Logic, the science of correct thought, demands in the first place true,
or in other words, reasonable thought. Logic deals with reason and
truth.
These two things have been endowed with a mysterious nature, while they
obviously belong to the entire universe and its tangible nature. Reason
and truth are not separated from the other things, are not things in
themselves. There is no such thing. Philosophers who have looked for
them in the depths of the human brain with their hands over their eyes
and engaged in brown study, were on the wrong road. Proletarian logic
differs from conventional logic in that it does not look for reason and
truth behind the curtains of temples, nor in the brains of the learned,
but it discovers them in the actual interconnection of all things and
processes of nature.
Preachers, professors, judges, and politicians are the leaders of "the
wise men of Gotham," and since we have all passed our youth among them,
we find it difficult to get rid of their confused logic.
We owe much of our better insight to the famous philosophers. These men
had many an eccentric notion, but on the whole they were reasonable
fellows who followed the doctrine of the unreliability of the senses and
the faith in the hidden truth and reason more in a theoretical than in a
practical way. In practice they operated with open eyes and ears. Thus
correct logic, although confused by queer notions, has been handed down
to us from generation to generation. Preachers, professors, judges, and
politicians cling to the confused notions, while we take the liberty to
discard them.
Now we recognize not only that reason and truth are connected with the
world, but also that the universe is the supreme reason and truth, is
that being which religion and philosophy have long been looking for, the
most perfect being, which Plato called the true, good and beautiful,
Kant God, freedom, and immortality, and Hegel the absolute.
If he is an atheist who denies that perfection can be found in any
individual, then I am an atheist. And if he is a believer in God who has
the faith in the "most perfect being" with which not alone the
theologists, but also Cartesius and Spinoza have occupied themselves so
much, then I am one of the true children of God.
The abuse of sublime feelings and exalted ideas has filled many hearts
with disgust, so that they care no longer for any unctuous sermons. The
mere flavor of religion is odious to them. Nevertheless I assure you
that we shall never get rid of idol worship, unless we understand the
supreme being, reason or truth, in its true nature.
"Understand" is a mysterious word. To bring light into the mystery of
understanding by a clear theory of understanding, is an integral part of
the science of thought, of logic.
Permit me to compare the faculty of understanding with a photographic
apparatus, by the help of which you strive to obtain a picture of the
cosmic truth. Then you will see at a glance that in this way we can
obtain but a dim picture of the whole. The object appears boundless, too
infinitely great and sublime to permit of copying. And yet we can
approach it. Although we cannot get a true picture of universal truth,
yet we can obtain clear pictures of individual truths, in other words,
we can picture the infinite in its parts. By the help of your
intellect, you can grasp the infinite by means of limitation.
Absolute truth appears to us in relative phenomena. The perfect being is
composed of imperfect parts. A "wise man of Gotham" may regard this as a
senseless contradiction. But we can separate the arms, legs, head, and
trunk from one another, and so separated they will be mere parts of a
corpse, while connected they certainly possess the chance of vitality.
Life is composed of the dead, the most perfect being is composed of
imperfect parts. In the universal truth everything is contained. It is
the perfect being, it includes the whole existence, even the imperfect.
The false, the ugly, the evil, the nasty are involved in the true, the
good, the beautiful. The universal existence is the absolute truth, the
whole is composed of relativities, of parts, of phenomena. Our
understanding, our instrument of thought, is likewise an imperfect part
of the perfect being. Our intellect produces only a dim, imperfect
picture of the absolute, but it reproduces true pictures of its parts,
although pictures only.
There are good and bad, adequate and inadequate, true and false thoughts
and understanding. But there are no absolutely true thoughts. All our
conceptions and ideas are imperfect pictures of the most perfect being
which is inexhaustible in great things as in small things, as a whole
and in parts. Every part of nature is a natural part of the infinite.
I repeat: All parts or things of this world have, apart from their
imperfect nature as parts, also the world nature of the absolute being.
They are imperfect perfections. Our intellect is no exception. The human
mind is the only mind having the name of reason, and is the most
perfect reason which can possibly exist. In the same way, the water of
this earth is the non plus ultra of all water. The belief in another and
different mind, in a monster mind, belongs to the same transcendental
category as the belief in a celestial river without the nature of water
flowing around the castle of Zion. Even the most perfect mind is nothing
else, and cannot be anything else, but an imperfect part of the absolute
world being.
The first thing a student of correct thought has to learn is to
distinguish true thought from false thought, and for this purpose he
must know above all that distinction must not be exaggerated. All
differences can only be relative. The bad and the good pictures belong
to the same family, and all families finally belong to the absolute, are
individuals of the universe.
For the purpose of distinguishing true thoughts from false, it should be
remembered that the true thought is only a part of the truth, a part
which does not exaggerate its own importance, but subordinates itself to
the absolute.
The following illustration may explain this. Although astronomy teaches
that the earth revolves daily around its axis and that the sun is
standing still, it nevertheless knows that the fixed state of the sun is
only a relative truth, so that from a higher point of view both the
earth and the sun are revolving. The consciousness of its relative truth
alone makes the statement of the sun's standstill true. Again, when the
farmer sees that the earth is fixed and that the sun is moving every day
from East to West, he is mistaken only so far as he regards his
standpoint as the whole truth, his farmers' knowledge for absolute
knowledge. The knowledge of the absolute alone enables you to
distinguish correctly between truth and error. Whoever sees the sun
turning around the earth with the consciousness that this revolution is
but a partial truth is not in error, but sees truly. The knowledge of
the absolute truth clears up error and instructs us as to the method of
correct thought. This thought makes us apt, humble, and tolerant in
judging.
The "wisest of men" was very proud of his modesty in knowing that he
knew nothing. His example may well be recommended to-day. Although we
have learned a great deal, we know very little compared to the
inexhaustible fountain of all wisdom, good mother nature. We learn every
day, but we never learn all there is to learn. What was to the credit of
Socrates, was his firm faith in the truth, his conviction of its
existence, and his faith in the mission of the human intellect to search
for truth.
On the contrary, the sophists confused and disputed everything. They
frivolously flouted all truth and research. This same frivolousness now
relies upon Kant who, misled by the prejudice of his time, removed truth
to a transcendental world and therefore deprecatingly called our actual
world the "world of phenomena." In distinction from him, our logic
teaches that the phenomena of this world without exception are parts of
the one truth, and that the true art of understanding consists in
studying the parts.
The doctrine of the sophists to the effect that everything may be denied
and disputed has a certain similarity with ours in that we declare that
the universe is the truth and all parts of it true parts, that smoke and
fog, reason and imagination, dreams and realities, subject and object,
are true parts of the world. They are not the whole truth, but still
true. For this reason it is well to call your attention to the
difference between the sophistical and the logical method of thought.
The contemporaries of Socrates are still alive to-day. They are teaching
in the name of God and believe in nothing, while to us truth, every day
naked and sober truth, is sacred.