Dear Eugene:
In my first letter I acquainted you with my purpose, in the second I
lifted the subject on my finger tips, so to say, to show it for a brief
moment; in the third I showed that its color had inevitably a religious
shade. Now, to continue, permit me to introduce another point to your
consideration.
The great cause of the working class has hitherto always been the beast
of burden of a small and exclusive minority. This is most evident in the
slave states of antiquity, in Egypt, Greece, Rome. Likewise in the
feudal and guild systems of the middle ages the oppression of the mass
of the people is sufficiently apparent. At present this condition of
things is more visible in Eastern Europe, in Russia, Turkey, Bulgaria,
Hungary, Eastern Prussia, etc., than in the industrial countries of the
West. In the United States of America it is most obscured, so that there
the people hardly realize their enslaved condition. In America, many of
the upper ten thousand have made their way from the bottom up, and it
happens more frequently than in Europe that the captains of industry
laid their foundation by hard work. The shortsighted observers then
easily forget out of sympathy for the hard beginning that there is
sharper's practice at the end, and they indulge in the idle hope that
every hard working beast of burden might transform itself into a happy
millionaire by thrift and smartness.
You will probably ask: What has that to do with logic or the art of
reasoning? Patience! You will admit that the emancipation of the nations
from beastly toil, misery and suffering is the highest goal of the human
mind. Nor will you deny that the thought is the most essential
instrument for reaching this high goal. The accomplishments of thought
are visible in the results of civilization. The proletariat of the
present, also that of Russia, Turkey, East Prussia, participates in
these accomplishments of thought. It participates not alone in the sense
that its brains are better educated and cultured, but also that its
food, clothing, and shelter have become more civilized through the
progressive deeds of intellect.
You see, then, that the people's cause is connected with the faculty of
thought, and the nature of the latter may be illustrated as well by the
example of the development of civilization. The complicated network of
wheels in a watch may also serve to demonstrate the nature of that which
language designates by many names, such as spirit, intellect, faculty of
knowledge, reason, etc. Only it must be remembered that this mysterious
something cannot be shown by itself, but only in connection with other
things, whether they be the history of civilization or a watch. There
will then be no contradiction in finding that the intellectual life
appears more powerful and magnificent through the clockwork of the
history of civilization than through any miniature product of thought.
In searching for the connection of things, one generally seeks to
recognize the manner or the degree of the connection. But we, in this
case, disregard the question as to how the things of this world are
related to one another and to thought, and we simply make a note of the
fact of the interdependence of thought and being, of nature and mind.
This fact of the universal interconnection of things contradicts the
untrained prejudice. The uncultivated brain nurses the illusion that the
earth, the trees on it, and the clouds and the sun above them are
separate things. But it requires a better training of reason to
understand that the earth, the tree, the clouds, and the sun, can be
what they are only in the universal interconnection. I remember reading
an article from Fichte, in a German school reader, which clearly showed
that the disarrangement of an insignificant object during the process of
thinking causes us to disarrange the whole history of the world in our
thoughts. It is well known that one unfamiliar with political economy
overlooks the fact that the business men not only carry on their trading
for their private benefit, but are also members of the process of social
production. It is overlooked that all labor, aside from being individual
activity, is at the same time an organic part of social labor. And just
as ignorance of economics overlooks the industrial interdependence, so
ignorance of logic overlooks the cosmic interrelations.
Here is a drop of water. Look how different it is according to the
different things with which it is connected. It cannot be what it is
without a certain temperature. According to changes in temperature, it
will assume either the form of ice or of steam. In fat the drop remains
compact, in salt it divides infinitely, runs downhill in general and
uphill in a loaf of sugar. According to the specific gravity of a
certain fluid, with which it may come into contact, it either floats on
the surface or sinks. Without a connection with the earth, its
temperature and gravitation, this drop and all others would disappear in
the fathomless abyss and have no existence. Thus the forms of things
change according to their connections, and they are what they are only
as parts of the universal interrelation.
What is true of a drop of water, is true of all things, all forces and
substances, even of our thoughts. The human mind lives and works only in
connection with the rest of the material universe--and the recognition
of the organic unity of all things is the fulcrum of my logic.
Old line metaphysical logic was so enamored of its object that the
descent, the kinship, and the connection with the common things of this
world seemed too ordinary for the exquisite spirit. That logic was
transcendental, and therefore its chosen object likewise had to be in
touch with a transcendental world. And though it was scientific enough
to regard the tale of the creation of the first soul by the breath of
God as a fable, it was nevertheless so prejudiced in favor of the
extraordinary nature of the intellect that it did not abandon, for
thousands of years, the hope of finding in that intellect a source which
would reveal transcendental matters. Formal logic now entirely discards
this hope of a fantastical world, but at the same time it misunderstands
the natural connection between the spirit and the common world. It
isolates the instrument of thought and leaves the question undecided
whether this instrument has a natural, supernatural, or no connection at
all. It overlooks that just as logic is real, so reality is logical, and
does not see that the back door which leads to illogical heaven by way
of faith deserves the disdain of science.
Thought, intellect, are really existing, and their existence is a
uniform part of the universal existence. That is the cardinal point of
sober logic.
The fact that the thoughts are of the same worldly substance as the
other parts of the universe, that they are parts of common nature and
not a transcendental essence, has already been expressed by Cartesius in
the famous words: "_Cogito, ergo sum_," I think, therefore I am.
The fact of my thinking, says the philosopher, proves my existence. In
order to come to an absolute conviction on the nature of truth and
error, he sets out by doubting everything. And then he says that he
cannot doubt the existence of his thoughts. He thus placed the spirit on
the basis of real life, delivered it of its transcendentalism, and that
constitutes his everlasting merit.
However, not alone Cartesius, but also your own experience testifies to
the inseparable connection between thinking and being. Have not your
thoughts been connected always and everywhere with some worldly or real
object? If you attempt to isolate thought in order to ponder over it,
you can only do so because that thought has been experienced by you and
therefore was in every instance attached to some worldly object. True,
you have thought of Greek gods, brownies, and mermaids. But you, an
amateur in painting, are familiar enough with that part of the mind
which is called imagination in order to admit that even this eccentric
part of the mind does not only act, and therefore, exist in reality, but
also derives all its products from reality, so that even its most
fantastical vagaries and illusions are still real pictures, reflections
of reality.
But how is it that I require such a multitude of words in order to state
over and over again that the thought has a real existence and is a
uniform part of the universe? Simply because from time immemorial the
confusion in matters of logic is so great that the human spirit is in
the same breath exalted to heaven, and yet its thoughts regarded as
nothing real, nothing true. This is made plain by the fact that a sharp
distinction is commonly made between that which is real and that which
is only imagined, and this difference is exaggerated to such an extent
that it appears as if the idea, which indeed is only in the brain, has
no real existence at all.
In order that you may understand the interrelations of the things of the
universe, I must warn you against this exaggeration and prove that the
intellect has a real existence which is connected with the universe or
reality. Botany, which occupies itself with plants, does not only teach
us to divide them into classes, orders, and families, but it also does
more by showing us what place in the entire realm of nature is occupied
by the vegetable kingdom, by pointing out the differences which
distinguish the plants from the inorganic mineral kingdom or the organic
animal kingdom. Formal logic similarly dissects the spirit into its
parts, makes distinctions between conceptions, ideas, judgments,
conclusions, divides these into subdivisions, classifies conceptions
according to species, separates abstract and concrete thought, knows
many varieties of judgments, registers three, four, or more modes of
conclusion. But at the same time this formal logic recoils from touching
on the question as to how the universal spirit is related to the
universe, what role it plays in the general existence, whether it is
part and parcel of nature or transcendental. And yet this is the most
interesting part, the part which logically connects the intellect and
the science of the intellect with all other sciences and things.
Logic must teach us how to distinguish. It is not a question, however,
of distinguishing sheet iron from gold, or a greyhound from a pug-dog,
for this is done by special lines of knowledge. Logic must rather
enlighten us about that part of the faculty of distinguishing which is
generally required in all branches of knowledge, whereby truth and
error, imagination and reality are recognized. To this end I feel
impelled to advise you not to overlook that even error and imagination
belong to the one infinite and absolutely coherent reality. For the
purpose of distinguishing true imagination from actual reality, it must
be remembered that just as rye bread and cream puffs agree in belonging
to the general category of baker's products, so imagination and truth,
thought and reality, are two different kinds of the same nature.
To sum up the contents of this letter, let me point out that its
beginning shows the connection of the intellect with the development of
the people, while its conclusion explains the wider connection of the
mind with the universal existence.