Chapter XIII (part 3)

Just as it is impossible for a savage to attain to an understanding of the nature of a watch by a study of its phenomenal side—the number of wheels, and the number of teeth in each gear—so also for the positivistic scientist, studying the external, manifesting side of life, its secret raison d’être and the aim of separate manifestations will be forever hidden. To the savage the watch will be an extremely interesting, complicated, but entirely useless toy. Somewhat after this manner a man appears to the scientist-materialist—a mechanism infinitely more complex, but equally unknown as regards the purpose for which it exists and the manner of its creation. We pictured to ourselves how incomprehensible the functions of a candle and of a coin would be for a plane-man, studying two similar circles on his plane. In like manner the functions of a man are in comprehensible to the scientist, studying him as a mechanism . The reason for this is clear. It is because the coin and the candle are not two similar circles , but two different objects, having an entirely different use and meaning in that world which is relatively higher than the plane—and man is not a mechanism , but something having an aim and meaning in the world relatively higher than the visible one. The functions of a candle and of a coin in our world are for the imaginary plane-man an inaccessible noumenon . It is evident that the phenomenon of a circle cannot give any understanding of the function of a candle, and its difference from the function of a coin. But two-dimensional knowledge exists not alone on the plane. Materialistic thought tries to apply it to real life. A curious result p. 147 follows, the true meaning of which is, unhappily, incomprehensible to many people. One of such applications is "the economic man"—this is quite clearly the two-dimensional and flat being moving in two directions—those of production and consumption—i.e., living upon the plane of production-consumption . How is it possible to imagine man in general as such an obviously artificial being? And how is it possible to hope to understand the laws of the life of man, with his complex spiritual aspirations and his great impulse to know , to understand everything around about him and within himself—by studying the imaginary laws of the imaginary being upon an imaginary plane? The inventors of this theory alone possess the secret of the answer to this question. But the economic theory of human life attracts men as do all simple theories giving a short answer to a series of complicated questions. And we are ourselves too entangled in materialistic theories to see anything beyond them. _____ Positivistic science does not really deny the theory of phenomena and noumena, it only affirms, in opposition to Kant, that in studying phenomena we are gradually approaching to noumena. The noumena of phenomena science considers to be the motion of atoms and the ether, or the vibrations of electrons; it conceives of the universe as a whirl of mechanical motion or the field of manifestation of electro-magnetic energy taking on the "phenomenal tint" for us on their reception by the organs of sense. "Positivism" affirms that the phenomena of life and psychic phenomena are simply the functions of physical phenomena, that without physical phenomena the phenomena of life, thought and emotion cannot exist and that they represent only certain complex combinations of the foregoing; and furthermore that all these three kinds of phenomena are one and the same thing in substance—and the higher , i.e., the phenomena of life and of consciousness, are only different expressions of the lower , i.e., of one and the same physico-mechanical or electro-magnetic energy. But to all this it is possible to answer one thing. If it were true it would have been proven long ago. Nothing is easier than to prove the energetic hypothesis of life and the psyche. Just create p. 148 life and thought by the mechanical method.