I. The Theory of Knowledge of Empirio-Criticism and of Dialectic Materialism I

The fundamental tenets of the theory of knowledge of Mach and Avenarius are expounded with frankness, simplicity and clearness only in their early philosophic works. To these works we shall now turn. As to the corrections and emendations which were afterwards effected by these writers, we shall take them up later on.

“The problem of science,” Mach wrote in 1872, “can be split into three parts:

“1. The determination of the connection of presentations. This is psychology.

“2. The discovery of the laws of the connection of sensations (perceptions). This is physics.

“3. The clear establishment of the laws of the connection of sensations and presentations. This is psycho-physics.”

This is clear enough.

The object of physics is the relation between sensations, and not between things or bodies, the images of which are our sensations. And in 1883, in his Die Mechanik in ihrer Entwickelung, Mach repeats the very same notion: “Sensations are not ‘symbols of things.’ The ‘thing’ is rather the mental symbol of the complex of sensations which is in a state of relative equilibrium. Not the things (bodies) but colours, sounds, pressures, spaces, times (what we usually call sensations), are the actual elements of the world.”

About this word “elements,” the fruit of twelve years of “reflection,” we shall speak further. At present let us note that Mach is explicit in his statement that things or bodies are complexes of sensations, and that his position is the opposite of that which holds that sensations are “symbols” of things (it would be more correct to say images or reflections of things). The latter theory is philosophic materialism. For instance, Friedrich Engels—the well-known collaborator of Marx and the co-founder of Marxism—constantly and exclusively speaks in his works of things and their mental images or reflections (Gedanken, Abbilder). It is obvious that these mental images arise only from sensations. It would seem that the position of “philosophic Marxism” ought to be known to everyone who speaks of it, especially to one who in the name of this philosophy writes about it. But because of the great confusion which our Machians have brought with them, it is very urgent to repeat things which are generally known. We turn to the first paragraph of Anti-Dühring and we read: “the things and their mental reflection . . .”; or to the first paragraph of the philosophic part which reads thus: “But how are these subjective principles derived? [The question here is about the fundamental principles of all knowledge]. From thought itself? No. These forms can never be created by thought nor derived from it but only from the external world. . . . Principles are not the starting points of investigation [as it is with Dühring who wishes to be a materialist, but who cannot consistently carry out materialism] but the conclusion of it; they are not to be applied to nature and history but are derived from them. Nature and Humanity are not steered by principles, but principles are, on the other hand, only correct insofar as they correspond to nature and history. That is just the materialistic conception of matter, and the opposite, that of Dühring is the idealistic conception. It turns things upside down and constructs a real world out of the world of thought” (p. 55). Engels, to repeat, applies this “sole materialistic view” everywhere and without exception, relentlessly attacking Dühring for the least deviation from materialism to idealism. Those who will pay the slightest attention in reading Ludwig Feuerbach and Anti-Dühring will find scores of examples in which Engels speaks of things and their reflection in the human brain, in our consciousness, reason, etc. Engels does not say that sensations or ideas are “symbols” of things, for a consistent materialist ought to use the term image, picture, or reflection instead of “symbol,” as we shall prove when we come to consider the question. The argument here, however, is not at all about this or that formulation of materialism, but about the opposition of materialism to idealism, about the difference of two trends of thought in philosophy, that is, whether we are to proceed from things to sensations and thought, or from sensations and thought to things? Engels sides with the first,—materialism; Mach, with the second,—idealism. No tricks, no sophistry (with which we shall often meet in his later works), will obscure the clear and undisputed fact that Ernst Mach’s doctrine of things as complexes of sensations, is subjective idealism and a tedious repetition of Berkeleianism. If with Mach, bodies are to be reduced to “complexes of sensations,” or with Berkeley, to “combinations of sensations,” then from this it inevitably follows that the “world is my idea.” Starting with such a supposition it is impossible to arrive at the existence of other selves except myself—and this is the purest solipsism. Much as Mach, Avenarius, Petzoldt and the others renounced solipsism, they were unable to get rid of it without falling prey to logical contradiction. To make this fundamental element of the philosophy of Machism still clearer, we shall adduce a few more citations from Mach’s works. Here is a sample from the Analysis of Sensations:

“We see an object having a point S. If we touch S, that is, bring it into connection with our body, we receive a prick. We can see S, without feeling the prick. But as soon as we feel the prick we find S on the skin. The visible point, therefore, is a permanent nucleus, to which the prick is annexed, according to circumstances, as something accidental. From the frequency of analogous occurrences we ultimately accustom ourselves to regard all properties of bodies as ‘effects’ proceeding from permanent nuclei and conveyed to the ego through the medium of the body; which effects we call sensations. . . .”

In other words: people “accustom” themselves to materialism, to consider sensations as the result of the effect of bodies, things, or nature on our sense-organs. This harmful—for the philosophic idealists—“habit,” acquired by mankind and natural science, is not at all to the liking of Mach, and he tries to break it. “By this operation, however, these nuclei are deprived of their entire sensory content and converted into a bare abstract symbol.” An old song, most honorable Professor! This is a literal repetition of Berkeley who said that matter is a bare abstract symbol. It is obviously Ernst Mach who is laid bare, for since he does not recognise the “sensory content” to be an objective reality, existing independently of us, then the sensory content remains a “bare abstract” self, an italicised and capitalised Self similar to “the insane pianoforte, which imagined that it was the sole existing thing in this world.” If the “sensory content” of our sensations is not the outer world, then nothing exists save the bare self that indulges in empty philosophic trifling. A stupid and fruitless occupation! “The assertion, then, is correct that the world consists only of our sensations. In which case we have knowledge only of sensations, and the assumption of the nuclei referred to, or of a reciprocal action between them, from which sensations proceed, turns out to be quite idle and superfluous. Such a view can only fit in with a half-hearted realism or a half-hearted philosophical criticism.” (Ibid.)

We cited the sixth paragraph of the “anti-metaphysical utterance” of Mach in full. It is an absolute plagiarism from Berkeley. There is not a trace here of genuine thought, unless we are to regard the expression, “we perceive our perception” as original. From this it may be inferred that the “world consists of my sensations.” The word “our,” used by Mach, instead of “my” is illegitimately employed by him. By this word alone Mach betrays that “half-heartedness” of which he accuses others. For if the “assertion” of the existence of the outer world is an “idle” speculation, if the statement about the independent existence of the needle and of the interaction between my body and its point is “idle and superfluous,” then the “assertion” of the existence of other selves is still more idle and superfluous. That means that only I exist, and our fellow men as well as the outer world come under the category of idle “nuclei.” Holding such a doctrine one ought not speak about “our” sensations; but as Mach does speak about them, it only betrays his own half-hearted method. It proves that his philosophy is a jumble of idle and shallow words in which he himself does not believe.

The following is a good example of Mach’s confusion. In § 6 of Chapter II of the Analysis of Sensations we read: “If I can imagine that, while I am having sensations, I myself or someone else could observe my brain with all the necessary physical and chemical appliances, it would then be possible to ascertain with what processes of the organism sensations of a particular kind are connected” (p. 242).

Well, then, does it mean that our sensations are connected with a particular kind of processes which take place in the organism in general, and in our brain in particular? Mach very definitely admits this to be the case (it would be quite a task not to admit it from the standpoint of natural science!). But is this not the very same “assertion” about the very same “nuclei and their interaction” which our philosopher declared to be idle and superfluous? We are told that bodies are complexes of sensations; to go further than that, to regard sensations as a product of the effect of bodies upon our sense-organs is, in Mach’s opinion, metaphysics, an idle and superfluous assertion, etc.,—an opinion similar to Berkeley’s. But the brain is a body, you will say. Yes, that means that the brain also is no more than a complex of sensations. And that means that with the help of the complexes of sensations I (and I am also nothing else than a complex of sensations) perceive the complex of sensations. What a wonderful philosophy! At first to recognise sensations “as the real world elements” and on this to build an “original” Berkeleianism, and then secretly to import opposite views that sensations are connected in the organism with particular kinds of processes. Are not these “processes” connected with the exchange of matter between the “organism” and the external world? Could this exchange occur, if the sensations of the organism did not present an objectively correct picture of this external world?

Mach does not ask himself such embarrassing questions. He jumbles together fragments of Berkeleianism with views of natural science that instinctively adhere to the materialist theory of knowledge. . . . In the same paragraph Mach writes: “It is sometimes even asked whether inorganic ‘matter’ has sensation. . .” Does this mean that there is no question about organic matter having sensation? Does it mean that sensation is not something primary but that it is one of the properties of matter? Oh! yes,—Mach leaves out all the absurdities of Berkeleianism! “The question is natural enough, if we start from the generally current physical conception which represents matter as the immediately and undoubtedly experienced reality out of which everything, inorganic and organic, is constructed.” Let us keep in mind Mach’s valuable admission that the habitual and widely spread physical notions regard matter as an immediate reality, of which reality only one variety (organic matter) possesses the well defined property of sensation. “For sensation must either arise suddenly somewhere or other in this structure, or else have been present in the foundation-stones from the beginning. From our point of view the question is merely a perversion. Matter is for us not what is primarily given. What is primarily given is, rather, the elements which, when standing to one another in a certain known relation are called sensations.”

What is primarily given, then, is sensation, though in organic matter it is “connected” only with a particular kind of process! By making such an absurd statement, it seems as if Mach condemns materialism (“the generally current physical conception”) because the question as to why and how sensation “arises” has not been decided! This is a sample of the “refutation” of materialism by the fideists and their sycophants. Can any philosophy “solve” questions if there has not been collected a sufficient amount of data for its solution? Does not Mach himself say in the very same paragraph, “As long as this problem [i.e., what is the lower limit of sensation in the organic world?] has not been solved in even a single special case, no decision of the question is possible”?

The difference between materialism and Machism in this particular question is thus reduced to the following. Materialism in full agreement with natural science, takes matter as the prius, regarding consciousness, reason and sensation as derivative, because in a well expressed form it is connected only with the higher forms of matter (organic matter). It becomes possible, therefore, to assume the existence of a property similar to sensation “in the foundation-stones of the structure of matter itself.” Such, for example, is the supposition of the well-known German naturalist Ernst Haeckel, the English biologist Lloyd Morgan and others, not to speak of Diderot’s conjecture, mentioned above. Machism clings to the opposite, idealistic viewpoint, which at once leads to an incongruity since, in the first place, sensation is taken as the primary entity in spite of the fact that it is connected with particular kinds of processes (in matter organised in a particular way); and, in the second place, the hypothesis that bodies are complexes of sensations is here destroyed by the assumption of the existence of other living beings and, in general, of other “complexes” besides the given great Self.

The word “element,” which many a naive person accepts (as we shall later see) as a new discovery, in reality only obscures the question by a meaningless and misleading term which has not the least bearing upon the solution of the problem. This term is misleading because there still remains so much to investigate, so much to find out about how matter, devoid of sensation, is related to matter which, though composed of the same atoms (or electrons), is yet endowed with a definite faculty of sensation. Materialism, by putting clearly the problem, gives impetus to continual experimentation thus making possible its solution. Machism, one variety of muddled idealism, by means of the trifling word “element,” entangles this problem and sidetracks it.

In the last philosophic work of Mach there is one place that clearly betrays this idealistic trick. In his Erkenntnis und Irrtum we read: “While there is no difficulty in constructing any physical element out of sensation, which is a psychical element, it is impossible to imagine how we could compose a psychical experience out of elements that are current in modern physics, out of mass and motion, rigid elements that are only convenient for this special science.”

Engels speaks very definitely about the rigidity of the views of many modern naturalists and about their metaphysical (in the Marxian sense, anti-dialectical) conceptions. We shall see how Mach failed in this particular point either because he was not able to grasp it, or because he was ignorant of the relationship of relativism to dialectics. But for the present we shall not concern ourselves with it. It is important for us to note here the definiteness with which Mach’s idealism comes to the fore in spite of the confused, supposedly new terminology. Now we have the assurance that there will be no difficulty in building up physical elements out of sensations, that is from psychical elements! Such constructions are, indeed, not difficult, for they are purely verbal constructions, empty scholasticisms which leave a loophole for fideism. No wonder, then, that after this discovery Mach dedicates his works to the immanentist school, no wonder that the followers of that school, the adherents of the most reactionary philosophic idealism, embrace Mach’s theory. The “recent positivism” of Ernst Mach arrived only two hundred years too late. Berkeley gave numerous proofs that out of sensations, out of “psychical elements,” one can “build” nothing but solipsism! We have already learned something about the materialism, with which Mach contrasts his own views without naming the enemy frankly and explicitly, from the examples of Diderot. The doctrine consists not in the derivation of sensation from the movement of matter or in the identification of sensation with the movement of matter, but in the recognition that sensation is one of the properties of matter in motion. On this particular question Engels held Diderot’s views. Engels opposed the “vulgar” materialists, Vogt, Büchner and Moleschott because they assumed that thought is secreted by the brain as bile is secreted by the liver, holding that in this matter, they were confused. But Mach who contrasts his views with those of the materialists, ignores, of course, all the great materialists—Diderot, Feuerbach, Marx and Engels—just as all other official professors of the official philosophy do.

To characterise the prime and fundamental conception of Avenarius let us take his first independent philosophic work. Bogdanov in his Empirio-Monism (Book 1, 2nd ed., 1905, p. 12, note) says that “in the development of Mach’s views, the starting point was philosophical idealism, while the realistic tinge is characteristic of Avenarius from the very start.” Bogdanov said this for he took Mach at his word; but in vain, for his assertion is diametrically opposed to the truth. On the contrary, the idealistic view of Avenarius is so prominent in his work of 1876, that he was himself compelled to admit it in 1891. In the Introduction to Der Menschliche Weltbegriff Avenarius says: “He who read my first systematic work, Philosophie, etc., must surely have presumed that I would attempt to treat the questions of the Kritik der reinen Erfahrung from the idealist standpoint,” but “the sterility of idealism” compelled me to “doubt the correctness of my previous attitude” (Ibid., p. x). This starting point of Avenarius is universally acknowledged in philosophic literature. Of the French writers I shall refer to Couwelaert who says that in the Prolegomena the philosophical standpoint of Avenarius is that of “monistic idealism.” Of the German writers I shall name Rudolph Willy, Avenarius’ disciple, who says that “Avenarius—in his youth, especially in his work of 1876—was totally under the influence of the so-called epistemological idealism.”

It would be ridiculous to deny idealism in Avenarius’ Prolegomena, when it openly states that “only sensation can be thought of as existing” (pp. 10 and 65 of the second German edition). That is how Avenarius himself presents the content of § 116 of his work. “We admitted,” he says, “that the existing (das Seiende) is a substance endowed with sensation; the substance falls off . . . [“it is more economical,” as you see, “there is less effort” in thinking that there is no “substance” and that there exists no external world!] there remains sensation; we must then regard what exists as sensation through and through.”

Sensation, then, exists without “substance,” thought without brain! Are there really such philosophers who are capable of defending this brainless philosophy? Yes, there are! And Professor Richard Avenarius is one of them. We must pause for a while on the argument advanced in defence of this philosophy, difficult as it is for a normal person to take it seriously. Here in §§ 89 and 90 of the same work is Avenarius’ argument: “. . . The position that motion causes sensation is based on illusory experience alone. This experience, the separate act of which is perception, consists in the supposed fact that sensation arises in a certain kind of substance (brain) as a result of the transferred motion (excitation) and with the help of other material conditions (e. g., blood). However, regardless of the fact that this generation was never in itself observed, an empirical proof is at least necessary to show that sensation which is assumed to be caused in a certain substance by the transferred motion, did not already exist in the substance in one way or another; so that the appearance of sensation should not be interpreted in any other way but as a creating act on the part of the transferred action. Thus only by the proof that where we have now a sensation there was none before, not even a minimal one, is it possible to ascertain the fact which, denoting as it does some act of creation, contradicts the rest of experience and radically changes our conception of nature. But it is impossible to obtain such proof through any experience; on the contrary, the notion of a state of substance which, previously deprived of sensation, now begins to perceive, is no more than a hypothesis. And such hypothesis only complicates and obscures our knowledge instead of simplifying and clarifying it.

“Should the experience, which assumes that a transmitted motion is capable of causing sensation in a substance that begins to perceive from this moment on, prove itself illusory upon more intimate acquaintance, then there would still remain sufficient material in the content of the experience to ascertain at least the relative origin of sensation from conditions of motion. It might appear that the amount of sensation, which was latent or minimal, or which did not appear to our consciousness before, now, due to the transmitted motion, frees itself, becomes more intense, or becomes known. However, even this bit of the remaining content of experience is no more than illusory. Were we even in the position of ideal observers who could trace the outgoing motion from the moving substance A which, transmitted through a series of intermediate centres, reaches the substance B which is endowed with sensation, we would at best find that sensation in substance B developed simultaneously with the reception of the incoming motion, but we would not find that this occurred as a consequence of the motion.”

We have purposely quoted this refutation of materialism by Avenarius in full, in order that the reader might see with what sophistry “recent” empirio-critical philosophy operates. We shall compare the argument of the idealist Berkeley with the materialist argument of Bogdanov, as a kind of punishment for the latter’s betrayal of materialism!

In bygone days, nine years ago, when Bogdanov was still partly “a naturo-historical materialist” (that is, an adherent of the materialist theory of knowledge, which the preponderant majority of contemporary naturalists instinctively hold), when he was only partly confused by the befuddled Ostwald, he wrote: “From ancient times to the present, the classification of the facts of consciousness into three categories has still held true for descriptive psychology, namely, the domain of sensations and ideas, the domain of emotion and the domain of excitations . . . To the first category belong the images of phenomena of the outer or inner world, that are taken by themselves in consciousness. . . . Such an image is called a “sensation” if it is directly caused by the intermediation of the sense-organ with its corresponding external phenomenon.” And a little farther: “Sensation . . . arises in consciousness as a result of a certain external impulse transmitted by the external sense-organs” (p. 222). Or “sensation is the foundation of mental life; it is the immediate connection with the outer world” (p. 240). “In the process of sensation the transformation of energy of external excitation into a fact of consciousness takes place at each step” (p. 133). And even in 1905 when, due to the benevolent assistance of Ostwald and Mach, Bogdanov abandoned the materialist viewpoint for the idealist, he still wrote (because of impaired memory!) in his Empirio-Monism: “As is well known, the energy of external excitation is transformed at the nerve endings into a ‘telegraphic’ form of the nervous current, as yet insufficiently elaborated yet devoid of mysticism. This energy reaches the neurones that are located in the so-called ‘lower’ centres—ganglial, spinal, subcortical, etc.” (Book 1, 2nd ed., 1905, p. 118). For every scientist, who is not led astray by professorial philosophy, as well as for every materialist, sensation is nothing but a direct connection of the mind with the external world; it is the transformation of energy of external excitation into a mental state. This transformation has been observed by each of us a million times. The sophistry of idealist philosophy consists in that it takes sensation not as a connection of the mind with the outer world but as a screen, as a wall which separates the mind from the outer world; in that it is taken not as an image corresponding to the perception of the external phenomenon but as the “only entity.” Avenarius accepted the slightly changed form of this old sophistry which had already been worn thin by Bishop Berkeley. As we do not know all the conditions of the constantly observed connection of sensation with matter organised in a certain way, we recognise sensation alone as existing. The argument of Avenarius may be reduced to this.

To be done with the characterisation of the fundamental idealist assumptions of empirio-criticism, we shall take the testimony of the English and French representatives of this philosophic tendency. Mach explicitly says of Karl Pearson, the Englishman, that he agrees with his epistemological views. “Reference may first be made to the expositions of Karl Pearson which agree with my own, save in terminology.” Pearson in turn agrees with Mach. For Pearson “real things” are “sense impressions.” He declares the recognition of things outside the boundaries of sense-impressions to be metaphysics. Knowing neither Feuerbach, nor Marx and Engels, Pearson fights materialism with great determination; his arguments do not differ from those that were illustrated above. But to Pearson the desire to appear as a materialist is foreign—this is a specialty of the Russian Machians. He is incautious to such an extent . . . that without inventing “new” names for his philosophy, he simply considers his views as well as those of Mach as “idealist” (ibid, p. 326). His theoretic genealogy he directly traces to Berkeley and Hume. The philosophy of Pearson, as we shall see time and again, excels that of Mach in integrity and thoughtfulness.

With the French physicists, especially Pierre Duhem and Henri Poincaré, Mach expresses his solidarity. We shall treat the confused and inconsistent philosophic doctrines of these writers in the chapter on new physics. Here we shall note only that for Poincaré things are “groups of sensations” and that a similar view is held by Duhem.

We shall see now how Mach and Avenarius, having admitted the idealist character of their original views, corrected them in their subsequent works.

It is under such a title that Friedrich Adler, an instructor at the University of Zürich, probably the only German author who was anxious to supplement Marx with Machism, wrote about Mach. We must give the naive instructor his due, and admit that with his naiveté he rendered a service to Machism, that did more harm than good. The question was put by him point-blank,—did Mach really “discover the world-elements”? If he did, only backward and ignorant people could henceforth remain materialists. Or does this discovery signify Mach’s return to the old philosophic errors?

We saw that Mach in 1872 and Avenarius in 1876 held a purely idealist view; for them reality meant sensation. In 1883 The Science of Mechanics appeared, and in the preface to the first edition Mach refers to Avenarius’ Prolegomena, greeting the ideas that were “closely related” to his own. Here are the arguments in defence of these elements: “All physical knowledge can only mentally represent and anticipate compounds of those elements we call sensations. It is concerned with the connection of these elements. Such an element, say the heat of a body A, is connected not only with other elements, say with such whose aggregate makes up the flame B, but also with the aggregate of certain elements of our body, say, with the aggregate of the elements of nerve N. The connection of A and B is a problem of physics, that of A and N, a problem of physiology. Neither is alone existent; both exist at once. Only provisionally can we neglect either. Processes, thus, that in appearance are purely mechanical, are, in addition to their evident mechanical features, always physiological.” We see the same in the Analysis of Sensations: “. . . Wherever the reader finds the terms ‘sensation,’ ‘sensation-complex,’ used alongside of or instead of the expressions ‘elements,’ ‘complex of elements,’ it must be borne in mind that it is only in the connection and relation in question, only in their functional dependence that the elements are sensations (namely, the relations A, B, C to K, L, M, that is ‘complexes which we have called the world of matter,’ we find as parts, not only our own body, K, L, M . . . but also the bodies of other persons or animals.) In another functional relation they are at the same time physical objects. A color is a physical object as soon as we consider its dependence, for instance, upon its luminous source, upon other colours, upon temperatures, upon spaces and so forth. When we consider, however, its dependence upon the retina (the elements K, L, M . . .), it is a psychological object, a sensation” (ibid, p. 17).

The discovery of the world elements, then amounts to this:

(1) That the existing is declared to be sensation.

(2) That the sensations are called elements.

(3) That elements are divided into physical and psychical; the latter is that which depends upon the human nerves and upon the human organism in general; the former does not depend upon it.

(4) That the relations of physical and psychical elements are declared not to exist separately from each other, but only together.

(5) That it is possible only for a moment to divert one’s attention from one or the other relation.

(6) That the “new” theory is declared to be free from “one-sidedness.”

To be sure, there is no one-sidedness about it. It is, however, the most disconnected mess of contradictory philosophic conceptions. Once you start with sensation you cannot rid your idealism of the vestiges of a one-sided theory by the use of the term “element” alone. You are only complicating matters, and in a cowardly manner, running away from your own theory. In words you are eliminating the contrast between the physical and psychical, between materialism (which takes matter as its prius) and idealism (which takes mind, consciousness, sensation as the prius); in acts you at once secretly restore this contrast and retreat from your original position. For, if elements are sensations, you may not even for a moment accept the existence of the elements without their dependence on our nervous system and on our consciousness. But once you admit such physical objects independently of our nervous system and our sensations—objects that cause sensations only by acting upon my retina—you are disgracefully abandoning your “one-sided” idealism and are accepting “one-sided” materialism! If colour is a sensation dependent upon the retina (as natural science compels you to admit!), then the light rays falling on the retina produce the sensation of colour. That means that independent of us and our consciousness there exists the vibration of matter, of ether waves of a certain length and certain velocity which, acting upon the retina, produce in us the sensation of one colour or another. That is how natural science regards it. The various sensations of one colour or another are explained by science in terms of various lengths of light waves existing outside of the human retina and independently of man. Such is the view of materialism; that matter, acting on our sense-organs, produces sensation. Sensation depends upon the brain, nerves, retina, etc., upon matter organised in a certain way. The existence of matter does not depend upon sensation. Matter is of primary nature. Sensation, thought, consciousness are the highest products of matter organised in a certain way. This is the doctrine of materialism, in general, and of Marx and Engels, in particular. Mach and Avenarius smuggled in materialism by the term “element” which thus supposedly rids their theory of the one-sidedness of subjective idealism, leaves room for the dependence of the psychical on the retina, the nerves and so forth, as well as for the independence of the physical from the human organism. The stratagem with the term “element” is the most contemptible sophistry, for reading Mach and Avenarius, the materialist would immediately ask the question: “what are the elements?” It is, indeed, very childish to think that the invention of a new word will do away with the chief philosophic alignments. If “elements” are sensations, as all empirio criticists (Mach, Avenarius, Petzoldt and others) maintain, their philosophy then is idealism which in vain tends to cover the nakedness of its solipsism by a garb of “objective terminology.” If “elements” are not sensations, then no thought whatsoever can be attached to the “new” term, and they are parading with a mere bagatelle.

Take Petzoldt for instance, since his is the last word of empirio-criticism, as it is characterised by B. Lessevich, the outstanding Russian empirio-criticist. Having defined elements as sensation, he says in the second volume of the work cited: “One must be on his guard not to take the term ‘sensation’ in the statement that ‘sensations are world elements,’ as indicating only something subjective and therefore something ethereal which thus transforms the ordinary picture of the world into an illusion.”

One usually speaks of matters which are most urgent to him! Petzoldt feels that the world “evaporates” (verflüchtigt sich) or becomes illusory, if the world-elements are regarded as sensations. And the good natured Petzoldt imagines that he helps matters by the clause, “that we must not take sensation as something subjective!” Is this not ridiculous sophistry! Can the situation be changed by “taking” sensation as sensation or by trying to stretch the meaning of the word? Would the fact that sensations are connected in us with a normally functioning nervous system vanish, merely because of such a change of words! Does the outer world exist independently of our perception? If you wish to evade the situation other than by tricks, if you seriously wish to be “on your guard” against subjectivism and solipsism, then you must above all be wary of fundamental idealist assumptions; then you must change your idealist approach and go from the outer world to sensations instead of vice versa. But this is not sufficient; you must also throw overboard the empty ambiguity of the term “element” and simply say that colour is the result of the action of a physical object on the retina which is the same as saying that sensation is a result of the action of matter on our sense-organs.

Let us now take Avenarius. As to the question of the “elements,” his last work appears to be the most valid and important for the apprehension of his philosophy. The author, by the way, here gives a very “illuminating” table (Vol. XVIII, p. 410) the main part of which we reproduce here:

“Elements, complexes of elements:

“I. Things or appertaining to things . . . corporeal things.

“II. Thoughts or appertaining to thoughts (Gedankenhaftes) . . . incorporeal things, recollections and phantasies.”

Compare with this what Mach says after all his comments on the “elements”: “Bodies do not produce sensations, but complexes of elements (complexes of sensations) make up bodies.” Here you have the “discovery of the world-elements,” that transcends the one-sidedness of idealism and materialism! At the beginning we were assured that the “elements” were something new, both physical and psychical at the same time, and then a little correction was secretly made; instead of the rude materialist differentiation of matter (bodies and things) and mind (sensations, recollections, phantasms) we are presented with the doctrine of the “most recent positivism” about elements corporeal and mental. Very little did Adler (Fritz) gain from “the discovery of the world-elements!”

In reply to Plekhanov, Bogdanov wrote in 1906: “. . . I cannot call myself a Machian in philosophy. In the general philosophic conception I borrowed from Mach only one thing—the notion of neutrality of the elements of experience in relation to the physical and psychical, and of dependence of these characteristics upon the connection of experience.” This is as if a religious man were to say—“I cannot consider myself an adherent of religion, for I have borrowed from it only one thing—the belief in God.” This “one thing” which Bogdanov took from Mach is the chief error of Machism, the fundamental incorrectness of the entire philosophy. The deviations of Bogdanov from empirio-criticism, to which Bogdanov himself attributes so much weight, are really of secondary importance and do not pass the boundaries of detailed, private, individual differences between the empirio-criticists who are approved by Mach and who approve Mach (more of this later). Therefore, when Bogdanov showed irritation at being confused with Mach, he betrayed his failure to comprehend what it is which radically distinguishes materialism from what is common to Bogdanov and the rest of the Machians. It is of no importance in what manner Machism was developed, corrected or corrupted by Bogdanov. It is of importance how he deserted the materialist doctrine and hence condemned himself to inevitable confusion and idealist aberrations. In 1899, as we saw, Bogdanov held a correct position when he wrote: “The image of the man before me, which is given to me by sight, is a sensation.” Bogdanov made no effort to offer a criticism of his previous position. He blindly placed faith in Mach and began to repeat after him that the “elements” of experience are “neutral” in their relation to the physical and psychical. “As was established by recent positivist philosophy the elements of psychic experience,” wrote Bogdanov in Book I of his Empirio-Monism (2nd ed., p. 90), “are similar to the elements of experience in general, for they are identical with the elements of physical experience.” Or in 1906 (Bk. III, p. xx): “As far as idealism is concerned, must it be spoken of only upon the basis of the recognition of identity between the elements of physical experience and the elements or elementary sensations of psychical experience, when this is simply an indubitable fact?”

Here is the actual source of Bogdanov’s philosophic inferences, a source which he shares with the rest of the Machians. One may and ought to speak of idealism if he regards sensations as identical with “the elements of physical experience” (that is the physical, external world, matter), for this is nothing else but Berkeleianism. There is not a trace here of the latest or positivist philosophy or of the “indubitable fact.” It is merely the very old idealist sophistry. And were one to ask Bogdanov how he could prove the “indubitable fact” that sensations are identical with the physical, he would hear no other response save the eternal idealist song: “I perceive only my perception; the evidence of self-consciousness” (die Aussage des Selbstbewusstseins), or; “in our experience [which testifies that “we are perceiving subjects”] sensation is given to us with more certainty than is substance,” (ibid., p. 55) and so forth, and so on. As an “indubitable fact” Bogdanov, following Mach, accepted a reactionary philosophic subterfuge, for in truth not one fact was or could be cited which would refute the view which holds that sensation is a reflection of the outer world—a view which was held by Bogdanov in 1899 and which is still held by contemporary science. The physicist Mach, in his idealist wanderings, strayed into a path different from that of “modern natural science.” Concerning this important circumstance which was overlooked by Mach, we shall have a good deal to say afterwards.

One of the circumstances (besides the influence of Ostwald) which induced Bogdanov to leap from the natural materialism of science to the muddled idealism of Mach, was the teaching of Avenarius about dependent and independent series of experience. Bogdanov himself thus relates it in Book I of his Empirio-Monism: “Insofar as the data of experience are dependent upon the state of the given nervous system, they form the psychical realm of the given person; insofar, however, as the data of experience are taken independently of such a relation, we have before us the physical realm. Avenarius therefore characterises these two realms of experience as being constituted by dependent series and independent series of experience” (p. 18).

The trouble is that the doctrine of “independent series” is a surreptitious importation of materialism, which from the standpoint of a philosophy that maintains that bodies are complexes of sensations, that sensations are “identical” with physical “elements” is illegitimate, arbitrary, and eclectic. For having recognised that the source of light and light waves exist independently of men and their consciousness, that colour depends upon the action of these waves on the retina, as a matter of course they took the position of materialism and thus completely destroyed the “indubitable facts” of idealism with all “the complexes of sensations,” elements and similar nonsense, discovered by recent positivism.

The trouble is that Bogdanov (together with the rest of the Russian Machians) took no pains to make a thorough study of the idealist views originally held by Mach and Avenarius, and so get to the roots of their fundamental ideas. He, therefore, failed to see that their subsequent attempts to surreptitiously smuggle in materialism were illegitimate and eclectic. Yet just as much as the idealist views originally held by Mach and Avenarius are generally acknowledged in philosophic literature, so is it universally accepted that their subsequent empirio-criticism tended to incline towards materialism. Couwelaert, the French writer quoted above, sees “monistic idealism” in Avenarius’ Prolegomena; in Der Kritik der reinen Erfahrung (1888-90), he sees “absolute realism,” and in Der menschliche Weltbegriff (1892), an attempt “to explain” the change of position. We call attention to the fact that the term “realism” is here employed in a sense contrary to idealism. Following Engels, I will use the term “materialism” in this sense, accounting it as the only correct one, especially since the term “realism” has been usurped by positivists and other muddleheads who vacillate between materialism and idealism. For the present it will suffice to note that Couwelaert had the established fact in view that in the Prolegomena (1876) “sensation” for Avenarius, is the only entity, while “substance”—according to the principle of “the economy of thought” !—is eliminated; and in Der Kritik der reinen Erfahrung the physical is taken as the domain of independent series, while the psychical and, consequently, sensations, as the domain of dependent series.

Avenarius’ disciple, Rudolph Willy, likewise admits that Avenarius who was a “full-fledged” idealist in 1876, subsequently “reconciled” (Ausgleich) “naive realism” (the above cited work) with this teaching. Naive realism is the instinctive materialist viewpoint held by humanity which accepts the existence of the outer world independently of the mind.

Oscar Ewald, the author of the book on Avenarius says that this philosophy combines the contradictory idealist and realist (he should have said “materialist”) elements (not in Mach’s sense but in the sense of popular usage). For example: “The absolute (consideration) would perpetuate naive realism, the relative would declare exclusive idealism as constant.” Avenarius calls the “absolute consideration” that which corresponds to Mach’s connection of “elements” outside of the body.

But of considerable interest to us in this respect is the opinion of Wundt, who himself holds (as the majority of the above-mentioned writers) the confused idealist viewpoint. Wundt, more than others, devoted himself to an analysis of empirio-criticism. P. Yushkevich speaks thus about Wundt’s conclusion: “It is interesting that Wundt considers empirio-criticism as the most scientific form of the latest type of materialism,” that is, of the type of materialism which sees in the spiritual the function of corporeal processes (and which we wish to add) stands—according to Wundt—between Spinozism and absolute materialism. (“Ueber naiven und kritischen Realismus” in Philosophische Studien, Bk. XIII, 1898, p- 334.)

It is true that Wundt’s opinion is very interesting. But it is still more “interesting” to learn what Mr. Yushkevich’s attitude is toward Wundt’s philosophy. This is a typical instance of the relation our Machians bear to such works. The hero of Gogol, Petrushka, found it interesting that words could be constructed of letters. Yushkevich read Wundt and found it “interesting” that Avenarius was accused by Wundt of materialism. If Wundt is wrong, why not refute him? If he is right why not admit that the position of materialism is contrary to that of empirio-criticism? Yushkevich finds what the idealist Wundt says “interesting,” but this Machian regards it as a vain effort to go to the root of the matter (probably in accordance with the principle of “the economy of thought” . . .).

The point is, that having informed the reader that Wundt had accused Avenarius of materialism, Yushkevich failed to inform him that Wundt regards some aspects of empirio-criticism as materialism and others as idealism, and holds that the connection between the two is an artificial product. By this Yushkevich misrepresented the issue. Either this gentleman does not at all understand what he reads, or he was prompted by a base desire to be praised by Wundt, as if to say “you see, the official professors regard us not as muddleheads but as materialists.”

The above-mentioned article by Wundt is a voluminous book (more than 300 pages) which is primarily devoted to a detailed analysis of the immanentist school, as well as to an analysis of empirio-criticism. Why did Wundt connect these two schools? Because he considers them to be in close relationship; and this opinion, shared by Mach, Avenarius, Petzoldt and the followers of the immanentist school is, as we shall see later, perfectly correct. Wundt explains in the first part of this article that by “immanentists” are meant idealists, subjectivists and adherents of fideism. This, too, as we shall see later, is a perfectly correct opinion which, however, is expressed with a superfluous ballast of professorial erudition, with superfluous subtleties and clauses that can be explained by the fact that Wundt himself is both an idealist and deist. He reproaches the adherents of the immanentist school not because they hold fast to idealist and fideist views, but because they arrive at these great principles in a circuitous way. The second and third part of the article is devoted by Wundt to empirio-criticism. There he quite definitely shows that the very important theoretical principle of empirio-criticism—the interpretation of “experience” and the “essential co-ordination,” of which we shall speak later—is, in his opinion, similar to that of the immanentists. (Die empiriokritische in Uebereinstimmung mit der immanenten Philosophie annimmt, p. 382). The other theoretical principles of Avenarius are borrowed from materialism. Regarded as a whole empirio-criticism is a “variegated mixture” (bunte Mischung, ibid., p. 57), in which the “component elements are not well fused together” (p. 56).

In the jumble of materialist bits of the Avenarius-Mach mixture, Wundt singles out chiefly the teaching of the former about “independent vital series.” He says that if you start from the “system C” (that is how Avenarius, being a great hand at an erudite play of terms, names the human brain or the nervous system in general) and if the mental is for you a function of the brain, then this “system C” is a “metaphysical substance and your doctrine is materialism” (ibid., p. 64). Many idealists and agnostics (Kantians and Humeans included) call the materialists metaphysicians, because to them the materialists’ recognition of the existence of the outer world independently of human mind is equivalent to transcending the boundaries of possible experience. Concerning the incorrectness of this terminology we shall speak later when we come to the question. Here it is important to note that the recognition of the “independent” series by Avenarius (and also by Mach, who expressed the same idea in different words), is according to the general admission of philosophers of various tendencies, an appropriation from materialism. If you start with the presupposition that everything existing is sensation or that bodies are complexes of sensations, you cannot, without destroying your ultimate principles, all “your” philosophy, come to the conclusion that the physical exists independently of us, and that sensation is a function of matter organised in a certain way. Mach and Avenarius in their philosophy combine idealist assumptions with individual materialist inferences just because this theory is an instance of that “eclectic hodge-podge” of which Engels speaks with contempt. They did not deserve better treatment.

In the last philosophic work of Mach, Erkenntnis und Irrtum, this eclecticism is especially prominent. We have already seen that Mach there declared: “There is no difficulty in constructing any physical element out of sensation, i.e., out of psychical elements”; and in the same book we read: “The dependencies outside of U [Umgrenzung, that is, “the spatial boundary of our body,” p. 8] is the subject matter of physics in the broad sense of the term” (p. 323). “To obtain those dependencies in a pure state it is necessary as much as possible to eliminate the influence of the observer, that is, those elements that lie within U.” He set out to construct physical elements from psychical elements, and yet ends up with the result that physical elements lie beyond the boundary of psychical elements, “which are within our body!” What a remarkable philosophy this is!

Another example: “An ideal (vollkommenes) gas, an ideal liquid, an ideal elastic body—do not exist; the physicist knows that his fiction only approximates the facts and deliberately simplifies them; he is aware of the divergence which cannot be eliminated” (p. 418).

What divergence (Abweichung) is meant here? The divergence of what from what? Thoughts (physical theory) from facts? And what are thoughts and ideas? Ideas are “marks of sensations” (p. 9). And what are facts? Facts are “complexes of sensations.” Well, then, that means that the divergence of the marks of sensations from the complexes of sensations cannot be eliminated.

What does all this mean? It means that when Mach forgets his own theory, and, begins with the various physical problems, he plainly speaks as a materialist without idealist twists. All “the complexes of sensations” and the entire stock of Berkeleian wisdom quickly vanish. The theory of the physicists proves to be a reflection of bodies, liquids, gases existing without and independently of us. This reflection is, of course, approximate, but to call this approximation or simplification “wilful” is erroneous. Sensation, in actuality is regarded by Mach just as it is regarded by the whole of natural science (when it is not “purified” by the disciples of Berkeley and Hume) as an image of the outer world. Mach’s own theory is subjective idealism, and when a moment of objectivity is required, he unceremoniously adopts in his arguments the contrary principles of the materialist theory of knowledge. Eduard Hartmann, the consistent idealist and reactionary in philosophy, whose sympathy was enlisted by the Machians in their controversy with the materialists, is not far from the truth when he says that the philosophic position of Mach is a “mixture of naive realism and absolute illusionism.” The doctrine that bodies are complexes of sensations, etc., is absolute illusionism, solipsism; for, according to this doctrine, the world is nothing but my illusion. The arguments of Mach which have been discussed here, together with many others in his fragmentary discourses, express the point of view of so-called “naive realism,”—the theory of knowledge that has been unconsciously and instinctively taken over by the scientists from the materialists.

Avenarius and those professors who trod in his footsteps, attempt to cover this hodge-podge by the theory of “essential co-ordination.” We shall soon proceed with the examination of it, but we must first complete the alleged accusation of Avenarius in materialism. Yushkevich, to whom Wundt’s opinion seemed so interesting, although he was unable to comprehend it, was not sufficiently interested himself or perhaps not sufficiently benevolent as to inform the reader how Avenarius’ most devoted disciples and successors reacted against this accusation. This is extremely necessary in order to clarify matters, especially if we are interested in the question of the relation of materialism, Marxian philosophy, to the philosophy of empirio-criticism. And if Machism will prove to be a mixture of materialism and idealism, then it will be important to learn whither this current flowed after the official idealists began to discountenance it because of its concessions to materialism.

Wundt, by the way, was answered by two of the most orthodox disciples of Avenarius, Petzoldt and Carstanjen. Petzoldt, with proud indignation, rejected the accusation of being a materialist, something which is considered a stigma upon a German Professor, and referred (what do you think?) to Avenarius’ Prolegomena, as the place where the concept of substance had supposedly been annihilated! Indeed, a convenient theory when one can refer to it as both a purely idealist work and an arbitrary admission of materialist assumptions! “Avenarius’ Kritik der reinen Erfahrung, to be sure, does not contradict materialism,” wrote Petzoldt, “but neither does it contradict the opposite spiritualist doctrine.” What an excellent defence! This is exactly what Engels meant by “miserable eclectic hodge-podge.” Bogdanov, who refuses to call himself a Machian and who wishes to be considered a Marxist (in philosophy), follows Petzoldt. He asserts “that empirio-criticism is concerned neither with materialism nor with spiritualism, nor with any metaphysics in general,” that “truth . . . does not lie in the ‘golden mean’ between the conflicting tendencies [of materialism and spiritualism], but lies outside of both.” That which appeared to Bogdanov as truth is in fact confusion, a vagrant flitting between materialism and idealism.

Carstanjen, replying to Wundt, said that he absolutely rejects this “foisting of a materialist element upon the doctrine of pure experience.” “Empirio-criticism is scepticism in relation to the content of the concepts.” There is a grain of truth in this over-emphasis upon the neutrality of Machism; the corrections of Mach and Avenarius of their original rendering of idealism can be reduced to admissions of partial concessions to materialism. Instead of the consistent standpoint of Berkeley—‘“the outer world is my sensation”—we sometimes get the Humean standpoint—“I reject even the question as to whether or not there is anything beyond my sensation.” This admission of agnosticism inevitably condemns one to vacillation between materialism and idealism.

The doctrine of essential co-ordination is laid down by Avenarius in Der menschliche Weltbegriff and later in Die Bemerkungen. In the latter, Avenarius emphasises that the exposition differs somewhat from both the Kritik and Der menschliche Weltbegriff, yet the essence is the same. Now the essence of this doctrine is the principle of “continual co-ordination (i. e., the correlative connection) of the self and environment” (§ 146). “To use a philosophic expression,” he says, “one can say ‘self’ and ‘not self?! We always find ‘this’ and ‘the other,’ our self and environment, ‘together’ (immer ein Zusammengefundenes). No full description of the experienced (des Vorgefundenen) can reflect the environment without implying the existence of a self (ohne ein ich), whose environment it is, at least of the self that describes the experienced (§ 146). The self is called the central term of co-ordination; the environment, the counter term (Gegenglied).”

Avenarius claims that by this doctrine he recognises the full validity of so-called naive realism, that is, the ordinary unphilosophical, naive view of the plain man who does not concern himself with the question whether he himself exists or whether the environment and the external world exist. Expressing his agreement with Avenarius, Mach also tries to appear as the defender of “naive realism” (Analysis, etc., p. 51). The Russian Machians, without exception, relied upon Mach and Avenarius to the extent of believing that this was really a defence of “naive realism.” The self is acknowledged; so is the environment. What more is to be expected?

To decide with whom the highest degree of naiveté rests, we shall commence with a somewhat distant subject. Here is a popular dialogue between a philosopher and a reader:

“Reader: The existence of a system of things is prerequisite to the existence of anything else; from it consciousness will be inferred.

“Author: Now you are speaking in the spirit of professional philosophers . . . and not according to human understanding and actual consciousness. . . . Tell me, and think well before you answer me, can you behold an object within yourself or outside of yourself, independently of your consciousness of the thing?

“Reader: Upon sufficient reflection, I agree with you.

“Author: Now you are speaking from your heart. You must not then attempt to escape from yourself, and to apprehend more than you are able to, namely, consciousness and the thing, the thing and consciousness; or to be more exact do not try to intuit either of the two separately, but only the fusion of the two, the absolute subjective-objective and objective-subjective as distinct from either one in isolation.”

Here is the whole essence of empirio-critical essential co-ordination, the latest defence of “naive realism” by recent positivism! The idea of “continual” co-ordination is here stated very explicitly as if it were a defence of the habitual human conception, and not its philosophical perversion on the part of “the professional philosophers.” This dialogue, as it happens to be, was taken from the works of a classical representative of subjective idealism, Johann Gottlieb Fichte. It was published in 1801.

There is nothing in the teachings of Mach and Avenarius besides a paraphrasing of subjective idealism. The assumption that they rose above materialism and idealism, that they eliminated the conflicting views, started from things and proceeded to consciousness, or vice versa—is an empty pretence of a renovated Fichteanism. Fichte also imagined that he “inseparably” connected the “ego” and the “environment,” the mind and the thing; that he “solved” the problem by the assertion that a person cannot escape from himself. In other words, the Berkeleian argument is repeated: I only perceive my perceptions, I have no right to assume “objects in themselves” outside of my perception. The different ways of expression—by Berkeley in 1710, by Fichte in 1801, or by Avenarius in 1892-4—do not in the least change the fundamental philosophic position of subjective idealism. “The world is my sensation”; the “non-ego” is “postulated” (is created, produced) by our “ego”; the thing is inseparably connected with consciousness; the continual co-ordination of our ego and the environment is the empirio-critical principle of co-ordination;—this is the same old trashy stock-in-trade of subjective idealism under a newly painted signboard.

The reference to the “naive realism,” which is being defended by such a philosophy, is sophistry of a very cheap kind. The “naive realism” of any healthy person, who is not an inmate of an insane asylum, or in the school of the idealist philosophers, consists in this, that he believes reality, the environment and the things in it, to exist independently of his perception,—independently of his conception of himself, in particular, and of his fellow men, in general. This same experience (not in the Machian sense, but in the common sense use of the word) which caused in us the invincible conviction that there exist independently of us other selves and not mere complexes of my perceptions of high, short, yellow and hard, this very same experience is responsible for our conviction that things, reality and environment exist independently of us. Our sensation, our consciousness is only a representation of the outer world. But it is obvious that although a representation cannot exist without someone for whom it is a representation, the represented thing exists independently of the one for whom it is a representation. The “naive” belief of mankind is consciously taken by materialism as the basis of its theory of knowledge.

Does the characterisation made above of the “essential co-ordination” result from a materialist prejudice against Machism? Not at all. Specialists in philosophy, who cannot be accused of partiality towards materialism,—nay, who have nothing but hatred for it and who adhere to one system of idealism or another, agree that the essential co-ordination of Avenarius and his followers is an expression of subjective idealism. Wundt, for instance, whose “interesting” opinion was not understood by Yushkevich, explicitly states that the theory of Avenarius according to which it is impossible to describe fully the “given” or the “found” without dragging in a self, or an observer is a “confusion of the content of real experience with the argument about it.” Wundt says that the laws and concepts of natural science are the result of abstractions from its observation. “And such abstractions are possible because of the alleged necessity of taking into account the experiencing individual in every content of experience. This necessity, held by the empirio-critical philosophy in agreement with the adherents of the immanence school, is in reality an empirically groundless assumption arising from a confusion of the content of the real experience with a discussion about it” (loc. cit. p. 332). The adherents of the “immanence school” (Schuppe, Rehmke, Leclair, Schubert-Soldern), who have themselves voiced their hearty sympathy with Avenarius take as their starting point exactly this same idea of “inseparable” connection between subject and object. And Wundt, before analysing Avenarius, gave detailed proof that the immanentist philosophy was only a “modification” of Berkeleianism, that much as the adherents of the immanentist school deny their kinship to Berkeley, verbal differences ought not to conceal from us the “deeper content of their philosophic teaching,” as Berkeleianism or Fichteanism.

The English writer, Norman Smith, in analysing Avenarius’ Philosophie der reinen Erfahrung, states this criticism with even more determination and straightforwardness.

“Most readers of Avenarius’ Menschliche Weltbegriff will probably agree that, however convincing as criticism, it is tantalisingly illusive in its positive teaching. So long as we seek to interpret his theory of experience in the form in which it is avowedly presented, namely, as genuinely realistic, it eludes all clear comprehension: its whole meaning seems to be exhausted in negation of the subjectivism which it overthrows. It is only when we translate Avenarius’ technical terms into more familiar language that we discover where the real source of the mystification lies. Avenarius has diverted attention from the defects of his position by directing his main attack against the very weakness which is fatal to his own theory.

“Throughout the whole discussion the vagueness of the term experience stands him in good stead. Sometimes it means experiencing and at other times the experienced, the latter meaning emphasised when the nature of the self is in question. These two meanings of the term experience practically coincide with his important distinction between the absolute and the relative standpoints [I examined above the meaning of this distinction for Avenarius and these two points of view are not in his philosophy really reconciled. For when he allows as legitimate the demand that experience be ideally completed in thought [the full description of the environment is completed ideally in thought about the observing self] he makes an admission which he cannot successfully combine with his assertion that nothing exists save in relation to the self. The ideal completion of given reality which results from the analysis of material bodies into elements which no human senses can apprehend [concerning the material elements discovered by natural science, the atoms, electrons, etc., and not the fictitious elements invented by Mach and Avenarius] or from following the earth back to a time when no human being existed upon it, is, strictly, not a completion of experience but only of what is experienced. It completes only one of the two aspects which Avenarius has asserted to be inseparable. It leads us not only to what has not been experienced but to what can never by any possibility be experienced by beings like ourselves. But here again the ambiguities of the term experience come to Avenarius’ rescue. He argues that thought is as genuine a form of experience as sense-perception, and so in the end falls back on the time-worn argument of subjective idealism, that thought and reality are inseparable, because reality can only be conceived in thought, and thought involves the presence of the thinker. Not, therefore, any original and profound re-establishment of realism, but only the restatement in its crudest form of the familiar position of subjective idealism is the final outcome of Avenarius’ positive speculation.”

The mystification of Avenarius who repeats fully Fichte’s mistake is here excellently disclosed. The supposed elimination of the opposition between materialism (Smith erroneously uses the term realism) and idealism by means of the term “experience” proved at once to be a myth as soon as we proceeded to the analysis of concrete problems. Such is the problem of the existence of the earth prior to the appearance of man and any perceiving being. Here we will note that not only Smith, an opponent of his theory, but Schuppe, an adherent of the immanence school, who warmly greeted the appearance of Der menschliche Weltbegriff as the confirmation of naive realism, unmasks Avenarius and his fictitious “realism.” Schuppe fully agrees with the mystification of materialism which Avenarius presented under the name of “realism.” “Such ‘realism,’” he wrote to Avenarius, “I have always claimed with as much right as yourself, hochverehrter Herr Kollege, for it was insinuated against me, that I, an adherent of the immanence school, was a subjective idealist. . My conception of thought . . . is in full agreement with your Kritik der reinen Erfahrung, hochverehrter Kollege” (ibid., p. 384). “But the self [das Ich, the abstract, Fichtean self-consciousness, a thought separated from the brain] gives two terms of the system of co-ordination, namely, connection and continuity. Hence, what you desired to eliminate you assume by implication” (p. 388). So Schuppe wrote to Avenarius. It is difficult to say who unmasks Avenarius, the mystifier, more sharply—Smith by his determinate and clear refutation, or Schuppe by his exalted review of Avenarius’ concluding work. Wilhelm Schuppe’s kiss in philosophy is no better than the kiss of Peter Struve or Menshikov in politics.

Ewald, who praises Mach for his firm stand against materialism, speaks in a similar manner about the essential co-ordination: “If we declare the correlation of the central term and the counter term as an epistemological necessity from which there can be no retreat, then in whatever loud and large letters the word ‘empirio-criticism’ may be written on the signboard, it signifies only the espousal of a view that does not differ in the least from absolute idealism. [The term is incorrect; he should have said subjective idealism, for Hegel’s absolute idealism is reconciled with the existence of the earth, nature, and physical universe independent of man, since nature is assumed as the ‘otherness’ of the absolute idea.] On the other hand, if we do not adhere strictly to this co-ordination and give the counter terms their independence, then all the familiar metaphysical possibilities at once arise, especially on the side of transcendental realism” (loc. cit., pp. 56-57).

By metaphysics and transcendental realism, Friedländer, who is disguised under the name of Ewald, means materialism. Defending one of the varieties of idealism, he is in full agreement with the disciples of Mach and Kant that materialism is metaphysics—“from the beginning to the end a very wild metaphysics” (p. 134).

On the question of the “transcendence” and the view that materialism is metaphysics he is the associate of Bazarov and of all our Machians. It is important here to note how the shallow pseudo-erudite pretence to transcend idealism and materialism disappears,—important to note how the question is put without hope of reconciliation. “To give independence to the counter terms” means (to translate the pretentious language of Avenarius into common parlance) to regard nature and the external world as independent of human consciousness and sensation. Such a view is materialism. To build a theory of knowledge on the hypothesis of the inseparable connection of the object and human sensation [i. e., on “complexes of sensation” as being identical with bodies or “world elements” that are both mental and physical, or “co-ordination” and so forth] is to play into the hands of idealism. Such is the simple and inevitable truth which one can easily detect, if he looks for it beneath the tissue of sham philosophy which, due to the quasi-erudite terminology of Avenarius, Ewald, Schuppe and others, only complicates and obscures matters, thus making the public at large shun philosophy.

“The reconciliation” of Avenarius’ theory with “naive realism” led even his disciples to doubt it in the end. Willy, for example, said that the usual assertion that Avenarius embraced naive realism should “be taken cum grano salis.” “As a dogma, naive realism would be nothing but the belief in the thing-in-itself existing outside of us independently of our powers of sense-perception.” In other words, the only theory of knowledge that is really created by an actual and not fictitious agreement with “naive realism” is, according to Willy, materialism. Willy, of course, rejects materialism. But he is forced to admit that Avenarius sometimes restores the unity of “experience,” the unity of “self” and environment, in Der menschliche Weltbegriff by means of “a series of complicated and extremely artificial and arbitrary conceptions” (p. 171). Der menschliche Weltbegriff, being a reaction against the original idealist view of Avenarius, “is characteristic of the reconciliation between naive realism of common sense and the theoretico-cognitive idealism of academic philosophy. That such a reconciliation will result in restoring the organic unity of basic experience [Willy calls it Grunderfahrung, that is, a basic experience—another new word!], I cannot assert” (p. 170).

What a valuable admission! The “experience” of Avenarius has failed to reconcile idealism with materialism. Willy seemingly repudiates the academic philosophy of experience, in order to put in its place a philosophy of “basic” experience which is confusion thrice confounded. .

We have already seen that this question appears to be a crucial one for the philosophy of Mach and Avenarius. Natural science positively asserts that the earth once existed in a state in which no man or any other living creature existed or could have existed. Inasmuch as organic matter is a later appearance, a result of a long evolution, it follows that there could have been no perceiving matter, no “complexes of sensations,” no self which is “inseparably” connected with the environment, as Avenarius would like to have it. Hence, matter is primary, and mind, consciousness, sensation are products of a very high development. Such is the materialist theory of knowledge, which natural science instinctively holds.

The question arises whether the outstanding representatives of empirio-criticism take note of this contradiction between their theory and natural science. They do take note and ask themselves by what arguments they can remove this contradiction. Three attitudes to this question are of particular interest to materialism, that of Avenarius himself and those of his disciples, Petzoldt and Willy.

Avenarius tries to eliminate the contradiction with natural science by means of the theory of the “potential” central term in the co-ordination. As we already know, co-ordination is the “inseparable” connection of the self and the environment. To remove the obvious absurdity of this theory the concept of the “potential” central term is introduced. For instance, what should be done with the hypothesis of man’s development from the embryo? Does the environment (the “counterpart of the term”) exist, if the “central term” is the embryo? The embryonic system C—Avenarius contends—is the “potential central term in relation to the future individual environment” (Bemerkungen, p. 140). The potential central term is never equal to zero, not only when there are no parents but also when there are only the “integral parts of the environment” capable of becoming parents (p. 141).

The co-ordination then is continual. It is essential for the empirio-criticist to assert this in order to save the fundamentals of his philosophy—sensations and their complexes. Even when there is no human being, the central term is not equal to zero; it only becomes the potential central term! It is surprising that there still are people who can take a philosopher seriously who produces such arguments. Even Wundt, who asserted that he is no enemy of metaphysics (that is, fideism), was compelled to admit “the obscure mystification of the term experience” by the application of the word “potential” which destroys whatever co-ordination there is (loc. cit., p. 379).

Indeed, can one take co-ordination seriously when its continuity consists in one of its members being potential?

Is this not mysticism? Does this not lead to fideism? If it is possible to think of the potential central term in relation to a future environment, why not think of it in relation to the past environment, that is, after man’s death? You will contend that Avenarius did not make this inference from his theory. Well, even this is not to the credit of his fallacious and reactionary theory, for it becomes thereby more cowardly. In 1894 Avenarius did not tell the whole tale, or perhaps feared to speak or even think about it consistently. Schubert-Soldern, however, referred to this theory in 1896 for theological purposes; in 1906 he won the approval of Mach, who said that Schubert-Soldern followed a direction which was “in close proximity to Machism” (p. 4). Engels had a perfect right to attack Dühring, the open atheist, for leaving loopholes for fideism in his philosophy. He had several times justly accused the materialist Dühring for his drawing of theological inferences at least in the seventies. And still there now are people who wish to be considered Marxists and yet carry to the masses a philosophy which is very near fideism! “It would seem,” Avenarius wrote in Bemerkungen, “that from the empirio-critical standpoint natural science has no right to make queries about such periods of our present environment which precede the existence of man in time” (p. 144). Avenarius goes on to say that “he who asks questions about it cannot avoid imaginatively projecting himself there in space and time [sich ‘hinzudenken’]; what the natural scientist wants to know (though he is not clearly aware of it) is essentially this: How is the earth and the universe to be determined prior to the appearance of living beings or men? Only by imagining oneself in the role of a spectator, just as one follows the history of another planet or solar system from the basis of our earth, with the help of perfected instruments.”

An object cannot exist independently of our mind. “We shall always imaginatively project ourselves as reason endeavouring to apprehend the object.”

This theory of the necessity of “projecting” the human mind into any object and into nature prior to the emergence of man, is laid down by me in the first paragraph, in the words of the “recent positivist” Avenarius, and in the second, in the words of the subjective idealist Fichte. The sophistry of this theory is so manifest that one feels uneasy in analysing it. Now then, if we “project” ourselves, our presence will be imaginary,—but yet the existence of the earth prior to the emergence of man is real. To be sure, a man could not be an actual observer of the earth which was in a molten state, and to “imagine” his being present there is obscurantism. It is the same as if I were to prove the existence of hell by the argument, that I could “project” myself there as an observer. The “reconciliation” of empirio-criticism with natural science may be reduced to this: Avenarius agrees to “project” something, the possibility of which is excluded by natural science. No man who has the least education, and is healthy, can doubt that the earth existed when there could be no life, no sensation or “central term.” Hence, the whole theory of Mach and Avenarius, from which it follows that the earth is a complex of sensations (“bodies are complexes of sensations”) or “complexes of elements in which the mental and physical are similar,” or “the counter part of the system in which the central term cannot be equal to zero,” is philosophic obscurantism, a reduction of subjective idealism to absurdity.

Petzoldt, having seen the absurdity of the position into which Avenarius fell, felt ashamed. In his Einführung in die Philosophie der reinen Erfahrung (Vol. II) he devotes a whole paragraph (§ 65) to the problem of the reality of periods of the earth antedating the existence of man.

“In the teaching of Avenarius,” says Petzoldt, “the self plays a role different from that in Schuppe [note that Petzoldt had openly and repeatedly declared: ‘Our philosophy is founded on three persons—Avenarius, Mach, and Schuppe’] yet it is a rôle of determining importance for his theory.” Petzoldt was evidently influenced by the fact that Schuppe had unmasked Avenarius by saying that everything was grounded on the self; and Petzoldt wishes to correct himself. “Avenarius once said,” Petzoldt continues, “that we can think of a place where no human foot as yet has trodden, but in order to think about it, it is necessary that that be present which we designate by the term ‘self’ whose thought it becomes.”

Petzoldt replies: “The epistemologically important question consists in, not whether we could think of such a place, but whether we have a right to think of it as existing, or having existed, independently of any individual reflection.”

That is right! People can think and “project” all kinds of hells and devils—Lunacharsky even “projected” (to use a mild expression) a religious conception—but the purpose of the theory of knowledge is to show the unreal, fantastic and reactionary character of such figments of the imagination.

“, . . That the system C [brain] is necessary for reflection, is obvious for both the philosophy of Avenarius and that which is defended by me. . . .”

It is not true; Avenarius’ theory of 1876 is a theory of mind without brain. And in the theory of 1892-4, as we shall see immediately, there is an element of idealist absurdity.

“, .. But is this system C made the condition of existence of, say, the Secondary period of the earth?” And Petzoldt, presenting the argument of Avenarius already cited, on the aim of science and on the possibility of “projecting” the spectator replies: “No, we wish to know whether we have a right to imagine the existence of the earth at that remote epoch in the same way as I would imagine it having existed yesterday or a while ago. Or must the existence of the earth be really conditioned (as Willy claimed) by our right to assume that at a certain time together with the earth there existed at least some system C, be it even on the lowest stage of its development?” (About this idea of Willy we shall speak presently.)

“Avenarius evades Willy’s queer inference by means of the argument that the person who put the question could not divorce himself from his thought (that is, imagine himself absent) otherwise he could not avoid projecting himself imaginatively into the situation. But then Avenarius makes the individual self of the person, who makes queries about such a self, the condition, not of a mere act of thought about the inhabitable earth, but of our right to think about the existence of the earth at that time.

“It would be easy to avoid these misleading paths, if we would not ascribe such importance to the self. The only thing the theory of knowledge demands, taking into consideration the various conceptions of the remote in both space and time, is that it be plausible and uniquely determined; the rest is the affair of special sciences” (Vol. II, p. 325).

Petzoldt converted the principle of causality into that of unique determination and introduced into his theory, as we shall see below, the apriority of such principle. This means that Petzoldt saves himself from Avenarius’ subjective idealism and solipsism (in the professorial jargon, he attributes an exaggerated importance to the self) with the help of the Kantian ideas. The absence of the objective element in the doctrine of Avenarius, the impossibility of reconciling it with the demands of natural science which declares the earth (object) to have existed long before the appearance of living beings (subject), compelled Petzoldt to resort to causality (unique determination). The earth existed, says Petzoldt, for its existence prior to the appearance of man is causally bound up with the present existence of the earth. But in the first place, where does the notion of causality come from? A priori, says Petzoldt. In the second place are not those conceptions of hell, devils and Lunacharsky’s “projections” also bound by causality? In the third place, the theory “of the complexes of sensation” at any rate proves itself to be destroyed by Petzoldt. Petzoldt could not do away with the contradiction which he found in Avenarius, and entangled himself even more, for there could be only one solution—the recognition of the theory that the outer world reflected by us exists independently of our mind. Only such a materialist solution is really compatible with natural science, and only such a conception eliminates the idealist solution of the principle of causality of Petzoldt and Mach, about which we shall speak separately.

The third empirio-criticist, R. Willy, for the first time in 1896 took up the question of this difficulty in Avenarius’ philosophy, in an article entitled “Der Empiriokriticismus als einzig wissenschaftlicher Standpunkt.” What about the existence of the world prior to man? asks Willy; and answers after Avenarius, “We project ourselves into the past.” But then he goes on to say that by experience one must not understand the experience of man only. “We must regard as our primitive fellow-men, the entire realm of living beings—be it the most insignificant worm—since we consider the life of those beings in connection with experience at large” (pp. 73-4). The earth then, prior to the appearance of man, was the “experience” of a worm which functioned as the “central term,” in order to save the “co-ordination” of Avenarius and his philosophy! No wonder that Petzoldt tried to shield himself against an argument that is not only the height of absurdity (an idea of the earth is here attributed to the worm, as if it at all corresponded with the theories of the geologists!), but which is not even of substantial help to our philosopher, for the earth existed not only prior to the descent of man but prior to any living being in general!

Willy again argued the problem in 1905; there was no mention of the worm this time. Nor did Petzoldt’s “principle of unique determination” satisfy Willy, who saw in it only a “logical formalism.” The problem of the existence of a world prior to man, says the author, in his own Petzoldtian way, leads us “again to the things-in-themselves of common sense” (that is, to materialism—what a terrible thing, indeed!). What is meant by millions of years without life? “Is not time a thing-in-itself?” Of course, not! (More about this later on in our discussion of the Machians.) And that means that objects outside of men are only impressions, bits of phantasy spun out of their heads with the help of a few fragments which men find about them. And why not? Must a philosopher fear the stream of life? I say to myself, “Drop this philosophising about systems, utilise the moment, that moment which you experience and which alone brings happiness” (p. 178).

Here it is! Either materialism or solipsism! Despite the high-sounding phrases, this is the position Willy reaches in analysing the question of the existence of nature before the emergence of man.

To summarise: We have beheld three empirio-critical prophets who with the sweat of their brows laboured to reconcile their philosophy with the natural sciences, to mend the broken parts of solipsism. Avenarius repeated Fichte’s argument and changed the real world into an imaginary one. Petzoldt left Fichtean idealism and came closer to Kantian idealism. Willy, having failed with the “worm,” was ready to give up the question and against his own will blabbed out the truth: “Either materialism or solipsism, or the recognition of nothing else but the present moment.”

Now we must show the reader how this problem was understood and treated by the Machians of our own country. Here is Bazarov in his Outlines “of” Marxian Philosophy (p. 11):

“It remains for us now, under the guidance of our true vade mecum [Plekhanov is meant here], to descend into the last and the most horrible sphere of the solipsist hell, into that sphere where, as Plekhanov assures us, each kind of subjective idealism is threatened by the necessity of representing the world in the forms beheld by contemplative ichthyosauruses and archepteryxes. ‘Let us mentally project ourselves,’ writes Plekhanov, ‘into the Secondary epoch when there existed on the earth only the remote ancestors of men. The question as to what was the status of space, time and causality then arises. Whose subjective forms were they at that time? Were they the subjective forms of the ichthyosauruses? And whose mind framed the laws of nature? The mind of the archepteryx? To these queries the Kantian philosophy can give no answer. And it must be rejected as incompatible with modern science.’

Here Bazarov breaks the quotation from Plekhanov before a very important passage, namely: “Idealism says that without subject there is no object. The history of the earth shows that the object existed long before the subject came into existence, long before the appearance of organisms which possessed a perceptible grade of consciousness. . . . The history of evolution manifests the truth of materialism.”

Now we are continuing the quotation from Bazarov: “. . . But does Plekhanov’s thing-in-itself offer any solution? Remember that according to Plekhanov, too, we can have no notion as to the essence of things; we know only their phenomena, the results of their actions on our sense-organs. Besides this action they cannot be represented. What sense-organs existed during the epoch of the ichthyosauruses? Evidently, only the sense-organs of the ichthyosauruses and their like. Only the conceptions of the ichthyosauruses were actual, the real manifestations of things-in-themselves. Hence also, according to Plekhanov, the paleontologist, if he desires to remain on ‘real’ ground, must write the history of the Secondary epoch in the light of the ichthyosaurus’ contemplations. And consequently, in this respect we can make no more headway than could solipsism.”

Such is the complete argument (the reader must pardon the lengthy quotation—we could not help it) of a Machian, an argument which is a first-class model of confusion.

Bazarov imagines that Plekhanov gave himself away. If the thing-in-itself, besides its action on our sense-organ, has no aspect of its own, it means that in the Secondary epoch it did not exist except as the “aspect” of the ichthyosaurus’ sense-organ. And this is the argument of a materialist. If an “aspect” is the result of the action of the thing-in-itself of the sense-organs, does it therefore mean that things do not exist independently of any organs?

Let us imagine, however, that Bazarov was unable to grasp Plekhanov’s words (improbable as such assumption is), that they appeared obscure to him. Even then are we justified in asking whether Bazarov is showing off his tricks against Plekhanov (whom the Machians honor as the only representative of materialism), or whether he is trying to clear up the problem as regards materialism? If Plekhanov seemed obscure or contradictory, why did not Bazarov take other materialists? Is it because he did not know others? But ignorance is no argument.

If Bazarov does not know that the fundamental principle of materialism is the recognition of the external world, and the existence of things outside our mind and independent of it, then we have before us a case of extreme ignorance. We shall have to remind the reader of Berkeley, who in 1710 criticised the materialists for their recognition of “objects in themselves,” existing independently of our mind and yet which are reflected by our mind. Of course everyone has a right to side against materialism with Berkeley or anyone else, but no one has a right to speak about the materialists and distort or ignore the fundamental principles of their teaching. To do so is to commit an inexcusable blunder.

Is Plekhanov right when he says that for idealism there is no object without a subject; that for materialism the object exists independently of the subject, and that an object reflects itself more or less correctly in the perceiver’s mind? If he is wrong then, as a man who claims to respect Marxism, Bazarov should have pointed out Plekhanov’s mistake, and then ignored him in the problem of materialism and the state of nature before the appearance of man; he should have taken Marx, Engels, Feuerbach into account. But if Plekhanov happens to be right about the question, or if Bazarov is unable to find out his error, then the latter’s attempt to confuse things in the reader’s mind concerning the most elementary conception of materialism and its distinction from idealism, is a literary indecency. As for those Marxians who are interested in the question, we shall bring, as testimony, aside from the words uttered by Plekhanov, Feuerbach, who, as is known (perhaps, not to Bazarov?), was a materialist and whose influence on Marx and Engels led them from the idealism of Hegel to their materialist philosophy. In his rejoinder to R. Haym, Feuerbach wrote: “Nature, which is not an object for us or our mind, is for speculative philosophy or at least for idealism, the Kantian thing-in-itself [we shall speak in detail later on about the confusion of our Machians of the Kantian thing-in-itself and the materialist thing-in-itself], an abstraction without reality, but it is also this very same nature that causes idealism’s bankruptcy. Natural science necessarily shows us, at least in its present state, that there was a time when conditions were not fit for the existence of man, when nature, the earth, was not yet the object of the human eye and mind, when, consequently, nature was absolutely devoid of any trace of a human being. Idealism may retort that this state of nature is a state of which you think. Certainly, but from this it does not follow that this very state of nature never existed. Socrates and Plato do not exist for me now, for now I can only think of them; yet it does not follow that Socrates and Plato did not exist in their time outside of my mind.”

This is how Feuerbach discussed materialism and idealism as they bore on the question as to whether nature existed prior to the appearance of man. Avenarius’ sophistry (in “projecting the observer”) was refuted by Feuerbach though the latter did not know “recent positivism.” He was fully aware, however, of the old idealist sophistry. But Bazarov said nothing new; he has merely repeated this idealist sophistry: “If I had been there [at a time before the existence of man] I would have seen the world so-and-so” (Outlines, p. 29). In other words, only if I make the admission (that man could be the observer of an epoch at which he did not exist),—one absurd and contradictory to natural science, can I make the ends of my philosophy meet.

From this, one may infer the extent of Bazarov’s knowledge of the subject and his literary manners. He does not even mention the “difficulty” with which Avenarius, Petzoldt and Willy grappled; he made such a blunder, that the logical result of his treatment of the subject was that there is no difference between materialism and solipsism. This he offered for the reader’s enlightenment! Idealism is here represented as “realism” and materialism is described as denying the existence of things outside of their effects on the sense-organs! Well, either Feuerbach did not know the elementary difference between materialism and idealism, or Bazarov et al. formulated the truisms of philosophy in an entirely novel way.

Or take Valentinov. Look at this philosopher, naturally enthusiastic about Bazarov. (1) “Berkeley is the father of the correlative theory concerning the experience of the subject and object” (p. 148). But this is not Berkeley’s idealism at all! This is a “projected analysis.” (2) “The fundamental principles are formulated by Avenarius in the most realistic way outside of the forms [!] of its usual idealist interpretation” (p. 148). The mystification, evidently, ensnares the infants! (3) “Avenarius’ conceptions of the starting point of knowledge is that each individual finds himself in a certain environment, otherwise the individual and the environment are given as connected and undivided [!] terms of one and the same co-ordination” (p. 148). Excellent! This is not idealism, oh, no! for Valentinov and Bazarov rose above materialism and idealism; this “inseparability” of object and subject is the most “realistic conception.” (4) “Is the reverse assertion correct, that there is no counterpart of the term to which there would be no corresponding central term—the individual? Certainly not [!]. . . . In the Archaic epoch, the woods were green . . . yet there was no man” (p. 148). That means that it is possible to separate the “inseparable”! Is it not “clear enough”? (5) “Yet from the standpoint of the theory of knowledge, the problem of the object in itself is absurd” (p. 148). What a question! When there were no perceiving organisms, the objects were nevertheless “complexes of elements,” identical with sensations! (6) “The immanence school in the persons of Schubert-Soldern and Schuppe presented these thoughts [!] in an unsatisfactory form and fell into the solipsistic impasse” (p. 149). In “these thoughts” there is no solipsism, and empirio-criticism did not, of course, repeat the reactionary theories of the immanentist school, who lie when they declare themselves to be in accord with Avenarius!

This, gentlemen of the Machian school, is not philosophy; it is a jumble of words!

Bazarov emphatically answers this question in the affirmative. He writes: “If to Plekhanov’s thesis ‘that mind is an inner [Bazarov?] state of matter,’ a more satisfactory qualification be added, namely, ‘that each mental process is a function of the cerebral process,’ then neither Mach nor Avenarius would object to it” (Outlines, p. 29).

For a mouse there is no stronger beast than a cat. For the Russian Machians there is no stronger materialist than Plekhanov. Was Plekhanov really the only one, or the first one, to defend the materialist thesis that mind is the inner function of matter? And if Bazarov did not like Plekhanov’s formulation of materialism, why did he take cognizance of Plekhanov and not of Engels or Feuerbach? Simply because the Machians are afraid to admit the truth. They are fighting materialism, yet they pretend that they are only fighting Plekhanov. This is an unprincipled and cowardly stratagem.

Let us proceed, however, with empirio-criticism. Avenarius “would not dispute” the statement that “thought is a function of the brain,” says Bazarov. These words are absolutely untrue. Avenarius not only objects to the materialist thesis, but he even invents a whole “theory” in order to refute this thesis. “Our brain,” says Avenarius in Der menschliche Weltbegriff, “is not the locus or residue, or creator of thought; it is not its instrument, or organ, or carrier or substratum” (p. 76,—sympathetically quoted by Mach in the Analysis of Sensations, p. 28). “Thought is not an indweller, or master, or half, or an aspect of anything; neither is it the product or even the physiological function or state of the brain in general” (ibid). And no less emphatically does Avenarius express himself in his Bemerkungen: “Presentations are not functions (physiological, or mental, or psycho-physical) of the brain” (op. cit., p. 419). Sensations are not “psychical functions of the brain” (§ 116).

According to Avenarius, then, the brain is not the organ of thought, and thought is not the function of the brain. Take Engels and you will immediately meet with views exactly contrary to those—views that are frankly materialistic. “Consciousness and thought,” says Engels in Anti-Dühring, “are products of the brain of man” (p. 56, English edition). This idea is often repeated in that work. In Ludwig Feuerbach we have the following exposition of Feuerbach’s and Engels’ views: “. . . The material, perceptual universe, to which we ourselves belong, is the only reality, and. . . our consciousness and thought, however supernatural they may seem, are only evidences of a material bodily organ, the brain. Matter is not a product of mind, but mind itself is only the highest product of matter. This is, of course, pure materialism” (p. 64). (Cf. p. 53) on the reflection of nature processes in the “thinking brain.”

Avenarius rejects this materialist viewpoint saying that “the thinking brain” is a “fetish of natural science” (Der menschliche Weltbegriff, p. 70). Hence, Avenarius has no illusions concerning his absolute disagreement with natural science. He admits, as Mach and all the adherents of the immanentist school do, that natural science unconsciously upholds the materialist view. He admits and openly declares that he absolutely disagrees with the “prevailing psychology” (Bemerkungen, p. 150). The prevailing psychology is guilty of an inadmissible “introjection”—a new term invented by our philosopher, which means the inherence of thought in the brain, or of sensations in us. These two words (in uns), says Avenarius, express the fundamental proposition which empirio-criticism disputes. “This locating of the visible, etc., in man is what we call introjection” (p. 153, § 45).

This introjection rejects “on principle” the “natural conception of reality,” substituting the expression “in me” instead of the expression “before me” (vor mir, p. 154), making “of one component part of the (real) environment an integral part of the (ideal) mind” (ibid). “Out of the amechanical [a new word in place of ‘mental’] which manifests itself freely and clearly in experience, introjection makes something which hides itself mysteriously in the central nervous system” (ibid).

Here we have the same mystification which we encountered in the famous defence of “naive realism” by the empirio-criticists and the adherents of the immanentist school. Avenarius is acting here on the advice of Turgeniev’s rascal, to denounce mainly those vices which one recognises in himself. Avenarius pretends that he is combating idealism: See how ordinary philosophic idealism is inferred from introjection, how, he says, the outer world is converted into sensation, into representation and so forth, while I defend “naive realism,” and recognise everything experienced as equally real, both “self” and environment, without locating the outer world in the brain of man.

The sophistry here is the same as that which we observed in the case of his celebrated co-ordination. Distracting the reader’s attention by his attacks on realism, Avenarius defends this same idealism, albeit with a somewhat changed phraseology: thought is not a function of the brain; the brain is not the organ of thought; sensations are not functions of the nervous system! oh, no, sensations are “elements,” psychical in one connection and physical in another—(though the elements are “identical”). Through the use of an ambiguous and pretentious terminology, ostensibly expressing a new “theory,” Avenarius circled about for a while but ultimately gravitated to his fundamental idealist position.

And if our Russian Machians (Bogdanov and the others) have not noticed the “mystification” and have seen a refutation of idealism in what is really a “new” defence of it, then let us recall at least that in the analysis of empirio-criticism given by those who are experts in philosophy, we meet a sober estimation of Avenarius’ trend of ideas, in which its real character is exposed once its pretentious terminology is eliminated.

Bogdanov wrote as follows in 1903:

“Richard Avenarius gave us a well drawn and most complete philosophic picture of the development of the dualistic conceptions of mind and body. The gist of his ‘doctrine of introjection’ is that we observe directly only physical bodies, and are acquainted only by hypothetical inference with the experiences of others, that is to say, we know the mind of another person only through indirect reasoning. . . . The hypothesis is complicated by the assumption that the experiences of the other person occurring in his body, are lodged (are introjected) in his organism. Such an hypothesis is not only superfluous but gives rise in addition to numerous contradictions. Avenarius gave an account of these contradictions in a systematic fashion, thus revealing a series of successive historical stages in the development of dualism and of philosophical idealism; but here, we need not follow him. ‘Introjection serves as an explanation of the dualism of mind and body.’”

Bogdanov, believing that the doctrine of “introjection” was aimed at idealism, was caught on the hook of the “professorial” philosophy. He accepted on faith the estimation of introjection given by Avenarius himself, and failed to notice the sting it contained for materialism. Introjection denies that thought is a function of the brain, that sensations are functions of the central nervous system of man; it denies therefore the simplest truths of physiology in order to defeat materialism. “Dualism” is here refuted idealistically (in spite of Avenarius’ apparent ire against idealism), for sensation and thought prove to be not secondary phenomena, not derivative from matter, but primary entities. Dualism is refuted by Avenarius much in the same manner as the existence of the object without the subject is refuted. It is the same idealist “refutation” of the possibility of the existence of matter without thought, of the existence of an external world independent of our sensations; the absurd denial of the fact—that the visual image of the tree is a function of the retina, the nerves and the brain—was necessary for Avenarius in order to confirm his theory of the “inseparable” connection of both self and tree, subject and environment in an “all-inclusive” experience.

The doctrine of introjection is a confusion which necessarily gives rise to idealistic absurdities and contradicts the viewpoint of natural science which holds that thought is the function of the brain, that perceptions, that is, the images of the external world, are effects of external objects on our sense-organs. The materialist elimination of “the dualism of mind and body” (materialistic monism) consists in this, that the existence of the mind is shown to be dependent upon that of the body, in that mind is declared to be secondary, a function of the brain, or a reflection of the outer world. The idealist elimination of the “dualism of body and mind” (idealistic monism) consists in an attempt to show that mind is not a function of the body, that mind is primary, that the “environment” and “self” exist in an inseparable connection in the same “complex of elements.” Apart from these two diametrically opposed methods of elimination of “the dualism of body and mind,” there can be no third method unless it be eclecticism,—an illogical confusion of materialism and idealism. And this confusion in Avenarius appears to Bogdanov and the rest “to be a truth which transcends both materialism and idealism.”

Professional philosophers, however, are not as naive and credulous as are the Russian Machians. True, each one of these’ expert gentlemen, generally full fledged professors, defends “his” own pet system of refutation against materialism or, at least, of “reconciliation” of materialism and idealism. But in discussing an opponent they reveal without any ceremony the incompatible elements of materialism and idealism in what is heralded as the “latest” and most “original” system. And although a few young intellectuals were enmeshed in Avenarius’ net, the old bird, Wundt, however, was not enticed by such bait. Wundt, the idealist, very impolitely unmasked the buffoon Avenarius, giving him credit en passant for the antimaterialistic tendency of the doctrine of introjection.

“If empirio-criticism,” Wundt wrote, “reproaches vulgar materialism because by means of such expressions as the brain ‘has’ a thought, or ‘produces’ reason, it expresses a relation which cannot be stated on grounds of actual observation [evidently Wundt accepts as a matter of course the assumption that a person thinks without the help of the brain!] this reproach, of course, has good ground” (loc. cit. pp. 47-48).

Indeed, the idealists will always proceed against materialism hand in hand with the half-hearted compromisers, Avenarius and Mach! It is only to be regretted, Wundt goes on to say, that this theory of introjection “does not stand in any relation to the doctrine of the independent vital series, is only artificially tacked on to it” (p. 365).

“Introjection,” says Ewald, “is no more than a fiction of empirio-criticism, which serves to shield its fallacies” (loc. cit. p. 44). “We here observe a peculiar contradiction. On the one hand the elimination of the doctrine of introjection and the restoration of the natural conception of reality would restore it to life. On the other hand, by means of the notion of essential co-ordination, empirio-criticism leads to a purely idealistic theory concerning the absolute correlation of the counter term and the central term. Thus Avenarius’ thought runs in a vicious circle. He started out to do battle against idealism but capitulated before it on the very eve of the first skirmish. He set out to liberate the realm of objects from the yoke of the subject, but ended in tying it again to the subject. What he actually destroys in his criticism, is only a caricature of idealism, and not the genuine expression of its theory of knowledge” (loc. cit. pp. 64-5).

“In the frequently quoted statement by Avenarius,” Norman Smith says, “that the brain is not the seat, organ or supporter, of thought, he rejects the only terms which we possess for defining their connection” (loc. cit. p. 30).

No wonder then that the theory of introjection, approved by Wundt, gained the sympathy of James Ward, the outspoken spiritualist, who waged a systematic war against “naturalism and agnosticism,” and especially against Huxley (not because he was not outspoken and explicit in his materialism, which was Engels’ reproach against him, but because under his agnosticism, materialism was concealed).

Let us note that Karl Pearson, the English Machian, without dodging the philosophic issues involved, and recognising neither introjection, co-ordination, nor “the discovery of the world-elements,” arrives at the inevitable conclusion of Machism, namely, purely subjective idealism. Pearson knows of no “elements”; “sense-impressions” is his first and last word. He has no doubt that man thinks with the help of the brain. And the contradiction between this thesis (which alone is in conformity with science) and the starting point of his philosophy remained open and clear to all. Pearson tries hard to combat the view that matter exists independently of our sense-perceptions.

Repeating all of Berkeley’s arguments, Pearson declares that matter is a nonentity. But when he comes to speak of the relation of the mind to the brain, he is straightforward, as, for instance, in the following: “From will and consciousness associated with material machinery we can infer nothing whatever as to will and consciousness without that machinery” (ibid. p. 58). He lays down the following thesis as a summary of the corresponding part of his investigation: “Consciousness has no meaning beyond nervous systems akin to our own; it is illogical to assert that all matter is conscious [but it is logical to assert that matter contains a property of reflection which is in its essence akin to sensation], still more that consciousness or will can exist outside matter” (ibid. p. 75).

Pearson commits here a terrible blunder! Matter is nothing but groups of sense-perceptions. This is his thesis, his philosophy. This means that sensation or thought is primary; matter, secondary. But consciousness without matter cannot exist, surely, at least not without a nervous system. So that, mind and sensation now prove to be secondary. Water on the earth, the earth on the whale, and the whale on the water. Mach’s “elements,” Avenarius’ “co-ordination” and “introjection” do not in the least mitigate the difficulty; they only obscure matters with erudite chatter.

The specially invented terminology of Avenarius (about which a word or two will suffice) may be considered as an instance of such chatter. Among the numerous terms which he has coined will be found such words as “notal,” “secural,” “fidential,” etc. Our Russian Machians omit a good deal of this professorial jargon, apparently ashamed of it, and but rarely throw into the reader’s face even such terms as “existential,” etc. And if naive people do take these words for a special kind of bio-mechanics, the German philosophers, themselves lovers of such “wise” words, laugh at Avenarius. To say “notal” (notus means “known”), or to say that this or the other thing is known to me, is absolutely the same, says Wundt in the paragraph entitled “Scholastischer Character der empiriokritischer System.” Indeed, it is the purest and most obscure scholasticism. Willy, one of the most faithful disciples of Avenarius, had the courage to confess it. “Avenarius dreamt of bio-mechanics,” says he, “but an understanding of the life of the brain can only be reached through actual discoveries, not through the way in which Avenarius attempted to do it. Avenarius’ bio-mechanics is not grounded on any new observation; its characteristic feature is a purely arbitrary construction of concepts; and those constructions are such that they are not even of the nature of hypotheses which open up new vistas. They are mere stereotyped speculations which obstruct the distant landscape from view as would a wall.”

The Russian Machians will soon appear in the guise of lovers of fashion who still bedeck themselves with a hat which has long since been discarded by the bourgeois philosophers of Europe.

We have seen that the starting point and the fundamental postulate of the empirio-critical philosophy is subjective idealism. The world is my sensation; this fundamental postulate is obscured—the word “element” to the contrary notwithstanding—by the theories of “independent series,” “co-ordination,” and “introjection.” The absurdity of this philosophy consists in that it leads to solipsism, to the recognition of the sole existence of a solitary philosophising individual. Still our Russian Machians assure the reader that the “accusation” against Mach “of idealism and even of solipsism” is itself “extreme subjectivism.” So says Bogdanov in the introduction to the Analysis of Sensations (p. xi), and the rest of the Machians repeat it in many ways.

Having revealed the method by which Mach and Avenarius shield themselves from solipsism, we need add only one thing. The “extreme subjectivism” of the assertions made about Mach may be laid entirely at Bogdanov’s door, for in philosophical literature, writers of various tendencies have long since discovered the chief sin of Machism in spite of all its covering. We shall confine ourselves to those opinions which reveal the “subjective” ignorance of our Machians. It is significant that nearly all professional philosophers sympathise with one brand or another of philosophical idealism. In their eyes, as distinct from the Marxians, idealism is no reproach at all; they merely put on record Mach’s philosophically confused trend of thought, opposing his system of idealism with another, one that seems to them more consistent. Ewald says in his book which treats of Avenarius’ teaching: “The creator of empirio-criticism wittingly or unwittingly commits himself to solipsism” (loc. cit., pp. 61-62).

Hans Kleinpeter, a disciple of Mach, who emphasises his solidarity with him in the preface to Erkenntnis und Irrtum, says: “Mach can be taken as an example of one who combines theoretico-epistemological idealism with the demands of natural science [for the eclectics everything can be ‘combined’]. The latter can very well be deduced from solipsism, without stopping there.”

Lucka, in analysing Mach’s Analysis of Sensations, says: “Apart from sundry misunderstandings, Mach stands on the basis of pure idealism. It is inconceivable how Mach can deny that he is a Berkeleian (Kantstudien, 1903, Vol. III, pp. 416-17).

W. Jerusalem, one of the most reactionary of Kantians, with whom Mach expresses agreement in that same preface (“a closer kinship of thought” had existed between them, Mach confesses [p. x], than he had suspected before he wrote Erkenntnis und Irrtum, 1906), says: “Consistent phenomenalism leads to solipsism” (and therefore we have to borrow something from Kant!) .

Hönigswald says that “the alternative for both the immanentists and the empirio-criticists is either solipsism or metaphysics of the type represented by Fichte, Schelling, or Hegel.”

The English physicist Oliver Lodge in his book denouncing the materialist Haeckel, drops a remark, in passing, about “solipsists like Pearson and Mach” as if their solipsism were a well-established fact.

Nature, the organ of English natural science, pronounced, through the lips of the geometrician Dixon, a very definite sentence on Pearson, the follower of Mach. It is worth quoting, not for its novelty but for the reason that the Russian Machians have naively accepted the philosophical blunder of Mach as “the philosophy of natural science”:

“The foundation of the whole book is the proposition that since we cannot directly apprehend anything but sense-perceptions, therefore the things we commonly speak of as objective, or external to ourselves, and their variations, are nothing but groups of sense-impressions and sequences of such groups. But Professor Pearson admits the existence of other consciousness than his own, not only by implication in addressing his book to them, but explicitly in many passages.” Regarding the existence of another man’s consciousness Pearson infers by analogy, observing the moving bodies of other people. Since consciousness of another man is real, then his existence outside of myself is inferred. “Of course it would be impossible thus to refute a consistent idealist, who maintained that not only external things but all other consciousness were unreal and existed only in his imagination; but to recognise the reality of other consciousnesses is to recognise the reality of the means by which we become aware of them, which, as Professor Pearson explicitly states, is the external aspect of men’s bodies.” The way out of the difficulty is to recognise the “hypothesis” that to our sense-impressions there corresponds an objective reality. This hypothesis satisfactorily explains our sense impressions. “Indeed,” Dixon continues, “I cannot seriously doubt that Professor Pearson himself believes in them as much as anyone else. Only, if he were to acknowledge it explicitly, he would have to rewrite almost every page of the Grammar of Science.”

Mockery!—that is the scientists’ response to the idealist philosophy over which Mach waxed so enthusiastic.

And, finally, here is the opinion of the German physicist, Boltzmann. (The Machians will perhaps say, as Friedrich Adler did, that he is a physicist of the old school. But we are concerned here not with the theories of physics but with a fundamental philosophical problem.) Boltzmann wrote against those who “had become enthusiastic over the new epistemological dogmas”:

“In general, distrust of the conceptions which we have derived from direct immediate sense-perception, has led to an extreme view which is the direct opposite of the previous naive belief. Only sense perceptions are given us, it is said, and we have no right, therefore, to make a step beyond that. Yet if these people were consistent, they would have to ask themselves another question: Do we experience our perceptions of yesterday? Immediately we are ‘given’ only one perception or only one thought, namely, the one which is in our mind at the present moment. To be consistent one would have to deny not only the existence of other people, outside of one’s self, but also the existence of all presentations of the past we have ever had.”

This physicist rightly treats the so-called “recent” “phenomenalist” view of Mach and his companions as a revival of an old absurdity of subjective idealism.

Nay, those are stricken by “subjective” blindness, who have not “noticed” that solipsism is the fundamental error of Mach.