Introduction: How Certain “Marxists” in 1908 and Certain Idealists in 1710 Refuted Materialism

One who has the slightest acquaintance with philosophical literature must be aware of the fact that there is hardly one contemporary professor of philosophy—and theology as well—who is not directly or indirectly engaged in overthrowing materialism. A thousand times has materialism been disproved, yet for the thousand and first time they are still continuing to overthrow it. All our revisionists are engaged in disproving materialism, pretending that they are refuting only the materialist Plekhanov, but not the materialist Engels, not the materialist Feuerbach, nor the materialist views of Dietzgen. In addition they pretend to refute materialism from the standpoint of “recent” and “modern” positivism, natural science, etc.

Without adducing quotations from these books which one could produce by the hundreds at will, I shall refer only to those proofs by which materialism is being combated by Bazarov, Bogdanov, Yushkevich, Valentinov, Chernov and other Machians. I shall use this term (Machian) as a synonym for the term “empirio-criticist” because it is brief and simple and already enjoys the rights of citizenship in Russian literature. That Ernst Mach is the most popular representative of empirio-criticism is universally acknowledged in philosophic literature. As to Bogdanov’s and Yushkevich’s deviations from “pure” Machism, it will later be shown that they are of secondary importance.

The materialists, we are told, avow something unthinkable and unknowable—“things-in-themselves,”—matter “outside of experience” and beyond our cognition. They relapse into actual mysticism, admitting the existence of something transcending the boundaries of “experience” and cognition. Asserting that when matter acts upon our sense organs, it produces sensations, the materialists regard as the ultimate principle the “unknown,” nothingness; for they themselves declare our perceptions supposedly to be the only source of knowledge. The materialists fall into “Kantianism” (e.g., Plekhanov, by recognising the existence of “things-in-themselves,”—that is of things outside of our consciousness); they “duplicate” the world and profess “dualism,” for, besides the appearance, the materialists hold that there is the thing-in-itself; beyond the immediate sense data they supposedly postulate something else, some fetish, an idol, an absolute, the source of metaphysics, the double of religion (“the holy matter,” as Bazarov says).

Such are the proofs of the Machians against materialism repeated by the aforementioned writers in many ways.

In order to determine whether these proofs are new, and whether they are really directed against only one Russian materialist who “fell into Kantianism,” we shall adduce some detailed quotations from the works of George Berkeley, an old idealist. This historical inquiry is the more necessary in our introductory remarks since we shall have to refer more than once to Berkeley and his tendency in philosophy, for the Machians have wrongly represented the relationship of Mach to Berkeley and to the latter’s philosophic position.

The work of Bishop George Berkeley, published in 1710 under the title, Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, begins with the following argument: “It is evident to anyone who takes a survey of the objects of human knowledge, that they are either ideas actually imprinted on the senses; or else such as are perceived by attending to the passions and operations of the mind; or, lastly, ideas formed by help of memory and imagination. . . . By sight I have the ideas of light and colours, with their several degrees and variations. By touch I perceive hard and soft, heat and cold, motion and resistance. . . . Smelling furnishes me with odours; the palate with tastes; and hearing conveys sounds. . . . And as several of these are observed to accompany each other, they come to be marked by one name, and so to be reputed as one thing. Thus, for example, a certain colour, taste, smell, figure and consistence having been observed to go together, are accounted one distinct thing, signified by the name apple; other collections of ideas constitute a stone, a tree, a book, and the like sensible things . . .”

Such is the content of the first paragraph of Berkeley’s work. Let us not forget that Berkeley takes as the ultimate forms of his philosophy the principles “hard, soft, heat and cold, colours, tastes, odours,” etc. For Berkeley things are “collections of ideas,” designating by this expression the aforesaid qualities or sensations, and not abstract thoughts.

Besides those “ideas or objects of knowledge,” according to Berkeley, there exists something that perceives them—“mind, spirit, soul or myself” (§2). It is self-evident, the philosopher concludes, that “ideas” cannot exist outside of the mind that perceives them. In order to convince ourselves of the truth of this statement, let us take the meaning of the word “exist.” “The table I write on, I say exists, that is, I see and feel it; and if I were out of my study I should say it existed)—meaning thereby that if I was in my study I might perceive.” That is what Berkeley says in § 3 of his work, and right there he begins to discuss the question with people whom he calls materialists (§§18, 19 ff). “I cannot conceive”—says he—“how it is possible to speak of the absolute existence of things without their relation to the fact that somebody perceives them. To exist means to be perceived” (their esse is percipi, § 3; this saying is frequently quoted in philosophic textbooks). “It is indeed an opinion strangely prevailing amongst men, that houses, mountains, rivers, and in a word all sensible objects, have an existence, natural or real, distinct from their being perceived by the understanding” (§ 4). This principle is a “manifest contradiction,” says Berkeley. “For, what are the aforementioned objects but the things we perceive by sense? and what do we perceive besides our own ideas or sensations? and is it not plainly repugnant that any one of these, or any combination of them, should exist unperceived?” (§ 4).

The expression, “collection of ideas,” Berkeley now changes for what (according to him) is the identical expression, “combination of sensations,” accusing the materialists of the “absurd” tendency to go still further, of seeking the source of this “complex,”—this “combination of sensations.” In § 5 the materialists are accused of trifling with an abstraction, for to separate sensation from an object, according to Berkeley, is an empty abstraction. “In truth [according to Fraser this sentence is omitted in the second edition] the object and the sensation are the same thing, and cannot therefore be abstracted from each other. But, say you, though the ideas themselves do not exist without the mind, yet there may be things like them, whereof they are copies or resemblances, which things exist without the mind in an unthinking substance. I answer, an idea can be like nothing but an idea; a colour or figure can be like nothing but another colour or figure. . . .I ask whether those supposed originals or external things, of which our ideas are the pictures or representations, be themselves perceivable or no? If they are, then they are ideas and we have gained our point; but if you say they are not, I appeal to anyone whether it be sense to assert a colour is like something which is invisible; hard or soft, like something which is intangible; and so of the rest” (§ 8).

As the reader sees Bazarov’s “arguments” against Plekhanov concerning the problem of whether things can exist apart from their action on us, he will realise that they do not differ in the least from Berkeley’s arguments against the materialists whom he does not mention by name. Berkeley considers the notion of the existence of “matter or corporeal substance” (§ 9) as “contradictory,” holding that it is not worth the time exposing its “absurdity.” He says: “But, because the tenet of the existence of Matter seems to have taken so deep a root in the minds of philosophers, and draws after it so many ill consequences, I choose rather to be thought prolix and tedious than omit anything that might conduce to the full discovery and extirpation of that prejudice” (§ 9).

We shall soon see what Berkeley means by the expression “ill consequences.” Let us first complete his theoretical demonstrations against the materialists. Denying the “absolute” existence of objects, that is the existence of things outside human knowledge, Berkeley expounds the views of his enemies in such a way as if they recognised the “thing-in-itself.” In § 24 he says that this notion, which he refutes, recognises (emphasising the following words) “The absolute existence of sensible objects in themselves, or without the mind” (pp. 167-8). Here are two fundamental philosophic principles, depicted with such uprightness, clarity and precision, that they distinguish the classic philosophers from the inventors of “new” systems. By materialism is meant recognition of “objects in themselves,” or “without the mind”; ideas and sensations are copies or images of those objects. The opposite doctrine (idealism) claims that objects do not exist “without the mind”; objects are “combinations of sensations.”

This was written in 1710, fourteen years before the birth of Immanuel Kant; yet our Machians, supposedly on the basis of “modern” philosophy, made the discovery that the recognition of “objects in themselves” is the result of the contagion or perversion of materialism by Kantianism! The “new” discoveries of the Machians are clearly products of their astounding ignorance of the history of basic philosophic tendencies.

Their “new” thought consists in this; that the concepts of “matter” or “substance” are remnants of the old uncritical views. Mach and Avenarius, don’t you see, have given the impetus to philosophical reflection, have deepened the analysis and eliminated the “absolutes,” the “unchangeable entities,” etc. If you wish to check such assertions with the original sources, compare them with Berkeley, and you will see that they reduce themselves to shallow pretence. Berkeley says very definitely that matter is a nonentity (§ 68), that matter is nothing (§ 80). “You may,” thus Berkeley ridicules the materialists, “if so it shall seem good, use the word ‘Matter’ in the same sense as other men use ‘nothing’” (ibid., pp. 196-7). At the beginning, says Berkeley, it was believed that colours, odours, “really exist,” but subsequently such views were renounced, and it was granted that they only exist depending on our sensations. But this removal of the old erroneous conceptions was not completed; the remainder is the idea of “substratum or substance that is a plain repugnancy” (p. 195), which was finally revealed by Bishop Berkeley in 1710! In 1908 there were still such triflers who seriously believed Avenarius, Petzoldt, Mach et al., according to whom only “recent positivism” and “recent natural science” could succeed in removing these “metaphysical” conceptions.

These same triflers (amongst them Bogdanov) assure us that it was the new philosophy that corrected the much refuted error of the materialists concerning the “reduplication of the world”—concerning the “reflections” in the human mind of things existing without the mind. A mass of sentimental stuff has been written about this “reduplication” by the above-named authors. Due to forgetfulness, or ignorance, they overlooked the fact that these new discoveries had already been discovered in 1710.

“Our knowledge of these hath been very much obscured and confounded, and we have been led into very dangerous errors, by supposing a twofold existence of the objects of sense—the one intelligible or in the mind, the other real and without the mind” (§ 86). And Berkeley ridicules such “absurd” notions, which admit the possibility of thinking the unthinkable! The source of the absurdity—“follows from our supposing a difference between things and ideas . . . and depends on the supposition of external objects” (§ 87). The same source—discovered by Berkeley in 1710 and again by Bogdanov in 1908—produces faith in fetishes and idols. “The existence of Matter, or bodies unperceived, has not only been the main support of Atheists and Fatalists, but on the same principle doth Idolatry likewise in all its various forms depend” (§ 94).

Here we reach those “repugnant” conclusions derived from the “absurd” teaching of the existence of the external world which compelled Bishop Berkeley not only theoretically to repudiate the doctrine, but passionately to persecute its adherents as enemies. “For, as we have shewn, the doctrine of Matter or corporeal substance to have been the main pillar and support of Scepticism, so likewise upon the same foundation have been raised all the impious schemes of Atheism and Irreligion. . . . How great a friend material substance has been to Atheists in all ages were needless to relate. All their monstrous systems have so visible and necessary a dependence on it that, when this corner-stone is once removed, the whole fabric cannot choose but fall to the ground, insomuch that it is no longer worth while to bestow a particular consideration on the absurdities of every wretched sect of Atheists” (§ 92).

“Matter being once expelled out of nature drags with it so many sceptical and impious notions, such an incredible number of disputes and puzzling questions [“The principle of economy of thought,” discovered by Mach in the ’70’s of the last century! Philosophy as reflection of the world according to the “principle of minimum effort”—by Avenarius in 1876!] which have been thorns in the sides of divines as well as philosophers, and made much fruitless work for mankind, that if the arguments we have produced against it are not found equal to demonstration (as to me they evidently seem), yet I am sure all friends to knowledge, peace, and religion have reason to wish they were” (§ 96).

Frankly and plainly did Bishop Berkeley argue! In our time, however, these very thoughts—of withdrawing “matter” from philosophy for reasons of “economy”—are expressed in a form more cunning and baffling, disguised by the use of “new” terminology. This is done in order that these thoughts should be regarded by “naive” people as the most modern philosophy!

But frankness about the tendencies of his philosophy was not the only object of Berkeley; he also endeavoured to cover its idealistic nakedness and to present it devoid of absurdities and acceptable to “common sense.” Instinctively defending himself against the accusations of what is nowadays called subjective idealism and solipsism, he says “that by the principles premised we are not deprived of any one thing in nature” (§ 34). “There is a rerum natura and the distinction between realities and chimeras retains its full force; but then they both equally exist in the mind” (§ 34). “I do not argue against the existence of any one thing that we can apprehend either by sense or reflection. That the things I see with my eyes and touch with my hands do exist, really exist, I make not the least question. The only thing whose existence we deny is that which philosophers call Matter or corporeal substance. And in doing this there is no damage done to the rest of mankind, who, I dare say, will never miss it. The Atheist indeed will want the colour of an empty name to support his impiety” (§ 35).

This thought is made still clearer in § 37, where Berkeley defends his philosophy against the accusation of destroying corporeal substances: “If the word substance be taken in the vulgar sense—for a combination of sensible qualities, such as extension, solidity, weight and the like—this we cannot be accused of taking away: but if it be taken in a philosophic sense—for the support of accidents or qualities without the mind—then indeed I acknowledge that we take it away, if one may be said to take away that which never had any existence, not even in the imagination.”

Fraser, the English philosopher and idealist, an adherent of Berkeleianism, who edited Berkeley’s works, having supplied them with his own annotations, designates Berkeley’s doctrine by the term “Natural Realism” (ibid. p. x). This amusing terminology must by all means be noted, for it tells the tale of Berkeley’s intention to pose as a realist. In our further exposition we will from time to time meet with the “recent positivists,” who employ the same stratagem or guile. Berkeley does not deny the existence of real objects! Berkeley does not go against the opinions of humanity! Berkeley denies “only” the teachings of the philosophers, their theory of knowledge, the teaching which takes as a starting point the recognition of the external world and the reflection thereof in the human mind. Berkeley does not deny natural science which has always adhered (mostly unconsciously) to the materialist theory of knowledge! “We may, from the experience [Berkeley—philosophy of “pure experience”] we have had of the train and succession of ideas in our minds . . . often make well-grounded predictions concerning the ideas we shall be affected with pursuant to a great train of actions, and be enabled to pass a right judgment of what would have appeared to us, in case we were placed in circumstances very different from those we are in at present. Herein consists the knowledge of nature, which [listen to this!] may preserve its use and certainty very consistently with what hath been said” (§ 59).

Let us regard the external world, or nature as “a combination of sensations” which is caused in our mind by the divinity. Admit this and give up searching for the “ground” of these sensations outside of the mind and man, and I will recognize within the framework of the idealist theory of knowledge all of natural science, the application and certainty of its inferences. It is exactly this framework that I need for my conclusions for the sake of “peace and religion.” Such is Berkeley’s idea. It correctly expresses the essence and social significance of idealist philosophy, and we will encounter it later, when we come to speak of the relation of Machism to natural science.

Let us now consider another “recent” discovery that was borrowed from Bishop Berkeley by the recent positivist and critical realist, P. Yushkevich. This discovery is called “empirio-symbolism.” “Berkeley,” says Fraser, “thus reverts to his favourite theory of a Universal Natural Symbolism” (p. 190). If these words were not mentioned in the edition of 1871, one would suspect the English philosopher and fideist, Fraser, of plagiarising the works of both the modern mathematician and physicist H. Poincaré and the Russian “Marxist” Yushkevich!

As for Berkeley’s theory, which threw Fraser into rapture, it is expounded in the following words: “The connexion of ideas [do not forget that for Berkeley ideas and objects are identical] does not imply the relation of cause and effect, but only of a mark or sign with the thing signified” (§ 65). “Hence, it is evident that those things which, under the notion of a cause co-operating or concurring in the production of effects, are altogether inexplicable, and run us into great absurdities, may be very naturally explained . . . when they are considered only as marks or signs for our information” (§ 66). Of course, in the opinion of Berkeley and Fraser, no other than the divinity informs us by means of these “empirio-symbols.” The epistemological significance of symbolism in Berkeley’s theory consists in this, that one must change the “doctrine” which pretends “to explain things by corporeal causes” (§ 66).

In the question of causality there are before us two philosophic tendencies, one of which “pretends to explain things by corporeal causes.” It is clear that it is connected with the “absurd doctrinaire matter,” refuted by Bishop Berkeley. The other theory reduces the “notion of causality” to the notion of “mark or sign” which serves for “our information” (supplied by God). We shall meet these two tendencies in a twentieth-century garb when we analyse the relationship of both Machism and dialectic materialism to this question.

Furthermore, it ought to be remarked that on the question of reality Berkeley, refusing to recognise the existence of things outside the mind, tries to find a criterion in order to distinguish between the real and the fictitious. In § 36 he says that those “ideas” which are called out by the human mind “at pleasure” “are faint, weak, and unsteady in respect of others they perceive by sense—which, being impressed upon them according to certain rules and laws of nature, speak themselves about the effects of a mind more powerful and wise than human spirits. These latter are said to have more reality in them than the former;—by which is meant that they are more affecting, orderly, and distinct, and that they are not fictions of the mind perceiving them. . . .” Elsewhere (§ 84) Berkeley tries to connect the idea of reality with the simultaneous perception of the very same sensations by many people. For instance, how shall we answer the question, raised by the legend in which we are told, that the transformation of water into wine is real. “If at the table all who were present should see, and smell, and taste, and drink wine, and find the effects of it, with me there could be no doubt of its reality”; and Fraser remarks: “The simultaneous consciousness of, or participation in, the ‘same’ sense—ideas, by different persons, as distinguished from the purely individual or personal consciousness of imaginary objects and emotions, is here referred to a test of the reality of the former.”

It is evident that Berkeley’s subjective idealism is not to be interpreted as if he ignored the distinction between individual and collective perception. On the contrary, on the basis of this distinction he attempts to construct the criterion of reality. Inferring “ideas” from the divinity’s effects upon human mind, Berkeley thus comes near to objective idealism: the world is not my idea, but it becomes the product of a supreme spiritual cause that creates the “laws of nature,” and laws for distinguishing “more real” ideas from those less real.

In another work of his, The Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous (1713), where he endeavours to present his views in a specially popular form, he thus states the difference between his doctrines and those of the materialists:

“I assert as well as you [materialists] that, since we are affected from without, we must allow powers to be without, in a being distinct from ourselves. But then we differ as to the kind of this powerful being. I will have it to be Spirit, you Matter, or I know not what (I may add, you, too, know not what) third nature”. . . (Vol. I, p. 335).

Fraser comments: “This is the gist of the whole question. According to the Materialists, sensible phenomena are due to MATERIAL SUBSTANCE, or to some unknown ‘third nature’; according to Berkeley, to Rational Will; according to Hume and the Positivists, their origin is absolutely unknown, and we can only generalise them inductively, through custom, as facts.”

The English Berkeleian, Fraser, from his consistent idealist viewpoint, recognises the same fundamental divisions in philosophy which were distinguished with such great lucidity by the materialist Engels. In his work, Ludwig Feuerbach, Engels divides philosophers into “two great camps”—materialists and idealists. Engels, who considered more closely than Fraser the well developed and varied content of both types of theories, sees this fundamental distinction between them: that while to the materialists nature is primary and spirit secondary, to the idealists the reverse is the case. Between these two schools of thought Engels places the adherents of Hume and Kant who deny the possibility of knowing the world, or at least of fully knowing it, and he terms them agnostics. In his Ludwig Feuerbach Engels applies this term only to the adherents of Hume (the very same people whom Fraser names agnostics, and who prefer to call themselves “positivists”). But in his article on “Historical Materialism,” Engels speaks directly of the standpoint of “the Neo-Kantian agnostic,” regarding Neo-Kantianism also as a variety of agnosticism.

We cannot stop here to consider this remarkably correct and profound argument of Engels—an argument which is impudently ignored by the Machians. We shall discuss this fact at length later on. Now we shall confine ourselves to the task of calling attention to the Marxian terminology and to this meeting of extremes—the views of a consistent materialist and a consistent idealist upon the fundamental philosophic issues. To elucidate these tendencies (with which we shall constantly have to deal in our further exposition) let us briefly note the views of the outstanding philosophers of the eighteenth century, who had taken a path other than Berkeley’s.

These are Hume’s arguments: “It seems evident, that men are carried, by a natural instinct or prepossession, to repose faith in their senses; and that, without any reasoning, or even almost before the use of reason, we always suppose an external universe, which depends not on our perception, but would exist, though we and every sensible creature were absent or annihilated. Even the animal creations are governed by a like opinion, and preserve this belief of external objects, in all their thoughts, designs and actions. . . . But this universal and primary opinion of all men is soon destroyed by the slightest philosophy, which teaches us, that nothing can ever be present to the mind but an image or perception, and that the senses are only inlets, through which these images are conveyed, without being able to produce any immediate intercourse between the mind and the object. The table, which we see, seems to diminish, as we remove farther from it: but the real table, which exists independent of us, suffers no alteration: it was, therefore, nothing but its image, which was present to the mind. These are the obvious dictates of reason; and no man, who reflects, ever doubted, that the existences, which we consider, when we say, this house and that tree, are nothing but perceptions in the mind. . . . By what arguments can it be proved, that the perceptions of the mind must be caused by external objects, entirely different from them, though resembling them (if that be possible) and could not arise either from the energy of the mind itself, or from the suggestion of some invisible and unknown spirit, or from some other cause still more unknown to us? . . . How shall the question be determined? By experience surely; as all other questions of a like nature. But here experience is, and must be entirely silent. The mind has never anything present to it but the perceptions, and cannot possibly reach any experience of their connexion with objects. This supposition of such a connexion is, therefore, without any foundation in reasoning. To have recourse to the veracity of the supreme Being, in order to prove the veracity of our senses, is surely making a very unexpected circuit. . . . If the external world be once called in question, we shall be at a loss to find arguments, by which we may prove the existence of that Being or any of his attributes.”

He says the same thing in his Treatise of Human Nature: “There is only a single existence, which I shall call indifferently objects or perceptions.” By scepticism Hume means the refusal to explain sensations as the effects of objects, spirit, etc., a refusal, on the one hand, to reduce perceptions to the external world, and on the other, to the divinity or to an unknown spirit. And the author of the introduction to the French translation of Hume, F. Pillon—a philosopher related to Mach’s school (as we shall see below)—is right in saying that for Hume the subject and the object are reduced to “groups of various perceptions,” to “elements of consciousness, to impressions, ideas, etc.”; that the only concern should be with the “groupings and combinations of these elements.” Huxley, the English Humean, who coined the well-aimed and correct term “agnosticism,” in his Hume also emphasises the fact that the agnostic, regarding “sensations” as the “primary and irreducible states of consciousness,” is not consistent in his reply to the question how the origin of sensations is to be explained, whether by the effect of the objects on man or by the creative power of the mind. “Realism and idealism are equally probable hypotheses.” Hume does not go further than sensations. “Thus the colours red and blue, and the odour of a rose, are simple impressions. . . . But a red rose gives us a complex impression, capable of resolution into the simple impressions of red colour, rose scent, and numerous others” (pp. 64-65). Hume admits both a “materialist position” and an “idealist position” (p. 82); the “collection of perceptions” may be generated by the Fichtean “ego” or may be a “signification and even a symbol” of “something real.” This is how Huxley interprets Hume.

The materialist and leading spirit of the Encyclopedists, Diderot, gives the following opinion on Berkeley: “Those philosophers are termed idealists who, conscious only of their own existence and of a succession of external sensations, do not admit anything else. An extravagant system which should to my thinking have been the offspring of blindness itself. And yet, to the disgrace of the human mind and philosophy this system though the most absurd, is the most difficult to combat.” And Diderot who came very close to the view of contemporary materialism (that arguments and syllogisms alone would not suffice to refute materialism, and that it is not a question of theoretical argument), shows the similarity of the propositions of both the idealist Berkeley and Condillac, of the sensationalist school. In his opinion, Condillac should have disproved Berkeley in order to avoid such absurd conclusions of regarding sensations as the only source of our knowledge.

In the Dialogue of D’Alembert and Diderot, Diderot thus states his philosophic position: “Suppose a pianoforte be endowed with the faculty of sensation and memory, tell me would it not of its own accord repeat those airs which you have played on its keyboard? We are instruments endowed with the faculties of sensation and memory. Our senses are keys upon which surrounding nature strikes and which strike upon themselves. This is all, according to my opinion, that occurs in the piano which is organised like you and myself.” D’Alembert retorts that such an instrument would have to possess the faculty of finding food for itself and of reproducing little pianos. Undoubtedly, contends Diderot, and offers the egg as an example. “This is what refutes all the teachings of theology and all the churches on the globe. What is this egg? A mass that has no senses until the embryo is introduced thither, and when, this embryo is introduced, what is it then? An unperceiving mass, for in its turn, this embryo is only an inert and rude liquid. How is this mass reorganised, how does it begin to feel and to live? By means of heat. And what produces heat? Motion. . . . The living being that is hatched from the egg is endowed with all your sensations, and performs all your operations. Would you say with Descartes that this is a simple imitating machine? Little children will laugh at you, and the philosopher will contend that if this be a machine then you, too, are a machine. If you admit that the difference between these animals and you consists only in their organisation, you will prove that your judgment is sound, and you will be right. But from this will follow the inference that refutes you; namely, that from matter organised in a certain way, followed by the action of another bit of inert matter, and consequently from heat and motion—the faculties of sensation, life, memory, consciousness, emotion, and reflection are generated.” “One of the two,” continues Diderot, “either you must admit some ‘hidden element’ in the egg, that penetrates in an unknown way at the moment of a certain stage of development, an element about which it is unknown whether it takes up space, whether it is material or whether it is created for the occasion—a position which contradicts common sense, and leads to inconsistencies and absurdities; or we must make a simple supposition which explains everything, namely, that the faculty of sensation is the general property of matter, or a product of its organisation.”

To the reply of D’Alembert that such supposition implies a quality which is in its essence incompatible with matter, Diderot retorts: “And how do you know that the faculty of sensation is essentially incompatible with Matter, so long as you know neither the essence of things in general, nor the essence of Matter, nor the essence of sensation? Do you understand the nature of motion any better, its existence in a body, its transmission from one body to another?”

D’Alembert: “Without knowing nature, or sensation, or Matter, I see, however, that the faculty of sensation is a simple quality, single, indivisible, and incompatible with the subject and substratum, which is divisible.”

Diderot: “Metaphysico-theological nonsense! What, don’t you see that all qualities of Matter, all its forms that are accessible to us, are in their essence indivisible? There cannot be a larger or a smaller degree of impenetrability. There may be half of a round body, but there is no half of roundness. . . . Be a physicist and admit the produced character of the given effect when you see how it is produced, though you may not be able to explain the relation between the cause and effect. Be logical and do not place instead of the cause, which exists and explains everything, another cause which is impossible to comprehend, and whose connection with the effect is still more difficult to grasp, and which arouses an infinite number of difficulties, without solving even one of them.”

D’Alembert: “And if I will take this cause as a starting point?”

Diderot: “There is in the Universe one substance only, both in man and in animal. A hand-organ from wood, man from flesh. A pinefinch from flesh, and a musician from flesh who is differently organised; but one and the other are of the same origin, of the same formation, have the same functions and the same goal.”

D’Alembert: “And in what way is there a similarity of sounds between your two pianofortes?”

Diderot: “. . . An instrument endowed with the faculty of sensation, or an animal which learned by experience that after a certain sound certain consequences follow outside it; that other feeling instruments, similar to it, or other animals, draw closer or go farther, who demand, or offer, cause a wound or caress;—and all these consequences are thus associated with certain sounds in its memory and in the memory of other animals. Mark you that in human transactions there is nothing beside sounds and actions. And to appreciate the power of my system, note again, that it is subject to the same insurmountable difficulty which Berkeley set up against the existence of bodies. There was a moment of insanity when the feeling piano imagined that it is the only existing piano in the world, and that the whole harmony of the universe resided in it.”

This was written in 1769. And with this we shall conclude our brief historic inquiry. We shall more than once meet “the insane piano” and the harmony of the world ensuing within man when we analyse “recent positivism.” Now we shall limit ourselves to one conclusion: the “recent” Machians did not adduce even one argument which had not been put forth by Bishop Berkeley.

As a curiosity let us note that one of these Machians, Valentinov, vaguely feeling the falsity of his position, tried to “blot out traces” of his affinity to Berkeley; he did this in a very amusing way. On page 150 of his book we read: “We ask those, who when speaking of Mach, point to Berkeley, which Berkeley do they mean? Do they mean the Berkeley who considers himself [Valentinov wishes to say who is considered] a solipsist; or the Berkeley who insists upon the immediate presence and providence of the deity? Generally speaking [?], do they mean Berkeley, the philosophising bishop, who vehemently attacks atheism, or Berkeley, the thoughtful analyser? With Berkeley, the solipsist, and preacher of religious metaphysics, Mach really had nothing in common.” Valentinov confuses things, unable to account for the reason of his defence of the “thoughtful analyser” and idealist Berkeley against the materialist Diderot. Diderot clearly draws the line of demarcation between the fundamental philosophical tendencies. Valentinov confuses them, and while doing it, he consoles us in a ludicrous way. “We do not consider the ‘kinship’ of Mach with the idealist views of Berkeley as a philosophic crime,” he says, “even if it were to exist” (p. 149). To confound two irreconcilable fundamental divisions in philosophy—really, what “crime” is there? But the whole wisdom of Mach and Avenarius can only be reduced to such confusion, We shall now turn to the analysis of this great wisdom.