II. Self-Movement and Intelligence

At an early period the organisms divided themselves into two great groups – those which developed the organs of self motion, and those which lacked it, animals and plants.

It is clear that the power of self movement is a mighty weapon in the struggle for life. It enables it to follow its food, to avoid danger, to bring its young into places where they will be best secured from dangers and which are best provided with food.

Self motion, however, necessarily implies an intelligence, and vice versa. The one of these factors without the other is absolutely useless. Only in combination do they become a weapon in the struggle for life. The power of self-movement is completely useless, when it is not combined with a power to recognize the world in which I have to move myself. What use would the legs be to the stag, if he had not the power to recognize his enemies and his food grounds? On the other hand, for a plant intelligence of any kind would be useless. Were the blade of grass able to see, hear or smell the approaching cow, that would not in the least help it to avoid being eaten. Self-movement and intelligence thus necessarily go together, one without the other is useless. Wherever these faculties may spring from, they invariably come up together and develop themselves jointly. There is no self-movement without intelligence, and no intelligence without self-movement. And together they serve the same ends, the securing and alleviation of the individual existence.

As a means to that they and their organs are developed and perfected by the struggle for life, but only as a means thereto. Even the most highly developed intelligence has no capacities which would not be of use as weapons in the struggle for existence. Thus is explained the one-sidedness and the peculiarity of our intelligence.

To recognize things in themselves may appear to many philosophers an important task; for our existence it is highly indifferent, whatever we have to understand by the thing in itself. On the other hand for every being endowed with power of movement it is of the greatest importance to rightly distinguish the things and to recognize their relations to one another. The sharper his intelligence in this respect the better service will it do him. For the existence of the singing bird it is quite indifferent what those things may be in themselves which appear to it as a berry, a hawk, or a thunder cloud. But indispensable is it for his existence to distinguish exactly berries, hawks, and clouds from the other things among his surroundings, since that alone puts him in a position to End his food, to escape the enemy, and to reach shelter in time. It is thus inevitable that the intelligence of the animal should be a power of distinguishing in space.

But just as indispensable is it to recognize the sequence of the things in time, and indeed their necessary sequence as cause and effect. Since the movement as cause can only bring as a universal result the maintenance of existence, if it aims at special more immediate or remoter effects which are so much the more easily to be achieved, the better the individual has got to learn these effects with their causes. To repeat the above example of a bird, it is not sufficient that it should know how to distinguish berries, hawks, and thunder clouds from the other things in space, it must also know that the enjoyment of the berries has the effect of satisfying its hunger, that the appearance of the hawk will have the effect that the first small bird which it can grasp will serve it as food, and that the rising thunder clouds produce storm, rain, and hail as results.

Even the lowest animal, so soon as it possesses a trace of ability to distinguish and self movement, develops a suspicion of causality. If the earth shakes, that is a sign for the worm that danger threatens and an incentive to flight.

Thus if the intelligence is to be of use to the animal in its movements it must be organized so that it is in a position to show him the distinctions in time and space as well as the causal connections.

But it must do even more. All the parts of the body serve only one individual, only one end, the maintenance of the individual. The division of labor must never go so far that the individual parts become independent, because that would lead to the dismemberment of the individual. They will work so much the more efficiently, the tighter the parts are held together, and the more uniform the word of command. From this follows the necessary unity of the consciousness. If every part of the body had its own intellectual organs, or did each of the senses which conveys to us a knowledge of the outer world produce its own consciousness, then would all knowledge of the world in such a case and the cooperation of the various members of the body be much impeded, the advantages of the division of labor would be abolished, or changed into disadvantages, the support which the senses or the organs of movement mutually give to each other would cease and there would come instead mutual hindrance.

Finally, however, the intelligence must possess in addition the power to gather experiences and to compare. To return once more to our singing bird, he has two ways open to him to find out what food is the best for him and where it is easiest to be found; what enemies are dangerous for him and how to escape them. One, his own experience, the other the observation of other and older birds, who have already made experience. No master is, as is well known, born. Every individual can so much the easier maintain himself in the struggle for life, the greater his experience and the better arranged they are; to that, however, belongs the gift of memory and the capacity to compare former impression with later, and to extract from the common and universal element, to separate the essential from the unessential, that is: to think. Does observation communicate to us the differences, the particular factor through the senses, so does thinking tell us the common factor, the universal element in the things.

“The universal,” says Dietzgen, “is the content of all concepts, of all knowledge, of all science, of all acts of thought. Therewith the analysis of the organ of thought exhibits the latter, as the power to investigate the universal in the particular.”

All these dualities of the intellectual powers, we find developed in the animal world, even if not in so high a degree as in men, and they are often for us difficult to recognize, since it is not always easy to distinguish conscious actions springing from intelligence, from the involuntary and unconscious actions, simple reflex actions and instinctive movements which even in men play a great role.

If we find all these qualities of the intellectual faculties to be a necessary concomitant of the power of self movement already in the animal world, so do we, on the other hand, find in the same qualities also the same limitations which even the most embracing and most penetrating understanding of the highly developed civilized man cannot surmount.

Forces and capacities which were acquired as weapons in the battle for existence can naturally be made available for other purposes as well, besides those of rendering existence secure, when the organism has brought its power of self movement and its intelligence, as well as its instincts of which we will soon speak, to a high enough degree of development. The individual can employ the muscles, which were developed in it for the purpose of snatching its booty, or warding off the foe, as well for dancing and playing. But their particular character is obtained by these powers and capacities all the same, only from the struggle for life which developed them. Play and dance develop no particular muscles.

That holds good also of the intellectual powers and faculties. Each was developed as a necessary supplement to the power of self-movement in the struggle for life, in order to render possible to the organism the most suitable movement in the surrounding world for its own preservation, yet it could all the same be made to serve other purposes. To these belong also pure knowing without any practical thoughts in the background, without regard for the practical consequences which it can bring about. But our intellectual powers have not been developed by the struggle for existence, to become an organ of pure knowledge, but only to be an organ which regulates our movements in conformity with their purpose. The more completely it functions in respect of the latter, the more incomplete is it in the first. From the very beginning most intimately connected with the power of self movement, it develops itself completely only in mutual dependence on the power of self movement and can only be brought to perfection in this connection. Also the power of the human faculties of cognition and human knowledge is most intimately bound up with human practice, as we shall see.

It is the practice, however, which guarantees to us the certainty of our knowledge.

So soon as my knowledge enables me to bring about distinct effects, the production of which lies in my power, the relation of cause and effect ceases for me to be simply chance or simple appearance, or simple forms of knowledge, as the pure contemplation and thought might well describe them. The knowledge of this relation becomes, through the practice, a knowledge of something real and is raised to certain knowledge.

The boundaries of practice witness certainly to the boundaries of our certain knowledge.

That theory and practice are dependent on one another and only through the mutual permeation of the one by the other can at any time the highest result attainable be arrived at, is only an outcome of the fact that movement and intellectual powers, from their earliest beginnings, were bound to go together. In the course of the development of human society the division of labor has brought it about that the natural unity of these two factors would be destroyed, and created classes to whom principally the movement, and others to whom principally the knowing, fell. We have already pointed out how this was reflected in philosophy, through the creation of two worlds, a higher or intellectual and a lower or bodily.

But wholly were the two functions naturally in no individual to be divided, and the proletariat movement of today is directing its energies with good effect to abolishing this distinction and with it also the dualist philosophy, the philosophy of pure knowledge. Even the deepest, most abstract knowledge, which apparently is farthest removed from the practical, influence this, and are influenced by it, anti to bring in us this influence to consciousness becomes the duty of a critique of human knowledge. As before, knowledge remains in the last resort always a weapon in the struggle for existence, a means to give to our movements, be they movements in nature or society, the most suitable forms and directions.

“Philosophers have only interpreted the world differently,” said Marx. “The great thing, however, is to change it.”