V.

Love for the preceptorial office and for the prominence of the pulpit as well as the approval of a friendly and indulgent audience induce me to continue my sermons. It is, however, but fair to mention that there are a good many among you who blame me for being too “scholarly” or not “popular” enough. To that I reply that only trite sayings and truisms are easily comprehensible. The so-called popular things always move in the old ruts, while social-democracy has a new doctrine, based on principles which are generally misunderstood and require a total transformation of our mode of thinking, and therefore cannot be comprehended without a certain mental effort.

Religion, my comrades, is primitive philosophy. On the other hand, Social-democracy is a still growing product of the whole historic past. We are, therefore, justified in substituting historically developed, worldly, Science for Religion and do not deviate from our subject by dwelling on worldly, non-religious, matter in these hours of devotion. I called religion philosophy because it claims not only to redeem us, with the help of Gods, and by praying and whining, from the earthly miseries, but also to lend a systematic frame to our thinking. The universal significance of religion for uncultured tribes is founded on the universal need for a systematic knowledge of the world. Just as we generally have a practical need for the dominion over the things of the world, so do we generally have a theoretical need for a systematic view of life. We require to see the beginning and the end of everything. The insipid clamor about the universality, eternity and inevitability of religion is not without some justification. To flatly deny it would be Russian nihilism which was justly expelled from the “International.” We are far from senseless negation. We scorn the “Kulturk�mpfer,” in order to fight for real culture. We acknowledge that the need for a systematic view of the world is inherent in man who always requires a canon for his thoughts and deeds. The things which engage his attention, as for instance mind and body, the transient and the lasting, time and eternity, reality and appearance, ethics, state and society, he wants to see in a certain order and logical sequence. Man requires to have a reasonable connection of his ideas, so that he may bring a reasonable system into practical life. We, too, we social-democrats and defenders of revolutionary movements, feel the same want. Servile trimmers and bunglers may perhaps on that ground think us religious. We reject that qualification. Not because we refuse to admit that religious and social-democratic philosophy have something in common, but because we want to emphasize the difference between them and to break away not only internally, but externally also, in name and deed, in short completely from everything which smacks of priestcraft.

Yet, it is not sufficient to dethrone the fantastic and religious system of life; it is necessary to put a new system, a rational one, in its stead. And that, my friends, only the socialists can accomplish. Or, if the doctors of philosophy think this language too presumptuous, I will put it differently, though the meaning remains the same: our social-democracy is the necessary outcome of a non-religious and sober way of thinking. It is the outcome of philosophic science. Philosophers wrestled with the priests in order to replace a non-civilized mode of thinking by a civilized one, to replace faith by science. The object is achieved, the victory is won. Cannibal religion of primitive ages was softened by Christianity, philosophy continued in its civilizing mission, and after many untenable and transient systems produced the imperishable system of science, the system of democratic (dialectic) materialism.

The Prussian professor Treitschke thinks the self-confidence of social-democracy to be a clever trick used with the purpose of imposing upon the people. Of course, he looks for us behind that hedge where he is sheltering himself. The professional sycophants, the prostitutes of the pen, having long ago sold their honor, are quite unable to grasp either the convincing power of truth or the self-confidence inspired by a consistent and systematic view of the world. The socialist philosophy, with which we are dealing, is a closely serried and well-knit system. A thorough treatment of it could only be carried out from a professional chair specially appointed for that purpose. My task is a different one. In the first place I want to interest you in the new philosophy and to stimulate you to further investigation and thinking for yourselves. I am to-day more of a raconteur who does not begin with the beginning nor finish with the end, but by a rambling method wants to excite the curiosity of his audience. I am giving you the outlines and the salient points only, which you should fill up and further develop by your own work.

We call ourselves materialists. Just as religion is a generic term for various beliefs, so is materialism a general name for various scientific conceptions. Reviewing the world from the lofty standpoint of the religious heaven, everything – even the purest ether – appears to be common matter, dirt and clay. All philosophy, even idealist Platonism, all scientific investigation, all positive knowledge is in the distorted eyes of religion no more than material aspiration. Indeed, all philosophers are materialists in disguise, for all of them want real knowledge, knowledge of real truth. Materialists in the contemptible sense of the word, who find the whole object of life in eating, drinking and in the satisfaction of physical wants – simple philistines have no room in science, they form no particular school and do no theorizing whatever. Philosophic materialists, on the other hand, are those thinkers who put the real world at the beginning, at the head of their investigation, and the idea or spirit as the sequel and outcome, as the product, while their opponents follow the opposite method : they decree, after the religious method, the rise of reality from the logos (God spake and it was), the material world from the idea. No doubt, materialism suffered heretofore from the lack of sound logical evidence. But now we social-democrats accept the name, with which our opponents think to abuse us, because we know that “the stone which the builders refused is become the head stone of the corner.” We would be equally justified to call ourselves idealists, inasmuch as our system is based on the final results of philosophy, on the scientific investigation of ideas, on the clear insight won into the nature of mind. How little our opponents are capable of understanding us is shown by the contradictory names given us. One time we are called crude materialists whose only desire is to lay hold of the wealth of the rich, and another time, when dealing with our communistic ideals, we are called inveterate idealists. As a matter of fact we are both materialists and idealists at the same time. Palpable, true reality is our ideal, the ideal of social-democracy is material.

The Alphabet of Knowledge for the Thinking, published lately in the Volksstaat, designated the inductive method as the “impregnable basis of all science, which builds on facts.” The application of this method to all problems of the world, that is the systematic application of induction shapes the socialist conception of the world into a system. Its categorical imperative is as follows: “Thou shalt not begin to speculate without material; thou shalt base thy deductions, rules and axioms on facts only, on palpable realities. Thinking must begin with data.” We begin to speculate, but we don’t speculate about the beginning. We know once for all, that all thinking must begin with some fragment of a real phenomenon, with a given beginning; the inquiry into the beginning of the beginning is therefore a nonsense, contradictory to the general law of logic. Those who speak of the beginning of the world imply that time was antecedent to the world. “Nothing was” are two words which preclude each other. That something was which was not, can only be asserted by a shrewd idiot who draws square circles. Nothing can only mean: not this nor that. Our philosophic system begins with the knowledge that beginning and end are, if I may say so, subjective modes, or categories, of the human mind.

And as logical as the beginning is our sequence. The whole metaphysics, which Kant sums up as the question after God, free will and immortality, finds its final solution in our system, through our knowledge that understanding and reason is an absolutely inductive faculty. That is, our comprehension of the world is perfect when we arrange and divide the empirical things according to their general qualities in species, classes, conceptions, etc. This is quite a truism which would hardly be worth discussing but for the superstitious and ideologues who are never tired of jabbering about deduction. They assert that our intellect possesses still a second method in ascertaining the truth, though simple, palpable truth is inductive. But they claim that in mathematics for instance, the deductive method is supreme and independent of experience. Knowing that two and two equals four we also KNOW that the same result would be obtained in heaven and on earth and always and everywhere. Insofar we also know of times and dimensions which no human eye ever perceived and no human ear ever heard. That a camel has two humps was a simple experience, but that two and two equal four, or that the part is smaller than the whole is claimed to be a transcendental, metaphysical truth, a deduction from pure reason. They believe, so to speak, in an inner light which revealed them the mysteries of mathematics, ethics, the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, freedom of will and other transcendental moonshine. Thanks to the idealistic studies of a Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Kant, Fichte, Hegel we were able to advance to our materialistic philosophy, to reveal the deductive ghost of the transcendentalists. The celebrities of philosophy have one after another so far promoted and strengthened the cause of truth that we social-democrats, standing on their shoulders, are able to understand completely the mechanical nature of all knowledge of the religions, the speculative as well as the mathematical. It may sound strange that that knowledge is due to our party standpoint, considering that a scientific result is a human affair. Yet, our assertion is easily comprehensible, for social-democracy does not represent a party, but humanity. The party of the disinherited is the party of the disinterested, is the party of impartial truth. We social-democrats have the easiest access to philosophy, for our mind is not dimmed by narrow selfishness.

The transcendental certainty, the deduction which is to be found in the proposition that two and two equal four, is, like any other deduction, a mere subterfuge; four and two times two are but different terms for one and the same thing. Everything has a certain substance. Smaller parts form the substance of the whole; handle and blade form the substance of a knife; two mountains have a dale between, and in the number four is contained two times two. Thus, because the substance is quite mechanically given in a thing, we are apodictically certain and transcendentally convinced that two times two equal four, the part is smaller than the whole, the knife is not without a handle and a blade, and two mountains are not without a valley. Where only the wet is called water, there we don’t need any special transcendental faculty to know categorically that water must be wet. No special light is necessary to attain to the understanding that deduction, like any other profane knowledge, is based in the last resort on empirical facts. Yet, after all inquiries into facts, and after all understanding of their bearing, they are not a whit less miraculous than before. So, for instance, we know that grape-juice turns almost overnight into an intoxicating liquor. How is that to be comprehended? The chemist will tell you: “It is fermentation. Grape-sugar, exposed to the influence of heat and air, turns into alcohol.” Thus the incomprehensible is explained, the production of wine is a chemical process belonging to the general class of fermentation. Facts are comprehended by ranging and classifying them into a certain system, and not by dissolving them into logical alcohol. Philosophic mysticism is an undigested remnant of the theological period. In order to dispose of both of them in a radical manner it is necessary to be imbued with the knowledge that facts do not rest on logical grounds, but conversely that the fundamental basis of all logic is ever the fact, the being, the external reality.

I must apologize, my friends, for troubling you with such hair-splitting dissertations. I am quite aware that there are but few among us who care for such discussions, but the few are just sufficient for our purpose. It is necessary that some of us should be able to face official philosophy. We must lay bare the foundation of our theory in order that the sight of its granitic rock shall demonstrate in a striking manner to the impartial observer how shifty the sands are on which the braggarts of the existing order have piled up their contradictions. They reason without any system, without any logic or consistency. They have advanced the proposition that everything must have a cause, a beginning and an end. But how do they demonstrate it? They demonstrate it with the belief in a God who has no beginning, and in a life which has no end. The same lack of consistency is to be found in the politics of the existing order. One of its organic laws promises freedom of public meeting and speech; but where the people make use of that freedom and come together to express their sentiments and thoughts, there the policeman is set on them. Is this system, logic or consistency? O, yes! It is the system of infamy. All the deeds and thoughts of our rulers are concentrated in the logical idea : We are at the top and we mean to stay there for good.