true method of understanding, is well recognized. It remains to be
demonstrated that the great relations of the world, the treatment of
which is still doubtful, are likewise intelligible by the same method.
Cause and effect, mind and matter, matter and force, are such great
world problems, and they are of a physical character. We shall
demonstrate that the most general distinction between reason and its
object furnishes the key to the solution of the great world problems.
+(a) Cause and Effect.+
"The nature of natural history," says F. W. Bessell, "lies in the fact
that it does not consider phenomena as facts in themselves, but looks
for their causes. The knowledge of nature is thus reduced to the minimum
number of facts." But the causes of the phenomena of nature had been
investigated even before the age of natural history. The characteristic
mark of natural history is not so much that it investigates causes, but
that the causes which it investigates have a peculiar nature and a
particular quality.
Inductive science has materially changed the conception of causes. It
has retained the term, but uses it in a different sense from that
employed by speculation. The naturalist conceives of causes differently
within his special field and outside of it; here, outside of his
specialty, he frequently indulges in introspective speculation, because
he understands science and its cause in a concrete, but not in a general
way. The unscientific forces are of a supernatural make-up, they are
transcendental spirits, gods, forces, little and big goblins. The
original conception of causes is an anthropomorphic one. In a state of
inexperience, man measures the objective by a subjective standard,
judges the world by himself. Just as he creates things with conscious
intent, so he attributes to nature his human manner, imagines the
existence of an external and creative cause of the phenomena of sense
perception, similar to himself who is the special cause of his own
creations. This subjective mood is to blame for the fact that the
struggle for objective understanding has so long been in vain. The
unscientifically conceived cause is a speculation of the _a priori_
kind.
If the term understanding is retained for subjective understanding, then
objective science differs from it in that such a science penetrates to
the causes of its objects not by faith or introspective speculation, but
by experience and induction, not _a priori_, but _a posteriori_. Natural
science looks for causes not outside or back of nature's phenomena, but
within or by means of them. Modern research seeks no external creator of
causes, but rather the immanent system, the method or general mode of
the various phenomena as they are given by succession in time. The
unscientifically conceived cause is a "thing in itself," a little god
who generates his effects independently and hides behind them. The
scientific conception of causes, on the other hand, looks only for the
theory of effects, the general element of phenomena. To investigate a
cause means then to generalize a variety of phenomena, to arrange the
multiplicity of experienced facts under one scientific rule. "The
knowledge of nature is thus reduced to the minimum number of facts."
The commonplace and inept knowledge differs from the most exalted,
rarest, and newly discovered science in the same way in which a petty
and childish superstition differs from the historical superstition of a
whole period. For this reason we may well choose our illustrations from
our daily circle, instead of looking for them in the so-called higher
regions of a remote science. Human common sense had long practiced the
investigation of causes by inductive and scientific methods, before
science realized that it would have to pursue its higher aims in the
same way. Common sense does arrive at the faith in a mysterious cause of
speculative reason, just like the naturalist, as soon as it leaves the
field of its immediate environment. In order to stand firmly on the
ground of real science, every one requires the understanding of the
manner in which inductive reason investigates its causes.
To this end let us glance briefly at the outcome of the study of the
nature of reason. We know that the faculty of understanding is not a
"thing in and by itself," because it becomes real only in contact with
some object. But whatever we know of any object, is known not alone
through the object, but also through the faculty of reason.
Consciousness, like all other being, is relative. Understanding is
contact with a variety of objects. To knowledge there is attached
distinction, subject and object, variety in unity. Thus things become
mutual causes and mutual effects. The entire world of phenomena, of
which thought is but a part, a form, is an absolute circle, in which the
beginning and end is everywhere and nowhere, in which everything is at
the same time essence and semblance, cause and effect, general and
concrete. Just as all nature is in the last instance one sole general
unity, in view of which all other unities become a multitude, so this
same nature, or objectivity, or world of sense perceptions, or whatever
else we may call the sum of all phenomena or effects, is the final cause
of all things, compared to which all other causes become effects. But we
must remember that this cause of all causes is only the sum of all
effects, not a transcendental or superior being. Every cause has its
effect, every effect causes something.
A cause cannot be physically separated from its effect any more than the
visible can be separated from the eye, the taste from the tongue, in
brief the general from the concrete. Nevertheless, the faculty of
thought may separate the one from the other. We must keep in mind that
this separation is a mere formality of thought, although it is a
formality which is necessary in order to be reasonable or conscious, in
order to act scientifically. The practice of understanding, or
scientific practice, derives the concrete from the general, the natural
things from nature. But whoever has been behind the scenes, and has
looked at the faculty of thought at work, knows that, conversely the
general is derived from the concrete, the concept of nature from natural
things. The theory of understanding or science teaches us that the
antecedent is understood by its consequent, the cause by its effect,
while our practical understanding regards the after as a consequence of
the before, the effect as a result of the cause. The faculty of
understanding, the organ of generalization, regards its opposite, the
concrete, as secondary, while the faculty of thought which understands
itself regards it as primary. However, the practice of understanding is
not to be changed by its theory, nor can it be; the theory intends
simply to render the steps of consciousness firm. The scientific farmer
differs from the practical farmer, not because he employs theory and
method, for both do that, but because he understands the theory, while
the practical man theorizes instinctively.
To continue: From a given multitude of facts, reason generates truth in
general, and out of a succession of forms and transformations it
abstracts the true cause, just as absolute multiplicity is the nature of
space, so absolute variability is the nature of time. Every particle of
time and space is new, original, and has never been there before. The
faculty of thought enables us to find our way through this absolute
medley by abstracting general concepts out of the multitude of things in
space, and tracing the variations of time to general causes. The entire
nature of reason consists in generalizing sense perceptions, in
abstracting the common elements out of concrete things. Whoever does not
fully understand reason by understanding that it is the organ of
generalization forgets that understanding requires an object which must
remain something outside of its conception, since such object cannot be
dissolved by its conception. The being of the reasoning faculty cannot
be understood any more than being in general. Or rather, being is
understood when we take it in its generality. Not being itself, but the
general element of being, is understood by the faculty of thought.
Let us realize, for instance, the process which takes place when reason
understands something it did not know before. Think of some peculiar,
unexpected and unknown chemical transformation which takes place
suddenly and without apparent cause in some mixture. Assume furthermore
that the same reaction takes place more frequently after that, until
experience demonstrates that this inexplicable change occurs whenever
sunlight touches the mixture. This already constitutes a certain
understanding of the process. Assume furthermore that subsequent
experience teaches us that several other substances have the faculty of
producing the same reaction in connection with sunlight. We have then
arranged the new reaction in line with a number of phenomena of the same
class, that is to say we have enlarged, deepened, completed our
understanding of it still more. And if we finally discover that a
special part of the sunlight unites with a special element of the
mixture and thereby produces this new reaction, we have generalized this
experience, or experienced this generalization, in a "pure" state, in
other words, the theory of this reaction is complete, reason has solved
its problem, and yet it has done nothing more than it did when it
classified the animal and vegetable kingdoms in families, genera,
species, etc. To find the species, the genus, the sex, etc., of anything
means to understand it.
Reason proceeds in the same way when it investigates the causes of
certain transformations. Causes are, in the last instance, not noticed
and furnished by means of sight, hearing, feeling, not by means of the
sense perceptions. They are rather supplied by the faculty of thought.
It is true, causes are not the "pure" products of the faculty of
thought, but are produced by it in connection with sense perceptions and
their material objects. This raw material gives the objective existence
to the causes produced by the mind. Just as we demand that a truth
should be the truth about some objective phenomenon, so we also demand
that a cause should be real, that it should be the cause of some
objective effect.
The understanding of any concrete cause is conditioned on the empirical
study of its material, while the understanding of any general cause is
based on the study of the faculty of reason. In the understanding of
concrete causes, the material of study varies, but reason maintains a
constant or general attitude. The cause, as a general cause, is a pure
conception, and it is based on the study of the multiformity of concrete
understandings of causes, or on the multiplied study of concrete causes.
Hence we are compelled to return to the concrete material of the general
concept, to the understanding of concrete causes, if we wish to analyze
the concept of a general cause.
When a stone falls into the water and causes ripples on the surface, the
stone is no more the cause of the ripples than the liquid condition of
the water. If the stone falls on solid substances, it causes no ripples.
It is the contact of the falling stone with liquid substances which
causes the ripples. The cause is itself an effect, and the effect, the
ripples, become a cause when they carry a piece of cork ashore. But in
either case the cause is based on a mutual effect, on the interaction of
the waves with the light condition of the cork.
A stone falling into the water is not a cause "in itself," not a cause
in general. We arrive at such a cause only, when the faculty of thought
uses concrete causes for its raw material and constructs out of them
the "pure" concept of the cause in general. A stone falling into the
water is only the cause of the subsequent ripples, and it becomes a
general cause only through the experience that ripples always follow the
falling of a stone into water.
We call cause that which generally precedes a certain manifestation, and
effect that which generally follows it. We refer to the stone as the
cause of ripples merely because we know that it always causes them when
falling into water. But since ripples sometimes appear without being
preceded by the fall of a stone, ripples have another general cause. So
far as there is anything general in ripples which precedes them, it is
the elasticity of the water itself which is the general cause of
ripples. Circular ripples, which are a special form of ripples, are
generally preceded by the falling of some body into the water, and this
body is then considered as their cause. The cause is always different in
proportion and to the extent of the phenomena under consideration.
We cannot ascertain causes by mere introspective reasoning, we cannot
derive them out of our head. Matter, materials, sense perceptions are
required for this purpose. A definite cause requires a definite
material, a definite amount of sense perceptions. In the abstract unity
of nature, the variations of matter are represented by the variations of
concrete quantities. Every quantity is given in time before and after a
certain other quantity, as antecedent and subsequent. The general
element of the antecedent is called cause, the general element of the
subsequent, effect.
When the wind sways a forest, the yielding character of the forest is as
much instrumental in producing this effect as the bending power of the
wind. The cause of a thing is its connection with other things. The fact
that the same wind leaves rocks and walls standing shows that the cause
is not qualitatively different from the effect, but that it is a matter
of aggregate effects. If nevertheless science or knowledge determines
any special fact to be the cause of any change, that is to say of any
succession of phenomena, this cause is no longer regarded as the
external creator, but merely as the general mode, the immanent method of
succession. A definite cause can be ascertained only when we have under
consideration a definite circle, series, or number of changes, the cause
of which is to be determined. And within a definite circle of succeeding
phenomena, that which generally precedes is their cause.
The wind which sways a forest differs from wind as a general cause only
in that the latter has other general effects, inasmuch as it howls in
one place, stirs up dust in another, or acts in many different ways. In
the special case of the forest, the wind is a cause only in so far as it
precedes the swaying of the trees. But in the case of rocks and walls,
the solidity precedes the wind and is therefore the general cause of
their resistance to the swaying power of the wind. In a still wider
circle of hurricane phenomena, a gentle wind may be regarded as a cause
of the stability of the objects last mentioned.
The _quantity_ or _number_ of given objects varies the name of their
cause. If a certain company of people return from a walk in a tired
condition, this change of condition is just as much due to the physical
weakness of the people as to the walk. In other words, a manifestation
has in itself no cause which can be separated from it. Everything which
was connected with a phenomenon has contributed toward its appearance.
In the case of the promenaders, the physical constitution of their
bodies has to be considered as well as the physical constitution and
length of the road and duration of the walk. If reason is nevertheless
called upon to determine the special cause of some concrete change, for
instance, of a tired feeling, it is simply a question of determining
which one of the various factors has contributed most to that feeling.
In this case as well as in all others, the work of reason consists in
developing the general from the concrete, that is to say in this case,
singling out from a given number of tired sensations that which
generally precedes the tired feeling. If most of the promenaders or all
of them are found to be tired, the walk will be considered as the cause.
But if only a few are tired, the weak constitution of these people will
be considered as the general cause of their tired condition.
To use another illustration: If the discharge of a shot frightens some
birds, this effect is due to the combined action of the shot and the
timidity of the birds. If the majority of the birds fly away, the shot
will be considered as the cause. But if the minority fly away, their
timidity will be regarded as the cause.
Effects are subsequences. Since all things in nature follow other things
and all things have an antecedent and a subsequent, we may call the
natural, the real, the sense perceptions absolute effects, having no
cause unless we find one with our faculty of thought by systematizing
the given material. Causes are mental generalizations of perceptible
changes. The supposed relation of cause and effect is a miracle, a
creation of something out of nothing. For this reason this relation has
been and still is an object of speculative reasoning. The speculative
cause creates its effects. But in reality the effects are the material
out of which the brain, or science, forms its causes. The cause concept
is a product of reason; not of "pure" reason, but of reason married to
the world of sense perceptions.
If Kant maintains that the statement: "Every change has its cause" is an
_a priori truth_ which we cannot experience because no one can possibly
experience all changes, although every one has the irrefutable feeling
of the correctness of this statement, we know now that this statement
expresses merely the experience that the phenomenon which we call reason
recognizes the uniform element in all multiformity. Or in other words,
we now know that the development of the general element out of the
concrete facts is called reason, thought, or mind. The secure knowledge
that every change has its cause is nothing else but the conviction that
we are thinking human beings. _Cogito, ergo sum._ I think, therefore I
am. We have experienced the nature of our reason instinctively even if
we have not analyzed it scientifically. We are as well aware of the
faculty of our reason to abstract a cause out of every given change, as
we are that every circle is round, that a is equal to a. We know that
the general is the product of reason, and reason produces this general
thing in contact with every given object. And since all objects before
and after a certain other object are temporal changes, it follows that
all changes which we as thinking beings experience must have a general
antecedent, a cause.
Already the English sceptic Hume felt that true causes are different
from assumed causes. According to him the concept of a cause contains
nothing but the experience of that which generally precedes a certain
phenomenon. Kant rightfully remarks on the other hand that the
conception of cause and effect expresses a far more intimate relation
than that indicated by a loose and accidental succession, and that the
concept of a cause rather comprises that of a certain effect as a
necessity and strict general result. Therefore he claimed that there
must be something _a priori_ in reason which cannot be experienced and
which extends beyond experience.
We reply to the materialists who deny all autonomy of the mind and hope
to detect causes by experience alone that the general necessity which
presupposes the relation of cause and effect represents an impossible
experience. And we reply to the idealists: Although reason explores
causes which cannot be experienced, this research cannot take place _a
priori_, but only _a posteriori_, only on the basis of empirically given
effects. It is true that the mind alone discovers the imperceptible and
abstract generality, but it does so only within the circle of certain
given sense perceptions.
+(b) Matter and Mind.+
The understanding of the general dependence of the faculty of thought on
material sense perceptions will restore to objective reality that right
which has long been denied to it by ideas and opinions. Nature with its
varied concrete phenomena which had been crowded out of human
considerations by philosophical and religious imaginings, and which has
been scientifically re-established again on special fields by the
development of natural sciences, gains general theoretical recognition
by the understanding of the functions of the brain. Hitherto natural
science has chosen for its object only special matters, special causes,
special forces, but has remained ignorant in general questions of
so-called natural philosophy regarding the cause of all things, of
matter, of force in general. The actual existence of this ignorance is
revealed by that great contradiction between idealism and materialism
which pervades all works of science like a red thread.
"May I succeed in this letter in strengthening the conviction that
chemistry as an independent science represents one of the most powerful
means for the higher cultivation of the mind, that its study is useful
not alone for the promotion of the material interests of mankind, but
because it permits a deeper penetration of the wonders of creation, with
which our existence, our welfare, and our development are intimately
connected."
In these words Liebig expresses the prevalent views which have
accustomed themselves to look upon material and spiritual differences as
absolute opposites. But the untenability of such a distinction is
vaguely felt even by the just quoted advocate of this view, who speaks
of material interests and of a mental penetration which is the condition
for our existence, welfare, and development. But what else does the term
material interests mean but the abstract expression of our existence,
welfare, and development? Are not these the concrete content of our
material interests? Does he not say explicitly that the penetration of
the wonders of creation promotes our material interests? And on the
other hand, does not the promotion of our material interests require a
penetration on our part of the wonders of creation? In what respect are
our material interests different from our mental penetration of things?
The superior, spiritual, ideal, which Liebig in conformity with the
views of the world of naturalists opposes to our material interests, is
only a special part of those interests. Mental penetration and material
interests differ no more than the circle differs from the square.
Circles and squares are contrasts, but at the same time they are but
different and special classes of form in general.
It has been the custom, especially since the advent of Christian times,
to speak contemptuously of material, perceptible, fleshly things which
are destroyed by rust and moths. And nowadays people continue on this
conservative track, although their antipathy against perceptible reality
has long disappeared from their minds and actions. The Christian
separation of mind and body has been practically abandoned in the age of
natural science. But the theoretical solution of the contradiction, the
demonstration that the spiritual is material and the material at the
same time spiritual, by which the material interests would be freed from
the stigma of inferiority, has not yet been forthcoming.
Modern science is natural science. Science is deemed worthy of its name
only in so far as it is natural science. In other words, only that
thought is scientific which consciously has real, perceptible, natural
things for its object. For this reason representatives and friends of
science can not be enemies of nature or of matter. Indeed they are not.
But the very existence of science shows that this nature, this world of
sense perceptions, this matter or substance, does alone and by itself
not satisfy us. Science, or thought, which has material practice or
being for its object, does not strive to reproduce nature in its
integrity, in its entire perceptible substance, for these are already
present. If science were to aim at nothing new, it would be superfluous.
It is entitled to special recognition only to the extent that it carries
a new element into matter. Science is not so much concerned in the
material of its study as in understanding. Of course it is the
understanding of this material which is desired, the understanding of
its general character, of the fixed pole in the succession of phenomena.
That which religion supernaturally separates from the material, which
science opposes to the material as something higher, diviner, more
spiritual, is in reality nothing but the faculty of rising above
multiformity, of proceeding from the concrete to the general.
The nobler spiritual interests are not absolutely different from the
material interests, they are not qualitatively different. The positive
side of modern idealism does not consist in belittling eating and
drinking, the pleasure in earthly possessions and in intercourse with
the other sex, but rather in pleading for the recognition of other
material enjoyments besides these, as for instance those of the eye, the
ear, of art and science, in short of the whole man. You shall not
indulge in the material revelries of passion, that is to say you shall
not direct your thought one-sidedly to any concrete lust, but rather
consider your entire development, take into account the total general
extension of your existence. The bare materialist principle is
inadequate in that it does not appreciate the difference between the
concrete and the general, because it makes the individual synonymous
with the general. It refuses to recognize the quantitative superiority
of the mind over the world of sense perceptions. Idealism, on the other
hand, forgets the qualitative unity in the quantitative difference. It
is transcendental and makes an absolute difference out of the relative
one. The contradiction between these two camps is due to the
misunderstood relation of our reason to its given object or material.
The idealist regards reason alone as the source of all understanding,
while the materialist looks upon the world of sense perceptions in the
same way. Nothing is required for a solution of this contradiction but
the comprehension of the relative interdependence of these two sources
of understanding. Idealism sees only the difference, materialism sees
only the uniformity of matter and mind, content and form, force and
substance, sense perception and moral interpretation. But all these
distinctions belong to the one common genus which constitutes the
distinction between the special and the general.
Consistent materialists act like purely practical men without any
science. But, since knowing and thinking are real attributes of man
regardless of his party affiliation, purely practical men do not exist
in reality. Even the merest attempt at practical experiment on the basis
of experienced facts differs only in degree from scientific practice
based on theoretical principles. On the other hand, consistent
idealists are just as impossible as purely practical men. They would
like to have the general without the special, the spirit without matter,
force without substance, science without experience or material, the
absolute without the relative. How can thinkers who search for truth,
being, relative causes, such as naturalists, be idealists? They are so
only outside of their specialties, never inside of them. The modern
mind, the mind of natural science, is immaterial only so far as it
embraces all matters. But men like the astronomer Madler find so little
of the ridiculous in the current expectation of the materially increased
spiritual power after our "emancipation from the bonds of matter," that
he has nothing better to substitute for it and flatters himself with
having defined the "bonds of matter" as material attraction. Truly, so
long as mind is still conceived in the form of a religious ghost, the
expectation of an increased mental power after the emancipation from the
bonds of matter is not so much an object for ridicule as for compassion.
But if we regard mind as the expression of modern science, we offer the
better scientific explanation for the traditional faith. By bonds of
matter we do not mean, in that case, the bond of gravitation, but the
multiplicity of sense perceptions. And matter holds the mind in bondage
only so long as the faculty of thought has not overcome the multiplicity
of things. The emancipation of the mind from the bonds of matter
consists in developing the general element out of the concrete
multiplicity.
+(c) Force and Matter.+
The reader who has closely followed our main idea, which will be
further illustrated, will anticipate that the question of matter and
force finds its solution in the understanding of the relation between
the general and the special. What is the relation of the concrete to the
abstract? This is the common problem of those who see the active impulse
of the world either in the spiritual force or in the material substance,
who think to find the nature of things, the _non plus ultra_ of science,
in either of these facts.
Liebig, who is especially fond of straying from his inductive science
into the field of speculative thought, says in an idealist sense: "Force
cannot be seen, we cannot grasp it with our hands; in order to
understand its nature and peculiarities, we must investigate its
effects." And if a materialist replies to him: "Matter is force, force
is matter, no matter without force, no force without matter," it is
plain that either has determined this relation only negatively. In
certain shows, the clown is asked by the manager: "Clown, where have you
been?" "With the others," answers the clown. "And where were the
others?"--"With me."
In this case we have two answers with the same content, in the other we
have two camps which quarrel with different words about an indisputable
fact. And this dispute is so much more ridiculous because it is taken so
seriously. If the idealist makes a distinction between matter and force,
he does not mean to deny that the real phenomenon of force is
inseparably linked with matter. And if the materialist claims that there
is no matter without force and no force without matter, he does not mean
to deny that matter and force are different, as his opponent claims.
The dispute exists for a good reason and has its object, but this
object is not revealed in the dispute. It is instinctively kept under
cover by both parties, so that they may not be in a position where they
would have to acknowledge their own ignorance. Each wants to prove to
the other that the other's explanations are inadequate, and both
demonstrate this sufficiently. Buechner admits in the closing statements
of his "Matter and Force" that the empirical material is insufficient to
permit of definite answers to transcendental questions, and that
therefore no positive answer can be given to them. And he furthermore
says that the empirical material "is fully sufficient to answer them
negatively and to do away with hypothesis." This is saying in so many
words that the science of the materialist is adequate for the proof that
his opponent knows nothing.
The spiritualist or idealist believes in a spiritual, which means in a
ghostlike and inexplicable, nature of force. The materialist thinkers,
on the other hand, are skeptical. A scientific proof of faith or of
skepticism does not exist. The materialist has only this advantage over
his idealist opponent, that he looks for the transcendental, the nature,
the cause, the force, not back of the phenomenon, not outside of matter.
But he remains behind the idealist when he ignores the difference
between matter and force. The materialist dwells on the actual
inseparability of matter and force and does not admit any other reason
for a distinction between the two than "an external reason derived from
the demand of our mind for systematization." Buechner says in "Nature and
Mind," page 66: "Force and matter, separated from one another, are for
me nothing but thoughts, fantasies, ideas without any substance,
hypotheses which do not exist for any healthy study of nature, because
all phenomena of nature are rendered obscure and unintelligible by such
a separation." But if Buechner deals with any special department of
natural science in a productive way, instead of handling phrases of
natural philosophy, his own practice will show him that the separation
of forces from matter is not an "external," but an internal, an imminent
necessity, by which alone we are enabled to elucidate and understand the
phenomena of nature. Although the author of "Force and Matter" chose for
his motto: "Now, what I want is--facts," we assure the reader that this
device is more a thoughtless word than a serious opinion. Materialism is
not so coarse-grained that it wants purely facts. Those facts which
Buechner is looking for are by themselves not specifics for his desires.
The idealist likewise wants such facts. No student of nature wants mere
hypotheses. What all cultivators of the field of science want is not so
much facts as explanations or an understanding of facts. Even the
materialist will not deny that science, the "natural philosophy" of
Buechner not excepted, is more concerned with mental forces than with
bodily matter, that it cares more for force than for matter. The
separation of force and matter is derived from "the demand of our mind
for systematization." Very true! But so does all science emanate from
the demand of our reason for systematization.
The contradistinction between force and matter is as old as that between
idealism and materialism. The first conciliation between the two was
attempted by imagination which, through the belief in spirits,
suggested a secret nature as the cause of all natural phenomena. Science
has of late expelled many of these special spirits by replacing the
fantastic demons with scientific, or general, explanations. And after we
have succeeded in explaining the demon of "pure" reason, it is not
difficult to expel the special spirit of force by the general
explanation of its nature and thus to reconcile scientifically the
contradiction between spiritualism and materialism.
In the universe which constitutes the object of science and of the
faculty of reason, both force and matter are unseparated. In the world
of sense perceptions force is matter and matter is force. "Force cannot
be seen." Oh, yes! Seeing itself is pure force. Seeing is as much an
effect of its object as an effect of the eye, and this double effect and
other effects are forces. We do not see the things themselves, but their
effects on our eyes. We see their forces. And force cannot alone be
seen, it can also be heard, smelled, tasted, felt. Who will deny that he
can feel the force of heat, of cold, of gravitation? We have already
quoted the words of Professor Koppe to the effect that we "cannot
perceive heat itself, we merely conclude from its effects that this
force exists in nature." This is saying in other words that we do not
see, hear, or feel the things themselves, but their effects or forces.
It is just as true to say that we feel matter and not its force as it is
to say that we feel force and not matter. Indeed, both are inseparable
from the object, as we have already remarked. But by means of the
faculty of thought we separate from the simultaneously and successively
occurring phenomena the general and the concrete. For instance, we
abstract the general concept of sight from the various phenomena of our
sight and distinguish it by the name of power of vision from the
concrete objects, or substances, of our eyes. From a multitude of sense
perceptions we develop by means of reason the general element. The
general element of different water phenomena, for instance, is the water
power distinguished from the substance of the water. If levers of
different materials but of the same length have the same power, it is
plain that in this case force is different from matter only in so far as
it represents the general element of various substances. A horse does
not pull without force, and this force does not pull without the horse.
Indeed, in practice the horse is force and force is the horse. But
nevertheless we may distinguish the power of pulling from other
qualities of the horse, or we may refer to the common element in
different services of horses as general horse power, without thereby
starting from any other hypothesis than we do in distinguishing the sun
from the earth. For in reality the sun does not exist without the earth,
nor the earth without the sun.
The world of sense perceptions is made known to us only by our
consciousness, but consciousness is conditioned on the world of sense
perceptions. Nature is infinitely united or infinitely separated,
according to whether we regard it from the standpoint of consciousness
as an unconditional unit or from the standpoint of sense perceptions as
an unconditional multiplicity. There is truth in both unity and
multiplicity, but it is truth only relatively speaking, under certain
conditions. It matters a great deal whether we look about with the eyes
of the body or with the eyes of the mind. For the eyes of the mind,
matter is force. For the eyes of the body, force is matter. The abstract
matter is force, the concrete force is matter. Matter is represented by
the objects of the hand, of practice, while force is an object of
understanding, of science.
Science is not limited to the so-called scientific world. It reaches
beyond all classes, it belongs to the full depth and width of life.
Science belongs to thinking humanity in its entirety. And so it is with
the separation of matter and force. Only a stultified fanaticism can
ignore the practical distinction. The miser who accumulates money
without adding any wealth to his life process forgets that the valuable
element of money resides in its force, which is different from, its
substance. He forgets that not mere wealth as such, not the paltry gold
substance, lends a reasonableness to the quest for its possession, but
its spiritual content, its inherent exchange value, which buys the
necessities of life. Every scientific practice, which means every action
carried on with a predetermined success and with understood substances,
proves that the separation of matter and force, though only performed in
thought and existing in thought, is nevertheless not an empty phrase,
not a mere hypothesis, but a very fertile idea. A farmer manuring his
field is handling "pure" manuring force, in so far as it is immaterial
for the abstract conception whether he is handling cow dung, bone dust,
or guano. And in weighing bundles of merchandise, it is not the iron,
copper, stone, etc., which is handled by the pound, but their gravity.
True, there is no force without matter, no matter without force.
Forceless matter and matterless force are nonentities. If idealist
naturalists believe in an immaterial existence of forces which, so to
say, carry on their goblin-pranks in matter, forces which we cannot see,
cannot perceive by the senses and yet are asked to believe in, then we
say that such men are to that extent that naturists, but mere
speculators, in other words spiritualists. And the word of the
materialists who refer to the intellectual separation of matter and
force as a mere hypothesis, is quite as brainless.
In order that this separation may be appreciated according to its
merits, in order that our consciousness may neither etherealize force in
a spiritualist sense nor deny it in a materialist sense, and in order to
comprehend it scientifically, we have only to understand the faculty of
thought in general or "in itself," that is to say its abstract form. The
intellect can not operate without some perceptible material. In order to
distinguish between matter and force, these things must exist and be
experienced by sense perception. By means of this experience we refer to
matter as the expression of force and to force as the expression of
matter. The perceptible object which is to be studied is therefore
matter and force in one, and since all objects are in their tangible
reality such matter and force-things, the distinction made by the mind
consists in the general method of brain work, in the derivation of the
general unity, from the special multiplicity in any one and in all given
objects. The distinction between matter and force is summarized in the
universal distinction between the concrete and the abstract. To deny the
value of this distinction is equivalent to denying the value of any and
all distinction, equivalent to ignoring the function of the intellect
altogether.
If we refer to phenomena of sense perception as forces of matter in
general, then this generalized matter is nothing but an abstract
conception. But if we mean by the term sense perception the various
concrete substances, then the general element which embraces the
differences of things and pervades and controls them is force producing
concrete effects. And whether we say matter or force, the mental which
science is studying, not with its hands, but with its brain, the
so-called essence, nature, cause, ideal, superior or spiritual, is the
generality comprising the special things.
V
"PRACTICAL REASON" OR MORALITY
+(a) The Wise and Reasonable.+
The understanding of the method of science, the understanding of the
mind, is destined to solve all the problems of religion and philosophy,
to explain thoroughly all the great and small riddles, and thus fully to
restore research to its mission of empirically studying details. If we
are aware that it is a law of reason to require some perceptible
material, some cause, for its operation, then the question regarding the
first or general cause becomes superfluous. Human understanding is then
seen to be first and last cause of all concrete causes. If we understand
that it is a law of reason to require for its operation some given
object, some beginning at which to start, then the question of the first
beginning must necessarily become inane. If we understand that reason
derives abstract units out of concrete multiplicities, that it
constructs truth out of phenomena, substance out of attributes, that it
perceives all things as parts of a whole, as individuals of some genus,
as qualities of some object, then the question regarding a "thing
itself," a something which in reality is back of all things, must needs
become irrelevant. In brief, the understanding of the interdependence of
reason reveals the unreasonableness of the demand for independent
reason.
Now, although the main object of metaphysics, the cause of all causes,
the beginning of all beginnings, the nature of things, causes little
inconvenience to modern science, and even though the needs of the
present have overcome the leaning for speculation, this practical
downfall of speculation does not suffice for the solution of its
problems. So long as the theoretical law is not understood, according to
which reason requires some concrete object for its operation, there is
no hope of abandoning objectless thought, this malpractice of
speculative philosophy, which pretends to generate knowledge without
intercourse with objective reality. Our naturalists demonstrate this
very clearly as soon as they turn from their tangible specialties to
abstract things. The dispute over questions of life's wisdom, of
morality, or the quarrel over the wise, good, right, or bad, reveals
that here is the boundary of scientific agreement. The scientific
explorers of the exact sciences abandon every day their inductive method
when dealing with social problems, and stray off into the regions of
speculative philosophy. Just as in physics they believe in imperceptible
physical truths, in "things themselves," so in social matters they
believe in the reasonable, wise, right, or bad, in the sense of "things
themselves," of absolute phases of life, of unconditional conditions. It
is here where the outcome of our studies, of the critique of pure
reason, must be applied.
In recognizing that consciousness, the nature of understanding, the
mental activity in its general form, consists in developing general
concepts out of concrete objects, we circumscribe this insight by
stating that reason develops its understanding out of contradictions.
It is the nature of the mind to perceive, in given phenomena of
different dimensions and different duration, the nature of things by
their semblance, and their semblance by their nature; to distinguish in
wants of various degrees the most essential and necessary from the less
pressing; to measure within a certain circle of magnitudes the large by
the small and the small by the large, or in other words to compare the
contrasts of the world with one another, to harmonize them by
explanation. Common parlance instinctively calls understanding judging;
judging requires a certain standard. Just as surely as we cannot
perceive any objects which are "in themselves" great or small, hard or
soft, clear or dark, just as surely as these terms denote certain
relations and require a certain standard by which their relations can be
determined, even so does reason require a certain standard for the
determination of that which is reasonable.
The fact that we consider certain actions, institutions, conceptions,
maxims of other periods, nations, or persons unreasonable is simply due
to the application of a different standard, because we ignore the
premises, the conditions, which cause another's reason to differ from
our own. Men who differ in their mental estimates, in their
understanding of things, may be likened to the thermometers of Reaumur
and Celsius, one of which designates the boiling point by 80 and the
other by 100. A different standard is the cause of this different
result. On the so-called moral field there is no scientific agreement,
such as we enjoy in some physical matters, because we lack the uniform
standard which natural science has long since found. It is still
attempted to perceive the reasonable, good, right, etc., without
empirical data, by speculative reasoning without experience. Speculation
seeks the cause of all causes, the immeasurable cause; truth "itself,"
the unconditional and standardless truth; the unlimited good, the
unboundedly reasonable, etc. The absence of a standard is the essence of
speculation, and its practice is characterized by unlimited
inconsistency and disagreement. If there are followers of certain
positive religions who agree in the matter of morals, they owe this to
the positive standard which certain dogmas, doctrines and commandments
have given them. But if any one tries to perceive things by "pure"
reason, the dependence of this reason on some standard will be
demonstrated by its "impure," that is to say individual, perceptions.
Sense perception is the standard of truth, or of science in general. The
phenomena of the outside world are the standard of physical truths, and
man with his many wants is the standard of moral truth. The actions of
man are determined by his wants. Thirst teaches him to drink, need to
pray. Wants are regulated in the South by southern conditions, in the
North by northern conditions. Wants rule time and space, nations and
individuals. They induce the savage to hunt and the gourmand to indulge.
Human wants give to reason a standard for judging what is good, right,
bad, reasonable, etc. Whatever satisfies our need is good, the opposite
is bad. The physical feeling of man is the object of moral standards,
the object of "practical reason." The contradictory variety of human
needs is the basis for the contradictory variety of moral standards.
Because a member of a feudal guild prospered in a restricted
competition, and a modern knight of industry in free competition,
because their interests differ, therefore their views differ, and the
one justly considers an institution as unreasonable which the other
regards as reasonable. If the intellect of some person attempts to
define by mere introspection the standard of reasonableness as a general
thing, this person makes himself or herself the standard of humanity. If
reason is credited with the faculty of finding within itself the source
of moral truth, it commits the speculative mistake of attempting to
produce understanding without perceptible objects. The same mistake is
to blame for the idea that man is subordinate to the authority of
reason, for the demand that man submit to the dictates of reason. This
idea transforms man into an attribute of reason, while in reality reason
is an attribute of man.
The question whether man depends on reason or reason on man is similar
to the one whether the citizen exists for the state or the state for the
citizen. In the last and highest instance, the citizen is the primary
fact and the state is modified according to the requirements of the
citizen. But whenever the dominant interests of the citizenship have
acquired the authority in the state, then the citizen is indeed
dependent on the state. This is saying in so many words that man is
guided in minor matters by more important ones. He sacrifices the less
important, minor, particular things to the great, essential, general
things. He subordinates his desire for more individual indulgence to his
fundamental social needs. It is not pure reason, but the reason of a
weak body or of a limited purse which teaches man to renounce the
pleasures of dissipation for the benefit of the general welfare. The
wants of the senses are the material out of which reason fashions moral
truths. To single out the essential need among different physical needs
of various degrees of intensity or extension, to separate the true from
the individual, to develop general concepts, that is the mission of
reason. The difference between the apparently and the truly reasonable
reduces itself to the difference between the special and the general.
We recall that reason requires sense perceptions for its existence and
operation, that it needs some object which it can perceive. Existence is
the condition or premise of all understanding. Just as the understanding
of true existence is the function of natural science, so the
understanding of reasonable existence is the function of wisdom. Reason
in general has the mission of understanding things as they are. As
physical science it has to understand what is true, as wisdom, what is
reasonable. And just as true may be translated by general, so reasonable
may be translated by generally appropriate to need. We saw a while ago
that a sense perception is not true "in itself," but only relatively
true, that it is called true or general only in relation to other
perceptions of lesser importance. In the same way, no human action can
be reasonable or appropriate "in itself," it can be reasonable only in
comparison with some other action which attempts to accomplish the same
purpose in a less practicable, that is an impracticable, form. Just as
the true, the general, is conditioned on the relation to some other
object, on a definite quantity of phenomena, on definite limits, so the
reasonable or practicable is based on definite conditions which make it
reasonable or unreasonable. The end in view is the measure of the
practicable. The practicable can be determined only by some definite
object that is wanted. Once this object is known, then that action is
called reasonable which accomplishes it in the fullest, most general
way, and all other actions appear unreasonable compared to it.
In view of the law which we evolved by our analysis of pure reason and
which showed that all understanding, all thought, is based on some
perceptible object, on some quantity of sense perceptions, it is evident
that everything distinguished by our faculty of distinction is a certain
quantity and that, therefore, all distinctions are only quantitative,
not absolute, only graduated, not irreconcilable. Even the difference
between the reasonable and the unreasonable, or in other words between
that which is momentarily or individually reasonable and that which is
generally reasonable, is merely a quantitative distinction, like all
others, so that the unreasonable may be conditionally reasonable, and
nothing is unreasonable but that which is supposed to be unconditionally
reasonable.
If we understand that reason requires some perceptible object, some
perceptible standard, then we shall no longer try to understand the
absolutely reasonable, the purely reasonable. We shall then limit
ourselves to look for the reasonable, as for all other things, in
concrete objects. The definite, accurate, certain, uniform result of
some understanding depends on the definite formulation of the task, on
the accurate limitation of the perceptible quantity which is to be
understood. If a certain moment, a certain person, a certain class, a
certain nation are given and at the same time an essential need, a
general and predominating purpose, then the question regarding the
reasonable or suitable is easily answered. It is true that we may also
know something of things which are generally reasonable for mankind in
the aggregate, but in that case our standard must be abstract mankind
instead of some concrete part of it. Science may study the anatomical
structure of some concrete body as well as the general type of the human
body, but this again it can do only when it supplies the faculty of
understanding with general instead of individual material. If science
divides the whole human race into four or five races, by establishing a
certain standard of physiognomy, and later on discovers some individuals
or tribes whose characters are so peculiar and rare that they cannot be
classed under any of the established races, the existence of such
exceptions is not a crime against the physical order of the world, but
merely a proof of the inadequacy of our scientific classification. If,
on the other hand, some conventional mode of thought considers a certain
action as universally reasonable or unreasonable and then encounters
opposition in actual life, convention fancies itself exempt from the
work of understanding and assumes to deny civic rights in the moral
order of the world to its opponents. Instead of realizing the limited
applicability of its rules by the existence of opposing practices,
convention seeks to establish an absolute applicability of its rules by
simply ignoring the cause of the opposition. This is a dogmatic
procedure, a negative practice, which ignores facts on the pretense
that they are irrational, but it is not a positive understanding, not an
intelligent knowledge, such as manifests itself by the conciliation of
contradictions.
If our study aims to ascertain what is universally human and reasonable,
and if these predicates are given only to actions which are reasonable
and practicable for all men, at all times, and under all conditions,
then such concepts are absolute, indeterminate, and to that extent
meaningless, indefinite generalities. We are stating such universal and
indeterminate, and therefore unimportant and unpractical concepts, when
we say that physically the whole is greater than a part, or that morally
the good is preferable to the bad. The object of reason is that which is
general, but it is the generality of some concrete object. The practice
of reason deals with individual and concrete objects, with the things
which are the opposite of the general, with special and concrete
knowledge. In order to perceive in physics whether we are dealing with a
part or with the whole object, we must handle definite and concrete
objects or phenomena. If we desire to ascertain what is morally
preferable as good or bad, we must start out with a definite quantity of
human needs. Abstract and general reason, with its socalled eternal and
absolute truths, is a phantasmagoria of ignorance which binds the rights
of the individual with crushing chains. Real and true reason is
individual, it cannot produce any other but individual perceptions, and
these perceptions cannot be generalized to any greater extent than the
general material with which they operate. Only that is universally
reasonable which is acknowledged to be so by all reasons. If the reason
of some time, class, or person is referred to as rational, and if some
other time, class or person considers it irrational; if, for instance,
the Russian noble considers serfdom a rational institution and the
English bourgeois the so-called liberty of his wage worker, both of
these institutions are not absolutely rational, but only relatively,
only in a more or less limited circle.
It is not necessary to state that I do not mean to question the great
importance of our reason by the foregoing remarks. Even though reason
cannot independently, or absolutely, discern the objects of the
speculative introspection, such as the objects of the moral world, the
true, the beautiful, the right, the bad, the reasonable, etc., it
nevertheless is well fitted to distinguish relatively, by means of
concrete sense perceptions, between general and concrete things, between
the object and its manifestation, between fundamental needs and fanciful
appetites. Although we may dispense with the belief in absolute reason
and consequently realize that there can be no absolute peace, still we
may call war an unmitigated evil when comparing it with the peaceful
interests of our time or of our class. Not until we abandon our
fruitless exploring trip after absolute truth, shall we learn to find
that which is true in space and time. It is precisely the consciousness
of the relative applicability of our knowledge which is the strongest
lever of progress. The believers in absolute truth have adopted the
monotonous diagram of "good" men and "rational" institutions as a basis
for their views of life. For this reason they oppose all human and
historical institutions which do not fit into their pattern, but which
reality nevertheless produces without regard to their brains. Absolute
truth is the arch foundation of intolerance. On the other hand tolerance
proceeds from the consciousness of the relative applicability of
"eternal truths." The understanding of pure reason leads to the
realization that the consciousness of the universal interdependence of
reason is the true road toward practical reason.
+(b) Morality and Right.+
The nature of our task limits us to the demonstration that pure reason
is a nonentity, that reason is the sum of all acts of individual
understanding, that it deals only seemingly with pure and general, but
in reality with practical, or concrete, perceptions. We have been
discussing that philosophy which pretends to be the science of pure or
absolute understanding. We found its aim to be idle, inasmuch as the
development of speculative philosophy represents a succession of
disappointments, because its unconditional or absolute systems proved to
be limited in space and time. Our presentation of the matter has
revealed the relative character of so-called eternal truths. We
perceived that reason was dependent on sense perceptions, we found that
any truth required definite limits for its determination. As regards
more especially life's wisdom, we saw that the acquired knowledge of
"pure" reason manifested itself in practice by the dependence of the
wise or the rational upon concrete sense perceptions. If we now apply
this theory to morality as such, we must be able to establish harmony
also in this field, where there is some doubt as to what is right and
wrong, by means of the scientific method.
Pagan morality is different from Christian morality. Feudal morality
differs from modern bourgeois morality as does bravery from solvency. In
brief, we need no detailed illustration to show that different times and
nations have different moralities. We have but to understand that this
change is necessary, a special characteristic of the human race and of
its historical development, and we shall then exchange the belief in
"eternal truths," which every ruling class claims to be identical with
its own selfish laws, for the scientific knowledge that absolute right
is purely a concept which we derive by means of the faculty of thought
from the various successive rights. Right as an absolute concept means
no more and no less than any other general concept, for instance, the
head in general. Every real head is a concrete one and belongs either to
man or to some other animal, it is either long or broad, narrow or wide,
in other words it has special peculiarities. But at the same time, every
concrete head has certain general qualities which are universal in all
heads, for instance the quality of being the superintendent of the body.
Moreover, every head has as many general as individual traits, it is no
more personal than it is common. The faculty of thought abstracts the
general traits from the actual concrete heads and in this way creates
the concept of the absolute head. Just as the absolute head, or _the_
head, is composed of the general qualities of all heads, so the absolute
right stands merely for the general characters of all rights. Both of
these concepts exist merely as ideas, not as objects.
Every real right is a concrete right, it is right only under certain
conditions, at definite periods, for this or that nation. "Thou shalt
not kill," is right in peace, but wrong in war; it is right for the
majority of bourgeois society that wishes to see the outbursts of
passion controlled in the interest of its own predominant needs, but
wrong for the savage who has not arrived at the period where a peaceful
and social life is appreciated, and who therefore would consider the
above commandment as an immoral restriction of his liberty. For the love
of life, murder is a detestable abomination, for revenge it is a sweet
satisfaction. In the same way robbery seems right to the robber, wrong
to the robbed. There can be no question of any absolute wrong in such
cases, only of wrong in a relative sense. An action is wrong in a
general sense only in so far as it is generally disliked. Plain robbery
is wrong in the opinion of the great majority today because our
generation takes more interest in bourgeois affairs of commerce and
industry than in the adventures of the knights of the road.
If there were such a thing as an absolutely right law, dogma, or action,
it would have to serve the welfare of all mankind under all conditions
and at all times. But human welfare is as different as men,
circumstances, and time. What is good for me is bad for another, and the
thing which may be beneficial as a rule may be injurious as an
exception. What promotes some interests in one period may interfere with
them in another. A law which would presume to be absolutely right would
have to be right for every one and at all times. No absolute morality,
no duty, no categorical imperative, no idea of _the_ good, can teach
man what is good, bad, right, or wrong. That is good which corresponds
to our needs, that is bad which is contrary to them. But is there
anything which is absolutely good? Everything and nothing. It is not the
straight timber which is good, nor the crooked. Neither is good, or
either is good, according to whether I need it or not. And since we need
all things, we can see some good in all of them. We are not limited to
any one thing. We are unlimited, universal, and need everything. Our
interests are therefore innumerable, inexpressibly great, and therefore
every law is inadequate, because it always considers only some special
welfare, some special interest. And for this reason no right is right,
or all of them are right, and it is as right to say "Thou shalt not
kill" as it is to say "Thou shalt kill."
The difference between good needs and bad needs, right wants and wrong
wants, like that between truth and error, reasonable and unreasonable,
finds its conciliation in the difference between the concrete and the
general. Reason cannot discover within itself any positive rights or
absolutely moral codes any more than any other speculative truth. It
cannot estimate how essential or unessential a thing is, or classify the
quantity of concrete and general characters, until it has some
perceptible material to work upon. The understanding of the right, or of
the moral, like all understanding, strives to single out the general
characteristics of its object. But the general is only possible within
certain defined limits, it exists only as the general qualities of some
concrete and determined perceptible object. And if any one tries to
represent some maxim, some law, some right in the light of an absolute
maxim, law or right, he forgets this necessary limitation. Absolute
right is merely a meaningless concept, and it does not assume even a
vague meaning until it is understood to stand for the right of mankind
in general. But morality, or the determination of that which is right,
has a practical purpose. Yet, if we accept the general and unconditional
right of mankind as a moral right, we necessarily miss our practical
aim. An act or a line of action which is universally or everywhere right
requires no law for its enforcement, for it will recommend itself. It is
only the determined and limited law, adapted to certain persons,
classes, nations, times, or circumstances, which has any practical
value, and it is so much more practical the more defined, exact, precise
and the less general it is.
The most universal and most widely recognized right or need is in its
quality no more rightful, better, or valuable than the most
insignificant right of the moment, than the momentary need of some
individual. Although we know that the sun is hundreds of thousands of
miles in diameter, we are nevertheless free to see it no larger than a
plate. And though we may acknowledge that some moral law is
theoretically or universally good or holy, we are free in practice to
reject it momentarily, in parts, or individually, as bad and useless.
Even the most sacred right of the most universal extent is valid only
within certain definite limits, and within particular limits an
otherwise very great wrong may be a valid right. It is true that there
is an eternal difference between assumed and true interests, between
passion and reason, between essential, predominating, general,
well-founded needs and inclinations, and accidental, subordinate,
special appetites. But this difference is not one of two separated
worlds, a world of the good and a world of the bad. It is not a
positive, general, continuous, absolute difference, but merely a
relative one. Like the difference between beautiful and homely, it
depends on the individuality of the person who distinguishes. That which
is a true and fundamental need in one case, is a secondary, subordinate,
and wrong desire in another.
_Morality is the aggregate of the most contradictory ethical laws which
serve the common purpose of regulating the conduct of man toward himself
and others in such a way that the future is considered as well as the
present, the one as well as the other, the individual as well as the
genus. The individual man finds himself lacking, inadequate, limited in
many ways. He requires for his complement other people, society, and
must therefore live and let live. The mutual concessions which arise out
of these relative needs are called morality._
The inadequacy of the single individual, the need of association, is the
basis and cause of man's consideration for his neighbor, of morality.
Now since the one who feels this need, man, is necessarily an
individual, it follows that his need must likewise be individual and
more or less intensive. And since my neighbors are necessarily different
from me, it requires different considerations to meet their needs.
Concrete man needs a concrete morality. Just as abstract and meaningless
as the concept of mankind in general is that of absolute morality, and
the ethical laws derived from this vague idea are quite as unpractical
and unsuccessful. Man is a living personality, whose welfare and
purpose is embodied within himself, who has between himself and the
world nothing but his needs as a mediator, who owes no allegiance to any
law whatever from the moment that it contravenes his needs. The moral
duty of an individual never exceeds his interests. The only thing which
exceeds those interests is the _material power_ of the generality over
the individuality.
If we regard it as the function of reason to ascertain that which is
morally right, a uniform scientific result may be produced if we agree
at the outset on the persons, conditions, or limits within which the
universal moral right is to be determined; in other words, we may
accomplish something practical if we drop the idea of absolute right and
search for definite rights applicable to well-defined purposes by
clearly stating our problem. The contradiction in the various standards
of morality, and the many opposing solutions of this contradiction, are
due to a misunderstanding of the problem. To look for right without a
given quantity of sense perceptions, without some definite working
material, is an act of speculative reason which pretends to explore
nature without the use of senses. The attempt to arrive at a positive
determination of morality by pure perception and pure reason is a
manifestation of the philosophical faith in understanding _a priori_.
"It is true," said Macaulay in his History of England, in speaking of
the rebellion against the lawless and cruel government of James II.,
"that to trace the exact boundary between rightful and wrongful
resistance is impossible: but this impossibility arises from the nature
of right and wrong, and is found in every part of ethical science. A
good action is not distinguished from a bad action by marks so plain as
those which distinguish a hexagon from a square. There is a frontier
where virtue and vice fade into each other. Who has ever been able to
define the exact boundary between courage and rashness, between prudence
and cowardice, between frugality and avarice, between liberality and
prodigality? Who has ever been able to say how far mercy to offenders
ought to be carried, and where it ceases to deserve the name of mercy
and becomes a pernicious weakness?"
It is not the impossibility of accurately determining this limit to
which the nature of the difference between right and wrong, in the sense
of Macaulay, is due. It is rather due to the vague thought which
believes in an unlimited right, in absolute virtues and faults, which
has not risen to the understanding that the terms good, brave, right,
and bad are valid always and everywhere only in relation to some
concrete individual who reasons, and that they have no validity in
themselves. Courage is foolhardiness in the eyes of the cautious, and
caution is cowardice in the opinion of the daring. The revolt against
existing governments is always right in the eyes of the rebels, always
wrong in the opinion of the attacked. No action can be absolutely right
or wrong.
The same qualities of man are good or bad, according to his needs and
their uses, according to time and place. Here trickery, slyness, and bad
faith prevail, there loyally, frankness and straightforwardness. Here
compassion and charity serve their purpose and promote welfare, there
ruthless and bloody severity. The quantity, the more or less beneficial
effect of a human quality, determines the difference between virtue and
vice.
Reason can distinguish between right and wrong, virtue and vice, only to
the extent that it can measure the relative quantity of right in any
faculty, rule, or action. No categorical imperative, no ethical code,
can serve as a basis for the real practical right. On the contrary,
ethics finds its justification in the actual righteousness of
perceptible objects. For general reason, frankness is not a better
quality than slyness. Frankness is preferable to slyness only inasmuch
as it is quantitatively, that is to say, more frequently, better, and
more generally appreciated than slyness. It follows that a science of
right can serve as a guide in practice only to the extent that practice
has served as a basis for science. Reason cannot determine the action of
man beforehand, because it can only experience, but not anticipate
reality, because every man, every situation, is new, original, exists
for the first time, and because the possibilities of reason are confined
to understanding _a posteriori_.
Absolute right, or right in itself, is an imagined right, is a
speculative desire. A scientifically universal right requires certain
definite and perceptible premises which form the basis of the
determination of the general. Science is not a dogmatic infallibility
which may say: This or that is right, because it is so understood.
Science requires for its perceptions some external object. It can
perceive right only if it rightly exists. The universal existence is the
material, premise, condition, and cause of science.
From the foregoing follows the postulate that morality must be studied
inductively or scientifically, not speculatively by the method of
traditional philosophy. We must not attempt to study absolute, but only
relative rights, only rights based on certain premises, and only this
can be the moral problem of reason. Thus the belief in a moral order of
the world is dissolved in the consciousness of human freedom. The
understanding of reason, of knowledge, of science, includes the
understanding of the limited validity of all ethical maxims.
Whatever impressed man as salutary, valuable, divine, was exhibited by
him in the tabernacle of faith as the most venerable thing. The Egyptian
worshipped the cat, the Christian venerates the divine providence. So,
when his needs led him to live a well-regulated life, the benefits of
the law inspired him with such a high opinion of its noble origin that
he adopted his own handiwork as a gift of heaven. The invention of the
mouse-trap or other useful appliances pushed the cat out of its exalted
position. Whenever man becomes his own master, takes care of himself,
and provides for himself, then all other providences become useless, and
his own mastership makes all superior tutelage unbearable. Man is a
jealous creature. Ruthlessly he subordinates everything to his own
interests, even God and His commandments. No matter how great or
venerable an authority any code may have acquired by long and faithful
service, as soon as new needs oppose it, they degrade the divine
authority to the ranks of human law and transform ancient right into
modern wrong. The Christian frivolity refused to respect the threat of
physical retribution which the Hebrew had anointed as an authority in
moral questions and revered under the maxim: Eye for eye, tooth for
tooth. The Christian had learned to cherish the blessings of
peacefulness; he carried submissive tolerance into the holy land, and
decorated the vacant tabernacle with the gentle injunction to offer the
left cheek when the right was tired of cuffs. In our times which are
Christian in name, but very anti-Christian in deeds, the long venerated
tolerance has long gone out of use.
Just as every religion has its own peculiar God, so every time has its
own peculiar right. To this extent, religion and morality are in harmony
with the worship of their sanctum. But they become arrogant upstarts
whenever they assume to exceed their natural boundaries, whenever they
attempt to saddle upon all circumstances, under the pretense of offering
something incomparable, absolute, permanent, that which is divine and
right at certain times and under definite conditions; whenever they
proclaim a successful remedy for their own peculiar disease as a
universal patent medicine for all diseases; whenever they overbearingly
forget their descent. A law is originally dictated by some individual
need, and then mankind with its universal needs is supposed to balance
itself on the thin rope of this one rule. Originally that which is
really good is right, and thereafter only some decreed right is supposed
to be really good. That is the unbearable arrogance. Ordained right is
not satisfied to serve as the right of this time, this nation or
country, this class or caste. It wants to dominate the whole world,
wants to be absolute right, just as if a certain pill could be absolute
medicine, could be good for everything. It is the mission of progress to
repulse this assumption, to pluck this peacock feather out of the tail
of the rooster, by leading mankind on beyond the boundaries prescribed
by ordained law, by extending the world for him, by conquering for his
cramped interests a wider liberty. The migration from Palestine to
Europe where the consumption of pork does not cause leprosy emancipates
our natural freedom from a once divine restriction by making it
irrelevant. But progress does not deprive one God of his shoulder straps
for the purpose of decorating some other God with them. That would
merely be an exchange, not an acquirement. Evolution does not drive the
saints of tradition out of the country; it simply retires them from the
wrongfully occupied field of universality into their peculiar
boundaries. Progress picks up the child and then pours the water out of
the bath tub. Though the cat may have lost its aureole and ceased to be
a God, it does not give up catching mice; and though the Jewish rules
for bodily cleanliness at certain definite times have long been
forgotten, a clean body is still highly respected. The present wealth of
civilization is due only to the economical administration of the
acquirements of the past. Evolution is as much conservative as it is
revolutionary, and it finds as much wrong as right in every law.
It is true that the believers in absolute duty scent a difference
between moral and legal right. But their self-interested narrowness does
not permit them to realize that every law is originally moral and that
every special morality is gradually reduced to the level of a mere law.
Their understanding reaches into other times and other classes, but does
not reach their own time and class. The laws of the Chinese and
Samoyeds are understood to refer to the peculiar requirements of those
people. But the rules of bourgeois society are supposed to be far more
sublime. Our present day institutions and moral codes are either
regarded as eternal truths of nature or reason, or as permanent oracular
expressions of a pure conscience. Just as if the barbarian did not have
a barbarian reason; as if the Turk did not have a Turkish conscience and
the Hebrew a Hebrew one; as if man could follow the dictates of some
absolute conscience, instead of the conscience being conditioned on the
man.
Whoever limits the purpose of man to the love and service of God, and to
eternal blessedness hereafter, may devoutly recognize the traditions of
abstract morality as authoritative and guide himself accordingly. But
whoever regards development, education, and blessedness on earth as
man's life purpose, will not think that the questioning of the assumed
superiority of traditional morals is irrelevant. It is only the
consciousness of individual freedom which creates sufficient unconcern
for the rules made by others to permit a brave advance, which
emancipates us from the striving for an illusory absolute ideal, for
some "best world," and which restores us to the definite practical
interests of our time and personality. At the same time we are thus
reconciled with the world as it really is, because we no longer regard
it as the unsuccessful realization of that which ought to be, but rather
as the systematization of that which cannot but be. The world is always
right. Whatever exists, is right and is not fated to be otherwise until
it changes. Wherever there is existence, which is power, there is also
right without any further condition, because it is right in a formative
stage. Weakness has no other right than that of striving for supremacy
and then enforcing a recognition of its long denied needs. The study of
history shows us not only the negative and ridiculous side of the
religions, customs, institutions and ideas of the past, but also their
positive, reasonable and necessary side. It explains to us, for
instance, that the deification of animals was due to an enthusiastic
recognition of their usefulness. And so the study of history shows not
alone the inadequacy of the things of the present, but also demonstrates
that they are the reasonable and necessary conclusions from the premises
of previous stages.
+(c) The Holy.+
In the well-known statement: The end sanctifies the means, the developed
theory of morality finds its practical expression. This maxim, used in
an ambiguous sense, may stand as a common reproach for us and for the
Jesuits. The defenders of the society of Jesus make efforts to prove
that it is a malignant attempt to discredit their clients. We shall not
try to speak for either party to this dispute, but will devote ourselves
to the subject matter itself, and seek to substantiate the truth and
reasonableness of this maxim, to rehabilitate it in the public opinion.
It will be sufficient for the refutation of the most general opposition
to understand that end and means are very relative terms, that all
concrete ends are means and all means are ends. There is no more of a
positive difference between great and small, right and wrong, virtue
and vice, than there is between end and means. Considered as something
integral by itself, every action has its own end and its means are the
various moments of which even the shortest action is composed. Every
concrete action is a means in relation to other actions which aim at the
same common effect. But in themselves actions are neither ends nor
means. Nothing is anything by itself. All being is relative. Things are
what they are only within and by their interrelations. Circumstances
alter cases. In so far as every action is accompanied by other actions,
it is a means, and serves a common end which exceeds its own special
end; but inasmuch as every action is complete in itself it is an end
which includes its own means. We eat in order to live; but so far as we
are living while we are eating, we are living in order to eat. As life
to its functions, so the end is related to its means. Just as life is
simply the sum of all life's functions, so the end is the sum of all its
means. The difference between means and end reduces itself to that
between the concrete and the general. And all abstract differences
reduce themselves to this difference, because the faculty of abstraction
or distinction reduces itself to the faculty of distinguishing between
the concrete and the general. But this distinction presupposes the
existence of some material, some given objects, some circle of sense
perceptions by which it manifests itself. If this circle is found in the
field of actions or functions, in other words, if a previously defined
number of different actions is the object of our study, then we refer to
the general character of these objects as the general end and to every
more or less extended part of them, or to every function, as a means.
Whether any definite action is considered as an end or as a means,
depends on the question whether we consider it as a whole in relation to
its own parts, or as a part of some whole in which it is connected with
other parts, with other actions. From a general point of view which has
all human actions for the object of its study, and encompasses them all,
there exists only one end, viz., the human welfare. This welfare is the
end of all ends, is the final end, is the real, true, universal end
compared to which all special ends are but means.
Now, our claim that the end sanctifies the means can have absolute
validity only in regard to some absolute end. But all concrete ends are
relative and finite. The one and sole absolute end is human welfare, and
it is an end which sanctifies all rules and actions, all means, so long
as they are subservient to it, but which reviles them as soon as they go
their own way without serving it. The human weal is literally and
historically the origin of the holy. That which is hale is holy. At the
same time we must not ignore the fact that the weal, or hale, in
general, the hale which sanctifies all means, is but an abstraction, the
real content of which is as different as are the times, the nations, or
persons which are seeking for their welfare. It must be remembered that
the determination of that which is holy or for the human weal requires
definite conditions, that no action, no means, is holy in itself, that
each one of them is sanctified only by definite relations. It is not
every end which sanctifies the means, but the holy end which sanctifies
its own means. But since every real and concrete end is only relatively
holy, it can sanctify its own means only relatively.
The opposition against our maxim is not so much directed against it, as
against the wrong application of it. Recognition is denied and the
socalled sanctified ends are accorded only limited means, because there
is lurking in the background the consciousness that these ends have only
a relative holiness. On the other hand our defense of the maxim does not
imply that the various nominally holy means and ends are sanctified
because some authority, some scriptural statement, some reason or
conscience, has declared them to be so, but only in so far as they
answer the common end of all ends, the human welfare. Our maxim of ends
does not at all teach that we should sacrifice love and truths to
sanctified faith, but neither does it demand that we should sacrifice
faith for love and truth. It merely states the fact that, whenever some
superior end has been determined by sense perceptions or circumstances,
all means contrary to that end are unholy, and that on the other hand
means which are generally unholy may become temporarily and individually
sanctioned by their relation to some momentary or individual welfare.
Wherever peacefulness is actually in favor as a sanctified means, war is
unholy. When, on the other hand, man seeks his salvation in war, then
murder and incendiarism are holy means. In other words, our reason
requires for a valid determination of that which is sanctified certain
definite material conditions or facts as premises; it cannot determine
_the_ holy in general, not _a priori_, not philosophically in the old
speculative way, but only in concrete cases, _a posteriori_, only
empirically.
If we understand that human welfare is the end of all ends, the ideal
of all means; if we furthermore dispense with all special determinations
of this welfare, with all personal ideas of it, and recognize that it is
different under different circumstances, then we understand at the same
time that no means is sanctified beyond the sanctity of its end. No
means, no action, is positively sanctified or makes for human welfare
under all circumstances. According to circumstances and relations one
and the same means may be good or bad. A thing is good only to the
extent that its results are good, only to the extent that there is good
in its end. Lying and cheating are bad only because they result
injuriously for ourselves, because we do not wish to be lied to or
cheated. But whenever a sanctified end is in question, the deceptive
means used in lying and cheating are called tricks of war. If any one is
firmly rooted in the goodness of chastity because he thinks it was
ordained by God, we cannot discuss the matter with him. But if one
honors virtue for the sake of virtue and abhors vice for the sake of
vice, in other words, for their consequences, he admits that he
sacrifices the lust of the flesh to the end of good health. In short, he
admits that the means are sanctified by the end.
In the Christian conception of the world, the commandments of its
religion are absolutely good for all time, they are considered good
because Christian revelation declares them to be so. This conception
does not know that, for instance, its acme of virtue, the specifically
Christian virtue of abstemiousness, received its value only by contrast
with corrupt heathenish licentiousness, but that it is not a virtue
when compared to reasonable and normal satisfaction of material needs.
It deals with certain means which it calls indiscriminately good without
any relation to their ends, and others which it calls indiscriminately
bad in the same absolute way. And for this reason, it opposes the above
named maxim.
But modern Christianity, modern civilization, has practically long done
away with this faith. It does indeed call the soul the likeness of God
and the body a putrid food for worms; but its deeds prove that it does
not take its religious phrases seriously. It cares little for the better
part of man and directs all its thoughts and actions toward the
satisfaction of the despised body. It employs science and art, and the
products of all climates, for the glorification of the body, clothing it
sumptuously, feeding it luxuriously, caring for it tenderly, resting it
on soft cushions. Although they speak slightingly of this earthly life
in comparison to the eternal life beyond, yet in practice they cling for
six days of the week to the uninterrupted pleasures of this body, while
heaven is hardly considered worthy of careless attention for more than
one short hour on Sundays. With the same thoughtless inconsistency the
socalled Christian world also attacks our maxim with words, while in
practical life it sanctifies the despised means by the end of its own
welfare, going even so far as to demonstrate its inconsistency in its
own life by subsidizing prostitution with state funds. The fact that the
legislative bodies of our representative states keep down the enemies of
their bourgeois order by courtmartials and exile, that they justify this
course by the proverb, "Do unto others as you would that they should do
unto you," in the interest of "public" welfare, or that they defend
their divorce codes by the plea of individual welfare, proves that the
bourgeoisie also believes in the motto: The end sanctifies the means.
And even though the citizens delegate rights to the state which they
deny to themselves, also our opponents cannot but admit that in so doing
the citizens are simply delegating their own rights to the superior
authority of the state.
True, whoever employs lying and cheating in the bourgeois world for the
end of gaining wealth, even though he may make it one of his ends to
give to charity, or whoever steals leather, like Saint Chispinus, for
the purpose of making shoes for poor people, does not sanctify his means
by his end, because the end in that case is not sanctified, or only
nominally so, only in general, but not in the concrete case quoted. For
charity is an end of but inferior holiness which must not be more than a
means compared to the main end of maintaining bourgeois society, and
whenever it contravenes this main purpose, charity loses its character
of a good end. And we have already seen that an end which is sanctified
only under certain circumstances cannot sanctify its means beyond them.
The indispensable condition of all good ends is that they must be
subservient to human welfare, and whether this welfare is secured by
Christian or pagan, by feudal or bourgeois means, it always demands that
the things which are considered unessential and of lesser importance
should be subordinated to the essential and necessary things, while in
the above quoted cases the more salutary honesty and bourgeois
respectability would be sacrificed to the less salutary charity. "The
end sanctifies the means" signifies in other words that in ethics as
well as in economics, the profit must justify the investment of the
capital. Again, if we call the forcible conversion of infidels a good
end, and an arbitrary police measure a bad means, this does not prove
anything against the truth of the maxim, but only testifies to its wrong
application. The means is not sanctified in the case, because the end is
not, because a forced conversion is not a good end, but rather an evil
one resulting in hypocrisy, and because such a conversion does not
deserve this name, or because force is a means which is unworthy of this
term. If it is true that a forcible conversion or wooden iron are
senseless ideas, how is it that people will persist in fighting against
universally recognized truths with such inconsistencies, such inane word
plays, such tricks of rhetoric and sophistry? The means of the Jesuits,
sly tricks and intrigues, poison and murder, appear unholy to us only
because the Jesuitic purpose, for instance that of extending the wealth
and influence and glorifying power of the order, is an inferior end
which may make use of the innocent language of the pulpit, but is not an
absolutely sanctified end, no supreme end, to which we would grant means
that would deprive us of some essential end, for instance of our
personal and public safety. Murder and manslaughter are considered
immoral as individual actions because they are not means to accomplish
our main end, because we incline not toward revenge or
blood-thirstiness, nor toward arbitrariness and the wilful dispensation
of justice by some judge, but toward lawful decisions and the more or
less impartial decrees of the state. But do we not explicitly declare in
favor of the maxim "The end sanctifies the means," when we constitute
ourselves into juries and render dangerous criminals powerless by the
rope and the ax of the executioner?
The same people who boast of having dropped Aristotle, that is to say
the belief in authority, for centuries, and who therefore replaced the
dead traditional truth by living self-gained truth, are found to be
completely at odds with their own development in the above cited cases.
If we listen to the recital of some funny story, which may be told by
even a reliable witness, we nevertheless remain loyal to the principles
of free reason, that is to say we are free to regard as serious and
regrettable any incident which the narrator may consider funny and
ridiculous. People know how to distinguish between a story and the
subjective impression its incidents created on the mind of the narrator,
and which depends more on the personality of the witness than on the
actual facts. But in the matter of good ends and bad means it is
proposed to neglect the distinction between an object and its subjective
end which is otherwise the point of all critique. Such ends as charity,
the conversion of infidels, etc., are thoughtlessly, a priori, called
good and holy, because they once were so under particular conditions,
while now their effect in the cases above cited is just the opposite,
and then people wonder that the unrighteous title carries with it
unrighteous privileges.
Only that end is worthy of the predicate good or holy in practice which
is itself a means, a servant, of the end of all purposes, of welfare.
Whenever man seeks his welfare in bourgeois life, in production and
commerce of commodities, and in the undisturbed enjoyment of his private
property, he clips his long fingers by the commandment: "Thou shalt not
steal." But wherever, as among the Spartans, war is regarded as the
supreme end and craftiness as a necessary quality of a warrior, there
thieving is used as a means of acquiring craftiness and sanctioned as a
means for the main end. To blame the Spartan for being a warrior instead
of a sedate bourgeois would be to ignore the facts of reality, would be
equivalent to overlooking that our brain is not designed to substitute
imaginary pictures for the actual conditions of the world, but is
organized to understand that a period, a nation, an individual is always
that which it can and must be under given circumstances.
It is not from mere individual and unpraiseworthy fondness for the
paradox that we subvert current views by defending the maxim "The end
sanctifies the means," but from a consistent application of the science
of philosophy. Philosophy originated out of the belief in a dualist
contrast between God and the world, between body and soul, between the
flesh and the spirit, between brain and senses, between thinking and
being, between the general and the concrete. The conciliation of this
contrast represents the end, or the aggregate result, of philosophical
research. Philosophy found its dissolution in the understanding that the
divine is worldly and the worldly divine, that the soul is related to
the body, the spirit to the flesh, thinking to being, the intellect to
the senses, in the same way in which the unity is related to the
multiplicity or the general to the concrete. Philosophy began with the
erroneous supposition that the one, as the first thing, was the basis
on which developed the two, three, four, and the entire multiplicity of
things by succession. It has now arrived at the understanding that
truth, or reality, turns this supposition upside down, that the reality
with its multiplicity of forms, perceivable by the senses, is the first
and foremost thing out of which the human brain gradually derived the
conception of unity or generality.
No achievement of science can be compared with the amount of talent and
intellectual energy consumed in harvesting this one little fruit from
the field of speculative philosophy. But neither does any scientific
novelty encounter so many deep-rooted obstacles to its recognition. All
brains unfamiliar with the outcome of philosophy are dominated by the
old belief in the reality of some genuine, true, absolutely universal
panacea, the discovery of which would make all sham, false individual
panaceas impossible. But we, on the other hand, have been taught by the
understanding of the thought process that this coveted panacea is a
product of the brain and that, since it is supposed to be a general and
abstract panacea, it cannot be any real, perceptible, concrete panacea.
In the belief in an absolute difference between true and false welfare,
there is manifested an ignorance of the actual operations of brain work.
Pythagoras made numbers the basis of things. If this Grecian philosopher
could have realized that this basic nature was a thing of the mind, of
the intellect,[2] and that numbers were the basis of reason, the common
or abstract content of all intellectual activity, then we should have
been spared all the disputes which have raged around the various forms
of absolute truth, about "things in themselves."
Space and time are the general forms of reality, or reality exists in
time and space. Consequently all real welfare must be attached to space
and time, and every welfare which exists in these dimensions must be
real. The different welfares, in so far as their beneficent qualities
are concerned, are to be distinguished only by their height and breadth,
by the quantity of their dimensions, by their numeral relations. Every
welfare, whether true or seeming, is perceived by the senses, by
practices of life, not by abstract reason. But practice assigns the most
contradictory things to different people at different times as means to
their welfare. What is welfare in one place, is disaster in another, and
vice versa. Understanding, or reason, has nothing else to do in the
matter than to number these various welfares as they are made real by
sense perceptions in various persons and times, and degrees of
intensity, in the order in which they appear, and thus to distinguish
the small from the great, the essential from the unessential, the
concrete from the general. Reason cannot dictate to us autocratically in
matters of some absolutely true welfare, it can only indicate the most
frequent, most essential, and most universal welfare in a certain
perceived number of welfares. But it must not be forgotten that the
truth of such an understanding, or enumeration, depends on certain
definite premises. It is therefore a vain endeavor to search for the
true and absolute welfare. This search becomes practical and successful
only when it limits itself to the understanding of a definite amount of
welfare of some particular objects. The general welfare can be found
only within definite boundaries. But the various determinations of
welfare agree in this respect, that they all consider it well to
sacrifice the little for the great, the unessential for the essential,
and not vice versa. In so far as this principle is right, it is also
right for us to employ for the good end of a great welfare some small
means in the shape of a small evil and to endure it, and thus we see
once more that the end sanctifies the means.
If people were liberal enough to permit every one to go to heaven in his
or her own way, the opponents of our maxim would be easily convinced of
its truth. But instead of doing this, people follow the usual course of
shortsightedness and make their private standpoint a universal one. They
call their own private welfare the only true welfare, and regard the
welfare of other nations, times and conditions a mistake. So does every
school of art declare its own subjective taste to be objective beauty,
ignoring the fact that unity is but a matter of ideas, of thought, while
reality is full of the most varied forms. The real welfare is manifold
and the true welfare but a subjective choice which, like a funny story,
may make an entirely different impression on others, and be a false
welfare. Even though Kant, or Fichte, or some other particular
philosopher, may discuss at length the purpose of mankind and solve the
problem to his full satisfaction and to that of his audience, we
nevertheless have learned enough today to know that one can define one's
own personal idea of the purpose of mankind by means of abstract
speculation, but that one cannot discover any unknown and hidden object
in this way. Thought, or reason, requires some object, and its work is
that of measuring, of criticising. It may distinguish between true and
false welfare, but will also remember that they have their limits,
remember that it is itself personal and that its distinctions are
likewise personal and cannot be generalized beyond the point where
others receive the same impression of the same object.
Humanity is an idea, while man is always some special person who has his
or her peculiar life in a definite environment and is therefore
subservient to general principles only from motives of self-interest.
The sacrifice of ethics, like that of religion, is only seemingly a
self-denial and serves the ends of reasonable self-interest, an
expenditure with a view to greater gains. A morality worthy of that name
which is not better defined by the term obedience can be exercised only
through the understanding of its worth, of its value for our welfare, of
its usefulness. The variety of political parties is conditioned on the
varieties of the interests concerned, and the difference in the means is
conditioned on the difference in ends. In questions of less importance
even the champions of absolute morality testify to this fact.
Thiers in his history of the French Revolution tells of a peculiar
situation in the year 1796, when the patriots held the public power and
the royalists carried on a revolutionary propaganda. It was then that
the partisans of the revolution, who should have been the champions of
unlimited liberty, demanded coercive measures, while the opposition, who
secretly cared more for a monarchy than for a republic, voted for
unlimited liberty. "To such an extent are parties governed by their
self-interests," comments Thiers, just as if this were an anomaly
instead of being the natural, necessary and inevitable course of the
world. When, on the other hand, it is a question of the fundamental laws
of bourgeois order, then the moral representatives of the ruling classes
are egotistic enough to deny the connection of their material interests
with these laws and to claim that theirs are eternal, metaphysical world
laws, that the pillars of their special class rule are the eternal
pillars of humanity, and that their own means alone are holy ones and
their end the final end of the universe.
It is a disastrous deception, a robbing of human liberty, an attempt to
cause the stagnation of the historical development, if any age or class
thus proclaims its own peculiar purposes and means to be for the
absolute welfare of humanity. Morality originally reflects one's
interests just as fashion reflects one's taste, and finally the action
is moulded after the conceived pattern like the coat in dressing. In
this process, force naturally is exerted for the maintenance and
protection of one's own life and those who resist are subdued. Interest
and duty, though perhaps not entirely synonymous, are certainly closely
related. Both of them are merged in the term welfare. Self-interest
represents more nearly the concrete, immediate, tangible welfare, while
duty concerns itself with the more remote and general welfare of the
future also. While self-interest considers the present tangible metallic
welfare of the purse, duty demands that we keep not only a part of
welfare, but all welfare in mind, that we consider the future as well as
the present, that we remember the spiritual welfare as well as the
physical. Duty thinks also of the heart, of social needs, of the
future, of the spiritual weal, in brief of interest in general and urges
us to renounce the superfluous in order to secure and retain the
necessary. Thus your duty is your self-interest and your self-interest
your duty.
If our ideas are to adapt themselves to truth, or to reality, instead of
reality or truth adapting itself to our notions or thoughts, we must
understand that the mutability of that which is right, holy, moral, is a
natural, necessary and true fact. And we must grant to an individual the
theoretical freedom which cannot be taken from it in practice, we must
admit that it is as free now as it has ever been, that laws must be
adapted to the needs of the social individual and not to the vague,
unreal, and impossible abstractions, such as justice or morality. What
is justice? The embodiment of all that is considered right, an
individual conception, which assumes different forms in different
persons. In reality only individual, definite, concrete rights exist,
and man simply comes along and abstracts from them the idea of justice,
just as he abstracted from different kinds of wood the conception of
wood in general, or from material things the conception of matter. It is
just as far from the truth, to think that material things consist of, or
are by virtue of, abstract matter, although this view is widely spread,
as it is to believe that the moral or bourgeois laws were derived from
the idea of justice.
The ethical loss caused by our realistic, or if you prefer,
materialistic, conception of morality is not so great as it appears. We
need not fear that through this conception social beings will become
lawless cannibals or hermits. Freedom and lawfulness are closely allied
by the need for association which compels us to permit others to live
together with us. If a man is prevented by his conscience or by other
spiritualistic or bourgeois ethics from committing unlawful
actions--unlawful in the wider meaning of the term--he is either not
exposed to very grave temptations, or he has a nature so tame that the
natural or legal punishments fully suffice to keep him within prescribed
bounds. But where these checks are ineffective, morality is likewise
powerless. If it were otherwise, we should have to assume that morality
exerts in secret the same influence on the faithful which is exerted by
public opinion on the faithless. But we know from actual experience that
there are more pious thieves than infidel robbers. That the world, which
attributes so much value for social welfare to morality by word of
mouth, actually shares this view of ours, is proven by the fact that
bourgeois society gives more attention to the penal code and to the
police than to the influence of morality.
Moreover, our fight is not directed against morality, not even against
any special form of it, but only against the arrogance which assumes to
stamp some concrete form of morality with the trade mark of absolute
morality. We recognize that morality is eternally sacred, in so far as
it refers to considerations which a man owes to himself and to his
fellowmen in the interest of their common welfare. But the freedom of
the individual demands that each one should be at liberty to determine
the degree of consideration and the manner of giving it expression.
Under these circumstances it is as inevitable that the ruling powers,
classes or majorities should enforce their special needs under the form
of a prescribed right, as it is that a man's shirt should be closer to
his skin than his coat. But it appears to us not merely very
superfluous, but even detrimental to the energies required for the
progress of the future, that some decreed right should be elevated to
the position of absolute right and transformed into an insuperable
barrier to the advance of humanity.