XIV

CONTINUATION OF THE DISCUSSION ON THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN DOUBTFUL AND

EVIDENT UNDERSTANDING

Let us divide the history of civilization into two periods. In the

first, the less civilized period, the doubtful perceptions predominate,

in the second period the evident ones. Our special investigation of the

correct way of evident understanding began in the first period in which

the doubtful perceptions, commonly called errors, predominated. In this

period, the gods rule in heaven and imagination on earth.

To get rid of errors meant originally to lose gods and heaven. The ideal

world was the cause of metaphysics. Metaphysics which drew the

investigation of the supernatural into the circle of its activity, did

so for the purpose of enlightening the human mind. Thus its problem was

from the outset of a twofold nature. It desires to throw light on the

natural process of thought, which was temporarily unbalanced by a bent

for the supernatural, and for this reason it first loses itself in the

clouds.

While human reason has now become soberer, the meaning of the term

"metaphysics" has also been sobered down. Our contemporaneous

metaphysicians speak no longer of such transcendental things as the

ancients did. Present day metaphysics occupies itself with such abstract

ideas as the thing and nothing, being and coming into being, matter and

force, truth and error.

Particularly the investigation of doubtful, erroneous, and evident or

true understanding, which we here discuss, is a part of metaphysics.

The term metaphysics, then, has a double meaning, one of them

transcendental and extravagant, the other natural and within sober

limits. Our sober task of demonstrating the positive outcome of

philosophy that acquired sober methods in dealing with understanding

also compels us to face transcendental metaphysics, which sobers down in

the course of time and develops into its opposite, into pure, bare,

naked physics.

The divine has become human, the transcendental sober, and so

understanding grows ever more unequivocal and evident in the progress of

history.

In order to become clear on the problem of understanding, we must cease

to turn our eyes to any one individual opinion, thought, knowledge, or

perception. We must rather consider the process of understanding in its

entirety. We then notice the development from doubt to evidence, from

errors to true understanding. At the same time we become aware how

unwise it was to entertain such an exaggerated idea of the contrast

between truth and error.

Whoever searches for true and evident understanding will not find it in

Jerusalem, nor in Jericho, nor in the spirit; not in any single thing,

but in the universe. There the known emerges from the unknown so

gradually that no beginning can be traced. Understanding comes into

being and grows, is partly erroneous and partly accurate, becomes more

and more evident. But there is never an absolutely true understanding

any more than there can be an absolutely faulty one. Only the universe,

but not any single thing, is absolute, imperishable, and impregnable.

In order to accurately define understanding, we must separate it from

misunderstanding, but not too far, not excessively, otherwise the thing

becomes extravagant. The limited formal logic teaches, indeed, that the

same thing cannot be affirmed and denied at the same time, affirmation

and denial being contradictions. But such a logic is very narrow. Herbs

are not weeds. Weeds are the negation of herbs, and still weeds are

herbs. An erroneous understanding is a negation of a true understanding,

error is not truth, and still it exists in truth. There is no absolute

error any more than perceptions are the truth itself. All perceptions

are and remain nothing but symbols or reflections of truth.

We do not wish to confound error with truth and make a stew of them, but

rather understand them both. The mixing is done by the man who opposes

them as irreconcilable contradictions. Let us first note the mistake

committed in so doing. By so opposing error and truth something is done

which is not intended, not known. The intention is to confront the

erroneous understanding with truth. For this purpose, error is assumed

to be the same as erroneous understanding, which may be admitted; but

true understanding and truth are two different things and must be kept

separate, if we wish to arrive at clear and unmistakable results. If we

formulate the question in this way: How do erroneous and true

understanding differ, we are nearer to the desired clarity by two solar

distances. We then find that error and understanding do not exclude one

another, but are two species of the same genus, two individuals of the

same family.

Two times two is not alone four; this is only a part of the truth; it is

also four times one, or eight times one-half, or one plus three, or

sixteen times one-quarter, etc. The man who first observed that the sun

circled around the earth once a day, committed a mistake, yet he made a

true perception. The apparent circulation of the sun in twenty-four

hours around the earth is a substantial part of the understanding which

illumines the relation of the motion of the sun and of the earth. No

truth is merely simple, but it is at the same time composed of an

infinite number of partial truths. The semblance must not be

contradictorily separated from truth, in an extravagant sense, but is

part of truth, just as all errors contribute toward true understanding.

In so far as all perceptions are limited, they are errors, partial

truths. True understanding requires above all the backing of the

conscious recognition that it is a limited part of the unlimited

universe.

The cosmic relation of the whole to its parts, of the general to the

special, must be considered in order to get a clear conception of the

nature of the human understanding.

Understanding or knowledge, thinking, perceiving, reasoning, must, for

the purpose of investigation, not be excessively separated from other

phenomena. In a way, every object which is chosen for special study is

isolated. In saying, "in a way," I mean that the separation of the

objects of study from other world objects must be consciously moderate,

not exaggerated. The separation of the intellect from other objects or

subjects when investigating them, must be accompanied by the recognition

that such a separation is not excessive, but only formal. In separating

a board, for the purpose of studying its condition, from other boards or

things and finding that it is black, I must still remember that this

board is black only on account of its interdependence with the whole

world process; that the blackness which it possesses is not of its own

making, but that light, and eyes, and the whole cosmic connection belong

to it. In this way every special perception becomes a proportionate part

in the chain of universal perceptions, and this again a proportionate

part of the universal life.

That this evident universal life is not a mere semblance, not a ghost,

not a baseless imagination, but the truth, is made evident to the

thinking man by his consciousness, reason, common sense. True, he has

been deceived by them, sometimes. But it requires no logic, no

syllogistic proof, to know that they are telling the truth in this

respect.

It is nevertheless important to give this proof, because by it the

peculiar nature of our intellect is revealed, of the object the study of

which is the special concern of philosophy.

This proof, that the universe is the universal truth, was first

attempted by philosophy in an indirect way, by casting about in vain for

a metaphysical truth.

The philosopher Kant was no doubt the thinker who confined the use of

understanding most strictly to the domain of experience. Now, if we

recognize that this field is universal, we become aware that the assumed

Kantian limitation is not a limitation at all. The human mind is a

universal instrument, the special productions of which all belong to

general truth. Though we make a distinction between the doubtful and the

positive, the outcome of philosophy teaches us that it must be no

excessive distinction, but must be backed up by the consciousness that

all evidence is composed of probabilities, of phenomena of truth, of

parts of truth.

The thinking understanding--this is the result of philosophy--is no more

evident than anything else and derives its existence not from itself,

but from the universal life. This universal life from which thought

derives its perceptions, from which understanding derives its

enlightenment, does not only exist as a general thing, but also in the

form of infinitely varied individualities. And generalization, the

relation of things, their number and extension, are no more, and no

less, infinite than individualization and specialization. Every tree in

the forest, every grain of a pile of sand, are individual, separate,

distinct. Every particle of every grain of sand is distinctly

individual. And the infinite individualization of nature goes so far

that, just as the human individual is different every day, every hour,

every moment, so is the individual grain of sand, even though its

transformations were not to become noticeable until after thousands of

years, by accumulated changes. By classifying this contradictory,

infinitely general and infinitely individual nature in groups according

to time and space, in classes, genera, families, species, orders, and

other subdivisions, we are discerning and understanding.

In the universe, every group is an individual and every individual is a

group. The uniformity of nature is not greater than its variety. Both of

them are infinite. We distinguish between time and space. Every moment

is composed of little moments. The smallest division of time cannot be

denominated any more than the largest, just because there is no smallest

and no largest in the universe, neither in time nor in space. Atoms are

groups. As smallest parts they exist only in our thoughts and thus give

excellent service in chemistry. The consciousness that they are not

tangible, but only mental things, does not detract from their

usefulness, but heightens it still more.

It is the nature of human intelligence to divide, classify, group. We

divide the world into four cardinal points; we also divide it into two

kingdoms, the kingdom of the mind and the kingdom of nature; the latter

we again subdivide into the organic and the inorganic, or perhaps into

the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms. In short, science seeks to

illumine the universe by division. The question then arises: Which is

the genuine and true division? Where does the variety of science, its

undecided vacillation end, and when does understanding become stable?

The reader should remember that the things, the objects of

understanding, are not fixed, but also variable objects, and that the

whole universe is moving, progressing; that especially the human mind

becomes more and more affluent from century to century, from year to

year, and that for this reason science is not alone compelled to fix

things, but also to remain in flow. The fixed and the fluid are not so

widely separated in science any more, that the evidence could not be

evident and yet at the same time a little doubtful.

Man and his understanding are progressive, and for this reason he must

progress by experience in his classifications, conceptions, and

sciences.

The fixed, impregnable, socalled apodictical facts are nothing but

tautologies, if seen at close range. After it has become common usage to

call only heavy and tangible things bodies, it is an apodictical fact

that all bodies are heavy and tangible. If the conceptions of vapor,

water and ice are restricted by common usage and by science to the three

stages of aggregation of the same substance, then we need not wonder at

our firm assurance that the water will always remain fluid in all time

to come, also above the stars. This signifies nothing more than that we

conceive of the things as solid which we call solid, and of those as

fluid which we call fluid, but it does not change the fact that our

faculty of understanding or perceiving gives us only an approximate

picture of natural processes, in which the solid and the fluid are

neither wholly opposed nor different, but where the positive and the

negative gradually flow into one another.

The philosophers produced a very good conception of understanding by

developing the concept of truth step by step and finally coming to quite

exact results. But this "quite exact" must only be accepted in a

reasonable sense, not in an extravagant one. Truth as the infinite, as

the sum total of all things and qualities, is "in itself" quite right,

but it cannot be accurately reproduced, not even by means of the mind,

of reason, or understanding. The means is smaller than the purpose, is

subordinate to purpose. So is our faculty of understanding only a

subordinate servant of truth, of the universe. The latter is absolutely

evident, true, indubitable, and positive. It does not vitiate the

sublimity of this world in the least that it is veiled by appearances,

by error, by untruth. On the contrary. Without sin there is no virtue,

and without error there is no understanding, no truth. The negative, the

weakness, the sin and error, are overcome, and thereby truth shines in

full splendor. The universe, the general truth, is a progressive thing.

It is absolute, but not at any fixed time or place, but only in the

combined unity of all time and space.

It is sometimes said that this is too much for our intellect, that we

cannot understand this. It is true that we cannot squeeze this into any

of our categories, of our fundamental conceptions, unless we place the

category of illimited and indeterminable and infinite truth at the

beginning of them. If that is not quite clear and plain, it should

serve to teach us that the category of clear and plain human

understanding is destined to recognize its function as a subordinate

factor of nature.

Such an understanding of understanding, such a higher consciousness

standing ever behind us, promotes a meek pride or a proud meekness which

is well distinguished from the mental poverty of theologians, from the

transcendental distinction between God and the world, between creator

and creature. To us the perishable soul is not a narrow-minded servant

for whom the plans of the imperishable monster soul are

incomprehensible. A philosophically educated and self-understanding mind

is a part of absolute nature. This mind is not only a limited human

mind, but the mind of the infinite eternal, omnipotent universe from

which it derived the faculty of knowing everything knowable. But when

this mind demands the ability to absolutely know everything, it demands

that knowledge should be everything, it becomes transcendental and

insolent, it misconceives the relation of science to infinity. The

latter is more than science, it is the object of science.