Dear Eugene:
My task of teaching logic requires two things: a logician and a teacher.
The last named capacity requires that I should clothe the subject in an
attractive way. Permit me, therefore, to combine the didactic style with
that of the story teller, and to relate at this point an episode from a
novel of Gustav zu Putlitz:
The organist of a certain village is lying on his deathbed. His last
strength has been spent on the previous day in playing a hymn, and after
its conclusion he was carried from the church in an unconscious state.
He had played his masterpiece, but at the same time his last piece. A
despised stage girl had accompanied him with a voice like that of a
nightingale. But neither she nor the organ player had earned any
applause from the stupid villagers.
The old man looked around in his room, his eyes were first riveted on
his faithful piano, his friend and companion through life. He extended
his hand, but it sank down exhausted. He had not had the intention to
touch the piano anyway. It was only like stretching out one's hand for a
friend far away. Then he looked through the window trying to recollect
what time of the day it was. And when he had taken in the situation, he
turned to the girl kneeling at his feet.
"Poor child," he began, "you were deeply disappointed yesterday. I felt
very much hurt, when I first heard of it, but after that everything
became clear to me while I heard the music all night, until a short
while ago. Rejoice, my girl, at being reviled, for it is done for the
sake of that sacred music, and it is an ecstasy, a blessing, to be
martyred for one's music which is well worth all injuries. I did not
fare any better all my life, and if I thank God for all the good he has
done me until this hour, I also thank him first and most fervently for
the gift of music which he bestowed on the world, and which he revealed
to me most wonderfully in my most painful hours.
"For my music I have starved and suffered all my life, and my gain was
delicious, my reward celestial for this poor perishable stake.
"My father was an organist in a little town of Eastern Frisia. His
father had held the same position in the same church, and, I think, so
did the father of his father follow music for a profession. Music has
been the heirloom of our family for generations. True, it was the only
heirloom, but I have cherished it and held its flag aloft all my life.
When God calls me away, I shall leave nothing behind but that old piano
and the sheet music which I wrote myself, for in all other respects I
have always been poor. I might have done differently, and my wife has
often upbraided me for it, but she does not understand the blessing of
music. I do not blame her for that, for it was not her fault that God
closed her ear to music as he did the ears of many others. Poor people,
how cold and dreary must be their lives when music does not scatter
blossoms in their path and bathe their temples in light. But there will
come a time when their ears will be opened, and God will compensate them
in heaven for what they missed here below.
"We who love music have tasted a part of eternal bliss here below, for
harmony which dissolves all chords is eternal life and its wings are
fanning us in this terrestrial life----
"Do you see, I know it well, and no one besides me, how it is when the
soul prepares to leave the perishable body and enter the song of the
spheres--
"You do not understand me, my girl, but do not worry, you also will
understand some day. I will only tell you this much, and it shall be a
consolation to you when the world treats you roughly hereafter. All of
us, whether rich or poor, whether reclining on soft silken cushions or
on hard straw, all of us enter life with the celestial melodies in our
hearts. The beating of time goes with us as long as we are breathing. It
is the beating of the heart in our breast. We may seem to lose the
melody, even the measured step of time seems to become confused by our
passion, but in the blessed hours we always find our melody anew, and
then we feel at home in the path of our life."
Thus the old organist idolized his music.
But it is not alone the harmony of music which has such a power over the
mind. The harmony of colors, every art and science, has the same power.
Even the most common craft, and the most prosaic of all prose, the chase
after the dollar, may take possession of a man's soul and prostrate him
in adoration before its idol. True, not every one is so sentimentally
inclined, and even the sentimentalist is so only in especially
sentimental moments. Furthermore it cannot be denied that artists,
inventors, and explorers are worshipping the most worthy and most
adorable objects. And I admit that no great success can be accomplished
without putting your whole soul into some great aim.
Nevertheless you should know that anything which may take possession of
one's soul shares its sublimity with all other things, and is for this
reason at the same time something ordinary. Without such a dialectic
clarification of our consciousness all adoration is idol worship.
The actual experience, then, that anything and everything may serve as
an idol should clearly convince you that no one thing, but only the
universe is the true God, is truth and life.
Now, is this logic or is it theology?
It is both. At closer range you will notice that all great logicians
occupy themselves a great deal with God and deity, and that on the other
hand all honest theologians are trying to base their faith on some
logical order. Logic is by its whole nature metaphysical.[3]
There exists a class of logicians who attempt to deny the inevitable
connection between the celestial region and the tangible universe. Some
of them do so from excessive religious delicacy of feeling, in order to
protect the sublime from the disintegrating effects of critique. Others
have such an antipathy against the religious abuses that they do not
wish to hear any more about religion. Both classes adhere to the
so-called formal logic.
These adherents of formal logic may be compared to a maker of porcelain
dishes who would contend that he was simply paying attention to the form
of his dishes, pots, and vases, but that he did not have anything to do
with the raw material, while it is evident that he is compelled to form
the body in trying to embody forms. These things can be separated by
words only, but not by actions. In the same way as body and form, the
finite and infinite or so-called celestial spheres, the physical and the
metaphysical, are inseparable.
Logic analyzes thought. But it analyzes thought as it is in reality, and
therefore it unavoidably searches for truth. And whether this truth is
found above or below, or anywhere, is a question which just as
inevitably brings the logician into contact with the theologian. To
think of avoiding such a meeting from considerations of sympathy or
antipathy, would be a rude lack of consideration for science.
Metaphysical logic which aims to extend its field to eternity, which
looks for logical order even in heaven, and seeks to solve even the
so-called last questions of all knowledge, differs in a distinct way
from formal logic, which selects a restricted field for its research and
confines itself to investigating the logical order of the socalled
physical world. This difference is worthy of your special attention,
because in it there is hidden the kernel of our whole correspondence.
It is quite a practical method to set a limit for one's investigations,
not to fly into clouds, not to undertake anything that cannot be
accomplished. Yet you must not forget that practical boundaries are not
theoretical boundaries, that they are not invariable boundaries for you,
or for others. Although you cannot fly to heaven and will give up the
idea of flying machines from considerations of practical expediency, yet
you will not wish to deny to man the theoretical freedom of infinite
striving even in the matter of airships, and you will not be so small as
to give up the idea of the capacity for our race for metaphysical, or in
other words, infinite development.