III.

Inquiry never arrives at an end – neither objectively nor subjectively; neither the infinity of the world, nor the infinity of the intellect admit of an end; that, however, the intellect is but a limited portion of the world, no Social-Democratic materialist will ever deny. On the contrary, it is precisely he who scientifically conceived the thinking faculty as an instrument, quality, product or part of Nature. We are not animated to such a presumptuous extent by mind as to ascribe to it every capacity and every faculty. We only wish – what our professor wished, but could not achieve – we only wish to escape from dualism. We can only acknowledge one solitary world – the one “of which we obtain knowledge through the sensory perception.” We keep N�geli to his word, namely, where we do not see or hear or feel or taste or smell anything, there we can not know anything either.

I wish to return once more in a positive manner to the perceptibly limited nature of human cognition. With this faculty we can only know; to sing, to jump and to do a hundred other things with it we cannot; in so far reason is limited. But in its own element, in cognition, it is unlimited, and so unlimited that it never comes to an end with its work.

To go on. Everything knowable is open to it. The unknowable, that which is absolutely inaccessible to the senses, is for us non-existent; it is also “in itself “ non-existent insofar as we cannot even speak of it without drawing upon the fanciful.

“Our senses are just organized for the needs of common life, but not in order to satisfy our mental need, and to give us knowledge of all phenomena of Nature. ... Just as we came to know something about the phenomena which have their seat in every particle of matter, so there may be yet other natural forces, other molecular forces of motion of which we do not get any sensory impression, because they never unite into an observable sum, and therefore remain hidden from us.”

We reply: Those who have the ‘mental need’ to know something of phenomena ‘which remain hidden from us,’ and must remain hidden according to our Nature, have not a mental need, but a mystical need. The electrical phenomena have no more been discovered by accident than America was. And what a strange Columbus a scientist must be to speak of phenomena which nobody ever perceived or will perceive. It is possible that Mephistopheles should hover about me in the form of an invisible rearmouse; but what I don’t know leaves me cool and ought also to leave cool every natural philosopher.

N�geli says:

“The natural philosopher must well be aware that his inquiry is confined in all respects by finite limits, that on all sides he is categorically bidden to halt by the unknowable eternity. That this has not always been understood, that the infinitely great and the infinitely small have been mistaken for the endless and nothing, has often led to erroneous ideas. Such are the erroneous theories of the physical atoms as the infinitely small, and of the beginning and end of the world as the infinitely great.”

The consciousness of the limits of research may, eventually, be useful to the scientific inquirer. Still our professor ought not to have forgotten that rational doctrine in the very same breath in which he propounded it. This he does when saying that “on all sides we are categorically ordered to halt by the unknowable eternity.” How can one know anything about this halt when it is unknowable? Or is N�geli, like Du Bois, perhaps, unable to escape from the mere negation? Can he, too, only tell of the great halting-point of the ‘eternal’ that nothing can be known about it?

N�geli continues.

“This is not to say that the scientist must not philosophise, that he must not enter the domain of the ideal and transcendental. But he ceases to be a scientist, and the use he can make of his own profession is to keep the two domains strictly apart, that he treats the one as the real domain of research and knowledge, and the other, freed as it is of all finite, as the occult domain of presentiment.”

Our good professor knows the philosophers badly if he thinks that they will content themselves with the ‘occult domain of presentiment.’ Not only the Social-Democrat, but also many ‘official’ philosophers, claim that although their domain be hidden from the Munich professor, it is still open to ‘human understanding,’ and that all ‘divine cognition’ must be rigorously excluded from it. The occult domain or the metaphysical world beyond is not nearer Philosophy than to the other pure ideologists who seek each and every one to find some snug corner for their shrines. With science these conservative endeavors have nothing to do; they belong to the domain of practice. On the other hand, there is much more that belongs to the domain of exact science than those gentlemen are at all inclined to admit. They consider the conception of Nature in too vague a fashion. If it cannot be disputed that History, Economics, Politics, etc., ought to develop into exact sciences, nay, are already in a fair way to do so and have already partially done so, then Social-Democracy can also prove that the gulf between Philosophy and Science has already been bridged over without the bourgeois geniuses getting the slightest wind of it.

Professor Steinthal has gone in this respect further than his scientific colleagues. In the third edition of his book, The Origin of Speech, he says: “Speaking is not thinking, but the means, the organ of thinking,” and “no mind is without speech (designation); speech itself already belongs to the domain of mind.” Continuing this train of thought we argue: Speech lends our ideas their true designation. What speech designates as Nature, truth, knowledge and tin is really and truly tin, knowledge, truth and Nature. Steinthal teaches us on this point as follows: A only equals A and never B, if ‘equal’ is not taken in the mathematical sense of being equal in magnitude. But if equal means equality in essence, then A equalling B, B must be A, and we have no right to call it otherwise than A. Steinthal calls this “the principle of research and knowledge.” In other words unity, unity in conception and name is the first condition of science. All dualism is untenable. If divine knowledge = A, and human knowledge = B, that is, if both are essentially different, then we simply juggle with the word knowledge in a dualistic manner. Just as all mankind, in spite of the different races, make but one species, so necessarily is there in spite of the diverse kinds but one knowledge, one truth, one Nature, – the true Nature, the natural truth. And everything we get to know in heavens, on earth and in other places belongs to the same category. And what we do not get to know and of which only the parson and the professor tell us, – is mere jugglery, which, however, belongs to the natural truth, that is, true jugglery.