Dear Eugene:
My previous lectures instructed you as to the very trivial fact that the
thought is a part of the world. In proceeding from the part to the
whole, I passed logically from the mouth of the river to its source. The
universe is the maternal womb of the intellect as of all things.
It occurs to me that you or some teacher of logic might accuse my
letters of lack of logic. It may seem that these lectures fail to
present the subject matter in a strictly systematized form. You will,
please, excuse this in part with the fact that they appear in the form
of letters. This form demands that the contents should be logically
arranged and rounded off in each letter. It should furthermore serve as
an excuse for any defect, that my subject is not a finished one, not
perfectly elaborated by others before me. I am here not merely a
lecturer, but also an explorer on a field which, though much
investigated, yet is still rather obscure.
The conclusion of my last letter explained that the use of the term God
for the universe has much to recommend it and much to disqualify it. But
it is easily apparent that the universe with its absolute qualities is
closely related to that infinite being of whom Jakob Boehme, the
philosophical shoemaker, said: "He is neither the light nor the
darkness, neither love nor anger, but the eternal One.... Hence all
forces are merely one sole force."
That nothing exists outside of the universe, that everything is
contained in the All, that the All, with all real and imagined beings,
is everything, that it is neither sweet nor sour, neither great nor
small, but just everything and all, this statement is as obvious as the
often and long repeated statement of identity: A equals A.
The All is omnipotent, omnipresent, all-wise. This last term might be
questioned, since the universe is not a dummy with a monster head and
giant brain. For this very reason it was considered inappropriate to
apply the name of God to the universe, because that creates the
impression of a personal being. The All thinks only by means of human
brains, and for this reason omniscience cannot be anything but common
human knowledge. Of course, you, I, and every other man, are very
limited in our knowledge. But still we may indulge in the hope that the
things which we do not know are known by other men or will be discovered
by future generations, so that the collective human mind will know
everything that is knowable. We cannot see everything that is visible;
there are animals that can see even better than we can. But since even
the most intelligent animal is supposed to lack the highest degree of
intelligence, reason and science, there is no one who knows anything
except the human race. Mankind is omniscient. But since all our science
is derived only from the world, mankind is only the formal bearer of
intelligence, and it belongs to the fountain of all things, to eternal
nature. Our wisdom is the wisdom of nature, is world wisdom. Although
there may be inhabitants of the moon and of other stars who may know
things which are unknown to us, still that is in the first place a mere
speculation of little value, and in the second place universal
omniscience or the omniscient universe would not in the least be
affected thereby. It is a reasonable use of the language to regard human
wisdom as the only and omniscient wisdom, just as all natural and wet
water is called water without any further modification. I believe in the
statement of Protagoras: "Man is the measure of all things." Whoever
uses a different measure, uses a superhuman, transcendental measure.[6]
Hence, when I call the cosmic essence of all existence omnipotent, you
will not think of a senseless magic power which forges knives without
handles and blades, nor will you read any transcendental meaning into my
use of the term omniscience.
Omniscience belongs obviously under the head of logic, because the organ
of science and wisdom is the object of the study of logic. And it must
now be stated that the human mind does not only exceed the animal mind
by far, but is also the _non plus ultra_ of all minds. But it must be
retained that this mind can only be whatever it is in connection with
the divine universe which I may also be permitted to call worldly deity.
This name is fitting because it is a means of understanding that in the
first place no monster mind rules the world, and in the second place the
natural universe is not a mere sum of all things, but truth and life.
Of course, the identification of the universe with the religious God is
only a comparison, and comparisons are lame. Still we may compare the
sun with an eternal lamp or the moon with a candle, or the German prime
minister with a butler.
Logic shall teach you that everything which may be distinguished by the
faculty of understanding is of the same kind, everything is of common
clay, but the whole is sublimely elevated above all that is commonplace.
Mere frivolous atheism, as created by the free-thinkers, is not
sufficient. A bare denial of God always creates some other idol worship.
The positive understanding of the divine world truth is an indispensable
requirement for the radical extermination of all idol worship.
Logic must begin with the sublime, infinite, absolute. All logical,
consistent or interconnected thinking must take its departure from it.
The so-called scientific research after temporal causes, after the egg
from which the chicken was hatched, after the hen from which the egg
came, after the kindred organisms which developed the hen by natural
selection and adaption according to Darwin, this is a very valuable
research without which we can never understand the world process. But
nevertheless, such research must not satisfy the thinking man. Logic
demands from everybody that he or she should search for the highest, for
the cause of all causes. Whoever feels the desire to bring logical order
into his consciousness, must know that the finite and infinite, the
relative and the absolute, the special truths and the one general truth,
are contained in one another.
Logical thought as demanded by science means nothing but to be aware of
the final cause, the absolute foundation of all thought. This foundation
is the universe, an attribute of which is the external and internal
human head. The thousand year old dispute between the materialists and
the idealists turns on the question whether the spirit is material or
the world spiritual. Our answer is plain and clear: They both belong
together, they together make up the one thing, the thing of all things.
Mind and matter are two attributes of the same substance. They may be
compared the same as fish and flesh, the former being called very
appropriately by some African tribes "water flesh." In this way, matter
and mind are two kinds of meat of a different and yet of the same
nature.
I remember reading in a satirical paper the question: "What is a
gentleman? Answer: A gentleman is a loafer with money, and a loafer is a
gentleman without money." Just as these two types of men are essentially
alike and differ only in the small matter of money, so you should
remember that there are no essential differences, that all differences
are merely matters of attributes and qualities of the same absolute
world substance. To distinguish correctly and logically, that is the
point which logic is aiming to teach us. To make distinctions is the
function which is also called perceiving, knowing, understanding,
comprehending. When you consider that this function is innate in man,
and that man together with his faculty of understanding is innate in
nature, then you recognize all distinctions and the distinguished
objects as attributes of the undistinguished One, of the absolute,
compared to which all things are only relative things, in other words,
attributes.
I am endeavoring to make clear to you that logical thinking requires the
awakening of the consciousness of the one supreme general nature. And
you must not think of this sum of all existence in the stupid way in
which people used to think of the animal kingdom before Darwin, but
regard the world as a living organic unit, from which the faculty of
understanding has blossomed the same as all other things. In the logic
of the narrow-minded, all animal species are widely separated, without
any living interconnection, while Darwin has demonstrated the uniform
process, the intermingling life in multiform creation. The illustration
of this famous zoologist of the transition from one species to another
may serve as an example of the logical transitions in the world process,
in which all differences are but undulations. All our classifications
must always remember the undivided basis on which they are resting.
We have shown that the intellect divides the universal nature,
classifies and analyzes it, and we have learned of the universal nature
that it not only furnishes to the intellect the material for its work,
but also that the world comprises within its general process the
intellectual process, that the intellectual movement is a specialization
of the natural movement.
The world is not only the object, but also the subject of understanding,
it understands, it dissects its own multiplicity by means of the human
intellect. Our wisdom is world wisdom in a two-fold sense: The world is
that which is being understood, classified, analyzed, and at the same
time it is that which, by the help of our intellect, practices
understanding, classification, etc. When I call the human mind the
cosmic mind, the mind of the supreme being, I wish to have it understood
that there is nothing mysterious about this, that I merely intend to
show that thought or intelligence can only operate in the universal
cosmic interconnection, that it is not an abnormal and transcendental
thing, but a thing like all other things.
You must not conceive of the spirit as the producer of truth, as a
little god, but only as a means. The true god, the divine truth, has our
intellect for an attribute. The latter does not produce truth, but only
the understanding of truth. It produces only pictures of truth which are
all more or less perfect. Of course, it is not at all immaterial whether
we produce a more or less faithful, a true or a false picture of truth,
but still this is, at present and for us here, a secondary matter. The
main thing is to know that truth, or nature, is far above all pictures,
and still consists of parts, of forms, which together constitute the
whole.