The positive outcome of philosophyDietzgen, Joseph
Philosophy
The positive outcome of philosophy
Dietzgen, Joseph
Knowledge, Theory of; Logic; Philosophy
The material brain and the mental brain are two brains that together
make one. Thus two, three, four, or innumerable things are yet one
thing. The human understanding was endowed by nature with the faculty of
embracing the infinite variety of the universe as a unit, as a single
conception. The unity of nature is as true and real as its multiplicity.
To say that many are one and one many is not nonsense, but simply a
truism which becomes clear when understanding the positive outcome of
philosophy.
A reader unfamiliar with this our product of philosophy still follows
the habit of regarding the physical body as something different from the
mind. A distinction between these two is quite justified, but this
manner of classification must not be overdone. The reader should
remember that he also is in the habit of regarding such heterogeneous
things as axes, scissors, and knives as children of the same family by
referring to them collectively as cutting tools. The outcome of
philosophy now demands that we apply the same method to the object of
our special study, the human brain. We must henceforth eschew all
effervescent flights of imagination and regard the powers of the human
mind as children of the same family as all other physical powers, whose
immortal mother is the universe.
The universe is infinite not alone in the matter of time and space, but
also in that of the variety of its products. The human brains which it
produces are likewise internally and externally of an infinite
differentiation, although this does not prevent them from forming a
common group uniform in its way.
To group the phenomena of nature, the children of the universe, in such
a way by classes, families, and species that they may be easily grasped,
that is the task of the science of understanding, the work and
constitution of the perceiving human brain. To understand simply means
to obtain a general and at the same time a detailed view of the
processes and products of the universe by grouping them in a fashion
similar to that used for the vegetable kingdom by botany and for the
animal kingdom by zoology. It goes without argument that we, the limited
children of the unlimited universe, are able to solve this problem only
in a limited way.
However, this natural physical limitation of the human understanding
must not be confounded with the abject misery which slavish and
sentimental metaphysics attribute to it. The infinite universe is by no
means niggardly in its gifts to the human understanding. It opens its
whole depths to our intellectual understanding and perception. Our
intellect is a part of the inexhaustible universe and therefore partakes
of its inexhaustible nature. That part of nature which is known by the
name of intellect is limited only to the extent that the part is smaller
than the whole.
V
THE UNDERSTANDING AS A PART OF THE HUMAN SOUL
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