The fact that a world exists simultaneously involves its existence _as
such_, _i.e._ as our idea.
All speculations and theories about the world are thus of a secondary
nature. Their existence were a sheer impossibility if the world, apart
from its being in existence at all, were not also existent _as such_,
as idea, conceptually.
In the foreword to his _Kritik der reinen Erfahrung_, R. Avenarius
says:--
“This work makes the attempt to comprehend all theoretical relations
whatsoever ... as consequences of one single, simple postulate.”
This “single, simple postulate for all theoretical relations” is the
_possibility_ of such a thing, _i.e._ the fact that conscious ideas,
concepts, exist. _The concept is the problem of all thought_; and to
seek to master the world epistemologically before one has mastered the
concept, is sheer waste of time.
Now, in the matter of concept thought is in this awkward plight, that
the former offers nothing objective that can be made to serve as a
point of departure in any possible attempt at comprehension.
This simple consideration alone implies that every attempt to come at
the fact “concept” inductively, _i.e._ with the implements of science,
is hopeless, indeed absurd. And each fresh attempt in that direction
only supplies another proof of the truth of the Buddha’s teaching that
all mental life perforce is bound up with ignorance as to itself.
In what follows I shall endeavour very briefly to sketch the various
mistaken paths that here have been traversed.
As everywhere, so also with regard to the fact “concept,” the two
antitheses faith and science stand ranged over against each other. As
everywhere, so also here, the fact “concept” presents no problem to
faith. Just because I am endowed with a soul, a “force in itself,” I
possess the power, the ability to form concepts. As everywhere, so
also here, the paradoxical character of faith makes itself palpably
manifest: the fact of the formation of concepts is by it accepted as
proof that an inconceivable in itself must be present.
Opposed to it stands science, which seeks to explain and is bound
to explain how such an occurrence as the formation of concepts has
ever been able to come about. Her task falls into two main divisions.
On the one hand, there is the demonstrating of the subjective,
antecedent conditions of the concept; this is done in the physiology
of the different organs of sense. On the other hand, there is
the demonstrating of the objective, antecedent conditions of the
concept--objects, the external world.
Of this task the subjective part, and the entire fruitlessness of the
same, have already been dealt with in another place. The objective
division comprehends philosophy in the broadest sense of the word. For
every theory and speculation as to the world may without exception be
traced back to this one question: “How must the world be fashioned to
render possible the fact that consciousness-contents, conscious ideals,
concepts, exist--in fine, that the world exists _as such_?” In this
question is comprehended all philosophy, as the tree is comprehended in
the root.
All the theories as to the constitution of the world that have ever
been advanced or that will ever be advanced, branch into these two
fundamental views:--
First: the view that at the foundation of things there exists a
constant in itself, an unconditioned constant, an identical with
itself, or whatever else one has a mind to name it.
Second: the view that there exists no such unconditioned constant
at the foundation of things, but that all that exists is merely a
relation-value, and that the one single constant in the universe is the
constant of relations formulated abstractly in scientific law.
Now, to the impartial observer the world presents itself in a twofold
aspect: on one hand as “something that is,” and on the other as
“something that happens.” In the former of these two fundamental views,
things would be something that _has_ happening, something that has
this happening proceed forth from it. In the latter view, things would
_be_ the happening itself, would resolve themselves completely into
happening.
As already set forth at length in what has gone before, this latter
conception is that given for science as the mechanical world-theory.
Science, if she would justify her title to the name, dare not accord
recognition to anything concealed behind things, anything imperceptible
to sense. If this be granted, “that which is” then becomes purely a
form of “that which happens,” and the universe in its entirety one
huge mass of relation-values. For a thing is perceptible to sense and
therewith apprehensible only in so far as it enters into relations with
other things, which includes, with my senses.
Any third view is impossible, for, from the strictly epistemological
standpoint, opposites, between them, always comprehend the whole.
From the standpoint of strict epistemology, with any kind of thing as
a concept--with the concept “tree” for example--all the rest of the
world is given as “not-tree”--so completely given with it that the
interpolation of any third concept is an utter impossibility.
It may be asked, “In what do these two opposed fundamental views find
their justification?”
All things exist for us only in so far as they are perceptible to us.
They exist as appearances, as the sum of their properties. If now
the thinking mind would have anything made wholly manifest, wholly
perceptible to sense--would seek to have something made wholly and
entirely _appearance_, there always remains a residue that refuses to
be made manifest, refuses to be made perceptible to sense. Speaking
generally, one may say: Applied thought seems to conduct to a something
lying at the foundation of things, to a constant in itself, of which
all properties, all in things that is perceptible to sense, are only
so many different expressions. The idea that all that exists does so
in virtue of a constant in itself, presents itself as a _necessity of
thought_, which science must oppose by every means if she would retain
her title to the name of science.
Since this constant in itself is of necessity an imperceptible to
sense, it imposes no restrictions upon apprehension. One is perfectly
at liberty to conceive of it in quite contrary forms--as matter or
substance, equally as well as under the form of force. If one holds
by the former mode of conceiving it, then, whatever the guise its
elaboration in thought may assume, one belongs to the school _of
materialism_. If, on the contrary, one holds by the latter mode of
apprehension, one then belongs, quite independent of the form its
detailed elaboration in thought may assume, to the _idealistic_ school.
For the correct appraisement of our whole mental life, however, it is
important clearly to understand that the opposition is only an apparent
one. Both alike have one common root in the idea of an _unconditioned
constant_ lying at the foundation of things, which, summed up, may be
designated as _the substans_ (_das Substans_) of all appearances. _The
substance_, accordingly, results purely as the material form of this
_substans_, while the force represents its immaterial form: the one
being as well--and as ill--authenticated as the other, since one knows
nothing of either, nor ever can know anything.
If now one follows up the various transformations that have taken
place in this domain within historical times, one finds that, as is
also the case in the domain of natural science, they occur following
the law of the _inversion of positions_. Does the one school, whether
it be the materialistic or the idealistic, force its way into such a
preponderating position as to become intolerable to sound common-sense,
it is forced to give place to its opponent, which then for a season
takes the lead, only, after a longer or shorter period, to undergo
a like fate. It is like a game of see-saw. All the acuteness, all
the profundity, all the mental florescence which the one school has
manifested in the course of centuries of labour perhaps, in this period
of decline are brought to destruction, and only by ardent collectors
can be rescued and preserved as a palæontological form of mental life.
At bottom, the whole of philosophy up to each new “now” is nothing
but a more or less tastefully-arranged palæontological collection of
thought-values.
Above and alongside this play of inversions betwixt idealism
and materialism--which I might call the inversion of the _lower
order_--there takes place another inversion of a _higher order_.
In certain intervals the human understanding begins to offer serious
resistance to both the worldviews that base themselves on the
concept of _substans_ in its two possible forms--that of substance
and that of force--by hastening over to one that is the contrary of
both, a world-conception from which _substans_ is wholly absent, a
world consisting entirely of a mass of relation-values. This latter
form of world-conception alone has the right to the designation of
“scientific.” For there can be no science, properly so-called, where
the subject dealt with is any shape or form of an imperceptible to
sense.
Now, the first inversion of the higher order with which we in our
Western circles of culture are acquainted has, to be sure, a slight
enough scientific cast. It is the inversion that set in with Protagoras
the Sophist. With his thesis, “Man is the measure of all things--of
those that are, that they are; of those that are not, that they
are not”--he places himself in an attitude of opposition to both
world-conceptions founded on the concept of _substans_; for in both
these conceptions things, as existing in virtue of an unconditioned
constant, must also be the measure of man.
The appearance of Protagoras was a naturally-resulting protest against
the absurdities to which materialism and idealism had mutually driven
each other. The former found its culminating point in Democritus of
Abdera, who left nothing in the world but matter in the shape of atoms.
The latter reached its corresponding culmination in Plato, who left
nothing in the world but the immaterial _substans_, ideas, to whom
thereby matter became the non-existent.
The whole procedure of Protagoras conveys the impression that his
inversion was of a purely dialectical nature. For the style and manner
in which he formulates his new point of view leaves to humanity for
all its mental life nothing but mere opinion. His dictum as to man
being the measure of all things takes no account of a natural order of
things. To this perhaps may be attributed the fact that his philosophy,
however arresting it may have been in his own day and time, set forth
personally by this gifted mind, has yet proved itself to be but little
permanent.
After the see-saw between idealism and materialism had proceeded
for some two thousand years more, the new inversion of the higher
order set in with a mighty whirlwind, the most powerful, the most
systematically-delivered attack upon the notion of _substans_ that
Western philosophy had ever experienced--the philosophy of Hume.
Hume’s philosophy, briefly stated, consists in the investigation of
what exhibits itself to sense-perception considered as based on a
possible content of _substans_--in unravelling it to the last thread
and pointing out to his contemporaries with irrefutable clearness and
acuteness, “See there, you people! a constant in itself is nowhere to
be found!”
Hume is frequently alluded to as a sceptic. I consider, on the
contrary, that his philosophy is the purest criticism precisely where
in philosophy criticism may be practised at all--namely, upon the
concept of _substans_, whether in material or immaterial form.
Every criticism of _substans_ culminates naturally in criticism of
the notion of an _I_. For Hume, the _I_, the self, became a bundle, a
collection of separate mental representations “that follow one another
with inconceivable rapidity and are in a state of perpetual flow,
continual motion.”
But a criticism of the notion of _substans_ is incomplete without a
criticism of the concept of cause; for the intuition that all that
exists must have an adequate cause is likewise a necessity of thought.
Now, where there is a constant in itself, a _substans_ in things,
causality is an actual _following after one another_ of cause and
effect, this “constant in itself” being also “cause in itself” of
that which happens, the latter therefore, as “effect in itself,”
representing a simple following upon that cause in itself, in such sort
that between the two there exists a necessary--I might almost say--a
rigid dependence; whereupon the question, “How is a relation between
the two possible?” becomes a problem that defies solution.
Hence it follows that one is bound to hold the problem of causality as
a correlate of _substans_. If the latter falls, the former falls along
with it.
As the notion of a constant in itself becomes in the criticism of
Hume a simple product of imagination, so for him does the concept of
causality become the simple outcome of use and wont. Because in our
representation of things we frequently observe two things to follow one
upon the other, we assume that a necessary dependence exists between
the two. Hume solves both these problems by declaring them, without a
moment’s hesitation, to have no existence at all.
After Hume, the see-saw game of the lower order went on for a time.
Upon the intellectual materialism of the eighteenth century--especially
as it prevailed in France, where it was represented by such men as
La Mettrie and Von Holbach--there followed the idealism of Fichte,
Schelling, and Hegel. After this had exploded of its own gaseousness,
the scientific materialism of the nineteenth century set in, and up to
our day has continued to hold the upper hand, though now it seems to be
swinging back in a new idealistic movement.
Alongside of this a new inversion of the higher order has managed to
prepare itself, making its appearance in two distinct forms, of which
one is the direct successor of the criticism of Hume, while the other
derives from physics.
The former is modern positivism, as developed in particular by Ernst
Mach and R. Avenarius. The latter is the so-called world-theory of
energetics, as represented more especially by Ostwald the physicist.
Both schools partake of a purely scientific character in so far as
they aim at furnishing world-theories from which a _substans_ is ruled
out--seek to frame a world consisting solely of relation-values, a
world in which the one thing constant is the constancy of the relations.
A third school, modern monism, as represented especially by Haeckel, is
not scientific at all.
As already said, it is of the essence of every scientific view
that it should apprehend the entire play of world-events purely as
relation-values. Such a world-conception is bound always to set out
from the midst of the play of events, with things already in full
swing. Modern monism, with its teaching of primordial life in the form
of a primordial cell or some other primordial form, is science only in
outward appearance; at the core it is unmitigated superstition, and
ought to be regarded as such by every thinking man, for it betrays
itself such by its uncritical abuse of ecclesiastical dogma.
After this historical review, given with the utmost possible brevity,
we have to inquire:--
What is the reason then for this insufficiency of the _substans_-views,
whether it refer to a material or to an ideal _substans_ in things? Why
are materialism and idealism alike devoid of any kind of demonstrative
ability?