Dear Eugene:
Logic is going through the same experience as economics. The economists
of the capitalist era talk solely of the means and ways by which profit
and surplus value may be increased. They discuss only its relative size,
its increase or decrease. But the thing itself, its origin and descent,
is not discussed. It is passed in silence that profit is extracted from
labor power by paying less for a day's work than is produced by it. The
gentlemen talk only of the "wealth of nations," but not of their
poverty. And though this was due to ignorance in the beginning, it has
later become sheer roguery.
The formal logicians are as ignorant as they are roguish, when they
persist in discussing the intellect or thought in the traditional manner
as if they were isolated things, while ignoring the necessary connection
of the object of the logical study with the world of experiences. This
interconnection leads to an explanation of truth and error, of sense and
nonsense, of god and idols, and this is very inopportune for the
professors. For this reason this unwelcome problem is handed over to the
mystical departments, to metaphysics and religion, so that these
venerable pillars of official wisdom may continue their services to the
ruling classes.
I have already stated in my letters that the kernel of my discussion
turns on the distinction between formal and what I call proletarian
logic. The formal logicians treat the intellect as a thing "in itself,"
while I express in many different ways the fact that the intellect does
not exist by itself, but is interconnected with all things and with the
universe.
That intellect has indeed a transcendental leaning, which seeks vent by
trying to exclude now music, now language, now itself, now some other
fetich from the universal interrelation. But the science of the mind
teaches that the brain watching its own activity finds out that all
affirmations and negations, assertions and contradictions, belong to the
one omnipotent world mechanism, which keeps them stored within itself
and which is actually truth and life. Inasmuch as the human brain is of
the same nature as this automatic universal being and interconnected
with it, logic is at the same time religion, metaphysics, and world
wisdom.[4]
Formal logic teaches that our intellect must keep all things apart, but
does not teach that it must also connect them. This logic is right in
one way and yet does not arrive at the goal of a clear world philosophy,
because it permits the transcendental leaning to exaggerate the
differences and distinctions. It overlooks the paradoxical or
dialectical nature of things which are not only separated but also
connected. What must be understood is that, generally speaking, the
classification of the universe is only a formality. We are, indeed,
justified in distinguishing between above and Below, right and left,
beginning and end, gold and sheet metal, good and bad, but we must also
enlighten ourselves as to how multiplicity can be a unity, the variable
constant, and the constant variable. Formal logic has a wrong name. It
is not formal, but transcendental. It shares the common prejudice that
there are absolutely contradictory things or irreconcilable opposites,
that there are essential differences which have no connection, no bridge
between them, nothing in common. It teaches that contradictions cannot
exist, and contradicts itself by clinging to the belief that there are
irreconcilable contradictions. It teaches that a thing which contradicts
itself is inconceivable, is not true, and thus reveals that it is not
well informed on the formality of contradictions, on the true
conciliation of contradictions, and on universal truth. Gold is not
sheet iron, that is true enough. Whoever calls gold sheet metal or
sheet metal gold, contradicts himself. In the actual world both things
are separated. Yet they are not separated to such extent that gold and
sheet iron do not partake of the same nature, of the nature of all
metal. Gold and sheet iron are unlike metals, but they have the same
metallic likeness. That like things are different and different things
alike, that it is everywhere only a question of the degree of
difference, of formal differences, this is overlooked by "formal" logic
and by all who seek truth in any logical diagram or fetich, instead of
in the eternal, omnipresent existence of the inseparable universe.
Our logic deals with truth or with the universe, which contains the most
sublime gods and the meanest deviltry, in other words, which contains
everything. In the world truth there is contained error, pretense, lies,
just as death also lives in it. In other words, error, pretense, lies,
death are only phenomena, formalities, passing trifles or things which
are nothing compared to the one thing, that thing of all things, which
is being, truth, life.
The understanding of the one living world truth is so greatly aggravated
by the so-called contradictions which it contains. We find for instance
that where one thing ends another begins. The end of the one is the
beginning of another. Every beginning is at the same time an end. Both
are contained in one another, and yet in our minds beginning and end are
separated. We find the beginning and the end everywhere and nowhere. Or
look into space. You do not see any boundary, and yet your vision
reaches only a certain distance. Your vision is bounded and yet there is
no boundary to be seen. Or look at life. Death soon arrives, and yet a
closer look shows that death is not really death, for "a new life arises
from the ruins." The world proves to be the eternal life which does not
know death. It is a contradiction to say that death lives, but this
contradiction can be solved by the understanding that the difference
between life and death, however great, is still a formal one, a
difference which like all other differences is reduced to relative
insignificance by the infinite cosmic life.
There exists a widely diffused school, if this term may be applied to
the unschooled, that preaches patience in the matter of the
systematization of our thoughts or the enlightenment of our intellect,
and though it no longer hopes for a mysterious revelation, yet founds
its faith on natural science which has explained so many things to us
and which is finally supposed to throw light on the "last questions of
all knowledge." But I can easily convince you that the new countries,
plants, animals. Esquimaux, that may be discovered on polar expeditions,
or the inventions which Edison may perhaps make on the field of
electricity, or the experiences which future astronomers may gather in
regard to suns, moons, and comets, while they may add valuable
contributions to science and life, will yet do little toward a correct
general employment of our intellect or to a universal enlightenment of
the human brain. On the other hand, an enlightenment as to the nature
and meaning of contradictions will spread light to the remotest corners
of imagination, into the heavens and eternity, into the existence of the
whole, the unity and difference of all things.
The most drastic, and perhaps the most instructive, illustration of the
correct meaning of contradictions is given by the contrast between
truth and untruth. These two poles are perhaps more widely separated
than the North Pole and the South Pole, and yet they are as intimately
connected as these two. The commonplace logic will hardly listen to the
demonstration of the unity of such apparently wide opposites as truth
and untruth. Therefore you will pardon me, if I illustrate this example
by others, for instance by the contrast between day and night. Take it
that the day lasts twelve hours and the night likewise. Day and night
are opposites. Where there is day cannot be any night, and yet day and
night constitute one single day of twenty-four hours, in which they both
dwell harmoniously. It is the same with truth and untruth. The world is
the truth, and error, pretense, and lies are embodied in it, are parts
of the actual world, just as night is a part of day without confusing
logic. We may honestly speak of genuine pretense and true lies, without
any contradiction. Just as unreason has still some reason left, so
untruth still lives inevitably in truth, because the latter is
all-embracing, is the universe.
"Contradictions cannot exist." But confused brains full of
contradictions nevertheless exist. Knives without handles and blades,
two mountains without a valley between them, and other nonsense, exist
as a phrase. There are two kinds of contradictions: Senseless ones and
very sensible ones. Yea, the whole world[5] is an infinite and
inexhaustible contradiction, which contains innumerable sensible
statements and misstatements, which never disappear and yet may be
solved harmoniously by the help of time and reason.
From this it follows that the formal criteria of truth which are on
everybody's tongue, such as the identity of thought with its object, and
the absence of all contradictions, do not furnish a basis at all for the
analysis of truth and cannot define it, except in an ignorant and
roguish way.
Since the prophet Daniel scattered ashes in the temple and unmasked the
servants of Baal, other idol worshippers have continued to stimulate the
people to daily sacrifices, in order to steal the victuals at night.
This continual rascality and its repeated exposure has blunted the
desire of the people to serve truth, so that a great many have become
frivolous and indifferent. This rascally logic, not to mention
ignorance, encourages the frivolous and indifferent in their godless
departure from truth. In the pulpit and in the garb of science it
preaches the vanity and inadequacy of research. This is preached not as
a dogma, but as a logical science, and thus the senseless contradiction
is committed of trying to prove truly by the help of the intellect that
the intellect is too limited to grasp the truth and prove it.
In its historical course logical research once arrived at such a result
in good faith. This happened in the famous "Critique of Reason" of
Immanuel Kant. Our shrewd friends of darkness now seek to utilize the
fame of this work, to which it is entitled on account of its great
contribution toward the elucidation of cosmic truth, for the purpose of
preventing on the strength of it a progress of enlightenment beyond the
standpoint of Kant.
By the way, Kant has demonstrated that the truth in general is as much a
matter of experience as the brain with which we search for it. He has
shown beyond a doubt that our eyes and ears are inseparably connected
with our mind and with the whole cosmic truth. But the persistent spirit
of transcendentalism, or what is the same thing, the traditional belief
in the transcendental spirit, has led him to grant a mysterious
existence alongside of or above the human mind, alongside of or above
the cosmic truth, to an incomprehensible monster spirit and to a
fantastical hyper-truth.
The Kantian critique of reason did not understand the universality of
truth. It still affirmed the existence of two worlds and two truths
without any unity. And as it is the curse of the evil deed to generate
more evil, it produced two intellects. (1) The poor little subservient
intellect of man, and (2) the enormous and abnormal intellect of the
_Lord_, who is supposed to understand the incomprehensible and to untie
the most senseless contradictions like so many knots.
The truth which is the universe, the cosmic or universal truth, will
reveal to you the absurdity of abnormal humility which is contained in
the dualistic doctrine of the two minds. Of course, the philosopher Kant
had a greater intellect than Peter Simple. But nevertheless all
intellects partake of the nature of the general intellect, and no
intellect can step above or below this general nature without losing
sense or reason. One cannot speak of another, higher, faculty of thought
than that acquired by man through experience without dropping from logic
to absurdity. No doubt the animal world possesses something similar to
intellect. No doubt, also, the animal mind may be separated from the
human mind by some special name, for instance "instinct." No doubt,
furthermore, our reason is strengthened by culture from generation to
generation. But that anywhere and at any time there should come into
existence a faculty of thought which would stand outside of the cosmic
interconnection, that is an absurd conception and a senseless thing.
Just as necessarily as all water has one and the same nature, that of
being wet, just so necessarily every intelligence and every thought
partakes of the general nature of thought and must logically be a part,
a particular part, of the one universal and empirical world.