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

The idealists and agnostics, including the Machians, ply the materialists with the first question; the materialists ply the Machians with the second. We shall attempt to examine both.

Regarding matter, Avenarius says the following: “Within the neutral complete ‘experience’ there is nothing ‘physical,’ nothing which can in the metaphysical sense be called ‘matter,’ for ‘matter’ is only an abstraction; it would be a result of the combination of counter terms abstracted by some central term. As in ‘essential co-ordination,’ that is in ‘complete experience,’ the counter term is inconceivable without the central term, so, in the absolute metaphysical conception, ‘matter’ is a perfect absurdity.”

One thing is obvious from this prattle: Avenarius designates the physical or matter by the terms “absolute” and “metaphysics,” for, according to his theory of essential co-ordination (or in the new way, “complete experience”), the counter term is inseparable from the central term, the environment, from the self; the non-self (as Fichte said) is inseparable from the self. That this theory is a travesty of subjective idealism we have already shown elsewhere. The nature of Avenarius’ attacks upon “matter” is quite manifest; the idealist denies the physical to be independent of the mental and, therefore, rejects the conception elaborated by philosophy for such an entity. That matter is “physical” (that is, the most familiar and immediately given, whose existence no one save the inmates of the insane asylums doubts) is not denied by Avenarius; he only insists upon the acceptance of “his” theory of the continual co-ordination of the environment and the Self.

Mach expresses this thought in a simpler way, without philosophic legerdemain: “What we call matter is a combination of the elements or sensations according to certain laws.” Mach thinks that by making such an assertion he produces a “radical change” in the customary analysis. In truth this is the very same old subjective idealism over again, the nudity of which is concealed under the word “element.”

And lastly, Pearson, the English Machian, who strenuously contends against materialism, says: “Now there can be no scientific objection to our classifying certain more or less permanent groups of sense-impressions together and terming them matter, to do so indeed leads us very near to John Stuart Mill’s definition of matter as a ‘permanent possibility of sensation,’ but this definition of matter then leads us entirely away from matter as the thing, which moves.” Here there is not even the fig-leaf of “elements,” and the idealist offers his hand to the agnostic.

As the reader sees all the arguments of the founders of empirio-criticism turn totally and exclusively within the limits of the very old epistemological question of the relation of thinking to being, of the psychical to the physical. It requires the extreme naiveté of the Russian Machians to find anything here which is related to “recent science,” or “recent positivism.” All the philosophers mentioned here, directly or indirectly, swerve from the fundamental philosophic alignment of materialism (from being to thinking, from matter to sensation) to the contrary idealist alignment. Their denial of matter is the old solution of the epistemological difficulty, which contests the existence of an external, objective source of our sensations and of a reality which corresponds to them. And the converse, disputed by the idealists and agnostics, is expressed in the following definitions: Matter is that which, acting upon our sense-organs, produces sensation; matter is the objective reality, given to us in sensation, and so forth.

Bogdanov, pretending to argue only with Beltov, while ignoring Engels, is indignant at such definitions, which, as you see, “prove to be simple repetitions” of the “formula” (our “Marxist” forgets to add “of Engels”) that matter is primary, and spirit secondary, for one fundamental tendency in philosophy and that for the other, the reverse is the case. All the Russian Machians exultantly repeat the “refutation” of Bogdanov! But some reflection upon the subject should show these people that it is impossible to give any other definition of these two conceptions in epistemology, aside from reference and emphasis upon what is taken as the prius. Now, what is meant by giving a “definition”? It means first of all to subsume a given concept under another, a more inclusive one. For example, when I express the proposition “An ass is an animal,” I am subsuming the concept “ass” under a more inclusive concept. The question then is, are there any wider concepts, with which the theory of knowledge could operate, than those of “being” and “thinking,” “matter” and “sensation,” “physical” and “psychical”? No, there are not. These are the limits, the widest possible concepts, and farther than these (omitting the possible changes in nomenclature) the theory of knowledge can not go. Only charlatanism or poor mentality can demand “definitions” of these two “sets” of the widest concepts which would not be a “mere repetition”: one or the other must be taken as the prius. Take the three arguments concerning matter which have been given. To what can they be reduced? To this, that these philosophers go from “the mental” or “self” to the physical or environment, from the “central” term to the “counter” term, from sensation to matter, or from sense-impression to matter. Can Avenarius, Mach and Pearson essentially give any other “definition” of their fundamental conceptions, except by reiterating the direction of their philosophic alignment? Can they in a different, specific way define what the self is, what sensation is, or sense-perception? It suffices only to put the question clearly, in order to understand the absurdity of the Machian demand that the materialists give a definition of matter which will not express once more the assumption that matter, nature, being, the physical, is the primary entity, and spirit, consciousness, sensation, mind, is the secondary entity.

The genius of Marx and Engels expressed itself in that they despised the pseudo-erudite play upon new words, wise terms, cunning “isms.” They simply and explicitly said that there was a materialist and idealist division in philosophy, and between them there are various shades of agnosticism. The desire to find a “new” viewpoint in philosophy betrays the same poverty of spirit, as the desire to create a “new” theory of value, or a “new” theory of rent.

Carstanjen, a disciple of Avenarius, informs us that his teacher thus expressed himself in a private conversation: “I do not know either physical or psychical, but only a third ‘entity’”! To the remark of one writer, that the concept of this third is not given by Avenarius, Petzoldt replied: “We know why he was not able to present such a concept. There is no counter concept for the third entity. (Gegenbegriff of the correlative concept). . . . The question as to what the third entity is, is not logically put.” Petzoldt understands that it is impossible to define the last concept. But he does not understand that the reference to the “third entity” is mere trickery, for every one of us knows what is physical and what is psychical; but we do not at present know what that “third” is. Although in fact he declares the self to be the primary entity (central term), and nature (environment) to be the secondary entity (counter term), Avenarius wipes out his tracks with this verbal trickery.

Of course, the contradistinction between matter and mind has an absolute significance only between the boundaries of a very limited region—in this case exclusively within the limits of the fundamental epistemological problem of what was to be considered primary and what secondary. Beyond these bounds the relativity of the contradistinction is unquestionable.

Let us see what application the word “experience” has found in empirio-critical philosophy. The first paragraph of Kritik der reinen Erfahrung contains the following “assumption”: Any part of our environment stands in a relation to human individuals, such that it appears, as if they would declare of their experience that “this and that I learn by way of experience, this and the other is experience, or follows from experience, or depends upon experience” (p. 1). Thus experience is defined in terms of the same concepts “self” and “environment” while the “doctrine” of their “continuity” is put aside for the time being. Further: “The synthetic concept of pure experience [i. e., experience as such] is a declaration, in whose composition only the parts of environment serve as assumption” (p. 3). If we grant that the environment exists independently of “declarations” and “utterances” of man, then it is possible to interpret experience in a materialist way! “The analytical conception of pure experience, of just such declaration to which nothing was added, which was not in its turn experience and which, consequently, is nothing but experience” (p. 5). In other words, experience is experience. Yet there are people who take this quasi-erudite prattle for true wisdom!

It is essential to add that Avenarius in the second volume of the Kritik der reinen Erfahrung regards “experience” as a “special case” of the psychical; that he divides experience into “thing-values” (sachhafte Werte) and “mental-values” (gedankenhafte Werte); that “experience in the broad sense” includes the latter; that “complete experience” is identified with essential co-ordination (Bemerkungen, etc.). In short, we ask for whatever we wish. “Experience” covers both the materialist and idealist alignments in philosophy, thus sanctifying the confusion between them. Still, though our Machians trustingly accept “pure experience,” nevertheless the representatives of these various conflicting tendencies themselves all point to Avenarius’ abuse of this concept. “What pure experience is,” Riehl writes, “remains undetermined with Avenarius, and his statement that ‘pure experience is such experience to which nothing is given which was not in its turn experience,’ involves a vicious circle. Pure experience for Avenarius, writes Wundt, may mean now a phantasy, now a statement of the nature of an “object.”” Avenarius stretches the concept of experience to cover almost everything (p. 382). “On the exact definition of the terms ‘experience’ and ‘pure experience,” writes Couwelaert, “depends the whole meaning of this philosophy. Avenarius nowhere gives an exact definition.” “The vagueness of the term ‘experience’ stands him in good stead, and so at the end Avenarius falls back on the time-worn argument of subjective idealism,” says Norman Smith.

“I solemnly declare that the inner sense, the soul of my philosophy consists in this that a human being possesses nothing save experience; a human being comes to everything only through experience. . . .” What an outspoken philosopher of pure experience he is, indeed! The author of these words is no other than the subjective idealist Fichte. The history of philosophy tells us that the interpretation of what the concept of experience means divided the classical materialists and idealists. At present the professorial philosophy of all shades conceals its reactionary tendencies under a mask of well sounding phrases about “experience.” All followers of the immanentist school have recourse to experience. In the preface to the second edition of his Erkenntnis und Irrtum, Mach praises a book of Professor Jerusalem in which we read: “The acceptance of the divine prime being does not contradict any experience.”

We can only be sorry for those people who believe Avenarius, et al.,—who believe that by means of the word “experience” we are able to overcome the “obsolete” distinction between materialism and idealism. If Valentinov and Yushkevich accuse Bogdanov, who drew back somewhat from pure Machism, of abusing the word “experience,” they betray their ignorance. Bogdanov is “not guilty” on that score; he humbly took over the whole muddle from Mach and Avenarius. When Bogdanov says, “consciousness and immediate psychical experience are identical concepts . . .,” matter is “not experience” but “the unknown which causes the known,” he interprets experience in an idealist manner. And he is, of course, neither the first nor the last to build toy systems of idealism on the word “experience.” When he retorts upon the reactionary philosophers, that the attempts to transcend the boundaries of experience lead only to “empty abstractions and contradictory images, all elements of which have been taken from experience” (Vol. I, p. 48), he opposes the empty abstractions of human consciousness with something which exists outside of man and independently of his consciousness, thereby interpreting experience in a materialist way.

It is the same with Mach who, taking idealism as the starting point (bodies are complexes of sensations or “elements”) often becomes confused himself by assuming a materialist interpretation of the word “experience.” He says:

“Not to ‘philosophise out of ourselves,’ but to take our concepts from experience.” Here experience is distinguished from “philosophising out of oneself,” is interpreted as something objective, given to us from the outside, that is, is interpreted materialistically. Another example:

“Everything which we observe in nature imprints itself uncomprehended and unanalysed in our percepts and ideas, which, then, in their turn, mimic the processes of nature in their most general and most striking features. In these accumulated experiences we possess a treasure-store which is ever close at hand. . . .”

Nature is here taken as primary, sensation and experience as derivative. Had Mach consistently clung to such a view of the fundamental problems of epistemology, he would have freed humanity from many foolish idealistic “complexes.” The third example: “The close connection of thought and experience creates modern science. Experience brings forth thought. It is further elaborated and is again compared with experience.” Mach’s special “philosophy” is here thrown overboard, and the author instinctively accepts the customary viewpoint of the scientists whose approach to experience is materialistic. The outcome is this: The word “experience” on which the Machian grounds his system has long since served to shield idealistic systems, and now serves Avenarius and the others in their eclectic voyages from the idealist position to the materialist position and back. The various “definitions” of this concept express only those two fundamental divisions in philosophy which Engels so brilliantly characterised.

On pages x and xi of his preface to L. Feuerbach, Plekhanov says:

“One German writer remarks that for empirio-criticism, experience is only a subject of investigation, and not a means of knowledge. If this be so, then the distinction between empirio-criticism and materialism becomes devoid of any sense, and the discussion of the question as to whether or not empirio-criticism is called upon to change materialism, seems to be shallow and idle.”

This is a complete muddle.

Carstanjen, one of the most “orthodox” followers of Avenarius, says in his article on empirio-criticism (as a reply to Wundt), that for the Kritik der reinen Erfahrung, experience is not a means of knowledge, but a subject of investigation. And yet for Plekhanov the distinction between Carstanjen’s views and materialism is devoid of sense!

Carstanjen renders literally the conception of Avenarius, who in his Bemerkungen absolutely contrasts his conception of experience as that which is given us, that which we find (das Vorgefundene), with the conception of experience as a “means of knowledge” in the “sense of the dominating, essentially metaphysical theories of knowledge” (loc. cit., p. 401).

Petzoldt, following Avenarius in his Einführung in die Philosophie, etc., says the same (Vol. I, p. 117). Yet, according to Plekhanov, the distinction between the views of Carstanjen, Avenarius, and Petzoldt on one hand, and that of materialism on the other, is devoid of sense! Either Plekhanov has not read Carstanjen and the others to the end, or he has taken his reference to “one German writer” fifth hand.

What does this statement, uncomprehended by Plekhanov, concerning the views of the most outstanding empirio-criticists mean? Carstanjen wishes to say that Avenarius, in his Kritik der reinen Erfahrung, takes experience as the subject of investigation, that is to say, every form of “human expression.” Avenarius does not inquire, says Carstanjen (loc. cit., p. 50), whether these expressions are real, or whether they relate to ghosts; he merely arranges, systematises, formally classifies the various forms of human expression, the physical as well as the mental (p. 53), without going into the essence of the question. Carstanjen is absolutely right in characterising this viewpoint as “predominantly sceptical” (p. 213). In this article, by the way, Carstanjen defends his dear teacher from the scandalous (from the point of view of a German professor) accusation of materialism, levelled against him by Wundt. Pray, what sort of materialists are we! Such is the sense of Carstanjen’s objections.

If we speak of “experience” we do not speak of it in the usual sense, which leads or could lead to materialism, but in the sense of our investigation of everything that men “express” as experience. Carstanjen and Avenarius consider experience as a means of cognition, as materialistic (this is, perhaps, rather ordinary, but nevertheless untrue, as we have seen from the example of Fichte). Avenarius cuts himself free from the “prevailing metaphysics,” which persists in regarding the brain as the organ of thought while ignoring the theories of introjection and co-ordination. Under the given or found (das Vorgefundene), Avenarius understands the continuity of the self and environment, which leads him to a confused idealist interpretation of “experience.”

The materialistic as well as the idealistic, Humean and Kantian tendencies may very well be concealed, as we see, under the word “experience”; but neither the definition of experience as the subject of investigation nor its definition as a means of cognition, decides matters definitely. Carstanjen’s remarks about Wundt especially have no relation whatsoever to the question of the distinction between empirio-criticism and materialism.

As a curiosity, let us note that Bogdanov and Valentinov, responding to Plekhanov on this point, do not display any more knowledge of the subject. Bogdanov declares: “It is not quite clear; it is the task of empirio-criticists to analyse this formulation of experience and it remains for them to accept or reject its conditions” (Vol. III, p. xi). A very convenient position, indeed! It turns out that he is not a Machian and is not therefore obliged to find out in what sense a certain Avenarius or Carstanjen speaks of experience! Bogdanov desires to make use of Machism (and also of the Machian confusion regarding “experience”), but he does not wish to be responsible for it.

The “pure” empirio-criticist, Valentinov, copied Plekhanov’s remark and publicly disclosed the fact, that Plekhanov did not name the writer and did not explain the matter (loc. cit., pp. 108-109). And at the same time he himself did not offer even a word about the essence of the question, although he claims to have read Plekhanov’s remark “three times or more.” He evidently did not understand anything about it. These Machians!

The question of causality is peculiarly important in defining the fundamental philosophic alignment of this or the other latest “ism.” We should, therefore, spend a little more time on it. We shall begin with an exposition of the views of the materialist theory of knowledge on this particular point. The views of Feuerbach are expounded with exceptional clarity in his above mentioned answer to R. Haym.

“For Feuerbach ‘nature and human reason,’ says Haym, ‘differ completely, and between them there opens an abyss which it is impossible to span either from one side or from the other.” Haym grounds this reproach on § 48 of The Essence of Religion, where it is said that ‘nature may be conceived only through nature itself, that its necessity is neither human nor logical, neither metaphysical nor mathematical, that nature alone is a kind of being to which it is impossible to apply any human measure. Although we do compare its phenomena with similar human phenomena, we apply this measure, in order to make the human expression and conception themselves conceivable to us. For instance, we are compelled to apply such expressions, as “order, purpose, law” because of our language.’ What does it mean? Do I mean to say by this that in nature there is no order, to say, for example, that after autumn summer may follow, after spring, winter, after winter, autumn? Do I mean to say that there is no purpose in nature, to say that between the lungs and air, for example, or between light and the eye, between sound and the ear there is no concordance? Do I mean to say that there is no order in nature, to say that the earth may move now in an ellipse, now in a circle, and move around the sun, at one period in a year, at another—in a quarter of an hour? What an absurdity! What then did I intend to say in this passage? Nothing more than to make a distinction between that which belongs to nature and that which belongs to man; in this passage I do not say that there is nothing actually corresponding in nature to our words and conceptions of order, purpose, and law. Only the identity of thought and being is denied; only the notion that order, etc., exists exactly in nature as in the head or heart of man. Order, purpose, law are no more than words, by which man translates the actions of nature into his language, in order that he may understand them. These words are not devoid of sense or of objective content, nevertheless, it is necessary to distinguish the original from the translation. Order, purpose, law express in the human sense something arbitrary.

“From the contingency of natural order, from the inherency of purpose and law in nature, theism directly infers their arbitrary origin,—infers the existence of a being different from nature and one which brings order, purpose and law into a nature which is itself chaotic and without any determination. The ‘reason’ of the theists . . . is a reason which is contradictory to nature, absolutely devoid of an understanding of the substance of nature. The reason of the theists breaks nature into two beings—one, material; the other, formal or spiritual.”

As we see, Feuerbach recognises the objectivity of natural law, of causality, reflected only approximately by human conceptions of order, law and so forth. The recognition of the objectivity of natural law is with Feuerbach, inseparably connected with the recognition of the objective reality of the outer world of objects, bodies, things, reflected by our mind. The views of Feuerbach are consistently materialistic. All other views, or rather, all the other philosophical conceptions of causality, which deny the objectivity of law, causality, and necessity in nature, Feuerbach justly regards as a tendency to fideism. For it is clear indeed that the subjective interpretations according to which natural causality, uniformity and necessity are inferred, not from the outer objective world, but from mind, reason, and logic, not only separates human reason from nature, not only opposes the first with the second, but makes nature a part of reason, instead of making reason a small part of nature. The subjectivist interpretation of causality is philosophical idealism (varieties of which are the theories of causality of Hume and Kant), which is more or less diluted fideism. The recognition of the fact of natural order and the approximate reflection of that order in the mind of man is materialism.

Engels, on the question of causality, did not contrast his materialist view with other tendencies. He had no need to do this since on the fundamental question of the objectivity of nature he very definitely separated himself from all agnostics. But whoever reads his philosophic works with attention must clearly see that Engels does not admit a shadow of a doubt about the objective existence of law, order, causality and necessity in nature. We shall confine ourselves to a few examples. In the first paragraph of Anti-Dühring Engels says: “In order to study these individual phenomena we are obliged to take them out of their natural or social connection, and examine each of them by itself according to its own form and its particular origin and development” (p. 41). That this natural connection, a connection between natural phenomena, exists objectively, is obvious. Engels emphasises especially the dialectic view of cause and effect:

“Cause and effect are concepts which can only realise themselves in relation to a particular case. However, when we come to examine the separate case in its general relation to the world at large they come together and dissolve themselves in face of the working out of the universal problem, for, here, cause and effect exchange places; what was at one time and place effect, becomes cause and vice versa” (p. 43). Hence the human conception of cause and effect always somewhat simplifies the objective connection of phenomena of nature reflecting it only approximately, artificially isolating one side or the other of the same world process. If we find that the laws of reason correspond to the laws of nature, says Engels, then this becomes quite conceivable; that is, if we take into account that reason and consciousness are “products of the human brain and man himself is the product of nature.” Of course, the products of the human brain, in the last analysis, being themselves products of nature, do not contradict other natural relations, but correspond with them. There is no doubt that there exists a natural, objective relation between phenomena of the world. Engels always speaks of the “laws of nature,” of the “necessity of nature,” without finding it necessary to explain the generally known position of materialism.

In Feuerbach we also read that “the universal laws of motion—of the outer world as well as of the thought of man—are two sets of laws which are identical as far as matter is concerned but which differ as regards expression, in so far as the mind of man can employ them consciously, while, in nature and, up to now, in human history, for the most part they accomplish themselves, unconsciously in the form of external necessity, through an endless succession of apparent accidents” (pp. 95-96). And Engels accuses natural philosophy of changing “the unknown yet actual connections” (phenomena of nature) into “ideal and phantastic connections.” The recognition of the objective character of the laws of nature, of causality and of necessity is very clear in Engels’, as in the emphasis on the relative character of our own, that is human, approximate reflection of the facts of law expressed in these and other conceptions.

Passing to Dietzgen, we must first of all note one of the numerous perversions of the question on the part of our Machians. One of the authors of Outlines, Mr. Helfond, tells us: “The chief point of Dietzgen’s doctrine may be summarised in the following propositions: ‘The causal dependence which we ascribe to things in reality are not contained in the things themselves’” (p. 248). This is all nonsense on the part of Mr. Helfond, whose own views are a mixture of materialism and agnosticism. He has falsified Dietzgen’s meaning. Of course, we can find plenty of confusion and errors in Dietzgen, which gladden the hearts of the Machians and which make all materialists regard Dietzgen as an inconsistent philosopher. Yet to attribute the direct denial of the materialist view of causality to him—only Helfond and the Russian Machians are capable of doing such a thing.

“Objective science,” says Dietzgen in his Positive Outcome of Philosophy, “differs from it (the subjective understanding) in that such a science penetrates to the causes of its objects not by faith or introspective speculation, but by experience and induction, not a priori, but a posteriori. Natural science looks for causes not outside or back of nature’s phenomena, but within or by means of them” (p. 109). “Causes are, in the last instance, not noticed and furnished by means of sight, hearing, feeling, not by means of the sense perceptions. They are rather supplied by the faculty of thought, but are produced by it in connection with sense perceptions and their material objects. This raw material gives the objective existence to the causes produced by the mind. Just as we demand that a truth should be the truth about some objective phenomenon, so we also demand that a cause should be real, that it should be the cause of some objective effect” (p. 113). The “cause of the thing is its relation” (p. 114).

From this it is obvious that Mr. Helfond made a false statement. The doctrine of materialism expounded by Dietzgen recognises that “the causal nexus” is contained in the “things themselves.” For the proper Machian mixture it was necessary that Mr. Helfond confuse the materialist and the idealist positions on the nature of causality. Let us proceed with an analysis of this latter position.

We find a clear declaration of the starting point of Avenarius’ philosophy concerning this question in his first work, Philosophie, etc. In § 81 we read: “Without perceiving (without knowing in experience) force as causing motion, we do not perceive the necessity of any motion. . . . All we do perceive is that which follows one after the other.” We have before us the Humean standpoint in its clearest aspect: sensation, experience does not tell us anything about necessity. A philosopher who asserts (on the principle of “the economy of thought”) that only sensation exists can not come to any other conclusion. “Inasmuch as the conception of causality demands force and necessity or constraint, as integral parts for defining the effect, to this extent they fall together. . . (§ 82). Necessity remains as the degree of probability of expectation of the effects” (§ 83). This is quite definitely a subjective interpretation of causality. And to remain consistent to some extent, it is impossible to come to any other conclusion without recognising objective reality as the source of our sensations.

Taking Mach, we find this in a special chapter on “Causality and Explanation.” “The Humean critique (conception of causality) remains in force.” Kant and Hume solve the problems of causality differently (Mach does not take other philosophers into consideration!), “we prefer” Hume’s solution. “Besides logical necessity, there is no other necessity, no physical necessity, for example.” This is exactly the point of view which was so unflinchingly combated by Feuerbach. Mach does not even dream of denying his kinship with Hume. Only the Russian Machians could bring themselves to the point of proclaiming a “connection” between the agnosticism of Hume and the materialism of Marx and Engels. In Die Mechanik, etc., we read: “In nature there is neither cause nor effect (p. 474). I have said many a time that all forms of the law of causality follow from subjective endeavours; there is no necessity for nature to correspond to them” (p. 495).

We must note here that with remarkable naiveté our Russian Machians change the question from the fundamental difference between the materialist and idealist arguments concerning causality, to the question of this or that formulation of the law. They follow the German empirio-critical professors, in believing that to say “functional correlation,” the discovery of “recent positivism,” is to free us from the “fetishism” of such expressions as “necessity,” “law” and the like. Of course, this is absurd, and Wundt had a perfect right to ridicule such change of words (Philosophische Studien, pp. 383, 388) which does not change things in the least. Mach himself speaks of “all forms” of the law of causality, and in Erkenntnis und Irrtum (p. 278), utters the self-evident statement that the conception of function can express the “dependence of elements” with more exactness only when the possibility is reached of expressing the results of investigation in the measurable quantities. Even in a science like chemistry, this is attained only in part. In the opinion of our Machians, confident in the discoveries of the professors, Feuerbach—not to speak of Engels—did not know that the concepts, “order,” “law, etc.,” can be expressed under certain conditions as a mathematically definite functional correlation!

The really important epistemologic question which divides the philosophic schools is not concerning the degree of exactness of our description of causal connections attained nor whether these descriptions can be expressed in exact mathematical formulæ, but whether the source of our cognition of these connections is natural objective law, or the properties of our reason, its innate faculties of knowing certain a priori truths, and so forth. This is what divides the materialists, Feuerbach, Marx and Engels, from the agnostics—Humeans—Avenarius and Mach. In some parts of his works, Mach, whom it would be sinful to accuse of consistency, often “forgets” about his agreement with Hume and his subjective theory of causality, and argues “simply” as a scientist, from an instinctively materialist viewpoint. For instance, in his Die Mechanik, etc. (French tr.), we read: “Nature teaches us to find uniformity in its phenomena” (p. 182). But if we find uniformity in natural phenomena, does it mean that uniformity exists objectively outside our mind? He answers the question in the negative. On the question of the uniformity of nature Mach speaks thus: “The power that prompts us to complement facts, observed only partially by thought, is the power of association. It is enforced by repetition. It then seems to us a power which does not depend merely upon our volition and upon individual facts, but a power which directs thoughts and facts, which keeps them in correspondence with each other as a law of their connection. That we consider ourselves capable of making predictions by the help of such laws only proves [!] the presence of sufficient uniformity in our environment but not at all the necessity of success of our predictions.” (Wärmelehre, p. 383.)

This means that we may and ought to look for necessity somewhere else than in the uniformity of our environment, or of nature! Where to look for uniformity is the secret of the idealist philosophy which is afraid to recognise that the cognitive capacity of man can reflect the uniformity of nature. In Erkenntnis und Irrtum, Mach even defines a law of nature as a “limitation of expectancy” (Second Edition, p. 450 ff). Solipsism comes into its own after all.

Let us examine the position of other writers of the same philosophical school. Karl Pearson expresses himself with characteristic precision:

“The laws of science are products of the human mind rather than factors of the external world. Those, whether poets or materialists, who do homage to nature as the sovereign of man, too often forget that the order and complexity they admire are at least as much a product of man’s perceptive and reasoning faculties as are their own memories and thoughts. . . . The complexity of nature is conditioned by our perceptive faculty; the comprehensive character of natural law is due to the ingenuity of the human mind. Here, in the human powers of perception and reason, lie the mystery and the grandeur of nature and its laws. . . . Man is the creator of the law of nature. . . . There is more meaning in the statement that man gives laws to nature than in its converse that nature gives laws to man. . . . In this sense of the word, a sense unfortunately far too common to-day, natural law could exist before it was recognised by men.”

The fourth chapter, which is devoted to the question of causality (§ 11), contains the following: “The necessity lies in the world of conception, and is only unconsciously and illogically transferred to the world of perception.” It is noteworthy that for Pearson perceptions or sense-impressions are the reality existing outside of us. “In the uniformity with which sequences of perceptions are repeated (the routine of perceptions) there is also no inherent necessity, but it is a necessary condition for the existence of thinking beings that there should be a routine in the perceptions. The necessity thus lies in the nature of the thinking being and not in the perceptions themselves; thus it is conceivably a product of the perceptive faculty” (p. 139).

Our Machian, with whom Mach “himself” expresses his solidarity, thus arrives safely at purely Kantian idealism. Man dictates laws to nature and not vice versa! It is not important to repeat after Kant the doctrine of apriorism—which does not define the idealist tendency as such, but only a special formulation of it—but it is important that reason, mind, consciousness is here primary, and nature secondary. Reason is not only a large part of nature, not only one of its highest products, the reflection of its processes, but more—nature is part of a “reason” which stretches itself from ordinary, simple human reason known to all of us, into “stupendous” (as Dietzgen says), mysterious, divine reason. The Kantian-Machian formula, that “man gives nature its laws,” is a formula of fideism. If our Machians stare wide-eyed when Engels says that the fundamental characteristic of materialism is the acceptance of nature and not spirit as the prius, it shows only to what extent they are incapable of distinguishing real and fundamental philosophic tendencies from professorial erudition and “wise” words.

Petzoldt, who analysed and developed Avenarius in his two-volumed work may serve as a good example of reactionary scholasticism. “Until now,” says he, “one hundred and fifty years after Hume, substance and causality still paralyse the daring of reason.” Of course, most daring are the solipsists who discover sensation without organic matter, thought without brain, nature without objective law! “And the formulation of causality, necessity, or the necessity in nature, contains something unclear and mystical”—the idea of “fetishism” and “anthropomorphism” (pp. 32, 34). Ah! the poor mystics—Feuerbach, Marx and Engels! All the time they have been speaking of necessity in nature and have even called the adherents of Hume’s trend of thought, theoretical reactionaries! Petzoldt is superior to all “anthropomorphism.” He has discovered the great law of “unique determination” which eliminates every obscurity, every trace of “fetishism”; for example, the parallelogram of forces (p. 35). This cannot be “proven”; it must be recognised as a “fact of experience.” It cannot be assumed in advance that a body to which equal force has been imparted from different sides will move. “We cannot admit such indetermination and chaos in nature; we must demand from it exactness and law.” Well, well! From nature we demand conformity to law! The bourgeoisie demands a reactionary outlook from its professors. “Our reason demands precision from nature and nature always conforms to this demand; we shall even see that in a certain sense it is compelled to conform to it” (p. 36).

Why, at an impulsion in the direction of A B, does the body move toward C and not toward D or E, etc.? “Why does nature not choose one of the countless other directions?” (p. 37). Because then there would be no “unique determination,” and the great empirical discovery by Joseph Petzoldt demands it.

Such is the trash with which the empirio-criticists fill scores of pages! “., . . We have remarked more than once that our position draws its strength not from the sum-total of separate experiments, but rather on the contrary, from our demand on nature that it hold recognition (seine Geltung). Indeed, even before it became law it had already become for us a principle with which to approach reality, in other words, a postulate. It had power, so to speak, a priori, independent of every separate experiment. At first, it was not proper to the philosophy of pure experience to preach a priori truths, thus apparently returning to the most barren metaphysics. But our apriorism is only logical and psychological, and not metaphysical” (p. 40). Of course, if we call apriorism logical, then the reactionary flavor of the idea disappears and it is elevated to the most “modern positivism”!

There cannot be any unique determination in psychical phenomena, Petzoldt teaches us; the role of imagination, the significance of great inventions, etc., create exceptions, and the law of nature or the law of spirit does not tolerate “any exceptions” (p. 65). Here we have before us a pure metaphysician—one who has not even the slightest conception of the relative difference between the contingent and the necessary.

We are then referred to the motivation of historical events or to the development of character in poetical works. “If we will pay attention we shall see the absence of unique determination. There is not one historical event and not one drama in which we could not imagine the participants acting differently than they do under given psychical conditions” (p. 73). “Unique determination in the psychical domain is not only absent, but we also have a right to demand its absence from reality. Our teaching is thus raised to the rank of a postulate . . . that is the necessary condition of any preceding experience, logical apriorism” (Petzoldt’s italics, p. 76).

Petzoldt continues to operate with this logical apriorism in both volumes of his Einführung, etc., and in the booklet issued in 1906. This is the second example of a noted empirio-criticist, who imperceptibly slips into Kantianism and preaches the most reactionary doctrine under a somewhat altered appearance. And this fact is not at all fortuitous, for in the very foundation of the teachings of Mach and Avenarius on causality, there is hidden an idealist fraud in spite of high-sounding phrases about “positivism” in which it is wrapped up. The difference between the Humean and the Kantian theories of causality is a secondary distinction amongst the agnostics, who agree on the denial of the objectivity of natural law—thus condemning themselves inevitably to further idealist consequences. Rudolph Willy, a more “conscientious” empirio-criticist than Petzoldt, who is ashamed of his kinship to the immanentists, rejects, for example, the whole theory of “unique determination” as an expression of nothing more than “logical formalism.” But does Willy improve his position by renouncing Petzoldt? Not at all, for he renounces Kantian agnosticism in the interest of Humean agnosticism. “We have known,” he writes, “since the time of Hume, that ‘necessity’ is a purely logical characteristic (Merkmal) not a transcendental, or as I would rather say, and have already said, a purely verbal characteristic.” (R. Willy: Gegen die Schulweisheit, 1905, p. 91; cf. pp. 173, 175.)

The agnostic calls our materialist view of necessity “transcendental,” for from the point of view of Kantian and Humean “school wisdom,” which Willy does not reject, but only purifies, every recognition of objective reality which is given us in experience is an illegal “transcendence.” We find one of the French writers of the philosophical tendency which we are analysing, Henri Poincaré, constantly straying on the same path of agnosticism. He is a great physicist but a poor philosopher, whose errors Yushkevich proclaimed, of course, as the last word of recent positivism. This was carried so far that another “ism” arose—“empirio-symbolism.” For Poincaré (of whose views we shall speak in the chapter on “New Physics”), the laws of nature are symbols, conditioning limits which man creates for the sake of “convenience.” “The only true objective reality is the inner harmony of the world,” while by “objective,” Poincaré means that which is uniquely determined by the majority of men or by all. That is to say, he destroys objective truth, as all the Machians do, through a purely subjective interpretation of law. On the question of whether or not there is “harmony” outside us, he categorically declares “undoubtedly no.” It is perfectly obvious, therefore, that the new terms do not in the least change the traditional philosophic alignment of agnosticism, for the essence of Poincaré’s “original” theory reduces itself to the denial (though he is by no means consistent) of objective reality and the objectivity of natural law. It is, therefore, perfectly natural as distinct from the Russian Machians who accept new formulations of old errors for new discoveries, that the German Kantians greeted such notions as an expression of a fundamental philosophic reversal to their own views.—i. e., to agnosticism. “The French mathematician Henri Poincaré,” so we read in the work of the Kantian Philip Frank, “defends the doctrine that many of the most general postulates of science (the law of conservation of energy, etc.), of which it is so often difficult to say whether they are of empirical or of a priori origin, in fact belong neither to one nor the other, but are purely conditional postulates dependent upon the human factor. . . . Thus the Kantian rejoices that the new Naturphilosophie unexpectedly renews the fundamental thought of critical idealism, namely, that experience merely fills in the frame which man brings with him into the world. . . .” (Annalen der Naturphilosophie, 1907, Vol. VI, pp. 443, 447.)

We give this example to show the reader the degree of naiveté which characterises our Yushkeviches who take a certain theory of symbolism for the pure coin of novelty, when even superficially informed philosophers admit plainly and directly that those who have followed Poincaré have gone over to the standpoint of critical idealism! For the substance of this point of view does not necessarily lie in the repetition of the specific expressions of Kant, but in the recognition of the fundamental idea, common to both Hume and Kant—the denial of the objectivity of natural law and the deduction of various “conditions of experience,” principles, postulates and hypotheses from the subject and not from nature. Engels was right when he said that it is not important to which one of the numerous schools of idealism or materialism a philosopher belongs, but rather whether nature, the outer world, moving matter be taken as the prius, or spirit, reason, mind.

Another peculiar characteristic of Machism on this question, in contrast to the other philosophic standpoints, is given by the learned Kantian Lucka. On the question of causality, “Mach agrees with Hume. . . . P. Volkmann infers the necessity of thinking from the necessity of the processes of nature—a standpoint that recognises in contradistinction to Mach and in agreement with Kant the necessity, not in thinking, but in the processes of nature” (p. 424).

Volkmann, a physicist who wrote much on epistemological questions, tends to materialism, as do the great majority of the natural scientists, but to a materialism which is inconsistent, shamefaced and obscure. To recognise necessity in nature and to derive therefrom the necessity of thought, is materialism. To infer necessity, causality, law, etc., from reason, is idealism. The only inaccuracy in the citation adduced is the attribution to Mach of the complete denial of any necessity. We have already learned that this is not the case either for Mach, or for the whole empirio-critical school which, having once left materialism, inevitably succumbs to idealism.

It remains for us to say a few words especially about the Russian Machians. They desire to be Marxians; they have all “read” Engels’ definite separation of materialism from the philosophy of Hume; they could not have failed to learn, either from Mach or anybody else acquainted with his philosophy, that both Mach and Avenarius follow the Humean lead; and all try to avoid mentioning Humism and materialism in discussing the question of causality! Utter confusion holds sway here. We shall give several examples. Mr. Yushkevich preaches a “new” empirio-symbolism. The “sensations of blue, hard, etc.—these so-called data of pure experience” together with the “creations of pure reason such as a chimera or chess play”—all this is “empirio-symbolism” (Outlines, p. 179). “Cognition is empirio-symbolic, and developing, it gives empirio-symbols of a greater degree of symbolisation. . . . These empirio-symbols are . . . the so-called laws of nature. . . . The so-called true reality, existence in itself, is that infinite [a very learned man is this Mr. Yushkevich] limit of the system of symbols to which all our knowledge is striving” (p. 188). “The stream of experience. . . which lies at the foundation of our knowledge is . . . irrational . . . illogical . . .” (pp. 187, 194). Energy is “just as little a thing or substance as time, space, mass and the other fundamental conceptions of natural science; energy is a constant, an ‘empirio-symbol,’ that gratifies for a time, like other empirio-symbols, the great human need in introducing reason, and Logos, into the irrational stream of what is experienced” (p. 209).

We behold a subjective idealist in the costume of a clown, which has been made up of loud and variegated bits of fashionable terminology,—for whom the external world-nature and its laws—are symbols of our mind. The stream of experience is devoid of reason, order and law; it is our reason that introduces order. The celestial bodies are symbols of human cognition, and so is the earth. If science teaches us that the earth existed long before man and organic matter evolved, this is nothing but an invention! The order of the motion of the planets is a product of our knowledge. And feeling that human reason is being transformed by such philosophy into the very author and creator of nature, Mr. Yushkevich puts Logos on the same plane with reason; Logos, that is reason in abstract, not reason, but Reason, not the function of the human brain, but something existing prior to the emergence of the brain, something divine. The last word of “recent positivism” is the old formulation of fideism which was revealed by Feuerbach.

Let us take Bogdanov. In 1899, when he was still partly a materialist and had only begun to stray, under the influence of a very great chemist and very confused philosopher—Wilhelm Ostwald—he wrote: “The general law of the causal relation of phenomena is the last and best product of human cognition; it is the universal law, the highest of those laws which, to express it in the words of a philosopher, human reason attributes to nature.”

God knows from what sources Bogdanov took this reference; but the fact is that the “expression” of a philosopher, which is repeated in good faith by a “Marxist,” belongs to Kant. What an unpleasant occurrence! It is even more unpleasant that it cannot be explained even by the “mere” influence of Ostwald.

In 1904, having already abandoned both naturo-historical materialism and Ostwald, Bogdanov wrote: “. . . Modern positivism regards the law of causality only as a means of connecting phenomena into an uninterrupted series, solely through forms of coordinated experiences.” Bogdanov either did not know or would not admit that this modern positivism is agnosticism which denies the objective necessity of nature that existed before the emergence of “knowledge” and man. He took what is called “modern positivism” from the German professors on faith. And finally, in 1905, having gone through all the previous stages, the stage of empirio-criticism as well, and already well-advanced in the stage of “empirio-monism,” Bogdanov wrote: “Laws do not at all belong to the domain of experience . . . they are not given in it, but are created by reason as a means of organising experience, in order to fuse it harmoniously into a complete whole.” “Laws are abstractions of knowledge; and physical laws possess physical properties just as little as psychological laws possess psychical properties” (ibid).

That is, the law that winter follows autumn, is not given us in experience, but is created by reason as a means of organisation, harmony and connection. How is this done, Comrade Bogdanov?

“Empirio-Monism is possible only because knowledge harmonises experience, eliminating infinite contradictions, creating universal organising forms, changing the primeval chaotic world of elements into a derivative orderly world of relations” (p. 57). This is not true. The idea, that knowledge can “create” forms and change the primeval chaos into order, is an idealist notion. The world is a uniform world of matter in motion, and our cognition, being the highest product of nature, is in a position only to reflect this law.

The outcome is that our Machians, blindly following the “modern” professors, either repeat the mistakes of Kantian and Humean agnosticism on the problem of causality, without noticing its absolute contradiction with Marxism, that is materialism, or they roll down an inclined plane toward idealism.

“The principle of least resistance,” which was made the basis of the theory of knowledge by Mach, Avenarius and others, undoubtedly represents the Marxian “tendency in epistemology.” So Bazarov declares on page 69 of Outlines.

There is “economy” in Marx; there is “economy” in Mach. Is it true that there is even a shadow of resemblance between them, and “without doubt” at that?

Avenarius’ Philosophie, etc., applies this principle, as we have seen, in such a way that in the name of “economy of thought” only sensation is declared to exist. Causality and “substance” (a word which the professors like to employ for the sake of “importance,” instead of the clearer and more exact word “matter”) are “eliminated” in the name of the same economy; that is, we get sensation without matter, and thought without brain. This absurdity is really an attempt to serve subjective idealism with a new dressing. In philosophical literature the subjective character of this fundamental work, especially as regards the question of the famous “economy of thought,” has generally been recognised. That our Machians did not notice the subjective idealism under the “new” banner, is a choice item in the world of curiosities.

Mach, in the Analysis of Sensations, refers to his work of 1872 regarding this question. And this latter work, as we have seen, contains the characteristic doctrines of pure subjectivism, which reduces the world to sensations. Thus the two fundamental works which introduce this famous “principle” into philosophy, represent idealism. Now, what is the question at issue? It is this. The principle of economy of thought, if made a basis of the theory of knowledge, cannot lead to anything else than idealism. That it is more “economical” to “think,” that only I and my sensations exist—is beyond dispute, once we have introduced such an absurd principle into epistemology.

Is it “more economical” to “think” of the atom as indivisible or as composed of positive and negative electrons? Is it “more economical” to think of the Russian bourgeois revolution as having been conducted by the liberals or against them? It is sufficient only to put the question, in order to see the absurdity of subjectivism in applying the category of “the economy of thought.” Human thought is “economical” only when it correctly reflects the objective truth. Practice, experiment and industry will serve as the criterion of this correctness. Only by denying objective reality, that is, by denying the foundations of Marxism, can one seriously speak of the economy of thought in the theory of knowledge.

Consulting the latest works of Mach, we shall see an interpretation of the famous principle which is at the same time its complete denial. For instance, in the Die Prinzipien der Wärmelehre, Mach returns to his favourite idea of “economy of nature” (p. 366). And there he adds that we take care of our economy not for the sake of the economy (pp. 366, 391) but that “the purpose of scientific economy is a fuller and more quiescent . . . picture of the world” (p. 366). If this is the case, then the “principle of thought,” as far as the very heart of the question is concerned, is banished not only from the very foundation of epistemology but from the domain of epistemology in general. To say that the purpose of science is to give a true picture of the world (quiescence is beside the point here), is to repeat the materialist position. To say this is to recognise the objective reality of the world in relation to our knowledge, the objective reality of the model in relation to its picture. In characterising such a relation, “economy of thought” is merely a clumsy and pretentious phrase for the word “correctness.” Mach is confused here as usual, and the Machians behold this confusion enraptured! In Erkenntnis und Irrtum we read the following in the chapter “Illustrations of the Methods of Investigation”: “The definition of science as the simplest and completest description given by Kirchhoff (in 1874), the economical representation of the factual (given by Mach in 1872), ‘the concordance of thinking and being, and the concordance of the processes of thought with one another’ (given by Grassmann in 1844)—all these express with some variations one and the same thought.”

Is this not an example of confusion? The principle of the “economy of thought,” from which Mach, in 1872, inferred the existence of sensations alone (a viewpoint which he himself had to acknowledge as idealistic), is compared with the purely materialist expression of the mathematician Grassmann that there is a necessary correspondence between thought and things—is actually compared with Kirchhoff’s definition of science as concise description (of an objective reality in whose existence Kirchhoff himself does not doubt)!

Such an application of the principle of “economy of thought” is merely an instance of Mach’s peculiar philosophic peregrinations. And if all the peculiarities and lapses are eliminated, then the idealist character of the “economy of thought” becomes unquestionable. For example, the Kantian Hönigswald, in discussing the philosophy of Mach, greets his “principle of economy” as an approach to the “Kantian world of thought.” In truth, if we do not recognise objective reality, and hold that it is given to us in sensations, then from where would the “principle of economy of thought be derived, if not from the subject”? Sensations, to be sure, do not contain any “economy” in themselves. Therefore, sensations give us something which they themselves do not contain! This means that the “principle of economy” is not taken from experience (sensation), but precedes all experience and, like a category of Kant, constitutes its logical condition. Hönigswald quotes the following from Analysis of Sensations: “From the facts of our bodily and spiritual stability we can infer the stability and the uniqueness of the processes of nature as regards both determination and direction” (p. 352). Indeed, the subjective-idealistic character of such a position, as well as the kinship of Mach to Petzoldt, who has gone so far as to admit apriorism, is beyond any shadow of doubt.

The idealist Wundt, with an eye on “the principle of the economy of thought,” characterised Mach as “Kant turned inside out.” With Kant it is the a priori and experience, with Mach it is experience and the a priori, for the principle of the economy of thought is with Mach essentially apriorism (p. 130). The principle of connection is either between things, as the “objective law of nature [and this Mach decidedly rejects], or it is the subjective principle of description” (p. 130). The principle of economy with Mach is subjective and “kommt wie aus der Pistole geschossen”—into this world, God knows from where—as a teleological principle which may have a diversity of meanings (p. 131). Those who are expert in philosophic terminology, as you see, are not as gullible as our Machians, who are ready to take any one at his word who assures them that the “new” term eliminates the opposition between subjectivism and objectivism, between idealism and materialism.

And finally we shall refer to the English philosopher, James Ward, who without any pretence calls himself a spiritualistic monist. He does not dispute with Mach, but on the contrary, utilises the whole Machian tendency in physics for his struggle with materialism. And he definitely declares that in Mach “the criterion of simplicity is mainly subjective and not objective.”

That the principle of the economy of thought, as the basis of epistemology, pleased the German Kantians and English spiritualists, will not seem strange after the above-said. That people, desirous of being Marxists should link together the political economy of the materialist Marx with the epistemological economy of Mach is simply comical.

It would not be out of place here to say a few words about “world unity.” Mr. Yushkevich exemplifies very clearly—for the thousandth time perhaps—the abysmal blunder which our Machians commit in discussing this question. Engels, in his Anti-Dühring, thus replies to Dühring who had deduced the unity of the world from the unity of reason: “The real unity of the world consists in its materiality, and this is established, not by a pair of juggling phrases, but by a long and difficult development of philosophy and science” (p. 66). Mr. Yushkevich cites this and retorts: “First of all it is not clear what is meant by the assertion that the unity of the world consists in its being material.”

Is it not lovely? This person publicly prattles about the philosophy of Marxism, and then declares that the most elementary propositions of materialism are “not clear” to him! Engels, in the example from Dühring, showed that a somewhat consistent philosophy can infer the unity of the world either from reason—in which case it is helpless before spiritualism and theism and inevitably leads to phrase-juggling—or from the objective reality, which exists outside of us, is studied by the natural sciences and which in the theory of knowledge has long gone under the name of matter. To speak seriously to a person to whom such a thing is “not clear,” is useless, for Yushkevich himself is “not clear” with the deliberate intention of slyly evading the clear materialist position of Engels. He repeats Dühring’s babble about “the cardinal postulate of the principle of unique determination and its relationship to being,” about postulates of which “it would not be correct to say that they are inferred from experience, since scientific experience is only possible due to the fact that the postulates themselves are the basis of investigation” (ibid). This is nothing but confusion, for if this person had the slightest esteem for the printed word he would detect the idealist character in general, and the Kantian character in particular of the idea that there can be postulates which are not taken from experience and without which experience is impossible. A jumble of words taken from various books and strung together with the glaring errors of the materialist Dietzgen—that is the “philosophy” of Mr. Yushkevich and others of his ilk.

Let us examine the arguments on the unity of the world, as expounded by our serious empirio-criticist, Joseph Petzoldt. Paragraph 29, Vol. II, of his Einführung, is termed: “The Tendency to Uniformity in the Domain of Epistemology. The Postulate of the Unique Determination of Everything that Occurs.” And here are some samples of his arguments: “. . . Only in unity is that natural end reached, further than which no reflection can go and in which reason, if it takes into consideration all the facts of the given domain, can reach quiescence . . . (p. 79). It is beyond doubt that nature does not altogether correspond to the demand for unity, but it is also beyond doubt that in many cases, as our investigations show, it does satisfy the demand for quiescence and we must suppose that, in all probability, nature will satisfy this demand in the future, too. Therefore it will be more correct to characterise the mental state as a tendency toward a state of stability than as a tendency toward unity. . . . The principle of the state of stability goes farther and deeper. . . . Haeckel’s proposition to put the kingdom of the protista alongside of the vegetable and animal kingdom, is inadequate, for it creates two new difficulties in place of the previous one: formerly the boundary between the vegetables and animals was doubtful; now it becomes also impossible to distinguish the protista from vegetables and animals. . . . Evidently such a situation is not final. Such an ambiguity of concepts must in one way or another be eliminated through the agreement of specialists and by the decision of a majority of votes, even if there are no other means” (p. 81).

Have we not had enough of it? It is evident that the empirio-criticist Petzoldt is by no means better than Dühring. But we must be just even to an opponent. Petzoldt has sufficient scientific integrity to reject materialism unflinchingly in all of his works. He does not humiliate himself to the extent of simulating materialism and declaring the most elementary distinction between the fundamental philosophic tendencies “unclear.”

Having recognised the existence of objective reality, that is, of moving matter, independently of our mind, materialism must also inevitably recognise the objective reality of space and time,—distinct, first of all, from Kantianism which, in this question, takes sides with idealism, and regards time and space, not as objective realities, but as forms of human understanding. The radical difference between the two fundamental philosophic doctrines on this question is recognised very clearly by the writers of various tendencies, even by those who are only partially consistent thinkers. Let us begin with the materialists.

“Space and time,” says Feuerbach, “are not simple forms of phenomena but essential conditions [Wesenbedingungen] . . . of existence.” Regarding the world which we perceive by means of sensations as objective reality, Feuerbach naturally also rejects the phenomenalist (as Mach would dub it) or the agnostic (as Engels puts it) conception of space and time. Just as things or bodies are not mere appearances, not complexes of sensations, but objective realities which act on our senses, so space and time are not mere forms of appearances, but objectively real forms of being. There is nothing in the world but matter in motion, and matter cannot move save in space and time. Human conceptions of space and time are relative, but on the basis of these relative conceptions we arrive at absolute truth. These relative conceptions in their development follow the line of absolute truth and continually approach it. The mutability of human ideas in regard to space and time no more refutes the objective reality of either than the mutability of scientific knowledge concerning the structure and forms of matter in motion refutes the objective reality of the outer world.

Engels, unmasking the inconsistent and muddled materialist Dühring, finds him speaking of the change in the conception of time (which is a real problem for some philosophers of importance)—and evading a direct answer to the question whether or not space and time are real or ideal. Are our relative conceptions of space and time approximations to real forms of being? Or are these only products of the developing, organising and harmonising human mind? This and this only is the fundamental problem of the theory of knowledge on which the fundamental philosophic schools divide. Says Engels in Anti-Dühring: “We have nothing to do with the transformation which goes on in the brain of Herr Dühring. We are not speaking of a concept of time, but of actual time, of which Herr Dühring cannot so easily dispose [that is, by the use of such phrases as the mutability of our conceptions]” (p. 77).

It would seem that this is sufficiently clear for even the Yushkeviches to grasp the heart of the question! Engels contrasts Dühring’s position with the one generally accepted as obvious by every materialist, namely, that time is objectively real, saying that one cannot rid himself of the necessity of directly affirming or denying this proposition merely by arguing about our ideas of space and time. The point is not that Engels belittles the need and scientific significance of investigations of change and of the development of our conceptions of space and time, but he denies that with considerations such as these we consistently solve the epistemological problem of the source and significance of human knowledge in general. A somewhat intelligent philosophic idealist—and Engels, in speaking of the idealists, has in mind the great consistent idealists of classic philosophy—would easily admit the natural development of our conceptions of space and time. He would not cease to be an idealist in thinking, for example, that our naturally developed ideas of space and time approach some absolute idea or other, etc. It is impossible to hold consistently a point of view in philosophy which is inimical to fideism and idealism, if we do not definitely and straightforwardly recognise that our conceptions of time and space as they develop reflect the objectively existing real time and space; that they approach, as our ideas do in general, objective truth.

“The fundamental forms of all being,” Engels teaches Dühring, “are space and time; being outside of time is just as much of an absurdity as being outside of space.”

Why does Engels, in the first half of the quotation, almost literally repeat Feuerbach, and in the second, recall the struggle in which Feuerbach was the successful leader against the great absurdities of theism? Because Dühring, as can be seen from the same chapter in Engels, cannot make the ends of his philosophy meet without referring either to the “final cause” of the world, or to the “efficient cause” (another expression for “God,” says Engels). Dühring, desirous of being a materialist and an atheist no less than our Machians desire to be Marxians, cannot consistently adhere to the point of view which would undermine the idealist and fideist absurdity. Not recognising, at least not clearly and straightforwardly (for he strayed from this question and muddled it), the objective reality of space and time, Dühring inevitably rolls down the inclined plane to “final causes” and “efficient causes,” for he deprives himself of the objective criterion which prevents one from going beyond the bounds of time and space. If time and space are only man’s ideas and have been created by him, he has a right to go beyond their bounds just as the bourgeois professors have a right to receive their salaries from reactionary governments for defending the validity of this transcendence, for directly or indirectly defending the medieval “absurdity.” Engels showed Dühring that the denial of the objective reality of space and time is theoretically philosophic confusion, and practically a capitulation to or helplessness before fideism.

What does “recent positivism” teach us on this subject? Mach writes the following: “Space and time are well-ordered systems of series of sensations.” This is a palpable confusion, inevitably resulting from the doctrine that bodies are complexes of sensations. According to Mach it is not man with his sensations that exists in space and time, but space and time which exist in man which depend upon him and are generated by him. He feels that he is relapsing into idealism and “resists,” by offering a number of excuses and burying the question in long disquisitions (especially in Erkenntnis und Irrtum) on the mutability and relativity of our conceptions of space and time. But this does not and cannot save him, for one can really overcome the idealist position on this question only by recognising the objective reality of space and time. But Mach does not wish to do this at all. He constructs his epistemological theory of space and time on the principle of relativism alone. Such construction, in the very nature of the case, cannot but lead to subjective idealism; this we have made clear in speaking of absolute and relative truth.

Opposing the idealist inferences which inevitably follow from his theses, Mach argues against Kant, insisting on the empirical origin of our concepts of space. But if, as Mach teaches, objective reality is not given us in experience, then such a retort to Kant does not in the least destroy the general position of agnosticism either in Kant or in Mach. If our conception of space is taken from experience and is not a reflection of objective reality outside of us, then the theory of Mach remains idealistic. The existence of nature in time which is measured in millions of years prior to the appearance of man, shows how absurd this idealist theory is.

“In the physiological relation,” writes Mach, “time and space are sensations of orientation which together with sense perceptions determine the release (Auslösung) of biologically purposeful reactions of adaptation. In the physical relation, space and time are interdependences of physical elements” (ibid., p. 434).

The relativist Mach confines himself to an examination of the concept of time in its various aspects! And he trifles with it just as Dühring does. If elements are “sensations” then the dependence of physical elements upon each other could not have existed either independently of man or before the emergence of organic matter. If the sensations of time and space can give man a biological orientation, it is only in virtue of the fact that these sensations reflect the objective reality outside of man. Man would never have adapted himself to his environment, if his sensations had not given him an objective representation of it. The doctrine of space and time is inseparably connected with the solution of the fundamental question of the theory of knowledge: are our sensations copies of bodies and things, or are bodies complexes of our sensations? Mach vacillates between both positions.

In modern physics, he says, Newton’s views of absolute space and time prevail (pp. 442-444). These views seem senseless, says Mach, without even paying his respects to the materialists and their theory of knowledge. But in practice, he claims, this view was harmless and was therefore not criticised for a long time (p. 442).

This naive remark about the harmlessness of the materialist view betrays Mach. In the first place, it is not true that the idealists did not criticise this view for a “long time.” Mach simply ignores the struggle between the idealist and materialist theories of knowledge on this question; he evades the exposition of these views. In the second place, by recognising “the harmlessness” of the materialist views which he opposes, Mach recognises their correctness; for if they were incorrect how could their effects be harmless for a period of centuries? What became of the criterion of practice with which Mach attempted to flirt? The materialist view of the objectivity of space and time is harmless only because natural science does not transcend the bounds of space and time, or the material world, leaving this occupation to the professors of reactionary philosophy. Such “harmlessness” is the equivalent of correctness.

Mach’s idealist view of space and time is “harmful” because it opens the door to fideism and tempts Mach himself to draw reactionary conclusions. In 1872, for instance, he wrote that it is not necessary to conceive of chemical elements in three-dimensional space. To do this would be “to impose upon ourselves unnecessary restriction. There is no more necessity to think of what is merely a product of thought spatially, that is to say, with the relation of visible and tangible, than there is to think of these things in a definite position in the scale of tones” (p. 51). “Perhaps the reason why hitherto people have not succeeded in establishing a satisfactory theory of electricity, is because they wished to explain electrical phenomena by means of molecular events in a space of three dimensions” (p. 54).

The argument from the standpoint of the straightforward and unmuddled Machism, which was openly defended by Mach in 1872, is indisputable: if molecules, atoms, in a word, chemical elements cannot be perceived, they are “only mental things” (das bloss gedachte). And if time and space have no objective reality, then it is obvious that we must not think of the molecules as occupying any space. Let physics and chemistry “limit themselves” to three-dimensional space in which matter moves; for the explanation of electricity, however, we may seek its elements in a space which is not three-dimensional!

That our Machians make an attempt to get around this Machian absurdity, though Mach himself repeats it in 1906, is evident, for unless they did, they would have to put the question point blank concerning idealist and materialist views of space, without any evasion or effort to “reconcile” these contrary positions. As a matter of fact, in the ’seventies when Mach was not yet known, and when he met with refusals from “orthodox physicists” who would not publish his articles, one of the chiefs of the immanentist school, Anton Von Leclair, took this argument of Mach as a complete renunciation of materialism and as a confession of idealism! For at that time Leclair had not yet invented, or borrowed from Schuppe, Schubert-Soldern or Rehmke, the “new” sobriquet of “immanentist,” but called himself critical idealist. This outspoken defender of theism who openly preached the doctrine in his philosophic works, immediately declared Mach a great philosopher, a “revolutionary in the best sense of the word” (p. 252), and he was absolutely right. The discussions of Mach show that he abandoned science for theism. Science both in 1872 and in 1906 was seeking and discovering—at least it was feeling its way—the atom of electricity,—the electron in three-dimensional space. Natural science does not doubt that the substance under investigation exists in three-dimensional space, and, hence, that its particles also, though they are so small that we cannot see them, nevertheless must exist in the same three-dimensional space. Since 1872, in three decades of stupendous success in investigating the structure of matter, the materialist view of space and time has remained “harmless,” i. e., compatible, as heretofore, with natural science. The contrary view of Mach et al. was a “harmful” capitulation of the position of science to theism.

In his Science of Mechanics, Mach defends the mathematicians who are studying the problems of imaginary space of N dimensions, against those who are accusing them of drawing “monstrous” conclusions from their investigations. The defence is undoubtedly just, but look at the epistemological position which Mach takes in his defence. The most recent mathematical study, says Mach, asks a very important and useful question about N dimensions, imaginary space, but “in actuality” there remains only space of three dimensions. Many theologians, therefore, who feel uneasy as to where hell should be placed, as well as the spiritualists, desire to make use of the fourth dimension.

Mach refuses the company of the theologians and the spiritualists—very good! But how does he separate himself from them in his theory of knowledge? With the argument that only three-dimensional space is real! But what sort of defence against the theologians and their kind is the previous denial of the objectivity of space and time? You surreptitiously borrow from the materialists when you wish to separate yourself from the spiritualists. For the materialists, recognising the actual world, i. e., matter, which is perceived by us as the objective reality, have a right to infer that no spectral human phantasm is real for any purpose whatsoever, so long as it is beyond time and space. But the Machians, although combating materialism and denying the objective existence of the world, secretly introduce it in their struggle with idealism, a doctrine which is consistent and fearless to the end. If in the relativistic conception of space and time there is nothing except the relative, if there is no objective reality independent of mankind, why should the majority of mankind not have a right to entertain conceptions of beings outside of space and time? If Mach has a right to seek atoms of electricity, or atoms in general, outside of three-dimensional space, then why should the majority of mankind not have a right to seek atoms or the foundations of morals outside of three-dimensional space?

“There has never yet been an accoucheur who has helped a delivery by means of the fourth dimension,” says Mach.

Indeed, an excellent argument but only for those for whom the criterion of practice is a confirmation of the objective truth and reality of our perceptual world. If our sensation give us an objectively true copy of the world existing outside of us, then the validity of the argument based upon the accoucheur and upon human practice holds good. But if so Machism, as a philosophic doctrine, is of no use at all.

“I do not anticipate,” he continues, referring to his work of 1872, “that any one will defend ghost-stories (die Kosten einer Spukgeschichte bestreiten) with the help of what I have said and written on this question.”

So you did not anticipate the statement that Napoleon did not die on May 5, 1821. You did not anticipate that Machism will be used in the service of ghost-stories when it has already served and still continues to serve the immanentist school.

But not only the immanentist school, as we shall see below. Philosophic idealism itself is only a thinly disguised ghost-story. Look at the French and English representatives of empirio-criticism, so much less pretentious than the German representatives of this philosophic school. Poincaré says that the concepts of time and space are relative and that, consequently (for non-materialists it is indeed “consequently”) nature does not give them to us but we, finding them convenient, give them to nature. Does this not justify the exultation of the German Kantians? Does this not confirm Engels’ statement that a consistent philosophic doctrine should take either nature or human reason as primary?

The views of Karl Pearson are quite definite. He says: “Of time as of space we cannot assert a real existence; it is not in things but in our mode of perceiving them” (loc. cit., p. 184). This is idealism, pure and simple. “Like space, it appears to us as one of the plans on which that great sorting-machine, the human perceptive faculty, arranges its material” (ibid). Pearson’s conclusion, usually expounded in clear and precise propositions, is this: “Space and time are not realities of the phenomenal world, but the modes under which we perceive things. They are not infinitely large nor infinitely divisible, but are essentially limited by the contents of our perception” (p. 191).

This conscientious and honest enemy of materialism, with whom, to repeat, Mach often expresses his complete solidarity and who in turn outspokenly expresses his solidarity with Mach, does not invent a special label for his philosophy. Without the slightest evasion, he mentions the classic names of Hume and Kant, to whom he traces his philosophic genealogy (p. 192)!

And if in Russia, naive people can be found who believe that Machism gave a “new” interpretation of space and time, then at least in relevant English literature, scientists, on the one hand, and idealists, on the other, at once took a definite position toward Pearson. For example, here is the opinion of Lloyd Morgan, the biologist: “Physics as such accepts the phenomenal world as external to, and for its purposes independent of, the mind of the investigator. He [Professor Pearson] is forced to go to a position which is largely idealistic. . . Physics, as a science, is wise, I take it, in dealing with space and time in frankly objective terms, and I think the biologist may still discuss the distribution of organisms of space and the geologist their distribution in time, without pausing to remind their readers that after all they are only dealing with sense-impressions and stored sense-impressions and certain forms of perceptions. . . . All this may be true enough, but it is out of place either in physics or biology” (p. 304). Lloyd Morgan is the representative of that agnosticism which Engels calls “shamefaced materialism,” and however “irreconcilable” the divergent tendencies of such a philosophy are, nevertheless it holds that it is impossible to reconcile Pearson’s views with science. With Pearson “at first the mind is in space, and afterwards, space in the mind,” says another critic. “There can be no doubt,” remarked a defender of Pearson, “that the doctrine as to the nature of space and time which is associated with the name of Kant is the most important addition which has been made to the idealistic theory of human knowledge since the days of Bishop Berkeley, and it is one of the noteworthy features of the Grammar of Science that here, perhaps for the first time in the writings of English men of science, we find at once a full recognition of the general truth of Kant’s doctrine, a short but clear exposition of it. . . .”

Thus in England, neither for the Machians themselves, nor for their naturalistic adversaries, nor for their adherents among the expert in philosophy is there any shadow of doubt concerning the idealist character of Mach’s views on the subject of space and time. Only a few Russian writers, desirous of being Marxists, “have not noticed” it. “Many of Engels’ single views,” Bazarov writes in the Outlines (p. 67), “as for example, his conception of ‘pure’ time and space, are now antiquated.”

Yes, indeed! The views of the materialist Engels have become antiquated, but the views of the idealist Pearson and the muddled idealist Mach are modern! The most curious thing about it is that Bazarov does not even doubt that Engels’ views of space and time, which turn upon the question of their objective reality, belong to those “single views” which he regards as antiquated in contradistinction to Engels’ “starting point.” Here is an example of that miserable hodge-podge to which Engels had already referred when he spoke of the German philosophy of the eighties. To contrast the “starting point” of the materialist doctrine of Marx and Engels with any of their “single views” of the objectivity of space and time, is as absurd as to contrast the “starting point” of the theory of Marx with his “single view” of surplus value. To separate the doctrine of Engels of the objectivity of time and space, from his doctrine of the transformation of “things-in-themselves” into “things-for-us,” to separate it from his views of objective and absolute truth, i. e., of an objective reality experienced through perception, to separate it from his recognition of objectivity of the laws of nature, causality and necessity,—is to reduce an entire philosophy into one of its single fragments. Bazarov became confused, as did all the Machians, about the mutability of human conceptions as regards space and time. He confused their exclusively relative character with the absolute truth that man and nature exist only in space and time.

He fails to see that the non-spatial and non-temporal beings which are invented by the clergy and are given credence by the ignorant fancy of the downtrodden masses, are products of a diseased mind, artful deceptions of philosophical idealism,—bad products of a bad social order. The scientific doctrine of the structure of substance, the chemical composition of food, and the electron may become antiquated with time; but the truth that man is unable to subsist on thoughts and beget children by platonic love alone can never become antiquated! And a philosophy which denies the objectivity of time and space is just as absurd, just as essentially foul and false as one which denies these several truths. The cunning of the idealists and the agnostics is on the whole as hypocritical as the sermons on platonic love by the Pharisees!

To illustrate the distinction between the relativity of our ideas of time and space and the absolute truth that everything must exist in space and time, I shall adduce a characteristic quotation from a very old and very pure “empirio-criticist,” namely, the Humean, Schulze-Aenesidemus, who wrote in 1792:

“If we infer ‘things outside of us’ from the presentations within us, then space and time would prove to be something real, actually existing independently of us, for we can think of bodies only in existing space and of changes only in existing time” (p. 100).

Exactly so! Rejecting materialism and the least concession to it, this follower of Hume in 1792 describes the relation between the question of space and time and the question of an objectively existing reality just as Engels describes it in 1894 (the last preface to Anti-Dühring is dated May 23, 1894). This does not mean that in the course of time our conceptions of space and time do not change, that new material is not added in this evolution, material to which both Voroshilov-Chernov and Voroshilov-Valentinov point in order to refute Engels. That means that the relations of materialism and agnosticism can not change, despite the “new” names with which our Machians like to parade. Bogdanov contributes nothing but “new” names to the old philosophy of idealism and agnosticism. When he repeats the arguments of Hering and Mach concerning the difference between physiological and geometric space, or between perceptual and conceptual space, he merely repeats Dühring’s mistake. One question arises as to how, with the help of various sense organs, does man perceive space, and how, through the processes of historical development we arrive at abstract ideas of space. Another question arises as to whether these percepts and concepts correspond to an objective reality existing independently of mankind. Bogdanov does not “notice” this last question (although it is the only philosophic one at issue) under the mass of detailed investigations with which it is overlaid. He can not, therefore, clearly contrast the materialism of Engels with the confusion of Mach.

Time and space are “forms of social agreement of the experiences of different people” (ibid., p. 34); their objectivity is their “universality of meaning.”

This is an absolute falsehood. Religion also has a universal meaning, for it expresses the social agreement of experience of the majority of mankind. But the teaching of religion, for example, concerning the past of our earth and the creation of the world does not correspond with the objective reality. That the earth existed before any “sociability,” before man, before organic matter, that it has existed for a certain time, and in a certain space—to this teaching, though it is as relative at every step in the evolution of science as is each step in the evolution of religion, there does correspond an objective reality. For Bogdanov it would appear that the various forms of space and time adapt themselves to human experience and cognitive capacity. In fact just the reverse is true: our “experience” and our cognitions adapt themselves more and more to objective space and time, continually reflecting them with greater and greater accuracy.

On pages 140 and 141 of the Outlines, Lunacharsky cites from Anti-Dühring Engels’ argument on the question of freedom and necessity, and agrees with his “remarkably precise and well-aimed” characterisation of the problem on the corresponding “wonderful page” of that work.

There is, indeed, much that is “remarkable” in it. But it is even still more “remarkable” that neither Lunacharsky nor the other set of Machians, who desire to be Marxists, “have noticed” the epistemological significance of Engels’ discussion of freedom and necessity. Of course they read and copied it, but they did not understand what they were doing.

Engels says: “Hegel was the first man to give a proper explanation of the relation of freedom and necessity. In his eyes freedom is the recognition of necessity. ‘Necessity is blind only in so far as it is not understood.’ Freedom does not consist in an imaginary independence of natural laws but in a knowledge of these laws and in the possibility thence derived of applying them intelligently to given ends. This is true both as regards nature and as regards those forces which control the spiritual and physical existence of man himself—two classes of laws which we can distinguish as an abstraction, but cannot separate in reality. Freedom of the will consists in nothing but the ability to come to a decision when one is in possession of a knowledge of the facts. The freer the judgment of a man then in relation to a given subject of discussion, the more necessary is it that he arrive at a positive decision. . . . Freedom, therefore, consists in a mastery over ourselves and external nature founded upon the knowledge of the necessities of nature.” Let us examine the epistemologic propositions upon which this argument is based.

First, Engels recognises, at the very beginning of his discourse, the laws of nature, the laws of external nature, and the necessity of nature,—all that which Mach, Avenarius, Petzoldt, et al., declared to be “metaphysics.” If Lunacharsky had pondered over Engels’ “wonderful” argument, he would have seen the fundamental difference between the materialist theory of knowledge and that of agnosticism and idealism, which deny the uniformity of nature, declaring it to be only “logical,” etc., etc.

Second, Engels does not engage in sham “definitions” of freedom and necessity, those scholastic definitions which more than anything else engage the attention of the reactionary philosophers, as Avenarius, for example, and his pupil Bogdanov. Engels starts with the knowledge and volition of man—on one side, and the necessity of nature on the other—and instead of giving definitions, merely says that the necessity of nature is primary, and that of human volition and consciousness, secondary. The latter must operate in conformity with the former. Engels considers this to be so obvious that he does not waste words over it. Only the Russian Machians complain of Engels’ general definition of materialism that nature is the prius and consciousness the derived (remember Bogdanov’s “perplexity” at that!). And yet at the same time they find one of Engels’ partial applications of this general and fundamental definitions “remarkably well-aimed!”

Third, Engels does not doubt the existence of “blind necessity.” He recognises the existence of a necessity which is not known to man. This is obvious in the passage which we have quoted. Yet from the standpoint of the Machians it follows that man cannot know of the existence of that which he has no knowledge of. To have knowledge of the existence of “unknown necessity”—is this not “mysticism,” “metaphysics,” recognition of “fetishes” and “idols”—is it not the “Kantian unknowable thing-in-itself”? Had the Machians given the matter a little more thought, they would not have failed to notice the complete similarity of Engels’ argument concerning knowledge of the objectivity of nature and the transformation of things-in-themselves into things-for-us, on the one hand, and his argument concerning blind necessity, on the other. The development of consciousness in each individual and the development of the collective knowledge of humanity at large shows us at each step the transformation of the unknown “thing-in-itself” into the known “thing-for-us,” the transformation of blind, unknown necessity, “necessity-in-itself,” into “necessity known to us.” Epistemologically there is no difference between one transformation and the other, for their basic viewpoint is materialistic, i. e., the recognition of the objective reality of the external world and of the laws of nature. The world and its laws are absolutely knowable to man, but they can never be completely known. We do not know natural necessity in the phenomena of the weather, and to that extent we are slaves of the weather. Nevertheless without knowledge of this necessity, we know that it exists. Whence this knowledge? Whence the knowledge that things exist outside of knowledge and independent of it? Only from the historical development of our knowledge in the course of which every man has learned millions of times that his ignorance gives way to knowledge when an object acts on his sense-organs and vice versa: that knowledge becomes ignorance when the possibility of such action is eliminated.

Fourth, in the above-mentioned argument Engels palpably applies the “salto-vitale” method in philosophy, that is, he makes a leap from theory to practice. None of those learnedly stupid professors of philosophy, in whose footsteps our Machians follow, ever permit themselves to make leaps which are unbecoming to representatives of “pure science.” For them the theory of knowledge is one thing, for which they must invent some cunning “definition,” and practice another. For Engels the whole of human practice is part of the theory of knowledge thus giving an objective criterion of truth. Until we acquire knowledge of the laws of nature, which exist and act independently of our mind, we are slaves of “blind necessity.” When we acquire knowledge of laws which act—as Marx repeated a thousand times—independently of our volition and our consciousness, we acquire mastery of nature. The domination over nature, which manifests itself in human practice, is a result of an accurate objective “reflection” within the mind of man, of the phenomena of nature, and is proof that this “reflection” within the bounds of practice expresses an objective, absolute, and eternal truth.

What is the upshot of this discussion? Each step of Engels’ argument, literally each phrase, each proposition, is constructed wholly on the basic theory of knowledge of dialectic materialism, of propositions which stand out in contrast with the absurdity of Mach, who regards bodies as complexes of sensations or “elements” and for whom perceptions and reality are identical. Without any feeling of shame, the Machians give vent—in the manner of Berman—to vulgar remarks about dialectical materialism. They take all their philosophy from an eclectic mess of porridge and treat the reader to it. They take a little from agnosticism, a little from idealism and a little from Mach, combine them with a little from the dialectical materialism of Marx, and call this mixture an improvement upon Marxism. They imagine that if Mach, Avenarius, Petzoldt, et al., whom they consider authorities, had not the slightest conception of how Hegel and Marx solved the question of freedom and necessity, it was sheerly through accident. They simply failed to read through a page here and there. They do not know that in reality these “authorities” were and still are ignoramuses, in regard to the real progress of philosophy in the nineteenth century; they do not seem to be aware that their “authorities” are simply philosophical obscurantists.

Here is the argument of one such obscurantist, namely, the professor of philosophy at the University of Vienna, Ernst Mach: “The truth of the position of determinism or indeterminism cannot definitely be established. Only a completed science or a science which would prove to be impossible could determine this question. It is a question of the presuppositions which we bring to the examination of things, depending upon whether or not we ascribe to former successes or failures of investigations a more or less subjective weight. But at the moment of investigation each thinker is of necessity a theoretical determinist.”

Is not this careful separation of pure theory from practice—obscurantism, especially since determinism is confined to the domain of “investigation,” while in the domain of morality, social activity, and all other fields which exclude “investigation,” the question is left to a “subjective estimate”? In my workroom, says the pedant, I am a determinist. But that the philosopher should think of the whole, should embrace both theory and practice under a deterministic Weltanschauung, that is altogether out of the question. Mach utters banalities because theoretically he is not at all clear on the question of freedom and necessity. “. . . Each new discovery discloses the limitations of our knowledge, reveals the remainder of the functional dependencies which were not noticed before . . .” (p. 283).

Is this “remainder” the “thing-in-itself” into which our knowledge penetrates deeper and deeper? Not at all: “Thus the one who in theory defends extreme determinism, must in practice remain an indeterminist . . .” (p. 283). Well, here they shared things peacefully—theory to the professors, practice to the theologians! Or in theory, objectivism, “shamefaced” materialism, in practice the “subjective method in sociology”. No wonder that the Russian ideologists of Philistinism, from Lessevich to Chernov, voiced their sympathy with this vulgar philosophy. And it is a sad fact that people who wish to be Marxists are led into this fallacy, bashfully hiding the more conspicuous follies of Mach.

But on the question of freedom of the will, confusion and partial agnosticism are not sufficient for Mach; he goes much further. “Our sensation of hunger,” we read in The Science of Mechanics, “is not so essentially different from the tendency of sulphuric acid for zinc, and our will is not so greatly different from the pressure of the stone as it appears. . . . Thus we feel ourselves nearer nature [that is, if we hold such a view] without it being necessary that we should resolve ourselves into a nebulous and mystical mass of molecules, or make nature a haunt of hobgoblins” (ibid.). Thus we have no need of materialism (“nebulous atoms” or electrons, the recognition of the objectivity of the world), we have no need even of an idealism which would recognise the world as “the otherness” of spirit; but the possibility of an idealism which recognizes the world as will is granted by them. We do not only refuse to deal with materialism but also with the idealism of “a” Hegel, yet we do not mind stooping to flirt with an idealism in the spirit of Schopenhauer! Our Machians, who put on an innocent air when even mention is made of the kinship of Mach to philosophic idealism, prefer here also to keep silent about this delicate question. Yet it is hard to meet an exposition of the views of Mach in philosophic literature which does not mention his inclinations towards the Willensmetaphysik, that is, towards a voluntaristic idealism. Baumann points this out, and Kleinpeter, the Machian, does not in his rejoinder take exception to this point, but declares that Mach is, of course, “nearer to Kant and Berkeley than to the prevailing metaphysical empiricism in science,” (i. e., instinctive materialism, ibid., Vol. 6, p. 87). Becher, too, points to this, remarking that if Mach in certain places adopts a voluntaristic metaphysics, and in others renounces it, it shows the looseness of his terminology. In fact Mach’s kinship to the metaphysics of voluntarism is beyond doubt. Even Lucka admits the admixture of this metaphysics of idealism with “phenomenalism,” or agnosticism. Wundt also points it out. That Mach is a phenomenalist who is “not a stranger to voluntaristic idealism” is attested in Ueberweg-Heinze’s textbook of the history of modern philosophy.

In short, the eclecticism of Mach and his pronounced bent towards idealism is clear to everyone, save the Russian Machians.