VI

CONSCIOUSNESS IS ENDOWED WITH THE FACULTY OF KNOWING AS WELL AS WITH THE

FEELING OF THE UNIVERSALITY OF ALL NATURE

In the historical course of philosophy, there has been much discussion

as to where our knowledge comes from, whether any of it, or how much of

it, is innate, and how much acquired by experience. Without any innate

faculties no knowledge could have been gathered with any amount of

experience, and without any experience even the best faculties would

remain barren. The results of science in all departments are due to the

interaction of subject and object.

There could be no subjective faculty of vision unless there were

something objective to be seen. The possession of a faculty of vision

carries with it the practical performance of seeing. One cannot have the

faculty of vision without seeing things. Of course, the two may be

separated, but only in theory, not in practice, and this theoretical

separation must be accompanied by the recollection that the separated

faculty is only a conception derived from the practical function.

Faculty and function are combined and belong together.

Man does not acquire consciousness, the faculty of understanding, until

he knows something, and his power grows with the performance of this

function.

The reader will remember that we have mentioned as an achievement of

philosophy the understanding of the fact that we must not make any

exaggerated distinctions. Hence we must not make any such distinction

between the innate faculty of understanding and the acquired knowledge.

It is an established universal rule that the human intellect knows of no

absolute separation of any two things, although it is free to separate

the universe into its parts for the purpose of understanding.

Now, if I claim that the conception of the universe is innate in us, the

reader must not conclude that I believe in the old prejudice of the

human intellect being like a receptacle filled with ideas of the true,

the beautiful, the good, and so forth. No, the intellect can create its

ideas and concepts only by self-production and the world around it must

furnish the materials for this purpose. But such a production

presupposes an innate faculty. Consciousness, the knowledge of being,

must be present, before any special knowledge can be acquired.

Consciousness signifies the knowledge of being. It means having at least

a faint inkling of the fact that being is _The_ universal idea. Being is

everything; it is the essence of everything. Without it there cannot be

anything, because it is the universe, the infinite.

Consciousness is in itself the consciousness of the infinite. The innate

consciousness of man is the knowledge of infinite existence. When I know

that I exist, then I know myself as a part of existence. That this

existence, this world, of which I am but a particle with all others,

must be an infinite world, does indeed not dawn on me until I begin to

analyze the conception of being with an experienced instrument of

thought. The reader, in undertaking this work with such an instrument,

will at once discover that the conception of the infinite is innate to

his consciousness,[8] and that no faculty of conception is possible

without this conception. The faculty of conception, understanding,

thought, means above all the faculty of grasping the universal concept.

The intellect cannot have any conception which is not more or less

clearly or faintly based on the concept of the universe. _Cogito, ergo

sum._ I think, therefore, I am. Whatever I imagine is there, at least in

imagination. Of course, the imagined and the real thing are different,

yet this difference does not exceed the limits of the universal

existence. Creatures of fiction and real creatures are not so radically

different that they would not all of them fit into the general gender of

being. The manner, the form of being, are different. Goblins exist in

fiction and Polish Jews exist in a tangible form, but they both exist.

The general existence comprises the body and the soul, fiction and

truth, goblins and Polish Jews.

It is no more inconceivable that the faculty of universal understanding

should be innate in us than that circles come into this world round, two

mountains have a valley between them, water is liquid and fire burns.

All things have a certain composition in themselves, they are born with

it. Does that require any explanation? The flowers which gradually grow

on plants, the powers and wisdom that grow in men in the course of

years, are no more easily explained than such innate faculties, and the

latter are no more wonderful than those acquired later. The best

explanation cannot deprive the wonders of nature of their natural

marvelousness. It is a mistake to assume that the faculty of

explanation which is located in the human brain, is a destroyer of the

belief in natural marvels. Philosophy which makes this faculty of

explanation and the nature of its explanations the object of its special

study gives us a new and much better understanding of this old miracle

maker. It destroys the belief in metaphysical miracles by showing that

physical nature is so universal that it absolutely excludes every other

form of existence than the natural one from this world of wonders.

I and many of my readers find in our brains the actual consciousness

that this general nature of which the intellect is a part is an infinite

nature. I call this consciousness innate, although it is acquired. The

point that I wish to impress on the reader is that the difference

generally made between innate and acquired qualities is not so

extraordinary that the innate need not to be acquired and the acquired

does not presuppose something innate. The one contradicts the other only

in those brains who do not understand the positive outcome of

philosophy. Such thinkers do not know how to make reasonable

distinctions and exaggerate in consequence. They have not grasped the

conciliation of all differences and contradictions in universal nature

by which all contradictions are solved.

Philosophy has endeavored to understand the intellect. In demonstrating

the positive outcome of philosophy, we must explain that philosophical

understanding as well as any other does not rise out of the isolated

faculty of understanding, but out of the universal nature. The womb of

our knowledge and understanding must not be sought in the human brain,

but in all nature which is not only called the universe, but is

actually universal. In order to prove this latter assertion, I refer to

the fact that this conception, this consciousness of the infinite in the

developed intellect, is in a manner innate. If the reader wishes to

object to my indiscriminately mixing the innate faculty with the

acquired understanding, I beg him to consider that I am endeavoring to

prove that any and all distinction made by the intellect refers in

reality to the inseparable parts of the one undivided universe. From

this it follows that the admired and mysterious intellect is not a

miracle, or at least no greater marvel than any other part of the

general marvel which is identical with the infinitely wonderful general

nature.

Some people love to represent consciousness as something supernatural,

to draw an unduly sharp line of separation between thinking and being,

thought and reality. But philosophy, which occupies itself particularly

with consciousness, has ascertained that such a sharp contrast is

unwarranted, not in harmony with the reality, and not a faithful

likeness of reality and truth.

In order to understand what philosophy has accomplished in the way of

insight into the function of the discriminating intellect, we must never

lose sight of the fact that there is only a moderate distinction of

degree between purely imaginary things and socalled real things.

Neither the natural condition of our faculty of thought, nor the

universality of general nature, permit of an exaggerated distinction

between the reality of creations of imagination and of really tangible

things. At the same time the exigencies of science demand clear

illustrations and so we must distinguish between these two kinds of

reality. It is true that in common usage the mere thought and the purely

imaginary things are set apart from nature and reality as something

different and antagonistic. Yet the rules of language heretofore in

vogue cannot prevent the spread of the additional knowledge that the

universe, or general nature, is so unlimited that it can establish a

conciliation between these limited antagonisms. The cat and the dog, for

instance, are pronounced enemies, but nevertheless zoology recognizes

them as being legitimate domestic companions.

Human consciousness is, in the first place, individual. Every human

individual has its own. But the peculiarity of my consciousness, of

yours, and that of others, is that of being not alone the consciousness

of the individual in question, but also the general consciousness of the

universe, at least that is its possibility and mission. Not every

individual is conscious of the universality of general nature, otherwise

there would be none of that distracting dualism. Nor would there be any

necessity for volumes and volumes of philosophy to teach us that a

limit, a thing, or a world outside of the universal, is a nonsensical

idea, an idea which is contrary to sense and reason. We may well say,

for this reason, that our consciousness, our intellect, is only in a

manner of speaking our own, while it is in fact a consciousness, an

intellect belonging to universal nature.

It can no more be denied that our consciousness is an attribute of the

infinite universe than it can be denied that the sun, the moon and the

stars are. Since this intellectual faculty belongs to the infinite and

is its child, we must not wonder that this universal faculty of thought

is born with the capability of grasping the conception of a universe.

And whoever does no longer wonder at this, must find it explicable, must

realize that the fact of universal consciousness is thus explained.

To explain the mysterious may be regarded as the whole function of

understanding, of intellect. If we succeed in divesting of its mysteries

the fact that the concept of an infinite universe is found in the

limited human mind, we have then explained this fact itself and

substantiated our contention that the things around us are explained by

their accurate reflection in our brain.

We summarize the nature of consciousness, its actions, life, and aims in

these words: It is the science of infinite being; it seeks to obtain an

accurate conception of this being and to explain its marvelousness. But

we have by no means exhausted its life and aims in these words. With all

the power of language, we can convey but a vague idea of the immensity

of the object under discussion. Whoever desires to know more about it,

must work for his own progress by observation and study. This much may

be safely said: This question is no more mysterious than any other part

of the general mystery.