Repetition, my dear Eugene, is the mother of all study.
Logic aims to teach you the proper use of the intellect, not only in
this or that branch of study, but in the general branch of truth. Its
result is the following precept: In all things always remember the
universal interrelation.
In order to illustrate this statement a little, let me point out that in
the period of scholasticism thinking was practiced without any
interconnection with the rest of the world, merely by brown study. The
present age of natural sciences then cultivated a better method. But the
method of the natural sciences has not succeeded so far in being applied
to the field of law, morals, politics, psychology, and philosophy,
because the logical understanding of the total interrelation of the
indivisible world truth was lacking, because the concept of truth was
enveloped in darkness, and because the privileged classes have a great
interest in maintaining darkness.
For this reason, the true method of reasoning still requires many
explanations. The socialist, for instance, is charged with inciting the
people, with promising more than he can keep and with sowing strife in
the hearts of men. Those who make this charge in the commonplace sense,
tear two things, viz., peace and strife, out of their due connection. As
a matter of fact, peace and strife must always dwell together. A nation
whose peace were not intermingled with a certain strife, would be a
nation of sluggards. Thanks to the strife in their breasts, the nations
are progressive and stirring. Motion is the essence of the world, and
national motion is inconceivable without the striving of men. For the
sake of development and culture, nations must always demand more than
they can immediately attain. On the other hand, striving of this sort is
not sufficient. One must not demand more than one can obtain, nor
promise more than one can give. For this reason the logical socialist
must know that even in the future society the trees will not grow into
the clouds, and that the peace for which we hope and strive will always
be mixed with strife. The music of the future, although more harmonious
than the music of the present, will nevertheless be eternally marred by
disharmony. There is nothing perfect in the world, because only the
whole universe is perfect, because the universe alone is perfectness
itself.
Eternal peace, as the warriors may justly claim, is an illusion, so long
as we think of peace in a transcendental way and as being separated from
strife. But the sons of the war god who would like to continue the
thunder of cannons and the rattle of sabers eternally, are no less the
victims of illusion, if not something worse. Eternal is only war in
peace and peace in war, although that may seem senseless to the
logicians of the old school. Thus even the inevitable war will become
more peaceful and humane in the course of time. The barbarian form of
war, of which the Prussians are masters, is not destined to last
forever, unless we speak of the illogical eternity of the preacher which
opens its doors by leaving the temporal world. In defending the social
war, I wish to have it understood that neither the conceptions nor the
things called war and peace are separated by a Chinese wall.
Everything is interconnected and interdependent. It is true that strife
and animosities may be exaggerated, and so may peace. But whatever blame
attaches to this, refers only to the exaggeration. It is not the
animosity, but the excessive animosity which deserves censure. By
recognizing the logical interconnection between peace and strife, the
dispute of the parties is rendered saner. There is then no longer a
question of a yawning chasm between satisfaction and dissatisfaction,
but of something about which an agreement is possible, viz., how much
there is of either.
As peace and war in the human breast, so all variety intermingles in the
cosmic unit. In the novel "_Homo Sum_," by Ebers, the monk Paulus, who
tasted the delights of the preliminary celestial ecstasy when
castigating his body, says: "I truly believe that it is just as
difficult on this globe to find pain without joy as joy without pain."
And Till Eulenspiegel, that type of a practical joker, showed an
understanding of dialectics when he lightened the difficulty of
ascending a mountain by the reflection that the descent on the other
side would be so much easier. Logic is no more senseless in teaching
that all things, even the most opposite, are of the same substance than
it is in showing that night belongs to day and weeds to herbs.
In order that these petty illustrations may not confuse your mind, it
should be remembered that the essential point is the elucidation of the
great contradiction between mind and matter, between thinking and being,
which includes all petty contradictions.
In order to think in accordance with logical consistency, you must not
regard a thing as something independent, but consider everything as
fluid particles of the same substance, which is the thing of all things,
the world, the truth, and life.
Our logic is therefore the science of truth. This truth is neither above
nor below, neither in Jerusalem nor in Jericho, neither in the spirit
nor in the flesh, but everywhere.
Our logic is the science of understanding. It teaches that you must not
search for understanding by cudgeling your brain, but only in connection
with experience, with the interrelation of things.
Since man in his experience also meets errors, science was dominated for
centuries by the question whether truth and experience are not two
different things, whether all our experience is only an illusion of our
senses. Cartesius replied to this: "No; the belief in a perfect, true
being cannot admit of such a delusion." By substituting the concept of
truth for the concept of God, we are certain that the world of
experience is not a ghost, but the most actual reality.
Although the great Kant called the cosmic truth a phenomenon, because he
could not divest his mind of transcendental faith, of the faith in a
transcendental truth, still we know today that all distinctions which
are ever made constitute but a nibbling at the universal unit. As
necessarily as all variety in baking produces bakery wares, just as
necessarily heaven and earth, and everything connected with them, are
parts of the indivisible truth which is also called nature, cosmos,
universe, God, and experience. Language gives to its darling truth many
different pet names, just as a happy mother calls her heart's treasure
by a thousand endearing terms.
Feuerbach reasons in this fashion: "If God is not a personal being
different from nature and man, then he is an entirely superfluous
being.... The use of the word God which is always combined with the
conception of a separate being, is a disturbing and confusing abuse. Why
do you want to be a theist, if you are a naturalist, or a naturalist if
you are a theist? Away with this contradiction! Where God is confounded
with nature, or nature with God, there is neither God nor nature, but a
mystical amphibious hermaphrodite."
Feuerbach is right. The name of God is much abused. But truth is also
blasphemed by negation and frivolousness. The sober understanding that
God, truth, nature, are various names for the same thing permits us to
play with them without despairing of the matter. Indeed, this play of
words serves to make the subject clear.
But logic demands that we recognize truth as the absolute, as the power,
the force, and the glory, which comprises all logical and illogical
distinctions, together with the things to be distinguished, even the
faculty of distinguishing itself.
Such an understanding of the absolute, such world wisdom, will not make
you conceited, because it makes you conscious of the fact that your
understanding has grasped celestial truth which at the same time is
terrestrial, only in a very general way. You possess nothing but a
definition of truth. And without denying that definitions are valuable
and instructive, I, at the same time, point out that you know very
little about astronomy when you know that it is the science of the
stars. No matter, therefore, how clearly I may have defined truth, we
require for its complete understanding all the details of science, and
that is too much for me, for you, and for any individual human being.
Just as our vision never exhausts the visible, because the eye sees an
object but does not fully penetrate it, just so can the intellect never
fully understand and fathom the absolute all, the truth, or God. But we
can understand and fathom individual truths, parts of the universal
truth. What understanding grasps is not the truth itself, but yet it is
true understanding.