VI.

Our last considerations were devoted to the traditional saying: “Man needs religion,” which we ventured to translate into reasonable language by declaring: “Man needs system.” It is his intellectual need to gain a safe standpoint from which he could survey the world. In order not to go astray in the midst of the bewildering multitude of phenomena, man divides the heavens into constellations of stars, the cosmos into regions, and likewise our earth into classes, species, families and in dividuals. In short, he gives diversity diversified names. To have system implies the ability of finding one’s way and of classifying things. That an animal is the subject of zoology, and a plant the subject of botany is easily grasped, but it is by no means so easy to tell the branch of knowledge where such notions as truth, freedom, justice, etc., belong to. No system is perfect unless it has found a place for every phenomenon, has classified everything and has made provisions for everything. Founders of religion as well as philosophers at tempted to make such systems, but none has stood the test. The stream of time has brought and is still bringing to light new phenomena, new experiences, new things for which no provision was made. They don’t fit into the prevailing system, and therefore a new one was necessary, until social-democracy was wise enough to construct a system of thought sufficiently comprehensive for all present and future phenomena.

This is apparently an overweening assertion. In order to justify it I must somewhat retrace the steps we have taken until now. As the theologians look for a God who unites in his personality the omnipotence of the world, so the philosophers have been searching for a system which concentrates all knowledge in a single knot, so as to swallow all science in one bite. We know, how ever, that a color cannot be green and blue and yellow and black at the same time; that is, that the whole species cannot be incorporated in one individual. All science cannot be concentrated in a single human being and still less in a single conception. Yet, I ventured to assert that we possess such a concentration. Or does not the conception of matter contain all materials of the world?

So, too, has all science one general form in common, namely the inductive method. That the induction is the only general form of science, and that induction can be applied to all problems, to all objects – this conviction lends to social-democracy its systematic steadiness, its mental superiority, which astonish our opponents. We do not know everything, but we know the general form of all science and use it as a touchstone to find out all the tricks played against the people by the henchmen of our rulers. In natural science the inductive method is well-known, but that there is in it a systematic philosophy which is destined to put an end to all religious, philosophical and political humbug, this is a social-democratic novelty and acquisition.

Our opponents, the rulers and the rich, the progressives, liberals and free-masons are also advocates of induction but only insofar as it suits their purpose. They divide everything: the people into masters and servants; life into an earthly and heavenly one; the person into body and soul; and science into induction and deduction.

Now, dividing and classifying cannot be objected to, provided that there is system, that the divided parts are kept under one heading, and that the diversity is known to be but a gradual one. It is not unreasonable to divide life into an earthly and a spiritual one, but when so doing we must be conscious that both are forms of the selfsame life, and that both are of equal value. Social-democrats, too, have a body and a soul. Our body is the sum total of our corporeal qualities, and our soul is the sum total of our mental qualities. Yet, we must always remember that the empirical phenomenon comprises all matters uniformly, and that it is the common term for flesh and soul, for body and spirit. Soul or spirit is in our opinion an attribute of the world and not, as the priest asserts to the contrary, the world the attribute or the handiwork of the spirit. Darwin teaches the descent of man from animal. He, too, differentiates man from animal, but only as two products of the same material, as two varieties of the same species, as two sequences in the same system. A systematic and consistent classification of this kind, as well as the cosmic unity is unknown to our opponents. In this respect the good old religious life must be commended. It had at least a certain system. Earthly and heavenly life, lordship and slavery, faith and knowledge, were all under the united and centralized government of Him who said: “I am the Lord, thy God.”

I know quite well, that the believers, too, have a dualism and are guilty of a relative lack of system. I am quite aware that they are fluttering between heaven and earth. However, before the liberal wedge of doubt had entered the religious flesh, when religion was a more serious affair, it was also less dualistic. The devil was but a tool, the earthly life but a transitional term of probation for the eternal life. One was subordinated to the other. There was a center of gravity and a system. In comparison with modern half-heartedness and free-masonry, religion did encompass the whole in a monistic manner.

This consistent encompassing of the whole, my dear friends, is a difficult problem with which the human mind has grappled since it began working. The nineteenth century has solved the problem and given philosophy a system. If in spite of all the light and leading of our thinkers and scientists, people are still groping in the dark, it must be due to political reasons. Reactionary ill-will has scented the revolutionary consequences of the inductive method. Hegel himself was already cautious enough to put his light under the bushel. And his more courageous followers could not make headway at a time when conservative vileness governed supreme. Even to this day the privileged classes are doing their utmost to keep the smouldering embers well under the ashes. Comrades, let us fan them into flames. When they are aglow all the children of the night will disappear.

The stomach can’t go on without food and drink, nor the head without a system, that is, without a connected view of life, a “ final cause “ from which everything proceeds. This final cause is rather a ticklish thing.

According to the religious systems God is the final cause. Liberal ideologues believe it possible to base everything on reason. Prejudiced materialists find in hidden atoms the final cause of the universe, while social-democrats demonstrate everything by induction. We hold to induction on principle, that is we know that knowledge cannot be got by deduction, by drawing from pure reason, but that it is gained through the instrumentality of reason from experience.

That logical method is already known to other people, but they lack the systematic knowledge of it, they lack consistency. The philosophy of the anti-socialists is not homogeneous; it is rather a mixture of induction and deduction. They know how to induce, but they don’t know the system of induction. They are well acquainted with details, but they utterly fail when dealing with the general aspect of the world. They can readily find the beginning and end of a certain thing, they can tell in concrete cases which is sham and which reality. But when confronted with the question of the general beginning or of the general relation of truth, justice, energy, matter, unity and multiplicity, cause and effect – they are at their wits’ end and the rearing of the Tower of Babel begins. Some quote the Revelation, others take refuge in Kant or in some other venerable classic, still others forsake theology and philosophy altogether and apply themselves to scientific experiments and expect the solution of the problem from natural science.

In the face of such a helpless muddle international social-democracy is proud to know the “final cause” on which everything rests, and to possess a scientific basis for everything, and a systematic philosophy. Our decided superiority of principle is clearly manifested by the unanimity of our aspirations and demands, while our opponents are hopelessly divided on all questions of religion and politics. To be sure, there are differences of opinion in our ranks too, yet the anti-socialists have no reason whatsoever to rail at the dissensions among the social-democrats. We quarrel about detail, about forms of organizations, about practical and tactical questions, but in general principles and in matters of theory we stand as a solid and united phalanx, shoulder to shoulder, for we have what the Old- and New-Catholics, Protestants and Freethinkers would like to have: we have system. The beginning and end of all philosophy is clear to us.

Of course, comrades, this does not mean that every social-democrat possesses a full knowledge of the system. Not all of us have received a systematic training, else there would be no need for my preaching. What I ventured to assert is that your social-democratic aspirations proceed from systematic science. I assert that the inductive demonstration of a thing is the only, true, scientific demonstration, and that a consistent application of induction yields very remarkable anti-religious and revolutionary results. I should very much like to enter into details illustrating my assertion, but I must for the present abstain from that in order to first consolidate the foundation of our philosophy.

I repeat, and as a preacher who is anxious to drive home his teaching I am entitled to repeat: In the place of religion social-democracy puts a systematic conception of the universe.

This philosophy finds its “ final cause “ in the real conditions. The philosophy of the Liberals acts in the same way in natural science and in business only, while in matters of human society it looks for the final cause in the revelations of reason, instead of religion. They want their notions of justice, truth and liberty to be the models for an equitable, true and free society. The fact that feudal as well as liberal and clerical ideals of justice, freedom, political truth and wisdom have been moulded after the material interests of those respective parties, could not fail to teach us that ideals do not spring from the human head, but are formed by the human head from empirical materials.

Therefore we are able to mould consciously and with systematic consistency our notions of justice and liberty after our material needs, that is the needs of the proletariat, of the masses. The real bodily need and the present possibility of a “life worth living” is the “final cause” from which spring the equity, truth and rationality of the social-democratic demands. In the system of induction the body precedes the spirit and the fact the notion.

The frequent use of one and the same word having a soporific effect on the mind, I shall for a change call our system “The System of Experimental Truth.” The dawdlers of the bourgeois parties talk a good deal of divine, moral, logical, etc., truths. We, however, know of no divine truth, we but know the empirical truth. We may divide it into parts and give them special names, but its general character will remain. Truths, no matter how we call them, are based on physical, corporeal, material experience. As such they are but parts or classes of the experimental system. We cut only from one, from one whole. We demonstrate our propositions empirically and really, and our procedure is systematic and logical. Could there be, my friends, anything more evident than such evidence?

Having laid bare the foundation we proceed to look at the structure of our universal system from the most elevated point of vantage. We see the infinite diversity of things to consist of the same homogeneous, empirical material. All diverse qualities possess one general quality. How different they may be, big or small, ponderable or imponderable, spiritual or physical, all things of the world have this in common, that they are empirical objects of our intellect. From the standpoint of the inductive system the world and all it contains forms but one homogeneous object. All its details are but modalities of the absolute unity. Physical phenomena or empirical materials are the universal species in relation to which all other classes are but subdivisions. It is the only substance and truth, everything else is but a quality and a relative manifestation. Solid and liquid, wood and metal, are quite correctly summed up under the notion “matter.” Why should we not be justified in summing up all things under the term “empirical truth” or “empirical phenomenon?” Nothing can prevent us then from dividing it into organic and inorganic, into physical and moral, into good and bad, etc. Through the common origin all antagonisms are conciliated and bridged over. Diversity is but a form; in their essence all things are alike. The final cause of all things is the empirical phenomenon. The empirical material is the general elementary substance. It is absolute, eternal and omnipresent. Where it ends, all reasoning is at an end.

The inductive system may as well be called the dialectic or evolutionary system. Here we find what is more and more being proved by natural science, that seemingly essential differences are but differences in degree. However strict we may be in determining the specific characteristics which differentiate the organic from the inorganic or the plants from the animals, Nature shows that the lines of demarcation disappear and the differences and antagonisms coalesce. The cause effects and the effect causes. The truth appears and the appearance is true. As heat and cold differ but in degree, so do good and bad – they are all relative manifestations of the same substance, and forms or classes of physical experience.

I see in the audience some new guests to whom the monism which I preach appears to be so strange and unheard of that they are very anxious to hurl against me the most insipid objections. They would like to ask how it was possible to prove that empirical material is the primary component part of all objects of science? And are there no such things as God, pure reason and moral world?

By such questions you may see, my friends, how deeply rooted irrationality is in man. God, pure reason, moral world and many other things do not consist of empirical material; they are not forms of the physical phenomenon and we deny therefore their existence. Yet, the ideas, with which this kind of reasoning operates, have appeared physically and have a real existence and can be made the subject-matter of our inductive examination. The terms physical, empirical, etc., are generally understood in their narrower sense. I supplement them therefore with the adjective “experimental.”

The denominational systems of the religious, and the rational systems of the freethinkers put up different claims. The system of empirical truth, to which social-democracy adheres, can only be based on induction; it recognizes only those notions, doctrines and theories which are consciously taken from empirical material. From the height of that system we discover the bridge which unites philosophy with natural science. The bridge is constructed from one rock, the rock of all wisdom which consists of the knowledge that the human intellect is an inductive instrument. All specific disciplines are but applications of this general truth and science. The intellect is the commander-in-chief of all knowledge. The specialties of science are his subordinates. The systems of astronomy or chemistry, botany or optics are departments of the general system.

Those of my audience, who despite having carefully followed my dissertations, have not grasped yet the full bearing of socialist philosophy, I beg to consider how impossible it is to do full justice to a subject of that magnitude within the compass of a half an hour. And if I wanted to work it out more completely, I should fear to tire my audience.

However, many an opportunity will present itself in the course of our lectures to take up the matter again. For the present it must suffice to have laid bare the foundation and to have strengthened and solidified our party-consciousness by turning the attention of the comrades to the first principles of socialism.