IV. The Philosophic Idealists as Associates and Successors of Empirio-Criticists

We have been examining empirio-criticism as such. We must now examine it in its historical development, in its connection and correlation with other philosophic tendencies. First comes the question of the relation of Mach and Avenarius to Kant.

Both Mach and Avenarius came to the fore in the seventies when, in German professorial circles, the fashionable slogan “Back to Kant” had been proclaimed. In their philosophic development both founders of empirio-criticism took their starting point from Kant. “His [Kant’s] critical idealism was, I recognise with the greatest gratitude, the starting point of all my critical thought; but it was impossible for me to retain my allegiance to it. I very soon began to gravitate again towards the views of Berkeley, which are contained, in a more or less latent form, in Kant’s writings. By studying the physiology of the senses, and by reading Herbart, I then arrived at views akin to those of Hume, though at that time I was still unacquainted with Hume himself. To this very day I cannot help regarding Berkeley and Hume as far more logically consistent thinkers than Kant.”

As we see, Mach very definitely acknowledges that, having begun with Kant, he soon followed Berkeley and Hume. Let us turn to Avenarius.

In the preface to his Prolegomena, etc. (1876), Avenarius remarks that the words Kritik der reinen Erfahrung indicate both his relation to Kant’s Kritik der reinen Vernunft and his “antagonistic attitude” towards him (p. iv). In what does his antagonism to Kant consist? Kant, in Avenarius’ opinion, had not sufficiently “purged experience.” This “purging” of experience engages Avenarius’ attention in his Prolegomena (§ 56, p. 72ff). Of what does Avenarius “purge” the Kantian doctrine? In the first place, of apriorism. He says: “The question as to whether we should eliminate from experience the a priori conceptions of reason on the grounds that they are superfluous, and instead start with pure experience is, as far as I know, put here for the first time.” We have seen that Avenarius has already “purged” Kantianism of the recognition of necessity and causality.

Secondly, he purges Kantianism of its admission of substance (§ 95) i. e. of the thing-in-itself, which, in Avenarius’ opinion, “is not given in the stuff of actual experience but is imported into it by reflection.”

We shall soon see that Avenarius’ confession of his philosophic point of departure is in full accord with that of Mach and differs only in the pretentiousness of its presentation. But we must first note that Avenarius is telling an untruth that in 1876, for the first time, he put the question of “purging experience,” that is, of clearing the Kantian doctrine of its apriorism and its recognition of the thing-in-itself. In fact, the development of German classic philosophy after Kant resulted in a criticism of Kantianism which is exactly in the same direction which Avenarius himself took. This tendency in German classic philosophy is represented by Schulze-Aenesidemus, an adherent of Humean agnosticism, and Fichte, an adherent of Berkeleianism. In 1792 Schulze-Aenesidemus criticised Kant for the recognition of apriorism (loc. cit., pp. 56, 141 ff) and the existence of the thing-in-itself. We sceptics or adherents of Hume, said Schulze, entirely deny the existence of the thing-in-itself, supposedly lying beyond “the bounds of all possible experience” (p. 57). We deny objective knowledge (p. 25), and we deny that space and time exist outside of us (p. 100); we deny the presence of necessity in our experience (p. 112), of causality, force, etc. (p. 113). We ought not attribute to these conceptions any “reality outside of our representations” (p. 114). Kant “dogmatically” proves the presence of apriority, by saying that “if we cannot think any differently than we do there are, therefore, a priori laws of thought.” “This method of reasoning,” Schulze insists, “was utilised in philosophy long ago, to prove the objective nature of that which lies beyond our conceptions” (p. 141). So arguing we may attribute causality to the thing-in-itself (p. 142). “Experience never tells us (wir erfahren niemals) that the action of objects produce impressions within us,” and Kant did not in the least prove that “the something which lies beyond our reason must be regarded as the thing-in-itself as distinct from our sensation or feeling (Gemüt). Sensations may be thought of as the sole basis of our knowledge” (p. 265). The Kantian critique of pure reason “bases its argument on the proposition that every cognition begins with the action of objective things on our nature [Gemüt], but it subsequently calls into question the veracity of this proposition” and the reality of its subject (p. 266). Kant in no way refutes Berkeley (pp. 268-272).

It is evident from this that Schulze rejects the doctrine of Kant—rejects the “dogmatic” assertion that we experience objective reality, that our presentations are caused by the action of independently existing objects upon our sense-organs—and therefore regards the thing-in-itself as an inconsistent concession to materialism. The agnostic Schulze reproaches the agnostic Kant for the latter’s recognition of the thing-in-itself,—a recognition which is incompatible with agnosticism and ultimately leads to materialism. In the same fashion, but much more vigorously, Kant is criticised by the subjective idealist, Fichte, who maintains that Kant’s recognition of the thing-in-itself as independent of the self is tantamount to “realism” and that Kant makes no clear distinction between “realism” and “idealism.” Fichte sees the most incongruous inconsistency in the admission on the part of Kant and his followers that the thing-in-itself is the “basis of objective reality” (p. 480) for this leads to a contradiction within “critical idealism.” “With you it seems,” says Fichte of the realist commentators upon Kant, “that the earth rests on the whale, and the whale rests on the earth. Your thing-in-itself, which is only thought, in turn acts on the Self” (p. 483).

Avenarius had made a great mistake in imagining that he “purged experience” of Kant’s thing-in-itself and apriorism “for the first time” and that he gave rise to a “new” movement in philosophy. In reality he merely followed along the old lines of Hume, Berkeley, Schulze-Aenesidemus and Fichte. Avenarius imagines that he has “purified experience” in general. In reality he has only purged Kantianism of agnosticism. He does not combat the agnosticism of Kant (agnosticism is a denial of objective reality of that which is given in sensation), but he strives to attain a purer agnosticism, making all efforts to eliminate Kant’s inconsistent recognition of a thing-in-itself, which is unknowable, noumenal and otherworldly; contesting the existence even of an a priori necessity and causality, which Kant held was given to us by our understanding and not derived from objective reality. He attacks Kant not from the left, as the materialists do, but from the right in the manner of the sceptics and idealists. Avenarius imagines that he is making progress, when in reality he is only returning to the program of the old critical attack upon Kant. Kuno Fischer, speaking of Schulze-Aenesidemus, well characterised his standpoint in the following words: “The Critique of Pure Reason with pure reason [apriorism] left out, is scepticism. The Critique of Pure Reason, with the thing-in-itself left out, is Berkeleian idealism.”

We now approach one of the most curious episodes of Machism, that is, the campaign of the Russian Machians against Engels and Marx. The latest discovery by Bogdanov, Yushkevich and Valentinov, which they so loudly proclaim, is of Plekhanov’s “luckless attempt to reconcile Engels with Kant, the compromise being the barely knowable thing-in-itself” (Outlines, p. 67ff). This discovery of our Machians leads to unheard-of blunders, and betrays a failure to understand Kant and to grasp the sense of the entire development of German classic philosophy.

The principal feature of the philosophy of Kant is an attempted reconciliation of materialism and idealism, a compromise between the claims of both, a fusion of heterogeneous and contrary philosophic tendencies into one system. When Kant admits that something outside of us—a thing-in-itself—corresponds to our perceptions he seems to be a materialist. When he, however, declares this thing-in-itself to be unknowable, transcendent, “trans-intelligible”’—he appears to be an idealist. Regarding experience as the only source of our knowledge, Kant seems to be turning toward sensationalism and by way of sensationalism, under certain special conditions, toward materialism. Recognising the apriority of space, time, and causality, etc., Kant seems to be turning towards idealism. Consistent materialists, and consistent idealists, as well as the “pure” agnostics and Humeans, criticise him for this inconsistency. The materialists accuse him of idealism. They refute the idealistic features of his system, prove the possibility of knowledge, the this-sidedness of the thing-in-itself, the absence of a radical difference between the thing-in-itself and the phenomenon, and insist upon the need of deducing causality and similar concepts not from the a priori laws of reason, but from objective reality. The idealists and the agnostics object to Kant’s “thing-in-itself” as being a concession to materialism, “realism” or naive realism. The agnostics reject not only the thing-in-itself but apriorism as well; while the idealists demand a consistent deduction from pure thought not only of the a priori forms of understanding, but of the world as a whole (which is done by stretching the human understanding until it becomes the “abstract Self,” or “absolute Idea” or “universal Will,” etc.). And here our Machians without being “aware” that they had taken as their teachers men who had criticised Kant from the viewpoint of scepticism and idealism, begin to tear their clothes and to cover their heads with ashes, catching sight of strange people who criticised Kant from a diametrically opposed point of view, who rejected every bit of agnosticism, scepticism, and idealism in his system, who proved that the thing-in-itself is objectively real, absolutely knowable, that it is not otherworldly and does not differ essentially from “appearance,” that the thing-in-itself manifests itself as an “appearance” at each step in the development of the individual and collective consciousness of man—catching sight of such people, they begin to shout: “Help! Help! Here is an illicit product of materialism and Kantianism!”

When I read the assurances of the Machians to the effect that they are more consistent and definite than the obsolete materialists in their criticism of Kant, it seems to me as if a Purishkevich had stepped into our company and shouted, that he criticises the Constitutional-Democrats more consistently and definitely than do the Marxians. No question about it, Mr. Purishkevich, politically consistent people always can and will criticise the Constitutional-Democrats from diametrically opposed points of view, but one must not forget, however, that you criticised them for being too democratic, and we criticised them for not being democratic enough! The Machians criticise Kant for being too much of a materialist and we criticise him for not being more of a materialist. The Machians criticise Kant from the right; we, from the left.

The Humean, Schulze, and the subjective idealist, Fichte, may be taken as examples of “critics of the right” in the history of classic German philosophy. As we have already seen, they try to eliminate the “realistic” elements in Kantianism. Just as Kant himself was criticised by Schulze and Fichte, so are the German Neo-Kantians of the second half of the nineteenth century criticised by Humean empirio-criticists and subjective idealists—immanentists. The same tendency which Hume and Berkeley expressed, appears beneath a somewhat verbally repatched garb. Mach and Avenarius reproach Kant not because his treatment of the thing-in-itself is not sufficiently realistic and materialistic, but because he has admitted its existence altogether. Kant is reproached not for his refusal to derive causality and necessity from objective reality, but because he admits the presence of causality and necessity excepting perhaps “logical” necessity. The immanentists are at one with the empirio-criticists in criticising Kant from the standpoints of Hume and Berkeley. For instance, Leclair in 1879, in the work in which he praised Mach as a remarkable philosopher, reproached Kant for his “inconsistency and connivance with realism,” which expressed itself in the conception of the thing-in-itself,—this “nominal residuum of vulgar realism.”

Leclair speaks of materialism as “vulgar realism,” in an attempt to make his criticism stronger. “According to our opinion,” writes Leclair, “all those parts of the Kantian theory which tend towards vulgar realism should be eliminated from idealism as being an inconsistent and bastard (Zwitterhaft) product” (p. 41). “The inconsistencies and contradictions” in the teaching of Kant arise from a “mixture (Verquickung) of idealistic criticism and the irresolvable remnants of realistic dogmatism” (p. 170). By realistic dogmatism Leclair also means materialism.

Johannes Rehmke, another follower of the immanence school, reproached Kant because he barred himself from Berkeley with the realistic remnant of the thing-in-itself. “The philosophical activity of Kant bore essentially a polemical character: through the thing-in-itself he directed his philosophy against German rationalism [that is, against the old theism of the eighteenth century], and through pure reason against English empiricism” (p. 25). “I would compare the Kantian thing-in-itself with a movable trap placed over a ditch: the thing looks very innocent and secure, but by stepping upon it, you immediately fall into the abyss of the world-in-itself” (p. 27). That is why Kant is not liked by the immanentist associates of Mach and Avenarius. He borders in some respects upon the “abyss” of materialism!

And here are examples of the attack on Kant from the left. Feuerbach reproaches Kant not for his “realism” but for his idealism, characterising his system, as an “idealism erected on the basis of empiricism.”

Here is another important remark of Feuerbach on Kant: “Kant says that if we regard—as we ought—the objects of our perceptions as mere phenomena, we thereby admit that at the bottom of phenomena there are things-in-themselves. Although we do not know their inner construction, we know their phenomena—the manner in which those unknown somethings, affect our senses. Hence, our reason, in admitting the existence of phenomena, also admits the existence of things-in-themselves; and thus we can say that to postulate the existence of entities which are at the bottom of phenomena, which are the cause of sense impressions, is not only permissible but necessary. . . .”

Having selected a passage in Kant where the thing-in-itself is regarded as a mental concept, a psychological essence and not a real thing, Feuerbach directs all his criticism at it. “Therefore,” he says, “the objects of perception, the objects of experience are for the understanding only phenomena, not truth. . . .” The mental impression, as you see, does not represent actual objects for the understanding! The Kantian philosophy is a hopeless confusion between subject and object, essence and existence, thinking and being. The “essence” of anything is given to the understanding, its existence to perception. But existence without essence, the existence of phenomena without objective reality, “is a mere phenomenon, it is a perceptual object; while essence without existence is a purely conceptual essence, a noumenon. We can and ought to think of them, but they lack existence and objectivity,—at least for us. They are things-in-themselves, true things, but they are not real things. . . . What a contradiction, to separate truth from reality, reality from truth!” Feuerbach criticises Kant not for his recognition of the thing-in-itself, but because he does not recognise its actuality, its objective reality, because he regards it as a mere thought, a mental concept, not as a kind of entity which can be predicated upon anything that is real, actual and existing. Feuerbach attacks Kant for his deviation from materialism.

“The Kantian philosophy is contradictory,” Feuerbach wrote to Bolin on March 26, 1858, “it inevitably leads either to Fichtean idealism or to sensationalism.” The first alternative “belongs to the past,” the second to “the present and future.” We have already seen that Feuerbach defends objective sensationalism, i. e., materialism. The new turn from Kant to agnosticism and idealism, to Hume and Berkeley, is undoubtedly reactionary, even from the viewpoint of Feuerbach. And his ardent adherent, Albrecht Rau, who inherited the merits of Feuerbach together with those of his master’s faults which were later rectified by Marx and Engels, criticises Kant wholly in the spirit of his teacher:

“The philosophy of Kant is a profound ambiguity; it is both materialism and idealism, and the key to its essence lies in its dual nature. As a materialist or an empiricist, Kant cannot help recognising the existence of things outside of us; but as an idealist he cannot rid himself of the prejudice that the soul is something totally different from sensible things. There are real things, and the human mind which apprehends those things. How does the mind approach things totally different from itself? This is how Kant evades the difficulty: the mind possesses certain a priori cognitive forms, in virtue of which things must appear as they do. Hence, the fact that we understand things as we do, is due to our own creative power, for the mind which lives in us is part of a divine mind, and just as God created the world out of nothing, so the human mind creates out of certain things, something which they themselves do not possess. Thus Kant guarantees to real things their existence as ‘things-in-themselves.’ The soul is a necessary prerequisite for Kant, for immortality is to him a moral precept. The ‘thing-in-itself,’ gentlemen [says Rau, to the Neo-Kantians in general and the muddle-headed Lange in particular, who falsified the History of Materialism] is what separates the idealism of Kant from the idealism of Berkeley, it spans the gap between materialism and idealism. Such is my criticism of the Kantian philosophy and let those who can reject this criticism. For the materialist the distinction of a priori knowledge from the ‘thing-in-itself’ is absolutely superfluous; nowhere does he break connections in nature, nowhere does he regard matter and mind as basically different things; he regards them only as different sides of the same thing and therefore has no need of the stratagem of making them approach one another.”

Engels himself, as we have seen, criticised Kant for his agnosticism but not for his inconsistent agnosticism. Lafargue, the disciple of Engels, in 1900 argued thus against the Kantians, amongst whom at that time was Charles Rappoport:

“. . . At the beginning of the nineteenth century our bourgeoisie, having completed its task of revolutionary destruction, began to refute the philosophy of Voltaire. Catholicism, which Chateaubriand painted in romantic colours, again became fashionable, and Sebastian Mercier finally imported the idealism of Kant to dispatch the materialism of the Encyclopedists, whose outstanding protagonists had been guillotined by Robespierre.

“At the end of the nineteenth century, which will go down in history as the ‘bourgeois century,’ the intellectuals attempted to crush the materialism of Marx and Engels with the aid of the philosophy of Kant. This reactionary movement started in Germany. I do not mean to offend our socialist integralistes who would like to ascribe all honor to Malon, the founder of their school. But Malon himself is in reality a graduate of the school of Höchberg, Bernstein and the other disciples of Dühring who began to reform Marxism in Zürich. [Lafargue is speaking of the well-known ideological movement in German socialism in the latter seventies.] We must also expect Jaurès, Fournier and our other intellectuals to present us with Kant when they shall have become familiar with his terminology. . . . Rappoport is mistaken when he assures us that for Marx ‘idea and reality are fundamentally identical.’ First of all we never employ such metaphysical phraseology. The idea is as real as the object, of which it is the reflection in the brain. . . . To amuse the comrades who are acquainting themselves with the bourgeois philosophy, I shall expound the substance of this famous problem which obsesses spiritualistic minds.

“The working-man who thrives on sausage and receives five francs a day knows very well that his employer who robs him lives on pork; that the employer is a thief and that sausage is delicious and nourishing to the body. Not at all, says the bourgeois sophist, regardless of whether he is called Pearson, Hume or Kant. The opinion of the worker is his personal, his subjective opinion; he might very well maintain with the same right that his employer is his benefactor and that sausage consists of chopped leather, for he is unable to know the thing-in-itself. . . .

“The question is not well put, and its difficulty lies in this. . . To know the object, the individual must first discover whether his senses deceive him or not. . . . But the chemists, however, go still further,—they penetrate into the heart of objects, analyse them, decompose them into their elements, and then perform the reverse procedure, of recomposing the body from its elements. And from the moment that man is able to produce things from these elements for his own use, he may, as Engels says, assert that he knows things-in-themselves. The Christian God, if he existed and created the world, could do no more.”

We have permitted ourselves to quote this long passage in order to show how Lafargue understands Engels and how he criticises Kant from the left—criticises not those aspects of Kantianism which are different from the philosophy of Hume but those which are common to both Kant and Hume; not for his admission of the thing-in-itself, but for his inadequate materialistic account of it.

And lastly Kautsky, in his Ethics, also criticises Kant from a viewpoint contrary to that of Hume and Berkeley. “My organs of vision have only the function of making me conscious of this difference in a certain form, that of colour. . . . That I see green, red and white, has its ground in my organs of sight. But that the green is different from red, testifies to something that lies outside of me, to a real difference between the things. . . . But the relations and distinctions of the things themselves, which are shown to me by means of the individual space and time concepts . . . are real relations and distinctions of the external world, which are not conditioned by the nature of my faculty of knowledge. . . . Thus if the doctrine of Kant about the ideality of time and space were true, we could know absolutely nothing about the world outside of us, not even that it existed.”

Thus the whole school of Feuerbach, Marx and Engels turns from Kant to the extreme left, and completely rejects all kinds of idealism and agnosticism. But our Machians follow the reactionary trend in philosophy, follow Mach and Avenarius who criticise Kant from the standpoints of Hume and Berkeley. Of course, to espouse a reactionary ideology is within the sacred rights of every citizen and, especially, of every intellectual. But when people, who have severed their relations with the fundamental tenets of the Marxian philosophy, begin to dodge, confuse, evade and go so far as to assure us that they “too” are Marxians in philosophy, that they are “almost” in agreement with Marx and have only “supplemented” him,—such a spectacle is far from agreeable.

“It is ludicrous,” writes Mr. Yushkevich, “to see how out of the agnostic, Comtean and Spencerian positivist, Mikhailovsky, Mr. Chernov wishes to make a precursor of Mach and Avenarius” (loc. cit., p. 73). Ludicrous, above all, is the stupendous ignorance of Mr. Yushkevich. Like all Voroshilovs, he conceals his ignorance with a display of erudite names and words. This citation is from a passage which is supposed to elucidate the relation of Machism to Marxism. And having taken it upon himself to treat of the subject, Mr. Yushkevich does not know that for Engels, as for every materialist, both the adherents of the Humean tendency and the adherents of the Kantian tendency, are equally agnostic. Therefore, to contrast agnosticism with Machism in general, when Mach acknowledges himself to be an adherent of Hume, is to be a philosophic ignoramus. The phrase “agnostic positivism” is also absurd, for the adherents of Hume call themselves positivists. Mr. Yushkevich who has taken Petzoldt as his teacher, must have known that Petzoldt directly links up empirio-criticism with positivism. And finally, the mere mention of the names of Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer is absurd, for Marxism does not reject that which distinguishes one positivist from another, but that which they both have in common, that which makes a philosopher a positivist, instead of a materialist.

This entire jumble of words was necessary to Voroshilov in order to abash the reader, to stun him with the sound of words, to divert his attention from the essence of the matter and direct it to trifles. And the essence of the matter consists in a radical disparity between materialism and the broad movement of positivism, which includes as its representatives—Comte, Spencer, Mikhailovsky, and a host of other Neo-Kantians, together with Mach and Avenarius. The heart of the matter had been fully and definitely expressed by Engels in his Feuerbach, where he puts all the Kantians and Humeans of the eighties, in the same camp as the wretched eclectics, Flohknacker, etc. To whom this characterisation could apply—of this our Voroshilovs could not think. And as they are incapable of doing any thinking, we shall here adduce a comparison that will shed some light on the subject. As a matter of fact Engels, speaking in 1888 and 1891 of the Kantians and Humeans in general, does not mention any names. The only reference made in his book is that of the relation of Starcke to Feuerbach. “Starcke takes great pains to defend Feuerbach against the attacks and doctrines of those college instructors who plume themselves nowadays in Germany upon being philosophers. It is true that this is a matter of importance to those people who take an interest in the degenerate progeny of German classic philosophy; to Starcke himself this might appear necessary. We spare the reader this, however” (Feuerbach, p. 75).

Engels wished to “spare the reader,” that is to spare the social-democrats from making the acquaintance of the degenerate prattlers who call themselves philosophers. Now, who are the representatives of the “degenerate progeny”?

We open Starcke’s book and there we find constant references to the adherents of Hume and Kant. Starcke excludes Feuerbach from the two movements ushered in by these men. Starcke quotes Riehl, Windelband and Lange (pp. 3, 18-19, 127).

We open Avenarius’ Der menschliche Weltbegriff, and we read the following on page 120 of the first edition: “The final result of our analysis is based upon the concurrence—though not in absolute accordance with the differences between the several points of view—with the conclusions which other investigators have reached, for example, Laas, Mach, Riehl, Wundt, and also Schopenhauer.” Whom did our Voroshilov-Yushkevich ridicule?

Avenarius does not at all doubt that in principle he is akin not in respect to detail but in respect to the “final result” of empirio-criticism—to the Kantians, Riehl and Laas, and the idealist Wundt. Mach is mentioned together with the two Kantians. Indeed, do they not make one company, since Riehl and Laas play at being Kantians although they are followers of Hume, while Mach and Avenarius play at being followers of Hume although they are Berkeleians?

Is it to be wondered at, then, that Engels wished to “spare” the German workers from intimate acquaintance with the company of “flea-crushing” academicians? Engels spares the German workers but the Voroshilovs do not spare the Russian reader.

It should be noted that an eclectic combination of Kant and Hume, or Hume and Berkeley, is possible, so to speak, in various proportions, due emphasis being placed now upon one element of the mixture, and now upon another. We have seen that only one Machian, Mr. Kleinpeter, openly admits that he and Mach are solipsists,—consistent Berkeleians. But on the contrary, the Humean tendency of Mach and Avenarius is emphasised by many of their disciples and adherents: Petzoldt, Willy, Pearson, the Russian empirio-criticist Lessevich, the Frenchman Delacroix and others. We shall here cite as an example an important scientist, who in philosophy also connects Hume with Berkeley, but who accentuates the materialist elements of such an admixture. He is Huxley, the famous English naturalist, who coined the term “agnostic” and whom Engels undoubtedly has in mind, more than anyone else, when he speaks of English agnosticism. Such types of agnostics were in 1891 called by Engels “shamefaced materialists.” James Ward, the English spiritualist, in his book, Naturalism and Agnosticism, in which he chiefly attacks the “scientific leader of agnosticism,” Huxley (Vol. II, p. 31), confirms Engels’ estimate when he says: “In Huxley’s case indeed the leaning towards the primacy of the physical side [“series of elements” with Mach] is often so pronounced that it can hardly be called parallelism at all. In spite of his vehement repudiation of the title materialist as an affront to his untarnished agnosticism, I know of few recent writers who on occasion better deserve the title.”

And Ward quotes a passage from Huxley to confirm his opinion. “Any one who is acquainted with the history of science will admit, that its progress has, in all ages, meant, and now more than ever means, the extension of the province of what we call matter and causation and the concomitant gradual banishment from all regions of human thought of what we call spirit and spontaneity.” Or: “It is in itself of little moment whether we express the phenomena of matter in terms of spirit, or the phenomena of spirit in terms of matter—each statement has a certain relative truth. But with a view to the progress of science, the materialistic terminology is in every way to be preferred. For it connects thought with the other phenomena of the universe . . . whereas, the alternative, or spiritualistic terminology is utterly barren, and leads to nothing but obscurity and confusion of ideas. Thus there can be little doubt, that the further science advances, the more extensively and consistently will all the phenomena of Nature be represented by materialistic formulæ and symbols” (pp. 17-19).

That is how the “shamefaced materialist” Huxley argued, refusing to accept materialism which he regards as “metaphysics,” for it illegitimately goes beyond “groups of sensations.” And the same Huxley wrote: “If I were obliged to choose between absolute materialism and absolute idealism I should feel compelled to accept the latter alternative [p. 216]. . . . Our one certainty is the existence of the mental world” (p. 219).

The philosophy of Huxley is also a mixture of Hume and Berkeley, as is the philosophy of Mach: but in Huxley’s case the Berkeleian passages are rare, and agnosticism is the fig-leaf of materialism. With Mach the “colouring” of the mixture is a different one and the same spiritualist, Ward, bitterly fighting Huxley, good-naturedly pats the shoulder of Avenarius and Mach.

In speaking of empirio-criticism we can not avoid reference to the philosophers of the so-called immanentist school, the chief representatives of which are Schuppe, Leclair, Rehmke, and Schubert-Soldern. It is essential, therefore, to examine the relation of empirio-criticism to the philosophy of immanence especially as preached by the last-named.

In 1902 Mach wrote the following in the introduction to the fourth edition of the Analysis of Sensations:

“To-day I see that a host of positivistic philosophers, critical empiricists, adherents of the philosophy of immanence, and certain isolated scientists as well, have all, without any knowledge of one another’s work, entered upon paths which, in spite of all their individual differences, converge almost towards one point” (p. 13). Here we must first note Mach’s truthful statement that very few naturalists belong to the adherents of the supposedly “new” (in truth very old) school of the Humean-Berkeleian philosophy. Secondly, Mach’s view of this “new” philosophy, as a broad movement, in which the philosophers of the immanentist school are on a par with the empirio-criticists and the positivists, is important. “Thus there opens one common movement.” “My position, moreover, borders closely on that of the representatives of the philosophy of immanence. . . . This is especially true in the case of Schuppe with whose writings I became acquainted in 1902; his Outline of the Theory of Knowledge and Logic, a work which is packed with thought and which can be read without a special dictionary, struck a particularly sympathetic chord in me” (ibid., p. 46). Schubert-Soldern also “struck a sympathetic chord” in Mach, and to Wilhelm Schuppe he dedicates his last and conclusive philosophic work, Erkenntnis und Irrtum.

Avenarius, another founder of empirio-criticism, wrote in 1894 that he is “rejoiced” and “encouraged” by the sympathy of Schuppe with empirio-criticism, and that the differences between him and Schuppe “exist, perhaps, only temporarily.” And, finally, Petzoldt, whose teaching Lessevich regards as the last word in empirio-criticism, openly acclaims the trio—Schuppe, Mach and Avenarius—as the leaders of the “new” movement. On this point Petzoldt is definitely opposed to Willy, perhaps the most outstanding of those Machians who felt ashamed of such a kinship as Schuppe’s and tried to shield himself against him, for which he was reprimanded by his dear teacher, Avenarius. Avenarius wrote the aforementioned words about Schuppe in his note to Willy’s article against Schuppe, adding that the criticism of Willy “was put more strongly than it should have been.”

Having acquainted ourselves with the empirio-criticists’ estimate of the representatives of the doctrine of immanence, we shall proceed with the latter’s estimate of the empirio-criticists. We have already spoken of Leclair’s opinion of 1879. Schubert-Soldern in 1882 expresses his partial agreement “with the older Fichte” (that is, the distinguished representative of subjective idealism, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, whose son was as philosophically inept, as the son of Joseph Dietzgen), and “with Schuppe, Leclair, Avenarius and partly Rehmke,” while Mach is cited with special pleasure as being opposed to “naturo-historical metaphysics”—an expression which the reactionary instructors and professors in Germany apply to naturo-historical materialism. In 1893 after the issue of Avenarius’ Menschliche Weltbegriff, Schuppe greeted this work in an open letter to Avenarius as the “confirmation of naive realism” defended by Schuppe himself. “My conception of the understanding,” Schuppe wrote, “is in agreement with your pure experience.” Then in 1896, Schubert-Soldern gave an account of the “methodological tendency in philosophy” on which he “leans,” one which is derived from Berkeley and Hume and which has descended through Lange (“the beginnings of our movement in Germany date from Lange”) and then through Laas, Schuppe, et al., Avenarius and Mach; through the Neo-Kantians, Riehl and Renouvier, the Frenchman, etc. And finally in the preface to the platform, printed in the first issue of the special philosophic organ of the followers of the immanentist school, together with the declaration of war on materialism and with the expression of sympathy to Renouvier, we read: “Even in the camp of the naturalists, there have already been raised voices of individuals in protest against the self-esteem of their colleagues in persisting in the unphilosophic spirit which has penetrated the natural sciences. Such, for example, is Mach. . . . Fresh forces have gathered into motion from all sides and have set to work in order to destroy the blind faith in the infallibility of the natural sciences, have begun to search for new paths in the depths of the mysterious, to search for deeper insights into the realm of truth.”

A word must be said about Renouvier. He is the head of the influential school of the so-called neo-criticists in France. His theoretical philosophy is a combination of the phenomenalism of Hume and the apriorism of Kant. The thing-in-itself is absolutely rejected. The connection of phenomena, order and law are declared to be a priori; law is written in capital letters and is taken as the basis of religion. The Catholic priests exult over this philosophy. Willy, the Machian, indignantly calls Renouvier the “second apostle Paul,” “an obscurantist of the higher school,” the “casuistic preacher of freedom of will.” The co-thinkers of the immanentists in France warmly greeted the philosophy of Mach. When his Science of Mechanics was translated into French, the organ of the Neo-Criticists—L’Année Philosophique—edited by Pillon, the collaborator and disciple of Renouvier, wrote: “It is useless to speak of the extent to which, in its criticism of substance, object, thing-in-itself, the positive science of Mach is at one with neo-critical idealism” (Vol. XV, p. 179).

As for the Russian Machians, they are ashamed of their kinship with the representatives of the philosophy of immanence. It is impossible, of course, to expect anything else of people who unconsciously follow the direction of Struve, Menshikov, et al. Only Bazarov calls “certain representatives of the immanentist school” “realists.” Bogdanov briefly declares that “the immanentist school is only an intermediate form between Kantianism and empirio-criticism,” an interpretation that is quite wrong. Chernov writes: “Generally speaking, the immanentists approach positivism in only one aspect of their theory, in the other aspects they go far beyond it.” Valentinov says that the “immanentists wrapped up these (Machian) thoughts in a useless form and fell into the solipsistic impasse” (op cit., p. 149). As you see nothing lacks there—here is realism and solipsism in one swoop. Our Machians are simply afraid to state the truth about them openly and frankly.

The truth of the matter is that the adherents of that school are the most sworn reactionaries, open preachers of theism, unadulterated in their obscurantism. There is not one of them who would not undertake to defend religion in the field of epistemology, or come forward with an apology for one kind or another of mediævalism. Leclair, in 1879, defends his philosophy as satisfying “all the needs of a religiously inclined person.” Rehmke in 1880 dedicated his Theory of Knowledge to the Protestant pastor, Biedermann, and closes his book with a sermon not on God as supernatural, but on God as a “real conception” (is this why Bazarov ranged “certain” followers of the philosophy of immanence amongst the “realists”?), while the “objectification of this real conception is posited and solved by practical life,” while Biedermann’s Christian Dogmatism is declared to be the standard of “scientific theology.” Schuppe insists that though the immanentists deny transcendentalism, yet the concept of transcendentalism does not necessarily include God and immortality. In his Ethics he defends the “connection of the moral law . . . with one’s metaphysical outlook,” and condemns as a “senseless phrase,” separation of the church from the state. Schubert-Soldern in his Foundations of the Theory of Knowledge deduces both the pre-existence of the self and its after-existence in relation to the body, thus defending the immortality of the soul (p. 82). In Die sociale Frage he defends, in opposition to Bebel, suffrage based on class privilege together with other “social reforms,” and says that the “social-democrats ignore the fact that without the divine gift—of misfortune—there would be no happiness” (p. 330), and at this point laments the fact that “materialism dominates” (p. 242); that “he who in our time believes in the hereafter, or even in its possibility, is considered a fool” (ibid.).

And these German Menshikovs, obscurantists of no lesser calibre than Renouvier, live peacefully side by side with the empirio-criticists. Their theoretical kinship is incontestable. There is no more of Kantianism in the philosophy of immanence than in that of Petzoldt or Pearson. We have seen that they look upon themselves as disciples of Hume and Berkeley, an opinion which is generally entertained in philosophic literature. To illustrate what the epistemological assumptions of the associates of Mach and Avenarius are, we shall quote from some of the works of immanentists.

In 1879 Leclair had not as yet invented the name “immanent,” which signifies “empirical,” and which is just as deceiving a label to conceal corruption as are the labels and slogans of the European bourgeois parties. In his first work, Leclair frankly and explicitly calls himself a “critical idealist. Kant is there criticised, as we have already seen, for his concessions to materialism, and Leclair there definitely points out the path he himself has taken from Kant to Fichte and Berkeley. Leclair fights against materialism in general and against the leanings toward materialism displayed by the majority of scientists. So do Schuppe, Schubert-Soldern and Rehmke.

He says: “Let us return to the standpoint of critical idealism, let us not attribute any transcendental existence to the processes of nature or to nature as a whole [that is an existence beyond human consciousness]. The aggregate of bodies and the subject’s own body, in so far as he sees and feels it together with its changes, will then appear as the immediate presentation of spatially connected co-existences and successions in time, and the whole explanation of nature will reduce itself to stating the laws of these co-existences and successions” (p. 21).

Back to Kant! said the reactionary Neo-Kantians. Back to Fichte and Berkeley! is what the demand of the reactionary immanentists can be reduced to. For Leclair, existence and the “complex of sensations” are identical (p. 38); these properties which act on our sense-organs are indicated by him with the letter M, those acting on other natural objects, with the letter N (pp. 150 ff). He speaks of nature as the “phenomenon of the consciousness not of a single person, but of mankind” (p. 55). If we take into consideration the fact that Leclair issued his book in Prague, the very same city where Mach was professor of physics, and that Leclair gladly cites only Die Erhaltung der Arbeit of Mach which appeared in 1872, an inevitable question arises: ought we not regard the adherent of fideism and the open idealist, Leclair, as the actual sponsor of the “original” philosophy of Mach?

As for Schuppe, who, according to Leclair, reached “similar results,” he, as we have seen, pretends to defend “naive realism”; and in the Open Letter to Avenarius he complains of the “established perversion of my [Schuppe’s] theory of knowledge into subjective idealism.” The substance of the crude guile, which is called by Schuppe the defence of realism, is sufficiently obvious from his rejoinder to Wundt, who without hesitation had classified the immanentists with the Fichteans and the subjective idealists.

“In my case,” Schuppe retorts to Wundt, “the proposition that ‘existence is consciousness’ implies that consciousness without the external world is inconceivable; that, consequently, the latter belongs to the former and presupposes the absolute connection (Zusammengehörigkeit) of both, a fact which has been noted and explained by me many times; in this connection both constitute the unitary, and primeval whole of existence.”

One must be extremely naive not to notice the unadulterated subjective idealism in such “realism”! Just think of it, the external world “belongs to consciousness” and is in absolute connection with it! Indeed, the poor professor was slandered when he was classified with the subjective idealists. Such philosophy fully coincides with the “essential co-ordination” of Avenarius; no attempted justifications and protests on the part of Chernov and Valentinov can separate them; both philosophies are destined to find their way into the museum of the reactionary exhibits manufactured by the German professordom. As a curiosity testifying to Valentinov’s limitations, note that he calls Schuppe a solipsist (it is obvious, that Schuppe insists just as strenuously that he is not a solipsist, and has written special articles on this subject, as have Mach, Petzoldt, et al.), and is highly pleased with Bazarov’s article in the Outlines! I should like to translate into German the following utterance of Bazarov’s, “The reality existing outside of us is sense-perception,” and forward it to some reasonable follower of the immanentist school. He would embrace Bazarov just as heartily as the Schuppes, Leclairs and Schubert-Solderns have embraced Mach and Avenarius. For the utterance of Bazarov is the alpha and omega of the doctrines of the immanentist school.

Here is, finally, Schubert-Soldern: “The materialism of natural science,” the “metaphysics” implicit in the recognition of the objectivity of the external world, is the chief enemy of this philosopher. “Natural science abstracts from all relations of consciousness” (p. 52)—this is its chief defect (for it is the substance of materialism)—“since the individual cannot escape from his sensations and, hence, from a state of consciousness” (pp. 33, 34). Of course, Schubert-Soldern admitted in 1896, “My viewpoint is epistemological solipsism,” but it is neither “metaphysical” nor “practical.” “What we experience immediately is a sensation or a complex of constantly changing sensations.”

“Marx accepted the material process of production,” says Schubert-Soldern, “as the cause of inner processes and motivations in the same way (and just as falsely) as natural science accepts the general [to humanity] external world as the cause of the individual inner world.” About the connection of the historical materialism of Marx with natural, historical and philosophical materialism in general, Mach’s associate has no doubt at all.

“Many, perhaps even the majority, will be of the opinion that from the standpoint of epistemological solipsism no metaphysics is possible at all, that metaphysics is really transcendental. Upon more thorough reflection I cannot hold this opinion. Here are my proofs. . . . The immediate foundation of experience is a spiritual (solipsist) connection, the central point of which is the Self (the individual realm of presentations) with its body. The rest of the world is inconceivable without this Self, and this Self is inconceivable without the rest of the world; therefore it follows that with the destruction of the individual Self the world would be destroyed. But this is impossible. Were the world destroyed there would remain no place for the individual Self, for the latter can be separated from the world only logically, but not in time and space. Therefore my individual Self must inevitably exist after my death also, since the entire world cannot be annihilated with it at the same time” (ibid., p. xxiii).

“Essential co-ordination,” “complexes of sensation” and the rest of the Machian effusion stand those who have need of them in good stead!

“. . . What represents ‘the beyond’ from the point of view of solipsism? It is the possibility of a future experience [ibid.]. . . . Of course, spiritualism, for example, has not proven the existence of a hereafter, but neither can the materialism of natural science be advanced against spiritualism, for this materialism, as we have seen, is only one side of the world process [‘essential co-ordination’ within an all embracing spiritual connection” (p. xxiv).

All this is said in the same philosophic introduction to the Sociale Frage (1896), in which Schubert-Soldern expresses his constant agreement with Mach and Avenarius. Only in the case of the Russian Machians does Machism serve exclusively for intellectual prattle, but in its own country its rôle as a flunkey to theism is openly proclaimed!

Let us cast a glance at the development of Machism subsequent to Mach and Avenarius. It has been shown that their philosophy is a mass of contradictory and disconnected epistemologic propositions. Now we must seek the direction in which this philosophy is developing; this will help us to decide certain “debatable” issues by referring to certain “undebatable” historical facts. Indeed, in discussing the eclecticism and incoherence of the philosophic point of departure of this school, varying interpretations and sterile arguments concerning detail are inevitable. But empirio-criticism, like every ideological movement, is a living thing, which grows and develops, and the fact of its growth in one direction or another, can help us to solve better than long discourses, the basic question as to what the real essence of this philosophy is. We usually judge a person not from the way he thinks or speaks of himself but from the way he behaves. We must judge philosophers, too, not by the labels they bear (“positivism,” “pure experience,” “monism,” or “empirio-monism,” “naturalism,” etc.), but according to their answers to the fundamental questions, who their associates are, what they generally teach and what they have imparted to their disciples and followers.

It is the last question especially which interests us now. Their most essential doctrines were already laid down by Mach and Avenarius about twenty years ago. During that time the question had to be answered as to how “the leaders” were to be understood by those who wanted to understand them, and whom they themselves (at least Mach who outlived his colleague) considered as successors and followers. To be exact, let us take those who regard themselves as disciples, or adherents, of Mach and Avenarius, and whom Mach himself recognises as such. We shall thus get a picture of empirio-criticism as a philosophic movement, and not as a mere collection of literary cases.

In the introduction to the Russian edition of the Analysis of Sensations Mach recommends Hans Cornelius as a “young investigator” who has taken “if not the same position as Mach, then at least one bordering closely upon it” (p. 4). In the text of the Analysis of Sensations Mach once again “with pleasure points to the works” of Cornelius and others “who have propounded the essence of Avenarius’ ideas and who have developed them still further” (p. 40). In Cornelius’ Einleitung in die Philosophie, we see that its author also expresses his intentions of following in the footsteps of Mach and Avenarius (pp. viii, 32). We have before us then a disciple who has been acknowledged as such by his teacher. This disciple also begins with the elements of sensation (pp. 17, 42), and categorically declares that he has confined himself to experience (p. vi), and calls his views “consistent or epistemological empiricism” (p. 335). He definitely condemns the “one-sidedness” of idealism and the “dogmatism” of both the idealists and materialists (p. 129); he energetically denies (p. 123) that from his philosophy there necessarily follows the “misunderstanding” that the world exists in the mind of man, and flirts with naive realism no less dexterously than do Avenarius, Schuppe or Bazarov (“the visual as well as everything else given in perception has its locus where we find it, that is to say, where the naive mind, untouched by a false philosophy, localises it,” p. 125), and yet, the disciple, recognised by his teacher, arrives at immortality and God. Materialism, shouts this police officer in a professorial chair,—this disciple of “recent positivism,”—materialism converts man into an automaton. “There is no question that together with the disappearance of the belief in freedom of the will, moral validity and responsibility for our deeds also disappears; materialism leaves no room for the idea of the continuity of life after death” (p. 116). The final note of the book is that education (of the youth duped by this man of science) is necessary not so much for a life of activity as “primarily to implant veneration (Ehrfurcht),—not for the temporal values of the transitory tradition, but for the imperishable values of duty and beauty, for the divine in us and beyond us” (p. 358).

Compare with this Bogdanov’s assertion that “there is no room and there cannot be any room” for the ideas of God, freedom of the will and immortality of the soul in the philosophy of Mach, since the latter denies the “thing-in-itself.” And Mach in the same book (p. 293) declares that “there is no Machian philosophy” and recommends not only the immanentists but Cornelius as well, as the ones who have revealed the essence of Avenarius’ ideas. In the first place, Bogdanov himself is not acquainted with the development of the “Machian philosophy”—does not know that it not only nestles under the wing of theism but actually embraces it. In the second place, Bogdanov does not know the history of philosophy, for to tie up the denial of these ideas with a denial of the thing-in-itself, is to mock at the history of philosophy. Would Bogdanov deny that consistent adherents of Hume, who have rejected the thing-in-itself, still leave room for those ideas? Has he never heard of the subjective idealists who reject the thing-in-itself and yet leave room for these ideas? “There can be no room” whatsoever for these ideas—indeed—but in a philosophy which denies that perception constitutes the sole reality, which teaches that the world is matter in motion; that the external world, with which we are so familiar, is the only objective reality;—indeed—in the philosophy of materialism! It is precisely because of this that materialism is combated by the immanentists who have received the recommendation of Mach and his disciple Cornelius, as well as by the entire professorial philosophy.

Our Machians begin to reject Cornelius only when this indecency is pointed out to them. Rejections of this kind are worth very little. Friedrich Adler, evidently not having been warned beforehand, recommends the same Cornelius in the socialist journal Der Kampf (1908, No. 5, p. 235), and writes that “this work is easy to read and deserves high recommendation.” Through the medium of Machism, philosophic reactionaries and preachers of theism are imported as teachers of the workers.

Petzoldt detects Cornelius’ falsehood without having been told about it; but his method of attack is a masterpiece. Here is what he says: “The assertion that the world is idea [as those idealists whom we combat (!) assert] has sense only when one wishes to say that it is the idea of the one who makes the assertion or of all those who make such assertion, when it implies that the world depends for its existence exclusively upon the thinking of that individual or of those individuals: when it means that the world exists insofar as some person thinks about it, and that the world does not exist when that person does not think about it. We, on the contrary, make the world depend, not on the thinking of a separate individual or individuals, or even better and clearer, not upon the act of thinking, not upon actual thinking, but upon thinking in general and upon exclusively logical thinking at that. The idealist confuses one with the other, and as result we get the agnostic ‘semi-solipsism’ which we see in Cornelius.”

Stolypin denied the existence of black cabinets! Petzoldt totally destroyed the idealists; but it is surprising that this destruction of idealism turns out to be advice as to how to conceal their idealism in as cunning a manner as possible. To say that the world depends upon man’s reason is to pervert idealism, but to say that the world depends upon reason in general, is the “most recent” positivism, is critical realism, is—in a word,—thoroughgoing bourgeois charlatanism! If Cornelius is an agnostic semi-solipsist, then Petzoldt is a solipsistic semi-agnostic. Gentlemen, you are crushing fleas!

Let us proceed. In the second edition of his Erkenntnis und Irrtum, Mach says that “systematic exposition of my views, to the essence of which I can subscribe, is given by Professor Dr. Hans Kleinpeter.” We are taking Hans as exhibit number two. This professor is a certified propagator of Machism; he has penned a number of articles on the views of Mach in special philosophic journals in German and English, has translated works recommended by Mach who has written introductions to them—in short, he is the right-hand man of the “teacher.” Here are his views:

“All my (outer and inner) experience, all my reason and my endeavours are given to me as a psychical process, as a part of my mind (p. 18). . . . That which we call physical is a construction out of psychic elements (p. 144). . . . Subjective conviction and not objective certainty (Gewissheit) is the only goal which can be attained by any science” [p. 9; the emphasis is Kleinpeter’s. He adds the following remark: “This was practically said by Kant in the Kritik der Praktischen Vernunft”]. . . . The positing of other minds is one which can never be confirmed by experience (p. 43). . . . I do not know . . . whether there exist other selves in general outside of myself” (p. 43). §5 is entitled: “On the Spontaneity of Consciousness.” In the case of the animal-automaton changes in representations occur in a purely mechanical way. It is the same with us when we have reveries. “In spontaneity lies the essential quality of normal consciousness. It is a property which those automata lack. To explain the spontaneity of personality mechanically or automatically would be, to say the least, very difficult. Every person can make a distinction between himself and his states of consciousness; he can control them, can make them focal or marginal, can analyse and compare them, etc. All this is a fact of (immediate) experience. Our Self is essentially different from the sum-total of all psychical states and cannot be compared with the mere sum. Sugar consists of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen; if we attribute a soul to it, then by analogy it would have to possess the faculty of spontaneously directing the movement of the particles of hydrogen, oxygen and carbon” (pp. 29-30). § 4 of the following chapter is headed: “The act of Consciousness is a Volitional Act (Willenshandlung).” . . . “We must regard as a well-established fact the division of all psychical experience into two basic groups: those of spontaneous acts and those of necessary acts. To the first belong the impressions of the external world (p. 47). . . . That it is possible to advance many theories about the same set of facts, is so well known among physicists that it becomes clearly inadmissible to hold the hypothesis that there can be an absolute theory of knowledge. And this fact is bound up with the volitional character of our reason, implying in turn that our volition is not compelled by external circumstances” (p. 50).

Judge now of Bogdanov’s brave pronouncement that “there is no room in Mach’s philosophy for the freedom of the will,” when Mach himself recommends such a person as Kleinpeter! We have already seen that the latter conceals neither his own idealism nor Mach’s. In 1898-9 Kleinpeter wrote: “Hertz discloses as subjective a view on the nature of our conception as Mach. . . . If Mach and Hertz [with what justice Kleinpeter here invokes the famous physicist we shall soon see] deserve credit, from the point of view of idealism, for having emphasised the subjective origin and connection of all our concepts and not only of certain individual ones, then from the standpoint of empiricism they deserve no less credit, for having acknowledged that only experience can solve the problem, for example, of the truth of ideas, independently of their being entertained in our mind.” In 1900 he wrote: “In spite of the fact that Mach differs from Kant and Berkeley, they appeal to him more than the metaphysical empiricism prevailing in natural science.” (That is materialism; the professor does not wish to call the devil by name.) In 1903 he wrote: “The starting point of Berkeley and Mach is irrefutable. . . . Mach completed what Kant began.”

In the introduction to the Russian edition of Analysis of Sensations, Mach says that Ziehen “follows him, if not exactly, at least very closely.” We see from the introduction of Professor Ziehen’s book, that he refers to Mach, Avenarius, Schuppe, and so forth. Here again is a case of a disciple acknowledged by the teacher. The “modern” theory of Ziehen is that only the “common populace” can suppose that “real objects are the cause of our sensations” (p. 3), and that for the “foundation of the theory of knowledge there can be no other proposition, than the words of Berkeley: “external objects do not exist in themselves but in our minds” (p. 5). “We experience sensations and ideas. Both are mental. Non-mental is a word devoid of meaning” (p. 100). The laws of nature are relations not of material bodies but of “reduced sensations” (p. 104). In this expression the whole originality of Ziehen’s Berkeleianism consists. Petzoldt rejected Ziehen as an idealist as far back as 1904 in the second volume of his Einführung, etc. (pp. 298-301). In 1906 he put Cornelius, Kleinpeter, Ziehen and Verworn on the list of idealists or psychical monists. In the case of all these professors, as you see, there is a gross “misunderstanding” in their interpretations of the “views of Mach and Avenarius” (ibid.).

Poor Mach and Avenarius! Not only are they slandered by their enemies for being idealists and, to use Bogdanov’s own expression, accused of being “even solipsists,” but their very friends, disciples, adherents, expert professors also mistake them for idealists. If empirio-criticism develops into idealism, that does not at all establish the basic falsehood of its confused Berkeleian hypothesis. Oh, no! that is only an insignificant “misunderstanding” in the Nozdriov -Petzoldt sense of the word.

The most amusing of all is that Petzoldt, the guardian of empirio-critical purity and innocence, first “supplemented” Mach and Avenarius with a “logical a priori” and then connected them with Wilhelm Schuppe, the propounder of fideism.

Had Petzoldt known the English adherents of Mach, the list of those Machians who relapsed into idealism (because of the “misunderstanding”) would have been greatly increased. We have already cited as an unadulterated idealist, Karl Pearson, who is praised by Mach. Here are the opinions of two “slanderers” who assert the same thing: “The teaching of Professor Pearson is a mere echo of the truly great teaching of Berkeley.” “That Mr. Pearson is an idealist in the full sense of the word, there can be no doubt.” We would have to consider Clifford, the English idealist, whom Mach regards as “bordering very closely” upon his philosophy as a teacher rather than as a disciple of Mach, for the philosophic works of Clifford appeared in the seventies. The “misunderstanding” is due here to Mach himself, who in 1901 “failed to notice” any idealism in Clifford’s doctrine that the world is constituted of “mind-stuff,” that it is a “social object,” a “highly organised experience,” etc. In order to characterise the charlatanism of the German Machians it is sufficient to note that Kleinpeter, in 1905, introduces this idealist into the ranks of the founders of the “epistemology of modern natural science”!

On page 356 of the Analysis of Sensation Mach mentions the American philosopher, Paul Carus, who “tends” toward both Buddhism and Machism. Carus, who regards himself as an “adherent and personal friend” of Mach, edits in Chicago the Monist, devoted to philosophy, and The Open Court, a small journal dedicated to the propagation of religion. “The object of The Open Court is to establish religion on the basis of Science, and in connection therewith it will present the Monistic philosophy. The founder of this journal believes this will furnish a religion which embraces all that is true and good in religion.”

Mach is a permanent contributor to The Monist, and publishes his latest views in it. Carus corrects Mach “a little” from the Kantian viewpoint, declaring that Mach “is an idealist or, as I would say, a subjectivist. . . . There are, no doubt, differences between Mach’s views and mine, yet I at once recognised in him a kindred spirit.” Our monism, says Carus, “is not materialistic, not spiritualistic, not agnostic; it merely means consistency . . . it takes experience as its basis and employs as method the systematic forms of the relations of experience” (evidently a plagiarism from Empirio-Monism of Bogdanov!). Carus’ slogan is not agnosticism, but positive science, not mysticism, but clear thinking, not supernaturalism, not materialism but a monistic aspect of the world, not a dogma, but religion, not creed, but faith. And to fulfil this slogan Carus preaches a “new theology, theonomy, as being a general science in contrast to the old theology which was based upon erratic notions, guesses, and prophetic dreams.” We ought to remark that Kleinpeter in his book on the epistemological foundations of modern science, cited above, recommends Carus together with Ostwald, Avenarius and the immanentists (pp. 151-2). When Haeckel issued his programme for a union of the monists, Carus opposed him on the ground that, first, Haeckel vainly attempts to refute apriorism which is “consistent with scientific philosophy”; second, that Ernst Haeckel’s doctrine of determinism “excludes the possibility of the freedom of the will”; third, that Haeckel is mistaken “in emphasising the one-sided view of the naturalist against the traditional conservatism of the churches. He therefore appears as an enemy to the existing churches instead of rejoicing at their higher development through a new and truer interpretation of their dogmas.” Carus himself admits that “I appear reactionary to many freethinkers who blame me for not joining their chorus in denouncing all religion as superstition” (p. 355).

It is evident that we have before us a leader of a company of American literary sharpers who are engaged in drugging the people with religious opium. Mach and Kleinpeter have also become members of the company, by virtue of a little “misunderstanding.”

“So far as I am aware there is only one empirio-monist in philosophic literature—a certain Bogdanov,” writes Bogdanov of himself. “Since I know him very well, I can certify that his views fully accord with the sacred formula of the primacy of the natural over the mental. He regards all existence as a continuous chain of development, the lower links of which are lost in the chaos of primal elements while the higher links, known to us, represent the experience of men [Bogdanov’s italics]—which is compounded of a highly developed psychical and a still more highly developed physical, experience. This experience and the knowledge of itself which it generates corresponds to what we usually call spirit.”

The “sacred” formula Bogdanov here ridicules is the well-known proposition of Engels which Bogdanov, however, diplomatically evades! He does not differ from Engels, Oh, no!

But let us see how Bogdanov himself summarises this famous “empirio-monism” and “substitution.” The physical realm is called the “experience of men” and it is declared as “higher” in the chain of development than the psychical. But this is a crying absurdity, and it is the kind of an absurdity which is characteristic of the typical idealist philosophy. It is rather amusing that Bogdanov attempts to subsume such a “system” under materialism as if to say: In my case, too, nature is primary and spirit secondary. If Engels’ definition is applied in such a way, Hegel will also become a materialist, for in his case, too, psychical experience (under the name of absolute idea) is prior to the physical realm, to nature, and to human knowledge which through natural means discovers the “absolute idea” at the basis of the whole process. Not one idealist would deny the primacy of nature in this sense, for it is no genuine primacy, since here nature is not directly taken as the immediate data, is not taken as the actual starting point of epistemology. Nature in this sense is taken as a product, as an end-term in a long process of abstractions from “psychical” elements. It is immaterial what these abstractions are termed, whether “absolute Idea,” “the great Self,” “the world Will,” etc. These terms distinguish the different varieties of idealism, and there are a great number of those varieties. But the substance of idealism can be reduced to this: the mental is taken as the starting-point; from it external nature is inferred or constructed; and in short order the individual consciousness is deduced from nature. This primal “mental” is always in the last analysis a lifeless abstraction which conceals a diluted theology. For instance, everybody knows what a human idea is, but an idea prior to the existence of man, an idea independent of man, an idea in abstraction, an absolute idea,—is a theological fiction of the idealist Hegel. Everybody is familiar with human sensation, but sensation independent of man, sensation existing before man—is nonsense, a lifeless abstraction, an idealist equivocation. Precisely such an equivocation is performed by Bogdanov, when he creates the following ladder:

(1) The chaos of “elements” [we know that the term “element” implies nothing else save some form of human conception];

(2) The psychical experience of men;

(3) The physical experience of men;

(4) “Knowledge which emerges from it.”

There are no sensations (human) without man. That means that the first rung of the ladder is a dead idealist abstraction. Essentially, there are before us not the usual and familiar human sensations, but fictitious sensations, belonging to no one, sensations in general—divine sensations—as human ideas usually become, when once separated from man and man’s brain, as for example in the case of Hegel.

The first rung is thus counted out.

The second rung is also to be counted out, for no individual knows the psychical before the physical (and the second rung is higher than the third in Bogdanov’s); nor does natural science know it. The physical realm existed before the psychical, for the latter is the highest product of the most highly developed forms of organic matter. Bogdanov’s second rung is also a dead abstraction, for it implies thought without brain, human reason separated from man.

Only when we throw overboard the first two rungs can we obtain the world picture which truly corresponds to natural science and materialism. Namely, (1) the physical realm exists independently of human consciousness and existed long before the emergence of man, long before any “human experience”; (2) the psychical, consciousness, etc., is the highest product of highly developed matter, is a function of that complicated bit of matter which is called the human brain.

“The realm of substitution,” writes Bogdanov, “coincides with the realm of physical phenomena; for the psychical phenomena we need substitute nothing, for they are immediately given complexes” (p. xxxix).

This is idealism, for the psychical, that is, consciousness, perception, sensation, etc., is taken as the immediate and the physical is inferred from it, and then placed in its stead. The world is the non-ego, created by the ego, said Fichte. The world is absolute Idea, said Hegel. The world is Will, said Schopenhauer. The world is conception and perception, said the immanentist, Rehmke. Being is consciousness, said the immanentist, Schuppe. The psychical is a substitution of the physical, says Bogdanov. One must be blind not to perceive the same idealist form beneath the cloak of these various phrasings.

“Let us ask ourselves the question,” writes Bogdanov in Book I of Empirio-Monism (pp. 128-29): “What is a living being, for instance, man?” And he answers: “Man is primarily a certain complex of immediate experience.” Mark you, “primarily”! “Then, in the further development of experience, man becomes both for himself and for others, a physical body amidst other physical bodies.”

This is a whole “complex” of absurdities, useful only to prepare for the deduction of the immortality of the soul or the existence of God, etc. Man is primarily a complex of immediate experiences and in the course of his further development becomes a physical body! That means that there are “immediate experiences” independently of the physical body, existing prior to the physical body. It is a pity that this magnificent philosophy has not yet found acceptance in our theological seminaries, where such theoretical service would be highly appreciated.

“. . . We admitted that physical nature itself is derived [Bogdanov’s italics] from complexes of immediate characters or elements (in which psychical co-ordination is included); that it is the reflection of complexes that are analogous to them,—complexes of the most complicated type (in the socially-organised experience of living beings)” (p. 146).

A philosophy which teaches that physical nature is derivative, is a clerical philosophy—pure and simple. And its character is not altered in the least even though Bogdanov himself spurns all kinds of religion. Dühring was also an atheist; he even proposed to prohibit religion in his “socialised” order. Nevertheless Engels was absolutely right when he proved that Dühring’s “system” could not make ends meet without religion. The same is true of Bogdanov with the essential difference that the quoted passage is not an occasional inconsistency but is the essence of his “empirio-monism” and all its “substitution.” If nature is derivative then it is self-evident that it can be derived only from something that is greater, richer, broader, mightier than nature, from something that already exists, for in order for nature to be “derived” from it, it has to exist apart from it. It means that something exists outside of nature, which produces nature. In plain language this is what is meant by God. The idealists continually try to substitute a different name, to make it more abstract, more nebulous, and at the same time, to make it appear more plausible, to bring it nearer to the “psychical,” to present it as an “immediate complex,” as something immediately experienced which requires no evidence. The absolute idea, the universal spirit, the world will, “the general substitution” of the psychical for the physical, are different formulations of the same idea. Everybody knows that the idea, spirit, will, and the psychical, in general, is the function of a normally operating human brain. It is the specific task of science to investigate the connection. To separate this function from specific structure, organised in a certain way, to convert this function into a universal, general abstraction, to substitute this abstraction for the whole of physical nature,—is the delusion of an idealism which secretly scorns science.

Materialism says that the “socially organised experience of the living” is derived from physical nature, is a product of long development, is the result of a gradual evolution from a state of physical nature in which there were no such things—nor could there very well be—as sociability or organisation, or experience, or living beings. Idealism says that physical nature is derived from the experience of living beings, and in saying this, idealism gives nature at least the same status as God, if not altogether subordinating it to God. For God himself, according to this theory, is surely derived from the socially organised experience of the living. Turn the philosophy of Bogdanov about as you please, yet you will get nothing but a reactionary muddle.

Bogdanov thinks that to speak of the social organisation of experience is “cognitive socialism” (III, p. xxxiv). This is insane twaddle. If socialism is thus argued, then the Jesuits are ardent adherents of “cognitive socialism,” for the starting-point of their epistemology is divinity as the supreme form of “socially organised experience.” And it is beyond doubt that Catholicism is a “socially organised experience”; but it reflects not the objective truth,—to which science is faithful but which Bogdanov betrays—but the exploitation of the ignorance of the masses by certain social classes. But why speak of the Jesuits! The “cognitive socialism” of Bogdanov can be wholly found in the doctrine of immanence of which Mach is so fond. Leclair regards nature as the consciousness of “mankind,” but not of the individual man. The bourgeois philosophers will give us such Fichtean cognitive socialism to our heart’s content. Schuppe also emphasises das gattungsmässige Moment des Bewusstseins, that is, the generating element of consciousness. To think that idealism vanishes by substituting the consciousness of mankind for the consciousness of the individual or the experience of “the socially organised” for the experience of one person, is to assume that capitalism will vanish by the substitution of one capitalist for another in a joint stock-company.

Our Russian Machians, Yushkevich and Valentinov, repeat after the materialist Rakhmetov that Bogdanov is an idealist (after having abused Rakhmetov so brutally). But they could not think from where this idealism is derived. For them it appears that Bogdanov is an individual phenomenon, an accident, something sui generis. This is not true. Bogdanov may personally think that he has invented an “original” system, but it is sufficient to compare it with the effusions of the aforementioned disciples of Mach to realise the falsity of such a claim. The difference between Bogdanov and Cornelius is much less than that between Cornelius and Carus. The difference between Bogdanov and Carus is less (in the essential outlines of their philosophical systems, to be sure, and not in the consciousness of the reactionary implications of that system) than that between Carus and Ziehen and so on. Bogdanov is only one of the manifestations of that “socially organised experience” which bears witness to the growth of Machism into idealism. Bogdanov (we here speak exclusively of Bogdanov as a philosopher) could not be born into God’s world, if in the doctrines of his teacher Mach there were not the “elements” of Berkeleianism. And I cannot imagine a more “terrible revenge” upon Bogdanov than to have his Empirio-Monism translated, say, into German and presented for review to Leclair, Schubert-Soldern, Cornelius, Kleinpeter, Carus and Pillon (the French collaborator and disciple of Renouvier). The compliments of the associates and followers of Mach extended to this new “substitution” would have been much more significant than their argument.

It would hardly be correct to regard the philosophy of Bogdanov as a completed and solidified system. In a span of nine years, from 1899 to 1908, Bogdanov has gone through four stages in his philosophic peregrinations. At the beginning he was a “naturo-historical” materialist (i. e., still half unconsciously and instinctively true to the spirit of science). His Fundamental Elements of the Historical Outlook on Nature (in Russian) bears traces of that stage. During the second stage, the later nineties, he was an adherent of the fashionable “energetics” of Ostwald,—a muddled agnosticism, with leanings towards idealism. From Ostwald (on the title page of Ostwald’s Lectures on the Philosophy of Nature we find that the book is “dedicated to Mach”), Bogdanov went over to Mach, accepting the fundamental hypotheses of subjective idealism, inconsistent and muddled as it is, together with the entire philosophy of Mach. The fourth stage is an attempt to eliminate some of the contradictions of Mach, and to create a semblance of objective idealism. “The theory of general substitution” shows that Bogdanov has revolved almost in a semi-circle, beginning with his original base. Is this stage of Bogdanov’s philosophy more remote from dialectic materialism than the previous ones? If Bogdanov remains in one place, then he is surely more remote from it. If he keeps moving in the same curve as he has done those nine years, then he is closer to materialism. He needs only to make one serious step in order to turn again to materialism—he needs but make a clean sweep of his “universal substitution.” This universal substitution has intertwined into one Chinese queue all the transgressions of half-baked idealism, all the weaknesses of consistent subjective idealism, just as the “absolute Idea” of Hegel (si licet parva componere magnis!—if it is permissible to compare the great with the small) combined all the contradictions of Kantian idealism and all the weaknesses of Fichteanism. It remained for Feuerbach to make only one serious step in order to reach materialism, namely to throw completely overboard the absolute Idea, this Hegelian “substitution of the psychical for the physical.” Feuerbach cut off the Chinese braid of absolute idealism—and took nature without any “substitutions” as the basis.

We shall see later to what lengths the Chinese queue of Machian idealism will grow.

In order to complete what has been said above about the idealists, as associates of and successors to empirio-criticism, it is in keeping here to note the character of the Machian criticism of certain philosophic propositions touched upon in our literature. For instance, our Machians, who desire to be Marxians, gladly cavil at the “symbolic representations” of Plekhanov, a theory, according to which the sensations and perceptions of man are not the copy of real things and nature’s processes, not their image, but only arbitrary signs and symbols of them. Bazarov ridicules this symbolic (or hieroglyphic) materialism, and he is justified in so doing provided he reject it for a non-symbolic materialism. But Bazarov here again resorts to a trick; he smuggles in a renunciation of materialism in general under the guise of a criticism of “symbolic representation.” Engels speaks neither of symbols nor hieroglyphs, but of copies, photographs, images, mirror-reflections of things. Instead of pointing out Plekhanov’s error in deviating from Engels’ formulation of materialism, Bazarov obscures the truth of Engels’ views for the readers, by making a fuss over Plekhanov’s error.

To elucidate both Plekhanov’s error and Bazarov’s confusion we shall cite Helmholtz, an important representative of the “symbol theory” (calling a symbol a hieroglyph, does not change its meaning), and see how he was roundly criticised by both the materialists, and idealists including the Machians.

Helmholtz, a star of the first magnitude in science, in philosophy was as inconsistent as most contemporary scientists are to-day. He gravitated toward Kantianism, but even in this he was inconsistent. Here are some passages from his Treatise on Physiological Optics on the correspondence of ideas with objects: “Thus far the sensations have been described as being simply symbols for the relations in the external world” (p. 18). This is agnosticism, but further on we read the following: “Our apperceptions and ideas are effects wrought on our nervous system and our consciousness by the objects that are thus apprehended and conceived” (p. 19). This is materialism, but that Helmholtz, judging by his further discussion, makes no clear distinction between the relation of absolute and relative truth, is quite evident. For instance, he says: “In my opinion, therefore, there can be no possible sense in speaking of any other truth of our ideas except of a practical truth. Our ideas of things cannot be anything but symbols, natural signs for things which we learn how to use in order to regulate our movements and actions. Having learned correctly how to read those symbols, we are enabled by their help to adjust our actions so as to bring about the desired result . . .” (p. 19). This is not correct. Helmholtz is slipping towards subjectivism, towards a denial of objective reality and objective truth. And he arrives at a flagrant untruth when he ends the sentence with the words: “An idea and the thing of which it is an idea evidently belong to two entirely different worlds.” Only the Kantians thus separate idea and reality, mind and nature. However, a little further we read: “In the next place as to the properties of objects in the external world, a little reflection reveals that all properties attributable to them may be said to be simply effects exerted by them either on our senses or on other natural objects” (p. 20). Here again Helmholtz reverts to the materialist viewpoint. He is an inconsistent Kantian, now recognising the a priori laws of reason, now tending toward the “transcendental reality” of space and time (i. e., the materialistic conception of them), now inferring human sensations from external objects, which act on our sense-organs, and now declaring sensations to be only symbols, certain arbitrary signs torn from the “quite different” world of signified things.

This is how Helmholtz expressed himself in the speech of 1878 on “The Facts of Perception” (“an important occurrence in the realistic camp,” as Leclair characterised it): “Our sensations are but effects wrought by external causes on our organs, and the circumstance of how such effects would manifest themselves, depends, of course, very essentially upon the character of the apparatus on which these effects are wrought. Inasmuch as the quality of our sensation gives us evidence of the properties of the external cause by which this sensation is produced, the sensation can be regarded as its sign [Zeichen], but not as its image. Since a certain resemblance with the resembled object is demanded from an image. . . . While from a sign no resemblance is demanded with that of which it is a sign. . . .” If sensations are not images of things but only signs or symbols, which have “no resemblance” to them, then the materialist starting point of Helmholtz is completely undermined; the existence of external objects becomes doubtful, for signs or symbols quite possibly indicate imaginary objects, and everybody is familiar with instances of such signs or symbols. Helmholtz, following Kant, attempts to draw what appears to be an absolute boundary between the “phenomenon” and the “thing-in-itself.” He is very much prejudiced against straightforward, clear, and open materialism. But a little further he says: “I do not see how we could refute the system of the most extreme subjective idealism which would choose to regard life as a dream. We could declare it highly improbable and unsatisfactory, I myself would most strenuously object to it, yet it is possible to infer it consistently. . . . The realistic hypothesis, on the contrary, trusts the evidence [Aussage] of common self-observation according to which the changes of perception that follow certain actions do not have any psychical connection with the preceding impulse of volition. This hypothesis believes in the existence, independent of our ideas, of everything that is ascertained by our everyday perception to be part of the material world outside of us” (pp. 238-39). “Undoubtedly, the realistic hypothesis is the simplest hypothesis imaginable; it has been tested and verified in very broad domains of application; it is accurately determined in its integral parts and, therefore, it is in the highest degree useful and fruitful, as a ground of action” (ibid.) The agnosticism of Helmholtz, too, resembles “shamefaced materialism,” but with a characteristic Kantian failing, which distinguishes it from the characteristic Berkeleian failings of Huxley.

Albrecht Rau, the follower of Feuerbach, therefore very definitely criticises Helmholtz’s theory of symbols as an inconsistent deviation from “realism.” The basic view of Helmholtz, says Rau, is a realistic hypothesis according to which “we understand the objective properties of things” with the help of our senses. The theory of symbols cannot be reconciled with such a whole-hearted materialism, for it involves distrust in perception, a reluctance to place faith in the evidences of our sense-organs. It is beyond doubt that an image cannot absolutely resemble the model, but one thing is the image, another thing is the symbol, the conventional sign. The image must of necessity presuppose an objective reality which “is reflected.” “A conventional sign” and symbol are concepts which bear an absolutely unnecessary trace of agnosticism. Rau, therefore, is perfectly right in saying that by the theory of symbols, Helmholtz pays tribute to Kantianism. “If Helmholtz,” says Rau, “had remained true to his realist conception, if he had consistently adhered to the principle that the properties of bodies express relations of bodies amongst themselves and their relations to us, then he probably would not have needed the theory of symbols; he could then say, briefly and clearly ‘sensations which are produced in us by objects are reflections of the substance of those objects’” (ibid., p. 320).

Thus is Helmholtz criticised by a materialist. He rejects hieroglyphic or symbolic materialism or the partial materialism of Helmholtz in the name of the consistent materialism of Feuerbach.

The idealist Leclair (the representative of the immanentists dear to Mach’s heart and head) also accuses Helmholtz of inconsistency, of hesitation between materialism and spiritualism. But the theory of symbols is criticised by Leclair not because it lacks traces of materialism but because it suffers from an abundance of such traces. Says Leclair: “Helmholtz assumes that perception gives us sufficient support for our knowledge of succession in time and for our knowledge of the identity or difference of transcendental causes. This is sufficient, in Helmholtz’s opinion, to warrant the assumption of uniformity in the realm of the transcendental” (that is in the domain of the objectively real, p. 33). And Leclair denounces this “dogmatic prejudice of Helmholtz.” “The Berkeleian God,” he exclaims, “in the rôle of the hypothetical cause of the uniformity of ideas in our mind is just as capable of satisfying our need of causal explanation, as is the world of external objects” (p. 34). “A consistent application of the theory of symbols . . . is impossible without a generous admixture of vulgar realism” (that is, materialism, p. 35).

That is how a “critical idealist,” in 1879, tore into Helmholtz for his materialism. After the lapse of twenty years Kleinpeter, the disciple of Mach, who, we will remember, was highly praised by his teacher, thus refutes the “antiquated” Helmholtz by means of the “modern” philosophy of Mach, in his article on the “Fundamental Views of Mach and Hertz on Physics.” Let us leave Hertz (who was just as inconsistent as Helmholtz) for a while, and examine Kleinpeter’s comparison of Mach and Helmholtz. Having quoted a series of passages from the works of both writers and accentuated certain statements of Mach, that bodies are mental symbols for complexes of sensations, etc., Kleinpeter says:

“If we follow Helmholtz’s trend of thought, we shall find the following fundamental propositions:

“1. There are objects of the external world.

“2. The change of these objects is inconceivable without the action of some cause, which is taken as real.

“3. ‘Cause, according to the original meaning of the word, is that which remains unchanged, as remaining or existing behind the changing phenomena, namely, substance and the law of its action, force.’ [The quotation is by Kleinpeter from Helmholtz.

“4. It is possible to infer all the phenomena from the causes in a logically strict and uniquely determined mode.

“5. The attainment of that end is equivalent to the possession of objective truth, the acquisition of which is thus recognised as conceivable” (p. 163).

Roused by these propositions, by their contradictions and by the introduction of unsolved problems, Kleinpeter remarks that Helmholtz is not strictly consistent in his views, sometimes employing “a manner of speech, which is suggestive of the purely logical views of Mach in regard to such concepts as matter, force, causality, etc.”

“It is not difficult to find the source of our dissatisfaction with Helmholtz, if we recollect the clear and exact words of Mach. The erroneous interpretation of the concepts ‘mass,’ ‘force,’ etc., is the basic sin of Helmholtz’s argument. These concepts are only our ideas, products of our fancy and do not hold of a reality, existing beyond our reason. We are not at all in a position to know these so-called realities. From the observation of our sense-impressions we are generally not in a position, on account of their imperfection, to make a uniquely determined inference. We can never assert, for instance, that upon reading a certain scale we will obtain a determinate number; it is always possible, within certain limits, to select an infinite number of readings which will be perfectly compatible with the facts of observation. And to have knowledge of something real, lying outside of us,—that is impossible. Let us suppose that it were possible and that we could know reality; we would then have no right to apply the laws of logic to it, for the laws of logic are our laws and are applicable only to our conceptions, to our mental products [Kleinpeter’s emphasis]. Between facts there is no logical connection, only mere succession; to utter apodictic assertions of them is unreasonable. Since, therefore, it is incorrect to say that one fact is a cause of another, the whole deduction of Helmholtz and the conceptions based upon it fall to the ground. And finally, the attainment of objective truth, existing independently of the subject, is impossible, not only because of the nature of our sense-organs, but because being men (als Menschen) we can have generally no notion as to what exists independently of us” (p. 164).

As the reader sees, our disciple of Mach, repeating the favorite words of his teacher and the words of Bogdanov, who does not consider himself a Machian, refutes the whole philosophy of Helmholtz, refutes it from the idealist viewpoint. The theory of symbols is not emphasised by the idealist who regards it as unimportant, as a merely casual deviation from materialism. And Helmholtz is taken by Kleinpeter as the representative of the “traditional views of physics, entertained by the majority of physicists” (p. 160).

The upshot of the discussion is this: Plekhanov committed an obvious error in his exposition of materialism; Bazarov blundered completely in confusing materialism with idealism, in contrasting the “theory of symbols” or “symbolic materialism” with the idealistic nonsense, that “sense” perception is the “reality existing outside us.” From Helmholtz, the Kantian, as from Kant himself, the materialists broke away to the left, and the Machians to the right.

Let us note another characteristic trait in the incredible perversion of materialism by the Machians. Valentinov wishes to discredit Marxians by comparing them to Büchner who supposedly has much in common with Plekhanov, although Engels marked himself off from Büchner. Bogdanov, on the other hand, treats this question as if he were called upon to defend the “materialism of the naturalists,” which “is usually spoken of with certain contempt.” Both Valentinov and Bogdanov are terribly confused in this matter. Marx and Engels always “spoke contemptuously” of bad socialists, having in mind the doctrines of correct scientific socialism which reflected no fickle departure from socialist to bourgeois views. Marx and Engels always condemned the vulgar, anti-dialectic materialism, but they condemned it from the standpoint of a higher, more advanced dialectic materialism, and not at all from the viewpoint of Humism or Berkeleianism. Marx, Engels and Dietzgen spoke of vulgar materialists, taking account of them in order to correct their errors. Of the Humeans and Berkeleians they did not speak and of Mach and Avenarius they would not have spoken, having satisfied themselves with one contemptuous remark in the general direction of their movement. Therefore, the constant grins and grimaces of our Machians regarding Holbach, Büchner and others, signify nothing but an attempt to throw sand into the eyes of the public, to cover up the fundamental deviation of Machism from the basic tenets of materialism as such, and to avoid taking an outspoken and clear position with regard to Engels.

It is hardly possible to express oneself more clearly on the French materialism of the eighteenth century and on Büchner, Vogt and Moleschott, than Engels does at the end of Chapter II of his Feuerbach. It is impossible to misunderstand Engels, unless one is intent upon perverting him. “Marx and myself are materialists,” says Engels, explaining the basic distinction between all schools of materialism and idealism. And Engels reproaches Feuerbach for his lack of courage and his fickleness, in rejecting materialism somewhere on general grounds, because of the absurdities of a particular school of materialism. Feuerbach “had no right to confuse the teaching of the vulgarised peddlers [Büchner, Moleschott and others] with materialism in general” (p. 69). Only those who have been corrupted through the reading and unquestioned acceptance of the doctrines of the German reactionary philosophers, could have misunderstood the nature of Engels’ reproach against Feuerbach. Engels says very clearly that Büchner and the others did not overcome the limitations of their teachers, the materialists of the eighteenth century. For this alone, Engels takes Büchner, et al., to task; not for their materialism, as the ignorant assume, but because they did not promote materialism; that “they did not hitherto think of promoting the theory” of materialism.

For this alone Engels takes Büchner, and the others, to task, and points out the three fundamental “limitations” of the French materialism of the eighteenth century, from which Marx and Engels freed themselves, but from which Büchner and his associates have not. The first limitation lay in the fact that the views of the old materialists were too “mechanical” in the sense that they believed in “the exclusive application of mechanics to processes which are of chemical and organic nature” (p. 66). We shall see in the next chapter how the misapprehension of these words of Engels led some people to lapse into idealism because of the teaching of the new physics. Engels does not reject purely mechanical materialism on the grounds attributed to him by physicists of “recent” idealistic (Machian) tendency. The second limitation can be found in the metaphysical views of the old materialists, that is, the “anti-dialectical tendency of their philosophy.” This limitation is shared by Büchner, et al., together with our Machians who were unable, as we have seen, to understand Engels’ application of dialectics to epistemology (e. g., concerning absolute and relative truth). The third limitation lies in the preservation of a social idealism “from above,” in questions of social character and can be traced to a misapprehension of historical materialism.

Having pointed out and explained these limitations clearly and exhaustively, Engels adds that they (Büchner and the others) “did not by any means escape the limitations of the doctrine.”

Only because of these three deficiencies, and exclusively within their limits, does Engels refute the eighteenth century materialism and the doctrines of Büchner! On the other questions, which bear the character of truisms, there is no difference, despite the perversions of the Machians, nor can there be any, between Marx and Engels on the one side, and the rest of the materialists on the other. Only the Russian Machians brought confusion into this perfectly clear question since it is quite evident that for their western-European teachers and co-thinkers, there is a fundamental disagreement between the general views of Mach and his cohorts and the basic doctrines of the materialists. Our Machians had first to confuse the question in order to pave the way for a break with Marxism and a desertion to the camp of bourgeois philosophy under the guise of a minor correction of Marxism!

Take Dühring. It is hard to imagine anybody more contemptuous of him than Engels. Still simultaneously with Engels, Leclair criticises the same Dühring, and praises the “revolutionary philosophy” of Mach. For Leclair, Dühring is the “extreme left” of a materialism, which “without evasion declares sensation as well as the phenomena of consciousness and reason in general to be the secretion, function, highest flower, aggregate effect, etc., of the living organism.”

Does Engels criticise Dühring for this? No. In this respect he fully agrees with Dühring as with every other materialist. He criticises Dühring from an opposite point of view, namely, for his inconsistent materialism, for his idealist idiosyncrasies, which left a loophole for theism.

“Nature itself works in the creature, which has presentations, as well as outside of him; works to produce uniformly connected impressions and to create necessary knowledge about the arrangement of things.” Leclair quotes these words of Dühring, attacking in a rage such materialism as “crudest metaphysics,” as “delusion,” etc., etc. (pp. 160-162).

Does Engels criticise Dühring for this? No. He mocked at all bombast, but in regards to the recognition of the objectivity of nature, reflected by mind, Engels fully agrees with Dühring as with every other materialist.

“Reason is the highest aspect of the rest of reality. . . . The foundation stone of philosophy lies in the distinction and independence of the material world from the groups of mental phenomena which emerge in this world and which perceive it.” Leclair quotes these words of Dühring together with a series of his attacks on Kant, etc., and accuses Dühring on this account of “metaphysics” (pp. 218-222), of subscribing to a “metaphysical dogma,” etc.

Does Engels criticise Dühring for this? No. That the world exists independently of the mind and that any deviation from this view on the part of Kantians, Humeans, Berkeleians and so forth is false, Engels is in complete accord with Dühring as with all other materialists. Had Engels seen from what side Leclair, together with Mach, passed criticism upon Dühring, he would have called those philosophic reactionaries by even more contemptuous names than he did Dühring. For Leclair, Dühring was the incarnation of obnoxious realism and materialism. Schuppe, the teacher and associate of Mach, in 1878 accused Dühring of “dream realism” (Traumrealismus), in revenge for the word Traumidealismus, which Dühring hurled at all the idealists. For Engels on the contrary, Dühring was not a sufficiently consistent and explicit materialist.

Marx, together with Engels and Dietzgen, entered the philosophic arena when materialism reigned in advanced intellectual circles in general, and in workers’ circles in particular. It is, therefore, quite natural that they gave attention not to reaffirming well-established principles but to the serious elaboration of materialism in theory and its application to history, that is, to the completion of the edifice at the top. It is quite natural that they limited themselves in the domain of epistemology to correcting Feuerbach’s errors, and to ridiculing the vulgarities of the materialist Dühring, to the criticism of Büchner’s errors (see Dietzgen), to emphasis upon that which the popular (amongst workers) writers especially lacked, namely, the dialectical approach. Marx, Engels, and Dietzgen did not pay much attention to the truisms of materialism, which the vulgarising peddlers repeated in many editions. They tried to see to it that those truisms should not become vulgarised, should not become over-simplified, should not lead to stagnation (“materialism at the bottom, idealism at the top”), should not lead materialists to throw away the valuable kernel of the idealist system—the Hegelian dialectics—that gem which the Büchners and the Dührings (together with Leclair, Mach, Avenarius and others) could not discern in the rubbish of absolute idealism.

By keeping in mind the historical background in which the philosophic works of Engels and Dietzgen were written, one can clearly see why they fenced themselves off from the vulgar materialists instead of joining forces with them. Marx and Engels also fenced themselves off from the vulgarization of the fundamental demands of political democracy, rather than defend them.

Only the disciples of the philosophic reactionaries could “fail to notice” this circumstance, and could present matters to their readers in such a light as to make it appear that Marx and Engels did not understand what it means to be a materialist.

The previously cited example from Helfond already contains an answer to this question, and we shall not examine the numerous instances in which Dietzgen receives similar treatment at the hands of our Machians. It is more expedient to quote from Dietzgen himself in order to show his weak points.

“Thinking is a function of the brain,” says Dietzgen in The Positive Outcome of Philosophy. “My desk as a picture in my mind is identical with my idea of it. But my desk outside of my brain is a separate object and distinct from my idea” (p. 62). These very clear materialistic propositions Dietzgen, however, completes thus: “‘We distinguish between the object of sense perception and its mental image. Nevertheless the intangible idea is also material and real (p. 63). . . . The function of the brain is no more a ‘pure’ process than the function of the eye, the scent of a flower, the heat of a stove, or the touch of a table” (p. 64). Here is an obvious untruth. That thought and matter are “real,”—that they exist, is true. But to call thought material is to make an erroneous step, is to confuse materialism and idealism. But in truth it is only an inexact expression of Dietzgen’s, who elsewhere speaks quite correctly. “Consciousness and matter have this in common, that they exist. . . . Thinking is a physical process and it cannot exist or produce anything without materials any more than any other process of labor. My thought requires some material which can be thought of. This material is furnished by the phenomena of nature and life. . . . Matter is the boundary, beyond which the mind cannot pass. Mind is a product of matter, but matter is more than a product of mind . . .” (p. 74). The Machians refrain from analysing these materialistic arguments advanced by the materialist Dietzgen! They prefer to cavil at his inexact phrases and confused passages. For example, he says that scientists can be “idealists outside of their specialty” (p. 124). As to why he believes this, the Machians are silent. But on page 122 Dietzgen recognises the “positive side of modern idealism” and the “inadequacy of materialism” (p. 123), at which the Machians should rejoice. The source of the incorrect expression of Dietzgen lies in the statement that “the distinction between matter and mind is relative but not absolute” (p. 123). This is true, but from this follows not the inadequacy of materialism as such but the inadequacy of metaphysical, anti-dialectical materialism.

“Truth, profane or scientific, is not based upon personalities. It is based on external objects; it is objective. . . . We call ourselves materialists. . . . Those thinkers are philosophic materialists who put the real world at the beginning, at the head of their investigation, and the idea or spirit as the sequel and outcome, as the product, while their opponents follow the opposite method.” The Machians ignore this recognition of objective truth and the repetition of Engels’ definition of materialism. But when Dietzgen says: “We would be equally right in calling ourselves idealists, inasmuch as our system is based upon the final results of philosophy, upon the scientific investigation of ideas, upon the clear insight won by us into the nature of the mind” (ibid., p. 141), it is not difficult to cavil at this incorrect phrasing in order to refute materialism. In truth, the verbal expression, in Dietzgen’s case, is more inexact than is his basic thought which can be reduced to this, that the traditional materialism can not investigate ideas scientifically without the help of historical materialism.

Here is Dietzgen’s argument against traditional materialism: “Materialism is, like Political Economy, a scientific result. Just as we distinguish between modern and utopian socialism, so do we also distinguish between modern and eighteenth century materialism. With the latter we have only this in common, that we assume matter as the premise, as the cause of the idea” (p. 220). This word “only” is very characteristic! It includes all the epistemological grounds of materialism as distinct from agnosticism, Machism and idealism. But Dietzgen’s efforts are here directed to marking himself off from vulgar materialism.

Yet a little further another incorrect expression crops up again: “The conception of matter must be given a more comprehensive meaning. To it belong all the phenomena of reality including our power of thinking” (p. 222). This muddle confuses materialism and idealism under the pretence of “broadening” the first. To cavil at such “broadening” is to forget the basis of Dietzgen’s philosophy, the recognition of matter as the prius, as the “limit of spirit.” And a few lines further down, Dietzgen corrects himself, saying that “the whole governs the part, and cosmic matter the mind. It is in this sense that we may regard the material world as the supreme being, as the cause of all causes, as the creator of heaven and earth” (p. 222). That the conception of “matter” must also include “thoughts,” as Dietzgen repeats in the Excursions, is a confusion, for once such an inclusion is made, the epistemological distinction between mind and matter, materialism and idealism, has no meaning, a distinction which Dietzgen himself insists upon. That this distinction must not be stretched, or exaggerated, or regarded as metaphysically absolute, is beyond dispute, and in emphasising this lies the great merit of Dietzgen’s dialectical materialism. The limits of the absolute necessity and the absolute truth of such relative distinctions are precisely the limits which define the direction of our knowledge-getting processes. It would be a great mistake to operate beyond these limits with the contrast of matter and mind, physical and psychical, or with any other absolute contradistinction.

Dietzgen, as distinguished from Engels, expresses his thoughts unclearly and vaguely. But putting aside the shortcomings of the exposition and the frequent mistakes, he successfully defends the “materialistic theory of knowledge and dialectical materialism.” “The materialist theory of knowledge amounts, then, to this statement, that the human organ of cognition radiates no metaphysical light, but is a piece of Nature which pictures other pieces of Nature” (p. 309). “Our faculty of cognition is not a supernatural source of truth, but a mirror-like instrument which reflects the things of the world, or Nature” (p. 331). Our thoughtful Machians ignore an analysis of the individual propositions of Dietzgen’s materialist theory of knowledge, but cavil at his vagueness and confusion and deviations from his basic position. Dietzgen pleases the reactionary philosophers just because he commits blunders. Wherever there is a blunder, we are sure to find the Machians! This is obvious enough.

Marx wrote Kugelmann on December 5, 1868: “It is long since Dietzgen sent me his manuscript [The Nature of Human Brain-Work], which, despite some confusion of ideas and too frequent repetitions, contains many excellent thoughts, and which as a product of the independent thinking of a worker, is worthy of admiration.” Valentinov cites this review and it does not enter his mind to ask himself what Marx regards as Dietzgen’s confusion. Was it Dietzgen’s approach to Mach, or that which separates him from Mach. Mr. Valentinov does not ask himself this question, for he reads Dietzgen and Marx’s letters like Gogol’s hero, Petrushka, read words. It is not difficult to find an answer to this question: Marx often termed his viewpoint dialectical materialism, and Engels’ Anti-Dühring which Marx read through before publication, expounds precisely this viewpoint. From this it should be clear even to the Valentinovs that Dietzgen’s confusion lay only in his deviation from a consistent application of dialectics, from a consistent materialism. This is made quite evident, particularly in Anti-Dühring.

Had Valentinov and his associates no suspicion that Marx would pick out as confused only those elements in Dietzgen in which he approaches Mach, who went from Kant not toward materialism but towards Berkeley and Hume? Or perhaps the materialist Marx regarded Dietzgen’s materialist theory of knowledge as confused and approved his deviations from materialism? Perhaps Marx approved of what Anti-Dühring, written with his collaboration, disapproves?

Whom are our Machians, masquerading as Marxians, trying to dupe in telling the world that “their” Mach approved of Dietzgen? Have they no suspicion that Mach approved of him only because of the presence of those very elements for which Marx dubbed him a muddlehead?

Taking Dietzgen as a whole, he does not deserve to be very much censured. He is nine-tenths materialist and never made any pretentions to originality or boasted a special philosophy distinct from materialism. He spoke of Marx many times, and invariably as the head of the movement. (In 1873, on page 82 of his Philosophical Essays, and in 1876, on page 173, he stresses the fact that Marx and Engels “possessed the necessary philosophic training.” In 1886, on page 265, he speaks of Marx and Engels “renowned as founders of the movement”). Dietzgen was a Marxian, and a poor service, indeed, has his son, Eugene Dietzgen, rendered him. And alas! the same is true for Comrade P. Dauge, too, who invented “natur-monism,” “Dietzgenism,” etc. “Dietzgenism” as distinct from dialectic materialism is rank confusion, a step backward toward reactionary philosophy, an attempt to create a tendency, not out of the really great things in Joseph Dietzgen (that worker-philosopher, who developed dialectic materialism in his own way, which is great enough) but out of his weak points. I will confine myself to two examples of how Comrade Dauge and Eugene Dietzgen are slipping down the sharp decline to reactionary philosophy!

Dauge writes in the second edition of the Aquisit (p. 273): “Even bourgeois criticism, points out the connection of Dietzgen’s philosophy with empirio-criticism and the thought of the immanentist school,” and further: “especially that of Leclair.”

That Dauge values and esteems Dietzgen is beyond doubt. But it is also beyond doubt that he puts him to shame by citing without protest the opinion of a bourgeois scribbler, who makes the sworn enemy of theism akin to the professors, akin to the “graduated flunkeys” of the bourgeoisie, and especially to that downright reactionary and open preacher of theism, Leclair. It is possible that Dauge repeated somebody’s opinion on the followers of the immanentist school and Leclair, Dauge himself not being familiar with the writings of these reactionaries. But let this serve him as a warning: the road from Marx—through the peculiar deviations of Dietzgen—to Mach and the followers of the immanentist school is the road leading into the mire. The approach not only to Leclair but even to Mach distinguishes Dietzgen, the muddlehead, from Dietzgen, the materialist.

I shall defend Dietzgen against Dauge. I assert that Dietzgen did not deserve the disgrace of being classed with Leclair. And I call as witness the most authoritative person on such a question: as reactionary a philosopher, theist and “immanentist” as Leclair is himself, namely, Schubert-Soldern. In 1896 he wrote: “The social-democrats willingly follow Hegel with more or less (usually less) right, but they materialise Hegel’s philosophy. Compare Dietzgen in this respect. With Dietzgen the absolute becomes the universe,—the universe—the thing-in-itself, the absolute Subject, whose predicates are particular phenomena. That Dietzgen was converting pure abstractions into concrete processes, he was not, of course, aware of any more than Hegel was himself. . . . Hegel, Darwin, Haeckel, and naturo-historical materialism are combined in Dietzgen.” Schubert-Soldern more keenly discerns philosophic shades and tendencies than does Mach himself who praises everybody including Jerusalem.

Eugene Dietzgen was so naive as to complain to the German public that the “narrow” Russian materialists had done violence to the thought of Joseph Dietzgen. He translated into German Plekhanov’s and Dauge’s articles on Joseph Dietzgen. The poor naturmonist’s complaint fell on his own head. Franz Mehring, who understands something of the philosophy of Marxism, wrote in his review that Plekhanov was essentially right as against Dauge. That Dietzgen, where he deviated from Marx and Engels, got into a scrape, is for Mehring beyond doubt. Eugene Dietzgen replied to Mehring in a long, snivelling note, in which he said that Dietzgen might be of service “in the reconciliation” of the “contending orthodox and revisionist comrades.”

Another warning, Comrade Dauge: The road from Marx to “Dietzgenism” and “Machism” is a road into the mire, not merely for persons like Jones, Smith, etc., but for a whole movement.

And do not cry out, you Machians, that I resort to “authorities”; your clamour against the argument from authority is only a screen to conceal the fact that you substitute for the socialist authorities Marx, Engels, Lafargue, Mehring, Kautsky, the bourgeois authorities (Mach, Petzoldt, Avenarius and the immanentists). It would have been much better if you had not raised the question of “authorities” and “authoritarianism”!