Dear Eugene:
Today I am going to present my case with the precision of a
schoolmaster.
The concept of white cabbage embraces all white cabbage heads that ever
were and ever will be.
The concept of cabbage embraces red, white, and many other kinds of
cabbage. The concept of vegetable embraces a still wider range. The
organic field is still more comprehensive. And finally the world concept
embraces everything which we know and don't know, the end of which we
cannot conceive, and which therefore is called infinite.
When we trace our steps backward over the same reasoning, we find at
once that the universal concept is divided into two parts, viz., the
universe and the conception of it. We thus find the world in the concept
and the concept in the world, so that both of these parts are
interconnected, each is the predicate of the other, and whether we turn
the thing to the right or to the left, the concept is in the world and
the world in the concept.
Now it is true that the concept, or the faculty of understanding, is the
object of our study rather than the world outside of it. The faculty of
understanding, by the way, is nothing but a collective noun for all
concepts, hence simply another name for concept in general. But what I
eternally repeat is this: We cannot make a concept separated from all
the rest of the world the object of our study, because that would be an
empty abstraction which does not take on any meaning until we connect it
with the world, for instance the special concept of cabbage with
sense-perceived cabbage and so forth.
The concepts of white cabbage, cabbage in general, vegetables, or
plants, etc., are all of them special concepts and at the same time
general concepts. The one and the other is relative. Compared to the
various species it includes, the general concept of cabbage is abstract,
while compared to the general concept of vegetables it is concrete. And
so it is with all concepts. They are abstract and concrete at the same
time. Only the final concept, the world concept, is neither concrete nor
abstract, but absolute. It is the concept of the absolute, which is
indispensable for an understanding of logic.
We found a while ago that the absolute world concept consisted of two
parts, viz., the concept and the world. In the same way, the chemists
teach us that water consists of two elements, each of which by itself
does not make any water, while their compound makes pure water. But we
do not need such distant illustrations. My table in its present
composition is something different from what it would be if the same
pieces were put together in some other way and without a plan.
Therefore the world concept is a far more sublime concept than all the
parts of which it consists. And in order to make this quite clear, I may
honor this compound of the world and its concept by a special name, say
"universe," so as to distinguish it from its component parts.
Now I declare, without fear of having the word turned in my mouth by any
sophist, that the world embracing the thought, or the universe, is the
absolute which includes everything, while the world and the thought of
it, each by itself, are but classifications or relative things.
We wish to understand thought, not empty abstract thought, but the
universal world-embracing thought, the thought in a philosophical sense.
This is not mere thought, but living truth, the universe, the absolute,
the supreme being.
It is with the universe and its parts as it is with a telescope and its
concentric rings. Our intellect is a special ring which gives us a
picture of the whole concentric thing. This photographer, as I have
called it in a former letter, is not the object of our study for its own
sake, nor for the sake of its pictures, but rather for the sake of the
original, of the universe. It is as if somebody were to buy a portrait
of some historically renowned person. No matter how much concerned the
buyer would be with the picture, in the last analysis he is concerned
with that person itself. So it is with the art of understanding the
absolute, with world wisdom, which we study not for the sake of the
wisdom, but of the world itself.
This lengthy discussion might have been cut short by simply speaking of
the world instead of going to so much trouble on account of the world
concept. But I should then miss my point, which is that the human
intellect is a part of the world, and that the ideological distinction
which separates this intellect from the rest of the world, requires for
the whole an embracing term.
The absolute concept is the concept of the absolute, of the supreme
being. To it applies all the true, good, and beautiful ever attributed
to God, and it is also that being which lends logic, consistency, and
form to all thought.
Plato is a philosopher who has thrown a wonderful light on the faculty
of understanding, though he has not fully explained it. In his dialogue
entitled "Gorgias," he makes Socrates say the following: "Does it seem
to you that men want that with which they occupy themselves at any time,
or that for the sake of which they undertake whatever they may be
engaged in? Do those, for instance, who take some medicine prescribed by
the physicians seem to want that which they do ... or to want that for
the sake of which they take medicine, viz., health?... In the same way
those who go on board of ships and trade do not want that which they are
doing; for who would care to go to sea and face danger or conquer
obstacles? That for which they go to sea is that which they want, viz.,
to become rich; they are going to sea for the sake of acquiring wealth."
Plato thus says that the immediate purposes of men are not their real
purposes, but means to an end, means to welfare or for "good." He
therefore continues: "It is in pursuit of good, then, that we go when we
go, because we are after something better, and we stand still for the
sake of the same good."
Now let us go a step farther than Socrates and Plato. Just as men's
actions are truly done, not for the sake of some immediate purpose, but
of the ulterior, of welfare, and just as their socalled ethical actions
are justified only by the general wellbeing, so all things of the world
are not substantiated by their immediate environment, but by the
infinite universe. It is not the seed planted in the soil which is the
cause of the growing plant, as the farmer thinks, but the Earth, the
Sun, the winds, and the weather, in short, the whole of nature, and that
includes the seed germ.
If we apply this reasoning to our special object, the faculty of
understanding, we find that it is not a narrowly human, nor a
transcendental, but a universal cosmic faculty. According to Homer, the
immortal gods call things by other names than mortal men. But once you
have grasped the concept of the absolute, you understand the language of
the gods, you understand that the intellect by itself is but a minute
particle, while in the interrelation with the universe it is an absolute
and integral part of the universal absolute.
All things have a dual nature, all of them are limited parts of the
unlimited, the inexhaustible, the unknowable. Just as all things are
small and great, temporal and eternal, so all of them including the
human mind are knowable and unknowable at the same time. We must not
idolize the faculty of thought nor forget its divine nature. Man should
be humble, but without bowing in doglike submission to a transcendental
spirit, and he should be sustained by the sublime consciousness that his
spirit is the true one, the spirit of universal truth.
Everything can be seen by eyes, including those of a hawk. Just as the
eye is the instrument of vision, so the intellect is the instrument of
thought. And just as spectacles and glasses are means of assisting the
eye in seeing, so senses, experience, and experiments are means of
assisting the intellect in understanding. With this equipment the
intellect can assimilate everything in its conceptions. It understands
"all," but "all" only in a relative sense. We understand all, just as we
buy everything for money. We can buy only what is for sale. Reason and
sunshine cannot be valued in money. We can see everything with eyes, and
yet not everything. Sounds and smells cannot be seen. Just as everything
is great and small, so everything is knowable and unknowable, according
to the meaning given to "everything" in the language of men or gods.
That word has the dual meaning of applying to any particle and to the
whole universe. So is the human mind universal, but only a universal
specialty.
Look at that magnificently colored carnation. You see the whole flower,
and yet you do not see all of it. You do not see its scent nor its
weight. In the human language "whole" means a relative whole, which is
at the same time a part. Every particle of the universe is such a dual
thing. But in the language of the gods, which is spoken by philosophy,
only the absolute universe is whole.
When the subject under discussion is not the intellect, but some other
part of the world, for instance the eyes, the universal concept of the
absolute is not so important, because the faculty of seeing, like the
faculty of wealth, is in little danger of being metaphysically abused.
One knows that eyes which can see around a corner, or through a block of
iron, or which can perceive the scent of a carnation, are as meaningless
as a white sorrel. Even though our eyes cannot see the invisible, that
does not prevent them from being a universal instrument which can see
everything, that is everything visible.
If you understand this, you will also see through the miserable wisdom
of the professors which wallows on its belly in the dust and cries with
the faithful: O Lord, O Lord! similarly to Du Bois-Reymond, who cries
out: _Ignorabimus_! It is true that the human mind is an ignoramus in
the sense that it is ever learning, because there is inexhaustible
material in nature. There is also something unknowable in every particle
of nature, just as there is something invisible in every carnation. But
the unknowable in the sense used by those ignorant people who cannot
understand the human mind because they have a transcendental monster in
their mind, such a monstrous unknowable exists only in the imagination
of the idolators to whom the true spirit reveals itself as little as the
spirit of truth.
Just as surely as we know that there cannot be in heaven any knife
without a blade and a handle, nor any black horses that are white, just
so surely do we know that the faculty of understanding can never and
nowhere be the absolute, but must always be a special faculty. The
concept of understanding, like the concept of a knife, is limited to a
definite instrument. There may be all kinds of knives and intellects,
but nothing exists that has escaped from its own skin or from the
limitation of its own particular concept.
By this standard you may measure the silly thought of those who speak
transcendentally of an unlimited faculty of understanding. They haven't
any right idea of the mind nor of the universe, of the conceivable nor
of the inconceivable, otherwise they would not speak in such a
nonsensical sense of the "Limits of Understanding." In short, you see
that the relative limitation or absoluteness of reason can only be
understood by means of the concept of the absolute.