(A)
Although we know that there is no actual beginning, because we are
living in the universe without beginning and end, still we mortals must
always begin at a certain point. So I have begun one of my retrospects
over the history of my subject with Plato, and at another time I have
ended with Hegel, although before and after them there has been much
philosophical thought. These two names are luminant points which throw
their light over everything which is situated between them.
The errors of our predecessors are just as useful for the purpose of
illustration as their positive achievements. More even: the errors form
the steps of a ladder which leads toward a universal world philosophy.
We clamber up and down on it, perhaps a little irregularly, but nowadays
the crooked roads of an English park are preferred to the straight
French avenues.
It was an achievement on the part of the Socratic and Platonic schools
to seek the good not in good specialties, but in general good, as a
"pure" or absolute thing, to search for virtue in general instead of
virtues. But it was a mistake which prevented their success, to
exaggerate the distinction between the special and the general.
According to Plato, the black and white horses canter over terrestrial
pavements, but the horse in general, which is neither brown, black, nor
white, neither as slender as a race horse nor as clumsy as a draft
horse, cantered along in the Platonic "idea," in the ideal mists.
Platonic logic lacked what is taught by our present, or if you prefer,
future proletarian logic, viz., the general understanding of the
interrelation of all things, the truth that in spite of their
individual differences all things belong together as individuals of the
same genus. The logical relation between individual and genus stuck
upside down in the brain of the noble Plato.
He lived in a time which is similar to our own time in that the world of
the gods of the ancients was in the same state of dissolution in which
the Christian religions are today. Plato was as little satisfied with
Grecian mythology as a basis for a reasonable explanation of the world,
as we are with Christian mythology. He wanted to ascend to the universal
truth, not by way of little traditional stories, but by scientific
philosophy. His intention was good, but his weak flesh wrestled with a
task which required thousands of years for its solution.
A while ago I said that it was that topsy-turvy view of religion as to
the relation between the special and the general which thwarted Plato.
Let me illustrate a little more in detail in what this religious
topsy-turvydom consisted.
Here we have wind, the waters of the seas, the rays of the sun, chemical
and physical forces, forces of nature. These are specimens of the
universal force of nature. These specimens were regarded with sober
enough eyes by the Greeks, but the general nature sat high upon Olympus
in the form of Zeus. In the same way, the Greeks were familiar with
beautiful things, but beauty was an unapproachable goddess, Aphrodite.
True, the philosopher no longer believed in the gods, but he was
nevertheless still under the influence of transcendental concepts and
thus he mystified the general under the name of the "idea." The Platonic
ideas, like the gods of the heathen, are mystifications of the general.
Plato furthermore shows himself as a descendant of polytheism in this:
Although he clearly distinguished between virtue and virtuous things,
between beauty and beautiful things, between truth and true things, yet
he did not rise to the understanding that all generalities are
amalgamated and unified in the absolute generality, that, in so far, the
good, the true, and the beautiful are identical. The research for the
absolute did not become monistic until Christian monotheism lent a hand.
You will see from this that religion and philosophy form a common
chapter which has the genus of all genera for its object. Faith is
distinguished from science in that the latter no longer bows to the
dictates of imagination and of its organs, the priests, but seeks to
fathom the object of its studies by the exact use of the intellect. A
partial amalgamation of the two is, therefore, quite natural.
"When a woman is strong, isn't she strong after the same conception and
the same strength? By the term _same_," says the Platonic Socrates, "I
mean that it makes no difference whether the strength is in the man or
in the woman."
This quotation, taken from Plato's "Menon," shows that Platonic research
deals with the general, in this case the general concept of strength
which is the _same_ in man or woman, ox or mule, Tom and Jerry. It is
the genus by means of which black and white horses are known as horses,
dogs and monkeys as animals, animals and plants as organisms, and
finally the variations of the whole world as the universe, as the
_same_. Plato has grasped this _same-ness_ in a limited way, for
instance in regard to strength, reason, virtue, etc. But that in an
infinite sense everything is the _same_, that things as well as ideas,
bodies, and souls, are the same, remained for radical proletarian logic
to discover.
Hand in hand with the narrow Platonic conception of the general went a
narrow theory of understanding or science, a wrong conception of the
intellect and its functions. The Socratic Plato and the Platonic
Socrates both call understanding by the name of "remembering." By
praising understanding, they teach us that we must not believe the
priests, but study by the help of our senses. But, nevertheless, they
still teach a wrong method, a narrow art of thought.
In "Menon," the object of study is virtue. Socrates does not exactly
pose as a schoolmaster. He knows that he is called the wisest of men,
but explains that this is so, because others have a conceited opinion of
their wisdom, while his wisdom consists in humbly knowing that he knows
nothing. He does not so much try to teach what virtue is, as to
stimulate his disciples to search for it. But his idea of research is
distorted.
Among the immortal things which he transcendentally separates from
mortal things, he also classifies the soul, "the immortal soul" which
dies and lives again, and has always lived, knows everything, but must
"remember." Thus his research becomes a cudgeling of the brain, an
introspective speculation. He is not looking for understanding by way of
natural science, through the interrelations of the world, but
speculatively through the inside of the human skull.
In order to make his theory of memory plain, Socrates in "Menon" calls
an ignorant slave and instructs him in the fundamentals of geometry. He
quickly succeeds in getting from the ignorant fellow, who at first gives
wrong answers, the correct statements by recalling the connections of
thought by clever questioning. He thus demonstrates to his satisfaction
that man has wisdom _a priori_ in his head. But the Socratic-Platonic
art of logic has overlooked that such wisdom requires concepts which are
fixed in memory by internal _and_ external interrelations. The socalled
immortal soul with its innate wisdom has troubled the world a good while
thereafter.
You must not think that I have a poor opinion of Plato, because I
criticize him in this way. On the contrary, I am highly delighted with
his divine and immortal writings. "Honor to Socrates, honor to Plato,
but still more honor to truth." I also assure you that I am a great
admirer of natural science, but nevertheless I should like to show you
that it indulges in narrow reasoning.
Robert Mayer, the talented discoverer of the equivalent of heat, has
proven that the force of gravitation, of electricity, of steam, of heat,
etc., represents different modes of expression of the same force, of the
force of nature in general. But no, not quite so! He has ascertained the
numerical relation by which the transformations of one force into
another is accomplished. Thus a logical understanding sees that the
various forces and force in general are distinguished in detail but
identical in general. Darwin in his "Origin of Species" has accomplished
a similar demonstration. But neither Mayer nor Darwin have given that
general expression to world unity which is required by the art of logic.
In order to become an adept at this art, you must rise to the
understanding that all forces are various modes of expression of the one
force, all animals and species transformations of animaldom, that on the
moon a part is smaller than the whole, the same as on earth, that there
as well as here fire burns, and that as surely as you have no doubt of
your being, just as surely is there only one being, the infinite,
divine universe which has no other gods beside it, but contains all
forces, materials, and transformations.
This is an innate science which is the cause of all other science, an
innate science which, indeed, must first be awakened in you by "memory."
Hence our proletarian logic instructs you not to rack your brain by mere
introspection, as the ancient philosophers used to do, not to call the
senses impostors nor to search for truth without eyes, nose, and ears,
nor on the other hand to start out with the idea of certain natural
scientists who try to see, hear, and smell understanding without the
help of the intellect.
The mistake committed in making a wrong use of the intellect is a "sin
against the holy ghost." The Socratic-Platonic doctrine of memory is one
extreme side of this sin; the other extreme side is represented by that
modern science which tries to find truth by mere external means and
rejects everything as untrue which is not ponderable or tangible.
As this letter is more intimately connected with the following one than
is ordinarily the case, I take the liberty to unite them under the same
number and mark them with the letters A and B.
(B)
We are still the guests of Plato today, my son, and I should like to
show you that this philosopher, in whose time natural science had barely
developed its first downy feathers, already suspected its stubborn
narrowness, although in a certain sense the Platonic logic was no less
narrow than that of the so-called exact sciences still is to-day, at
least in part. Still Platonic logic had at least the advantage of its
outlook toward the Supreme Being, the absolute, while modern naturalism
is still stuck in the narrow land of specialties. Therefore, I hope that
you will find it interesting to note with me the way in which universal
truth is peeping forth beneath the wings of Platonic speculation.
"Listen, then, to what I am going to say," remarks Socrates in "Phaedo,"
paragraph 45. "In my youth, O Cebes, I had a great interest in natural
science, for it seemed to me a magnificent thing to know the cause of
everything, to learn how everything begins, exists, and passes. A
hundred times I turned to one thing and then to another, reflecting
about these matters by myself. Do animals arise when the hot and the
cold begin to disintegrate, as some claim? Is it the blood, which
enables us to think, or the air or the fire? Or is it none of these, but
rather the brain which produces all perceptions, such as seeing,
hearing, smelling, and does memory and thought then arise by these, and
from thought and memory, when they become adjusted, understanding? And
again, when I considered that all this passes away, and the changes in
heaven and on earth, I finally felt myself poorly qualified for this
whole investigation. Let this be sufficient proof to you: In the things
which formerly were familiar and known to me, I became so doubtful by
this investigation, that I forgot even that which I thought I knew of
many other things, as for instance the question as to how man grows. I
thought that everybody knew that this was caused by eating and drinking.
For when through the food flesh comes to flesh and bone to bone, and in
the same way that which is akin to all the rest of the things which
constitute man, it seemed natural that a small mass would become larger,
and thus a small man grow tall. Does not this appear reasonable to
you?... Consider furthermore this. It seemed enough to me that a man
appeared large when standing by the side of something small, that he
looked taller by one head, and in the same way one horse by the side of
another; or what is still plainer, ten seemed to me more than eight,
because it is more by two, and a thing of two feet longer than that
which measures only one foot, because it exceeds it by one."