2.

The question we are dealing with concerns the difference between religious and profane truth. That the Jew shall not run about unwashed, Moses prescribed cleanliness as a law. Cleanliness is a necessary requirement; it is a truism. In its religious form however it is of a solemn immobility, fixed to time, place and number; it prescribes when, in what manner and how often one must wash. The religious truth is a binding prescription; secular science and the free use of water cleanses more thoroughly than that prescription. In science the atom is as worthy an object as the starry sky. There is no fixed gulf in science between worthy and unworthy objects, and none in scientific ethics between good and evil. All things and qualities are useful and suitable; clean and unclean, love and hate, enjoyment and renunciation – all is relative, more or less, according to time and conditions. Scientific freedom, subordinating all things and qualities to human ends, is thoroughly anti-religious. Religious truth consists just in this, that it lifts natural qualities above nature, that it separates them from the living stream of human progress and confines them in a stagnant pool.

In qualifying the common and profane truth as “scientific,” I should like to remind you, friends and comrades, that the scientific truth is called profane and common. It is necessary to bear that in mind, seeing that a scientific priesthood has arisen which is aiding and abetting religious priestcraft. To destroy palpable superstition would be an easy matter if dualistic confusion were not on the lookout for the gaps of science in order to lay there its eggs. Such gaps are to be found especially in the field concerning epistemology, the theory of the method of cognition. As the Laplander or Firelander is terrorized by mighty natural phenomena, so is the professor by the wondrous working of the human mind. Enlightened freethinkers, who easily dispense with Christianity and religion in general, are still caught in the snares and pitfalls of superstition as long as they don’t clearly distinguish between religious and profane truth, and as long as they are not clear about the organ of truth or the faculty of knowledge. Having materialized everything spiritual, there remained nothing for the professors but to spiritualize their own profession, science. They assume academic knowledge to be of a different stuff from, say, the knowledge of the peasant, of the dyer or of the smith. Scientific agriculture is, however, only insofar ahead of usual farming that its rules or its knowledge of the so-called natural laws are generalizations of a more comprehensive kind. They but differ from each other in degree and not in essence, as for instance a quart of legumes from a quart of peas. There must be no groping in the dark about the insipid difference between noble science and common understanding, if we want to overcome the claims of the aristocracy of intellect. Our opponents may indignantly protest against such crude notions of the democratic levellers who even refuse to recognize intellectual distinction. Yet, quite as the old struggle against aristocracy was not meant to disparage their glorious ancestors, so our shafts are not directed against the intellect of the intellectuals. We object only to the material privileges which the knightly highwaymen and academic scribblers lay claim to. Since it is no more possible to brutally coerce the people to the production of wealth, the learned satellites of our rulers cheat them with the miracles of intellectual labor. The distinguished and lucrative position of the professor as well as the profits of the employer are defended under the false pretences that intellectual labor stands far higher and is ten times more productive than manual labor. Because we social-democrats are treating such presumptions with contempt, we are nicknamed “blasphemers of art and science.” We have the deepest contempt for the stilted phraseology of “culture and science” and for the talk of the graduated flunkeys who, like the pagan priests with their rudimentary knowledge of nature, use their sham idealism to keep the people in ignorance. The modern dualistic belief in the world of a scientific and of an ethical spirit, which is supposed to be superior to the common world and is therefore to control it, is nothing more than the rehashed superstition of an earthly and heavenly life. Professors who need the support of religion transform the Kingdom of God to a kingdom of scientific spirit. As Lord God finds his antipode in the devil so has the pious professor his antagonist in the materialist.

The materialistic conception of the world is just as old as the religious disbelief. And both have been worked up in the nineteenth century from their crude form to scientific precision. But our learned academicians fail to understand that, because they feel their social position endangered by the democratic tendencies inherent in materialism. Feuerbach says: “It is the characteristic feature of a professor of philosophy not to be a philosopher, and conversely, it is the characteristic feature of a philosopher not to be a professor of philosophy.” To-day we are a step farther. Not only philosophy but science in general has left its official mouthpieces behind. Even where there are materialistic professors in the professional chair, there adheres to them some unscientific religious nuisance in the form of an idealistic remnant as pieces of egg-shell to the unfledged bird. Furthermore, one swallow makes no summer, and the really scientific conception of a professor cannot take off the blot which sullies his whole class. As long as the middle classes and their leaders had to fulfill a civilizing mission, their academies were nurseries of learning. Since then, how ever, history has moved forward, and the struggle for a higher civilization has been devolved on the working class, the nethermost stratum of human society. Despite this historic change the old decaying rulers are making great efforts to preserve their power and are looking to the academic dignitaries for support, thus turning the “free scientists” into well-paid attorneys to defend a dying cause.

The socialist demand for a more equitable and popular distribution of economic goods can be realized by a democracy only, by a government of the people who do not tolerate the rule of a clique which, under the pretence of intellectual superiority, seeks to appropriate the lion’s share of the social wealth. In order to keep that presumptuous selfishness within reasonable bounds it is necessary to understand clearly the relation between mind and matter. Philosophy is therefore a subject which closely concerns the working class. This, of course, does by no means imply that every working man should try to become acquainted with philosophy and study the relation between idea and matter. From the fact that we all eat bread does not follow that we must understand milling and baking. But just as we need millers and bakers so does the working class stand in need of keen scholars who can follow up the tortuous ways of the false priests and lay bare the inanity of their tricks. Manual laborers do not sufficiently appreciate the real value of mental labor. Their healthy distrust against the leading scribblers of bourgeois society leads them too far. They see how much wrong-doing is going on under the cloak of intellectual work and are therefore inclined to undervalue mental labor and to overestimate manual labor. This brutal materialism must be counteracted. Physical vigor, bodily superiority was always the prerogative of the working classes. But in default of mental training they have so far been outwitted. The emancipation of the working classes requires that they should lay hold on the science of the century. The mere sentiment of indignation against the unjust conditions under which we suffer does not meet the case of freeing the working class, superior in numbers and physique as they may be. They must have recourse to the armory of intellect. Of all its weapons the theory of cognition or the theory of science, that is, the understanding of the scientific method of thinking, is the universal weapon against religious belief, driving it out of its last hidden recess.

The belief in Gods and demi-Gods, in Moses and the Prophets, the belief in the Pope, in the Bible, in the Kaiser, in his Bismarck and his government, in short, all belief in authorities, finds its definite and final reply in the science of mind. As long as we have not discovered how and where wisdom arises we are easily exposed to the danger of being bamboozled. The clear knowledge of how thoughts are being produced puts us on a coign of vantage which makes us independent of God, books and men. In dissolving the dualism of mind and matter, the theory of the scientific method of thinking destroys the last pillar which supports a society divided into rulers and ruled, into oppressors and oppressed.

I don’t think here is the proper place to enter more fully into the discussion of the theory of mind. I shall confine myself to the statement of some of its most evident and irrefutable propositions, in order to be able to oppose the presumption of the ruling classes which, by pleading intellectual work, endeavor to extenuate the charge of their exploitation of the people. The socialist attack on their economic, or class, position fills them with fanatic fury. They are therefore unable to bring the necessary impartiality to bear upon the study of subjects which may produce social changes. Mental and social science can hardly meet with the sympathy of an audience which, through their privileged and propertied position, are interested in clogging the wheel of civilization. Such a science appeals all the more to the judicious attitude of the have-nots, of the disinherited and oppressed.

Ad rem! Spirit is neither a ghost nor the breath of God. Idealists and materialists agree that spirit belongs to the category of “worldly things,” dwells in human brains, and is nothing else than an abstract expression, a collective noun expressive of thoughts which exist simultaneously and follow each other in organic order. If spirit is understood to be no more than another word for our force of thinking, who could then deny the some what paradoxical, yet empirical, proposition that mental work is a bodily effort? With this I venture to introduce you to the rather difficult chapter of contradictions. As line and point are but mathematical conceptions, so are contradictions no real things, but logical niceties, and have only a relative and comparative value. Relatively the great is small and the small great. In this sense we may say matter and mind, like all opposites, are logically but not really in opposition to each other, since all opposites are such only in way of comparison. Our body is so closely connected with our spirit, that physical labor is absolutely impossible without spiritual collaboration. Even the simplest work of an unskilled laborer requires the co-operation of mind. Conversely, the belief in metaphysics or in disembodied spiritual labor is an absurdity. Even the purest mental exercise is undoubtedly an effort of the body. All human work is both mental and physical. From my preceding lectures at least as much is evident, that thoughts not only originate from the brains and therefore proceed subjectively from matter, but that they always and everywhere have some palpable thing as their object. Cerebral matter is the subject of thought, the infinite material of the world is its object.

The mind as well as the body is eager to produce, to bring forth fruit. Therefore intellectual work must become materialized and bodily work spiritualized. An analysis of the product of labor will never indicate how much the mind has contributed to it and how much the body, for they operate together in close companionship, and not in isolation from each other. A certain work may be characterized, either as mental or physical, the product however, is made both by mind and body. Their contribution to the whole cannot be separated. Who could indicate in a kitchen-garden what parts of the plants are due to the spade, the arm of the gardener, the soil, the rain and the manure? It has always seemed to me an idle and poor endeavor to divide up the products of labor according to the factors which contributed to them. It is a perverse bourgeois idea which cannot be consummated and leads, moreover, in practice to just the opposite result. This idea appears to be the outcome of that cardinal perversion which wants to turn man into an independent producer who, freed from all social trammels, should compete with his fellow individuals and thus realize the fantastic ideals of personal liberty. But you, my friends, know full well, that all work in the capitalist world is in reality performed in common. The intellect of the journalist works for the manufacturers, and the manufacturers produce linen for the journalists, police agents, shoe-polishers, etc. One for all. Nobody looks for his ultimate object in his own product, everybody aims at the products of all which are supplied by the world’s market and find their realization in the form of money. If we judge the performance of each member of our society according to the money he receives, then the stockholders must have contributed an enormous amount of social labor.

The work of the individual and that of the family, the work of the factory and that of the whole society, is an organism, each part of which contributes to the whole. The contribution of each organ cannot be mechanically weighed or measured. The Socialist is quite aware that the workers are organs of the work process. He has completely given up the insipid idea of individualizing and dividing up a communistic product, and paying to each according to his deserts. Present society, with its misunderstood principle of suum cuique (each unto his own) and its grotesque justice, acts as unreasonably as the man who gives his eye an overweening care while utterly neglecting his leg. As the engineer is more careful about his smallest screws than about his big wheel, so do we desire that the product of social labor shall be divided according to the social needs, so that the strong and the weak, the swift and the clumsy, the mental and the physical labor, insofar as they are human, shall work and enjoy in human community.

That object, my comrades, is opposed by religion.

And not only by the formal, the common religion of priestcraft, but also by the most purified and sublime professional religion of hazy idealists. Since the publication of the first part of my sermon, I have been taken to task by several people that I was carried away too far by my criticism. Our friend Schafer of Francfort thinks that I was condemning Jesus for the misunderstanding of his followers. They had made of His teachings what the Master had never intended; we should therefore discriminate between the ideal true Christianity and the degenerated one. My criticism against the inordinate Christian humility was not well-founded, for the Lord Himself was courageous enough to chase the money-lenders out of the temple.

To that I should like to reply: Christianity aims at the divine control of the world. What a vain endeavor! Christianity itself is being controlled against its will and desire by the nature of things. “Therefore it is so full of compromises,” therefore the apostle, with all his desire for celibacy, must allow marriage, and therefore Christian non-resistance, which commands to tender the left cheek when the right one was smitten, is swept away by the indignation of the smitten. But, you see, it is not the consistency, it is, indeed, the inconsistency of Christianity, for it lays special stress on the necessity of absolute resignation, on the patience of the lamb carried to the shambles. Such humility has surely its limits, but that a revolutionary upheaval was a part of the divine mission is beyond doubt quite foreign to the spirit of Christianity, though we might find here and there an insignificant instance from which the contrary might be inferred. Whether Christ really meant or wanted such a humbleness, I cannot say. After all, why should such a question have any interest for us? Profane and true truth is not based upon personalities. It is based on external objects; it is objective. It does not lay claim to validity because it originates from a great master. The utmost we can say is that the master took hold of it because it was valid. And just in this lies the mistake and the superstition, of which our friend Schafer is guilty and which makes me indignantly knock at the pulpit that people are full of hero-worship and cannot give up their belief in authority and their idolatry of the great spirit.

Great men, who carry forward the beacon of knowledge, surely deserve all honor, but only insofar and as long as their teaching is founded on realities.