The positive outcome of philosophy concerns itself with specifying the
nature of the human mind. It shows that this special nature of mind does
not occupy an exceptional position, but belongs with the whole of nature
in the same organization. In order to show this, philosophy must not
discuss the human mind as if it were something separate from nature, but
must rather deal with its general nature. And since this general nature
of our intellect is the same of which every other thing partakes, it
follows that nature in general, or the universe, or the cosmos, all of
which is the same thing, are an indispensable object in the special
study of the nature of the human mind.
We have already said that the experienced understanding of the present
day no longer muses over nature in general in the fantastic and mere
introspective manner as of old, but rather seeks to obtain a knowledge
of it by special study. In so doing we do not forget that the study of
specialties at the same time throws a light on the general relation of
things, of which every species is but a part.
Since the human mind is a part of the whole of nature, viz., that part
which has the desire and longing to obtain a conception of all the other
parts, and more than that, to understand the interconnection between the
parts and the undivided and infinite whole, it is easy to comprehend the
fact that the philosophers have occupied themselves so much with the
most real and most perfect being. Whether this being was called God, or
substance, or idea, or the absolute, or nature, or matter, all of these
terms cannot prevent us today from approaching infinite nature with
sober senses, in order to gain, by its help, a lifelike picture of the
human intellect, which is not a mystical being, but a reasonable part of
the same nature that lives reasonably and intelligibly in all other
parts of nature.
The inexperienced powers of distinction which did not understand their
function, magnified the difference between the infinite and its finite
phenomena out of all proportion. Now that we have made the philosophical
experience that the general as well as the special nature of the human
intellect admits only of moderate and bounded distinctions, we arrive at
the conclusion that the immeasurable, all-perfect, and eternal being is
composed of finite, commensurable, imperfect, and transient things in
such a way that the universal being combines in itself all perfections
as well as all imperfections. This contradictory universal being, this
nature to which all contradictory attributes may be simultaneously
assigned, in a certain sense puts the old rule to shame that you cannot
at the same time affirm and deny the predicate of any subject.
Nature comprises all and is all. Reason and unreason, being and not
being, all these contradictions are contained in it. Outside of it there
are no affirmations and no contradictions. Since the human mind
eternally moves in affirmations and negations, in order to obtain a
clear picture of things, it has an interminable task in understanding
the interminable object.
Our brain is supposed to solve the contradictions of nature. If it knows
enough about itself to realize that it is not an exception from general
nature, but a natural part of the same whole--although it calls itself
"spirit"--then it also knows and must know that its clearness can differ
but moderately from the general confusion, that the solution of the
problem cannot differ materially from the problem itself. The
contradictions are solved only by reasonable differentiation, only by
the science of understanding which shows that extravagant differences
are nothing but extravagant speculations. The human understanding
inclines to exaggerations in its untrained state, and it is a relic of
untrained habits to differentiate in an absolute manner the spiritual
from the rest of nature, to make a too extravagant distinction between
it and the physical body. It is the merit of philosophy to have given us
a clear doctrine of the use of the intellect, and this doctrine
culminates in the rule not to make exaggerated, but only graduated
distinctions. For this purpose it is necessary to realize that there is
only one being and that all other socalled beings are but minor
expressions of the same general being, which we designate by the name of
nature or universe.
In consequence of the human bent to exaggeration, the human
understanding has been regarded as a being of a different nature from
that of natural beings which exist outside of the intellect. But it must
be remembered that every part of nature is "another" individual piece of
it, and, furthermore, that every other and different part is really
nothing different but a uniform piece of the same general nature. The
thing is mutual: The general nature exists only in its many individual
parts, and these in their turn exist only in, with and by the general
cosmic being.
Nature which is divided by the human understanding into East and West,
South and North, and into a hundred thousand other named parts, is yet
an undivided whole of which we may say with certainty that it has as
many innumerable beginnings and ends as it is without beginning and end,
as it is the infinite itself. It is well known that there is nothing new
under the sun. Nothing is created, nothing disappears, and yet there is
a continuous change.
The brain of man has a right and a left side, a top and a bottom, a
front and a back part, an interior and an exterior. And the innermost of
the brain again has two sides or qualities, a physical and a spiritual.
They are so little divided that the term brain has two meanings,
designating now the physical brain, now its mental functions. In
speaking here exclusively of the mind, we tacitly assume its inseparable
connection with the physical body.
The material brain and the mental brain are two brains that together
make one. Thus two, three, four, or innumerable things are yet one
thing. The human understanding was endowed by nature with the faculty of
embracing the infinite variety of the universe as a unit, as a single
conception. The unity of nature is as true and real as its multiplicity.
To say that many are one and one many is not nonsense, but simply a
truism which becomes clear when understanding the positive outcome of
philosophy.
A reader unfamiliar with this our product of philosophy still follows
the habit of regarding the physical body as something different from the
mind. A distinction between these two is quite justified, but this
manner of classification must not be overdone. The reader should
remember that he also is in the habit of regarding such heterogeneous
things as axes, scissors, and knives as children of the same family by
referring to them collectively as cutting tools. The outcome of
philosophy now demands that we apply the same method to the object of
our special study, the human brain. We must henceforth eschew all
effervescent flights of imagination and regard the powers of the human
mind as children of the same family as all other physical powers, whose
immortal mother is the universe.
The universe is infinite not alone in the matter of time and space, but
also in that of the variety of its products. The human brains which it
produces are likewise internally and externally of an infinite
differentiation, although this does not prevent them from forming a
common group uniform in its way.
To group the phenomena of nature, the children of the universe, in such
a way by classes, families, and species that they may be easily grasped,
that is the task of the science of understanding, the work and
constitution of the perceiving human brain. To understand simply means
to obtain a general and at the same time a detailed view of the
processes and products of the universe by grouping them in a fashion
similar to that used for the vegetable kingdom by botany and for the
animal kingdom by zoology. It goes without argument that we, the limited
children of the unlimited universe, are able to solve this problem only
in a limited way.
However, this natural physical limitation of the human understanding
must not be confounded with the abject misery which slavish and
sentimental metaphysics attribute to it. The infinite universe is by no
means niggardly in its gifts to the human understanding. It opens its
whole depths to our intellectual understanding and perception. Our
intellect is a part of the inexhaustible universe and therefore partakes
of its inexhaustible nature. That part of nature which is known by the
name of intellect is limited only to the extent that the part is smaller
than the whole.
V