CHAPTER FOUR

THE PHILOSOPHICAL IDEALISTS AS COMRADES-IN-ARMS AND SUCCESSORS OF EMPIRIO-CRITICISM

So far we have examined empirio-criticism taken by itself. We must now examine it in its historical development and in its connection and relation with other philosophical trends. First comes the question of the relation of Mach and Avenarius to Kant.

1. THE CRITICISM OF KANTIANISM FROM THE LEFT AND FROM THE RIGHT

Both Mach and Avenarius began their philosophical careers in the 'seventies, when the fashionable cry<"p227"> in German professorial circles was "Back to Kant"[84] And, indeed, both founders of empirio-criticism in their philosophical development started from Kant. "His [Kant's] critical idealism," says Mach, "was, as I acknowledge with the dcepest gratitude, the starting point of all my critical thought. But I found it impossible to remain faithful to it. Very soon I began to return to the views of Berkeley . . . [and then] arrived at views akin to those of Hume. . . . And even today I cannot help regarding Berkeley and Hume as far more consistent thinkers than Kant" (Analysis of Sensations, p. 292).

Thus Mach quite definitely admits that having begun with Kant he soon followed the line of Berkeley and Hume. Let us turn to Avenarius.

In his Prolegomena to a "Critique of Pure Experience " (1876), Avenarius already in the foreword states that the words Kritik der reinen Erfahrung (Critique of Pure Experience ) are indicative of his attitude towards Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason," and "of course, of an antagonistic attitude" towards Kant (1876 ed., p. iv). In what does Avenarius' antagonism to Kant consist? In the fact that Kant, in Avenarius' opinion, had not sufficiently "purified experience." It is with this "purification of experience" that Avenarius deals in his Prolegomena (§§ 56, 72 and many other places). Of what does Avenarius "purify" the Kantian doctrine of experience? In the first place, of apriorism. In § 56 he says: "The question as to whether the superfluous 'a priori conceptions of reason' should and could be eliminated from the content of experience and thereby pure experience par excellence established is, as far as I know, raised here, as such, for the first time." We have already seen that Avenarius in this way "purified" Kantianism of the recognition of necessity and causality.

Secondly, he purifies Kantianism of the assumption of substance (§ 95), i.e., the thing-in-itself, which, in Avenarius' opinion "is not given in the stuff of actual experience but is imported into it by thought."

We shall presently see that Avenarius' definition of his philosophical line entirely coincides with that of Mach, dif- fering only in pompousness of formulation. But we must first note that Avenarius is telling a plain untruth when he asserts that it was he who in 1876 for the first time raised the question of "purifying experience," i.e., of purifying the Kantian doctrine of apriorism and the assumption of the thing-in-itself. As a matter of fact, the development of German classical philosophy immediately after Kant gave rise to a criticism of Kantianism exactly along the very line followed by Avenarius. This line is represented in German classical philosophy by Schulze-Aenesidemus, an adherent of Humean agnosticism, and by J. G. Fichte, an adherent of Berkeleianism, i.e., of subjective idealism. In 1792 Schulze-Aenesidemus criticised Kant for this very recognition of apriorism (op. cit., pp. 56,141, etc.) and of the thing-in-itself. We sceptics, or followers of Hume, says Schulze, reject the thing-in-itself as being "beyond the bounds of all experience" (p. 57). We reject objective knowledge (p. 25); we deny that space and time really exist outside us (p. 100); we reject the presence in our experience of necessity (p. 112), causality, force, etc. (p. 113). One cannot attribute to them any "reality outside our conceptions" (p. 114). Kant proves apriority "dogmatically," saying that since we cannot think otherwise there is therefore an a priori law of thought. "This argument," Schulze replies to Kant, "has long been utilised in philosophy to prove the objective nature of what lies outside our ideas" (p. 141), Arguing thus, we may attribute causality to things in-themselves (p. 142). "Experience never tells us (wir erfahren niemals ) that the action on us of objective things produces ideas," and Kant by no means proved that "this something (which lies outside our reason) must be regarded as a thing in-itself, distinct from our sensation (Gemut ). But sensation also may be thought of as the sole basis of all our knowledge" (p. 265). The Kantian critique of pure reason "bases its argument on the proposition that every act of cognition begins with the action of objective things on our organs of sensation (Gemüt ), but it then disputes the truth and reality of this proposition" (p. 266). Kant in no way refuted the idealist Berkeley (pp. 268-72).

It is evident from this that the Humean Schulze rejects Kant's doctrine of the thing-in-itself as an inconsistent concession to materialism, i.e., to the "dogmatic" assertion that in our sensations we are given objective reality, or, in other words, that our ideas are caused by the action of objective things (independent of our mind) on our sense-organs. The agnostic Schulze reproaches the agnostic Kant on the grounds that the latter's assumption of the thing-in-itself contradicts agnosticism and leads to materialism. In the same way, but even more vigorously, Kant is criticised by the subjective idealist Fichte, who maintains that Kant's assumption of the thing-in-itself independent of the self is "realism " (Werke, I, S. 483), and that Kant makes "no clear" distinction between "realism" and "idealism." Fichte sees a crying inconsistency in the assumption of Kant and the Kantians that the thing-in-itself is the "basis of objective reality" (p. 480), for this is in contradiction to critical idealism. "With you," exclaims Fichte, addressing the realist expositors of Kant, "the earth rests on the great elephant, and the great elephant rests on the earth. Your thing-in-itself, which is only thought, acts on the self !" ( p. 483).

Thus Avenarius was profoundly mistaken in imagining that he "for the first time" undertook a "purification of the experience" of Kant from apriorism and from the thing-in-itself and that he was thereby giving rise to a "new" trend in philosophy. In reality he was continuing the old line of Hume and

Berkeley, Schulze-Aenesidemus and J. G. Fichte. Avenarius imagined that he was "purifying experience" in general. In reality he was only purifying agnosticism of Kantianism. He fought not against the agnosticism of Kant (agnosticism is a denial of objective reality given in sensation), but for a purer agnosticism, for the elimination of Kant's assumption, which is contradictory to agnosticism, that there is a thing-in itself, albeit unknowable, noumenal and other-sided, that there is necessity and causality, albeit a priori, given in our understanding, and not in objective reality. He fought Kant not from the Left, as the materialists fought Kant, but from the Right, as the sceptics and idealists fought Kant. He imagined that he was advancing, when in reality he was retreating to the programme of criticising Kant which Kuno Fischer, speaking of Schulze-Aenesidemus, aptly characterised in the following words: "The critique of pure reason with pure reason [i.e., apriorism] left out is scepticism. The critique of pure reason with the thing-in-itself left out is Berkeleian idealism" (History of Modern Philosophy, German ed., 1869, Vol. V, p. 115).

This brings us to one of the most curious episodes in our whole "Machiad," in the whole campaign of the Russian Machians against Engels and Marx. The latest discovery by Bogdanov and Bazarov, Yushkevich and Valentinov, trumpeted by them in a thousand different keys, is that Plekhanov is making a "luckless attempt to reconcile Engels with Kant by the aid of a compromise<"p231"> -- a thing-in-itself which is just a wee bit knowable" (Studies,[85] etc., p. 67 and many other places). This discovery of our Machians discloses a veritable bottomless pit of utter confusion and monstrous misunderstanding both of Kant and of the whole course of development of German classical philosophy.

The principal feature of Kant's philosophy is the reconciliation of materialism with idealism, a compromise between the two, the combination within one system of heterogeneous and contrary philosophical trends. When Kant assumes that something outside us, a thing-in-itself, corresponds to our ideas, he is a materialist. When he declares this thing-in-itself to be unknowable, transcendental, other-sided, he is an idealist. Recognising experience, sensations, as the only source of our knowledge, Kant is directing his philosophy towards sensationalism, and via sensationalism, under certain conditions, towards materialism. Recognising the apriority of space, time, causality, etc., Kant is directing his philosophy towards idealism. Both consistent materialists and consistent idealists (as well as the "pure" agnostics, the Humeans) have mercilessly criticised Kant for this inconsistency. The materialists blamed Kant for his idealism, rejected the idealist features of his system, demonstrated the knowability, the this-sidedness of the thing-in-itself, the absence of a fundamental difference between the thing-in-itself and the phenomenon, the need of deducing causality, etc., not from a priori laws of thought, but from objective reality. The agnostics and idealists blamed Kant for his assumption of the thing-in-itself as a concession to materialism, "realism" or "naïve realism." Thc agnostics, moreover, rejected not only the thing-in-itself, but apriorism as well; while the idealists demanded the consistent deduction from pure thought not only of the a priori forms of the under standing, but of the world as a whole (by magnifying human thought to an abstract Self or to an "Absolute Idea," or to a "Universal Will," etc., etc.). And here our Machians, "without noticing" that they had taken as their teachers men who had criticised Kant from the standpoint or scepticism and idealism, began to rend their clothes and to cover their heads with ashes at the sight of monstrous people who criticised Kant from a diametrically opposite point of view, who rejected the slightest element of agnosticism (scepticism) and idealism in his system, who argued that the thing-in-ittelf is objectively real, fully knowable and this-sided, that it does not differ fundamentally from appearances that it becomes transformed into appearance at every step in the development of the individual consciousness of man and the collective consciousness of mankind. Help, they cried, this is an illegitimate mixture of materialism and Kantianism!

When I read the assurances of our Machians that they criticise Kant far more consistently and thoroughly<"p233"> than any of the antiquated materialists, it always seems to me as though Purishkevich[86] had joined our company and was shouting: I criticised the Constitutional-Democrats far more consistently and thoroughly than you Marxist gentlemen! There is no question about it, Mr. Purishkevich, politically consistent people can and always will criticise the Constitutional-Democrats from diametrically opposite points of view, but after all it must not be forgotten that you criticised the Constitutional-Democrats for being excessively democratic, while we criticised them for being insufficiently democratic! The Machians criticise Kant for being too much of a materialist, while we criticise him for not being enough of a materialist. The Machians criticise Kant frorn the Right, we from the Left.

The Humean Schulze and the subjective idealist Fichte may be taken as examples of the former category of critics in the history of classical German philosophy. As we have already seen, they try to obliterate the "realistic" elements of Kantianism. Just as Schulze and Fichte criticised Kant himself, so the Humean empirio-criticists and the subjective idealist-immanentists criticised the German Neo-Kantians of the second half of the nineteenth century. The line of Hume and Berkeley reappeared in a slightly renovated verbal garb. Mach and Avenarius reproached Kant not because his treatment of the thing-in-itself was not sufficiently realistic, not sufficiently materialistic, but because he assumed its existence; not because he refused to deduce causality and necessity in nature from objective reality, but because he assumed causality and necessity at all (except perhaps purely "logical" necessity). The immanentists were at one with the empirio-criticists, also criticising Kant from the Humean and Berkeleian standpoint. For instance, Leclair in 1879, in the work in which he praised Mach as a remarkable philosopher, reproached Kant for his "inconsistency and connivance at realism" as expressed in the concept of the "thing-in-itself " -- that "nominal residuum of vulgar realism" (Der Realismus der modernen Naturwissenschaft, usw., S. 9). Leclair calls materialism "vulgar realism" -- in order "to make it stronger." "In our opinion," writes Leclair, "all those parts of the Kantian theory which gravitate towards realismus vulgaris should be vanquished and eliminated as being inconsistencies and bastard (zwitterhaft ) products from the idealist point of view" (p. 41). "The inconsistencies and contradictions in the Kantian theory of knowledge [arise from] the amalgamation (Verquickung ) of idealist criticism with still unvanquished remnants of realistic dogmatism" (p. 170). By realistic dogmatism Leclair means materialism.

Another immanentist, Johannes Rehmke, reproached Kant because he realistically walled himself off from Berkeley with the thing-in-itself (Johannes Rehmke, Die Welt als Wahrnehmung und Begriff, Berlin, 1880, S. 9). "The philosophical activity of Kant bore an essentially polemical character: with the thing-in-itself he turned against German rationalism [i.e., the old fideism of the eighteenth century], and with pure contemplation against English empiricism" (p. 25). "I would compare the Kantian thing-in-itself with a movable lid placed over a pit: the thing looks so innocent and safe; one steps on it and suddenly falls into . . . the 'world-in-itself '" (p. 27). That is why Kant is not liked by the associates of Mach and Avenarius, the immanentists; they do not like him because in some respects he approaches the "pit" of materialism!

And here are some examples of the criticism of Kant from the Left. Feuerbach reproaches Kant not for his "realism," but for his idealism, and describes his system as "idealism based on empiricism" (Werke, II, 296).

Here is a particularly important remark on Kant by Feuerbach. "Kant says: If we regard -- as we should -- the objects of our perceptions as mere appearances, we thereby admit that at the bottom of appearances is a thing-in-itself, although we do not know how it is actually constructed, but only know its appearance, i.e., the manner in which our senses are affected (affiziert ) by this unknown something. Hence, our reason, by the very fact that it accepts appearances, also admits the existence of things-in-themselves; and to that extent we can say that to entertain an idea of such entities which lie at the bottom of appearances, and consequently are but thought entities, is not only permissible, but unavoidable. . . ." Having selected a passage from Kant where the thing-in-itself is regarded merely as a mental thing, a thought entity, and not a real thing, Feuerbach directs his whole criticism against it. ". . . Therefore," he says, "the objects of the senses [the objects of experience] are for the mind only appearances, and not truth. . . . Yet the thought entities are not actual objects for the mind! The Kantian philosophy is a contradiction between subject and object, between entity and existence, thinking and being. Entity is left to the mind, existence to the senses. Existence without entity [i.e., the existence of appearances without objective reality] is mere appearance -- the sensible things -- while entity without existence is mere thought -- the thought entities, the noumena; they are thought of, but they lack existence -- at least for us -- and objectivity; they are the things-in-themselves, the true things, but they are not real things. . . . But what a contradiction, to sever truth from reality, reality from truth!" (Werke, II, S. 302-03). Feuerbach reproaches Kant not because he assumes things-in-themselves, but because he does not grant them reality, i.e., objective reality, because he regards them as mere thought, "thought entities," and not as "entities possessing existence," i.e., real and actually existing. Feuerbach rebukes Kant for deviating from materialism.

"The Kantian philosophy is a contradiction," Feuerbach wrote to Bolin on March 26, 1858, "it inevitably leads either to Fichtean idealism or to sensationalism." The former conclusion "belongs to the past," the latter "to the present and the future" (Grün, op. cit., II, 49). We have already seen that Feuerbach advocates objective sensationalism, i.e., materialism. The new turn from Kant to agnosticism and idealism, to Hume and Berkeley, is undoubtedly reactionary, even from Feuerbach's standpoint. And his ardent follower, Albrecht Rau, who together with the merits of Feuerbach also adopted his faults, which were eliminated by Marx and Engels, criticised Kant wholly in the spirit of his teacher: "The Kantian philosophy is an amphibole [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 conceding things an existence (Wesenheit ) outside us. But as an idealist he could not rid himself of the prejudice that the soul is an entity totally different from sensible things. Hence there are real things and a human mind which apprehends those things. But how can the mind approach things totally different from itself? The way out adopted by Kant is as follows: the mind possesses certain a priori knowledge, in virtue of which things must appear to it as they do. Hence, the fact that we understand things as we do is a fact of our creation. For the mind which lives within us is nothing but the divine mind, and just as God created the world out of nothing, so the human mind creates out of things something which they are not in themselves. Thus Kant guarantees real things their existence as 'things-in-themselves.' Kant, however, needed the soul, because immortality was for him a moral postulate. The 'thing-in-itself,' gentle men [says Rau, addressing the Neo-Kantians in general and the muddleheaded A. 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 refute it. . . ." "For the materialist a distinction between a priori knowledge and the 'thing-in-itself' is absolutely superfluous, for since he nowhere breaks the continuity of nature, since he does not regard matter and mind as two fundamentally different things, but as two aspects of one and the same thing, he need not resort to artifice in order to bring the mind and the thing into conjunction."*

* Albrecht Rau, Ludwig Feuerbachs Philosophie, die Naturforschung und die philosophische Kritik der Gegenwart [Ludwig Feuerbach's Philosophy, Natural Science and the Modern Philosophical Critique ], Leipzig, 1882, S. 87-89.

Further, Engels as we have seen, rebuked Kant for being an agnostic, but not for his deviation from consistent agnosticism. Lafargue, Engels' disciple, argued in 1900 against the Kantians (amongst whom at that time was Charles Rappoport) as follows:

". . . At the beginning of the nineteenth century our bourgeoisie, having completed its task of revolutionary destruction, began to repudiate its Voltairean and free-thinking philosophy. Catholicism, which the master decorator Chateaubriand painted in romantic colours (peinturlurait ), was restored to fashion, and Sebastian Mercier imported the idealism of Kant in order to give the coup de grâce to the materialism of the Encyclopaedists, whose 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 beneath the philosophy of Kant. The reactionary movement started in Germany<"p238"> -- without offence to the socialist integralistes [87] who would like to ascribe the honour to their chief, Malon. But Malon himself had been to the school of Höchberg, Bernstein and the other disciples of Dühring, who were reforming Marxism in Zurich. [Lafargue is referring to the ideological movement in German socialism in the later 'seventies.] It is to be expected that Jaurès, Fournière and our other intellectuals will also treat us to Kant as soon as they have mastered his terminology. . . . Rappoport is mistaken when he assures us that for Marx the 'ideal and the real are identical.' In the first place we never employ such metaphysical phraseology. An idea is as real as the object of which it is the reflection in the brain. . . . To provide a little recreation for the comrades who have to acquaint themselves with bourgeois philosophy, I shall explain the substance of this famous problem which has so much exercised spiritualist minds.

"The workingman who eats sausage and receives a hundred sous a day knows very well that he is robbed by the employer and is nourished by pork meat, that the employer is a robber and that the sausage is pleasant to the taste and nourishing to the body. Not at all, say the bourgeois sophists, whether they are called Pyrrho, Hume or Kant. His opinion is personal, an entirely subjective opinion; he might with equal reason maintain that the employer is his benefactor and that the sausage consists of chopped leather, for he cannot know things-in-themselves.

"The question is not properly put, that is the whole trouble. . . . In order to know an object, man must first verify whether his senses deceive him or not. . . . The chemists have gone still further -- they have penetrated into bodies, they have analysed them, decomposed them into their elements, and then performed the reverse procedure, they have recomposed them from their elements. And from the moment that man is able to produce things for his own use from these elements, he may, as Engels says, assert that he knows the things-in-themselves. The God of the Christians, if he existed and if he created the world, could do no more."*

We have taken the liberty of making this long quotation in order to show how Lafargue understood Engels and how he criticised Kant from the Left, not for those aspects of

* Paul Lafargue, "Le materialisme de Marx et l'idealisme de Kant" [Marx's Materialism and Kant's Idealism ], Le Socialiste,[88] February 25, 1900.

Kantianism which distinguish it from Humism, but for those which are common to both Kant and Hume; not for his assumption of the thing-in-itself, but for his inadequately materialist view of it.

And lastly, Karl Kautsky in his Ethics also criticises Kant from a standpoint diametrically opposed to that of Hume and Berkeley. "That I see green, red and white," he writes, arguing against Kant's epistemology, "is grounded in my faculty of sight. But that green is something different from red testifies to something that lies outside of me, to real differences between the things. . . . The relations and differences between the things themselves revealed to me by the individual space and time concepts . . . are real relations and differences of the external world, not conditioned by the nature of my perceptive faculty. . . . If this were really so [if Kant's doctrine of the ideality of time and space were true], we could know nothing about the world outside us, not even that it exists." (Russ. trans., pp. 33-34.)

Thus the entire school of Feuerbach, Marx and Engels turned from Kant to the Left, to a complete rejection of all idealism and of all agnosticism. But our Machians followed the reactionary trend in philosophy, Mach and Avenarius, who criticised Kant from the standpoint of Hume and Berkeley. Of course, it is the sacred right of every citizen, and particularly of every intellectual, to follow any ideological reactionary he likes. But when people who have radically severed relations with the very foundations of Marxism in philosophy begin to dodge, confuse matters, hedge and assure us that they "too" are Marxists in philosophy, that they are "almost" in agreement with Marx, and have only slightly "supplemented" him -- the spectacle is a far from pleasant one.

2. HOW THE "EMPIRIO-SYMBOLIST" YUSHKEVICH
RIDICULED THE "EMPIRIO-CRITICIST" CHERNOV

"It is, of course, amusing," writes Mr. P. Yushkevich, "to see how Mr. Chernov tries to make the agnostic positivist Comtean and Spencerian, Mikhailovsky, a forerunner of Mach and Avenarius" (op. cit., p. 73).

First of all, what is amusing here is Mr. Yushkevich's astonishing ignorance. Like all Voroshilovs, he conceals this ignorance under a display of erudite words and names. The passage quoted is from a paragraph devoted to the relation between Machism and Marxism. And although he undertakes to treat of this subject, Mr. Yushkevich does not know that for Engels (as for every materialist) the adherents of the Humean line and the adherents of the Kantian line are equally agnostics. Therefore, to contrast agnosticism generally with Machism, when even Mach himself confesses to being a follower of Hume, is simply to prove oneself an ignoramus in philosophy. The phrase "agnostic positivism" is also absurd, for the adherents of Hume in fact call themselves positivists. Mr. Yushkevich, who has taken Petzoldt as his teacher, should have known that Petzoldt definitely regards empirio-criticism as positivism. And finally, to drag in the names of Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer is again absurd, for Marxism rejects not what distinguishes one positivist from another, but what is common to both and what makes a philosopher a positivist instead of a materialist.

Our Voroshilov needed this display of words so as to "mesmerise" his reader, to stun him with a cacophony of words, to distract his attention away from the essence of the matter to empty trifles. And the essence of the matter is the radical difference between materialism and the broad current of positivism, which includes Auguste Comte, Herbert Spencer, Mikhailovsky, a number of Neo-Kantians, and Mach and Avenarius. The essence of the matter has been very accurately expressed by Engels in his Ludwig Feuerbach, where he places all the Kantians and Humeans of that period (i.e., the 'eighties of the last century) in the camp of wretched eclectics, pettifoggers (<"p242">Flohknacker : literally, flea-crackers), and so on.[89] To whom this characterisation can and must apply is a question on which our Voroshilovs did not wish to reflect. And since they are incapable of reflecting, we shall cite one illuminating comparison. Engels,<"p242a"> speaking both in 1888 and 1892 of the Kantians and Humeans in general, mentions no names.[90] The only reference Engels makes to a book is his reference to the work of Starcke on Feuerbach, which Engels analysed. "Starcke," says Engels, "takes great pains to defend Feuerbach against the attacks and doctrines of the vociferous lecturers who today go by the name of philosophers in Germany. For people who are interested in this afterbirth of German classical philosophy this is a matter of importance; for Starcke himself it may have appeared necessary. We, however, will spare the reader this" (<"p242b">Ludwig Feuerbach, S. 25).[91]

Engels wanted to "spare the reader," that is, to save the Social-Democrats from a pleasant acquaintance with the degenerate chatterboxes who call themselves philosophers. And who are implied by this "afterbirth"?

We open Starcke's book (C. N. Starcke, Ludwig Feuerbach, Stuttgart, 1885), and find constant references to the adherents of Hume and Kant. Starcke dissociates Feuerbach from these two trends. Starcke quotes in this connection

A. Riehl, Windelband and A. Lange (pp. 3, 18-19, 127, etc., in Starcke).

We open Avenarius' The Human Concept of the World, which appeared in 1891, and on page 120 of the first German edition we read: "The final result of our analysis concurs -- although not absolutely (durchgehend ) in the measure of the various points of view -- with that reached by other investigators, for example, E. Laas, E. Mach, A. Riehl, W. Wundt. See also Schopenhauer."

Whom was our Voroshilov-Yushkevich jeering at?

Avenarius has not the slightest doubt as to his kinship in principle -- not regarding any particular question, but regard ing the "final result" of empirio-criticism -- to the Kantians Riehl and Laas and to the idealist Wundt. He mentions Mach between the two Kantians. And, indeed, are they not all one company, since Riehl and Laas purified Kant à la Hume, and Mach and Avenarius purified Hume à la Berkeley?

Is it surprising that Engels wished to "spare" the German workers, to save them from a close acquaintance with this whole company of "flea-cracking" university lecturers?

Engels could spare the German workers, but the Voroshilovs do not spare the Russian reader.

It should be noted that an essentially eclectic combination of Kant and Hume, or Hume and Berkeley, is possible, so to speak, in varying proportions, by laying principal stress now on one, now on another element of the mixture. We saw above, for instance, that only one Machian, H. Kleinpeter, openly admits that he and Mach are solipsists (i.e., consistent Berkeleians). On the other hand, the Humean trend in the views of Mach and Avenarius is emphasised by many of their disciples and followers: Petzoldt, Willy, Pearson, the Russian empirio-criticist Lessevich, the Frenchman Henri Delacroix[*] and others. We shall cite one example -- an especially emincllt scientist who in philosophy also combined Hume with Berkeley, but who emphasised the materialist elements of this mixture. He is Thomas Huxley, the famous English scientist, who gave currency to the term "agnostic" and whom Engels undoubtedly had chiefly and primarily in mind when he spoke of English agnosticism.<"p244"> Engels in 1892 called this type of agnostics "shamefaced materialists."[92] James Ward, the English spiritualist, in his book Naturalism and Agnosticism, wherein he chiefly attacks the "scientific champion of agnosticism," Huxley (Vol. II, p. 229), bears out Engels' opinion when he says: "In Huxley's case indeed the leaning towards the primacy of the physical side ["series of elements" Mach calls it] is often so pronounced that it can hardly be called parallelism at all. In spite of his vehement repudiation of the title of materialist as an affront to his untarnished agnosticism, I know of few recent writers who on occasion better deserve the title" (Vol. II, pp. 30-3l). And James Ward quotes the following statements by Huxley in confirmation of his opinion: "'Anyone 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

* Bibliotheque du congrès international de philosophie, Vol. IV, Henri Delacroix, David Hume et la philosophie critique [David Hume and Critical Philosophy ]. Among the followers of Hume the author includes Avenarius and the immanentists in Germany, Ch. Renouvier and his school (the neo-criticists) in France.

matter -- each statement has a certain relative truth ["relatively stable complexes of elements," according to Mach]. 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 formulae and symbols'" (Vol. I, p. 17-19).

So argued the "shamefaced materialist" Huxley, who refused to accept materialism, regarding it as "metaphysics" that illegitimately goes beyond "groups of sensations." And this same Huxley wrote: "'If I were obliged to choose between absolute materialism and absolute idealism I should feel compelled to accept the latter alternative. . . . Our one certainty is the existence of the mental world'" (J. Ward, Vol. II, p. 216).

Huxley's philosophy is as much a mixture of Hume and Berkeley as is Mach's philosophy. But in Huxley's case the Berkeleian streaks are incidental, and agnosticism serves as a fig-leaf for materialism. With Mach the "colouring" of the mixture is a different one, and Ward, the spiritualist, while bitterly combating Huxley, pats Avenarius and Mach affectionately on the back.

3. THE IMMANENTISTS AS COMRADES-IN-ARMS
OF MACH AND AVENARIUS

In speaking of empirio-criticism we could not avoid repeatedly mentioning the philosophers of the so-called immanentist school, the principal representatives of which are Schuppe, Leclair, Rehmke, and Schubert-Soldern. It is now necessary to examine the relation of empirio-criticism to the immanentists and the nature of the philosophy preached by the latter.

In 1902 Mach wrote: ". . . Today I see that a host of philosophers -- positivists, empirio-criticists, adherents of the immanentist philosophy -- as well as a very few scientists, have all, without knowing anything of each other, entered on new paths which, in spite of their individual differences, converge almost towards one point" (Analysis of Sensations, p. 9). Here we must first note Mach's unusually frank admission that very few scientists are followers of the supposedly "new," but in truth very old, Humean-Berkeleian philosophy. Secondly, extremely important is Mach's opinion that this "new" philosophy is a broad current in which the immanentists are on the same footing as the empirio-criticists and the positivists. "Thus" -- repeats Mach in the introduction to the Russian translation of the Analysis of Sensations (1906) -- "there is a common movement. . ." (p. 4). "My position [Mach says in another place], moreover, borders closely on that of the representatives of the immanentist philosophy. . . . I found hardly anything in this book [i.e., W. Schuppe, Outline of the Theory of Knowledge and Logic ] with which, with perhaps a very slight change, I would not gladly agree" (p. 46). Mach considers that Schubert-Soldern is also "following close paths" (p. 4), and as to Wilhelm Schuppe, Mach even dedicates to him his latest work, the summary so to speak of his philosophical labours, Knowledge and Error.

Avenarius, the other founder of empirio-criticism, wrote in 1894 that he was "gladdened" and "encouraged" by Schuppe's sympathy for empirio-criticism, and that the "differences" between him and Schuppe "exist, perhaps, only temporarily" (vielleicht nur einstweilen noch bestehend ).[*] And, finally, J. Petzoldt, whose teachings Lessevich regards as the last word in empirio-criticism, openly acclaims the trio -- Schuppe, Mach and Avenarius -- as the leaders of the "new" trend. (Einführung in die Philosophie der reinen Erfahrung, Bd. II, 1904, S. 295; Das Weltproblem, 1906, S. v. und 146). On this point Petzoldt is definitely opposed to Willy (Einf., II, 321), probably the only outstanding Machian who felt ashamed of such a kinship as Schuppe's and who tried to dissociate himself from him fundamentally, for which this disciple was reprimanded by his beloved teacher Avenarius. Avenarius wrote the words about Schuppe above quoted in a comment on Willy's article against Schuppe, adding that Willy's criticism perhaps "was put more strongly than was really necessary" (Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie, 18. Jahrg., 1894, S. 29; which also contains Willy's article against Schuppe).

Having acquainted ourselves with the empirio-criticists' opinion of the immanentists, let us examine the immanentists' opinion of the empirio-criticists. We have already mentioned the opinion uttered by Leclair in 1879. Schubert-Soldern in 1882 explicitly expressed his "agreement" "in part with the elder Fichte" (i.e., the distinguished representative of subjective idealism, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, whose son was as inept in philosophy as was the son of Joseph Dietzgen), and "with Schuppe, Leclair, Avenarius and partly with Rehmke," while Mach (Die Geschichte und die Wurzel des <"fnp247">

* Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie, 1894, 18. Jahrg., Heft I, S. 29.

Satzes von der Erhaltung der Arbeit ) is cited with particular gusto in opposition to "natural-historical metaphysics"[*] -- the term given to natural-historical materialism by all the reactionary university lecturers and professors in Germany. In 1893, after the appearance of Avenarius' The Human Concept of the World, W. Schuppe hailed this work in An Open Letter to Prof. Avenarius as a "confirmation of the naïve realism" which he (Schuppe) himself advocated. "My conception of thought," Schuppe wrote, "excellently harmonises with your [Avenarius'] pure experience."[**] Then, in 1896, Schubert-Soldern, summarising the "methodological trend in philosophy" on which he "bases himself," traces his genealogy from Berkeley and Hume down through F. A. Lange ("the real beginning of our movement in Germany dates from Lange"), and then through Laas, Schuppe and Co., Avennrius and Mach, Riehl (among the Neo-Kantians), Ch. Renouvier (among the Frenchmen), etc.*** Finally, in their programmatic "Introduction" printed in the first issue of the philosophical organ of the immanentists, alongside a declaration of war on materialism and an expression of sympathy with Charles Renouvier, we read: "Even in the camp of the scientists themselves voices of individual thinkers are being raised sermonising against the growing arrogance

* Dr. Richard von Schubert-Soldern, Ueber Transcendenz des Objekts und Subjekts [On the Transcendence of the Object and Subject ], 1882, S. 37 and 5. Cf. also his Grundlagen einer Erkenntnistheorie [Principles of a Theory of Knowledge ], 1884, S. 3.
** Vierteijahrsschlift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie, 17. Jahrg., 1893, S. 384.
*** Dr. Richard von Schubert-Soldern, Das menschliche Glück und die soziale Frage [Human Happiness and the Social Question ], 1896, S. v, vi.

of their colleagues, against the unphilosophical spirit which has taken possession of the natural sciences. Thus the physicist Mach. . . . On all hands fresh forces are stirring and are working to destroy the blind faith in the infallibility of the natural sciences, and once again people are beginning to seek for other paths into the profundities of the mysterious, a better entrance to the house of truth."[*]

A word or two about Ch. Renouvier. He is the head of the influential and widespread school in France known as the neo-criticists. 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 is declared to be a priori ; law is written with a capital letter and is converted into the basis of religion. The Catholic priests go into raptures over this philosophy. The Machian Willy scornfully refers to Renouvier as a "second apostle Paul," as "an obscurantist of the first water" and as a "casuistic preacher of free will" (Gegen die Schulweisheit, S. 129). And it is such co-thinkers of the immanentists who warmly greet<"p249"> Mach's philosophy. When his Mechanics appeared in a French translation,[94] the organ of the neo-criticists -- L'Année philosophique [95] -- edited by Pillon, a collaborator and disciple of Renouvier, wrote: "It is unnecessary to speak of the extent to which, in this criticism of substance, the thing, the thing-in-itself, Mach's positive science agrees with neo-critical idealism" (Vol. XV, 1904, p. 179).

As for the Russian Machians, they are all ashamed of their kinship with the immanentists, and one of course could not expect anything else of people who did not deliberately <"fnp249">

* Zeitschrift für immanente Philosophie,[93] Bd. I, Berlin, 1896, S. 6, 9.

adopt the path of Struve, Menshikov, and the like. Bazarov alone refers to "certain representatives of the immanentist school" as "realists."[*] Bogdanov briefly (and in fact falsely ) declares that "the immanentist school is only an intermediate form between Kantianism and empirio-criticism" (Empirio-Monism, Bk. III, p. xxii). V. Chernov writes: "Generally speaking, the immanentists approach positivism in only one aspect of their theory, in other aspects they go far beyond it" (Philosophical and Sociological Studies, p. 37). Valentinov says that "the immanentist school clothed these [Machian] ideas in an unsuitable form and found themselves in the blind alley of solipsism" (op. cit., p. 149). As you see, you pay your money and take your choice: constitution and salmon mayonnaise, realism and solipsism. Our Machians are afraid to tell the plain and clear truth about the immanentists.

The fact is that the immanentists are rank reactionaries, I open advocates of fideism, unadulterated in their obscurantism. There is not one of them who has not frankly made his more theoretical works on epistemology a defence of religion and a justification of medievalism of one kind or another. Leclair, in 1879, advocated his philosophy as one that satisfies "all the needs of a religiously inclined mind" (Der Realismus, etc., S. 73). J. Rehmke, in 1880, dedicated his "theory of knowledge" to the Protestant pastor Biedermann and closed his book by preaching not a supersensible God, but God as a "real concept" (it was for this reason

* "Realists in modern philosophy -- certain representatives of the immanentist school who have emerged from Kantianism, the school of Mach-Avenarius, and many other kindred movements -- find that there are absolutely no grounds for rejecting the basis of naïve realism" (Studies, etc., p. 26).

presumably, that Bazarov ranked "certain" immanentists among the "realists"?), and moreover the "objectivisation of this real concept is relegated to practical life," while Biedermann's "Christian dogmatism" is declared to be a model of "scientific theology" (J. Rehmke, Die Welt als Wahrnehmung und Begriff, Berlin, 1880, S. 312). Schuppe in the Zeitschrift für immanente Philosophie assures us that though the immanentists deny the transcendental, God and the future life do not come under this concept (Zeitschrift für immanente Philosophie, II. Band, S. 52). In his Ethik he insists on the "connection of the moral law . . . with the metaphysical world conception" and condemns the separation of the church from the state as a "senseless phrase" (Dr. Wilhelm Schuppe, Grundzüge der Ethik und Rechtsphilosophie [Principles of Ethics and the Philosophy of Law ], Breslau, 1881, S. 181, 325). Schubert-Soldern in his Grundlage einer Erkenntnistheorie deduces both the pre-existence of the self before the body and the after-existence of the self<"p251"> after the body, i.e., the immortality of the soul (op. cit., p. 82), etc. In The Social Question,[96] arguing against Bebel, he defends, together with "social reforms," suffrage based on class distinction, and says that the "Social-Democrats ignore the fact that without the divine gift of unhappiness there could be no happiness" (p. 330), and thereupon laments the fact that materialism "prevails" (p. 242): "he who in our time believes in a life beyond, or even in its possibility, is considered a fool" (ibid.).

And German Menshikovs like these, no less obscurantists of the first water than Renouvier, live in lasting concubinage with the empirio-criticists. Their theoretical kinship is in contestable. There is no more Kantianism in the immanentists than in Petzoldt or Pearson. We saw above that they themselves regard themselves as disciples of Hume and Berkeley, an opinion of the immanentists that is generally recognised in philosophical literature. In order to show clearly what epistemological premises these comrades-in-arms of Mach and Avenarius proceed from, we shall quote some fundamental theoretical propositions from the works of im manentists.

Leclair in 1879 had not yet invented the term "immanent," which really signifies "experiential," "given in experience," and which is just as spurious a label for concealing corruption as the labels of the European bourgeois parties. In his first work, Leclair frankly and explicitly calls himself a "critical idealist " (Der Realismus, etc., S. 11, 21, 206, etc.). In this work he criticises Kant, as we have already seen, for his concessions to materialism, and clearly indicates his wn path away from Kant to Fichte and Berkeley. Leclair fights materialism in general and the tendency towards materialism displayed by the majority of scientists in particular as mercilessly as Schuppe, Schubert-Soldern and Rehmke.

"If we return," Leclair says, "to the standpoint of critical idealism, if we do not attribute a transcendental existence [i.e., an existence outside of human consciousness] to nature or the processes of nature, then for the subject the aggregate of bodies and his own body, in so far as he can see and feel it, together with all its changes, will be a directly given phenomenon 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 essentially what the reactionary immanentists are saying. For Leclair, all that exists consists of "complexes of sensations " (p. 38), while certain classes of properties (Eigenschaften ), which act upon our sense-organs, he designates, for example, by the letter M, and other classes, which act upon other objects of nature, by the letter N (p. 150, etc.). Moreover, Leclair speaks of nature as the "phenomena of the consciousness" (Bewusstseinsphänomen) not of a single person, but of "mankind" (pp. 55-56). If we remember that Leclair published his book in Prague, where Mach was professor of physics,<"p253"> and that Leclair cites with rapture only Mach's Erhaltung der Arbeit,[97] which appeared in 1872, the question involuntarily arises: ought we not to regard the advocate of fideism and frank idealist Leclair as the true progenitor of the "original" philosophy of Mach?

As for Schuppe, who, according to Leclair,[*] arrived at the "same results," he, as we have seen, really claims to defend "naïve realism," and in his Open Letter to Prof. Avenarius bitterly complains of the "established perversion of my [Schuppe's] theory of knowledge to subjective idealism." The true nature of the crude forgery which the immanentist Schuppe calls a defence of realism is quite clear from his rejoinder to Wundt, who did not hesitate to class the immanentists with the Fichteans, the subjective idealists (Philosophische Studien, loc. cit., S. 386, 397, 407).

"In my case," Schuppe retorts to Wundt, "the proposition 'being is consciousness' means that consciousness without the external world is inconceivable, that the latter belongs to the former, i.e., the absolute connection (Zusammengehörigkeit ) of the one with the other, which I have so often asserted

* Beiträge zu einer monistischen Erkenntnistheorie [Essays in a Monistic Theory of Knowledge ], Breslau, 1882, S. 10.

and explained and in which the two constitute the primary whole of being."[*]

One must be extremely naïve not to discern unadulterated subjective idealism in such "realism"! Just think: the external world "belongs to consciousness" and is in absolute connection with it! The poor professor was indeed slandered by the "established" practice of ranking him with the subjective idealists! Such a philosophy completely coincides with Avenarius' "principal co-ordination"; no reservations and protests on the part of Chernov and Valentinov can sunder them; both philosophies will be consigned together to the museum of reactionary fabrications of German professordom. As a curiosity once more testifying to Valentinov's lack of judgment, let us note that he calls Schuppe a solipsist (it goes without saying that Schuppe vowed and swore that he was not a solipsist -- and wrote special articles to this effect -- just as vehemently as did Mach, Petzoldt, and Co.), yet is highly delighted with Bazarov's article in the Studies ! I should like to translate into German Bazarov's dictum that "sense-perception is the reality existing outside us" and forward it to some more or less intelligent immanentist. He would embrace and kiss Bazarov as heartily as the Schuppes, Leclairs and Schubert-Solderns embraced Mach and Avenarius. For Bazarov's dictum is the alpha and omega of the doctrines of the immanentist school.

And here, lastly, is Schubert-Soldern. "The materialism of natural science," the "metaphysics" of recognising the objective reality of the external world, is the chief enemy of

* Wilhelm Schuppe, "Die immanente Philosophie und Wilhelm Wundt " ["The Immanent Philosophy and Wilhelm Wundt "] Zeitschrift für immanente Philosophie, Band II, S. 195.

this philosopher (Grundlagen einer Erkenntnistheorie, 1884, p. 31 and the whole of Chapter II: "The Metaphysics of Natural Science"). "Natural science abstracts from all relations of consciousness" (p. 52) -- that is the chief evil (and that is just what constitutes materialism!). For the individual cannot escape from "sensations and, hence, from a state of consciousness" (pp. 33-34). Of course, Schubert-Soldern admitted in 1896, my standpoint is epistemological solipsism (Die soziale Frage, S. x), but not "metaphysical," not "practical" solipsism. "What is given us immediately is sensations, complexes of constantly changing sensations" (Ueber Transcendenz des Objekts und Subjekts, S. 73).

"Marx took the material process of production," says Schubert-Soldern, "as the cause of inner processes and motives, in the same way (and just as falsely) as natural science regards the common [to humanity] external world as the cause of the individual inner worlds" (Die soziale Frage, S. xviii). That Marx's historical materialism is connected with natural-historical materialism and philosophical materialism in general, it does not even occur to this comrade in-arms of Mach to doubt.

"Many, perhaps the majority, will be of the opinion that from the standpoint of epistemological solipsism no metaphysics is possible, i.e., that metaphysics is always transcendental. Upon more mature reflection I cannot concur with this opinion. Here are my reasons. . . . The immediate foundation of all that is given is the spiritual (solipsist) connection, the central point of which is the individual self (the individual realm of thought) with its body. The rest of the world is inconceivable without this self, just as this self is inconceivable without the rest of the world. With the destruction of the individual self the world is also anni-hilated, which appears impossible -- and with the destruction of the rest of the world, nothing remains for my individual self, for the latter can be separated from the world only logically, but not in time and space. Therefore my individual self must continue to exist after my death also, if the entire world is not to be annihilated with it. . ." (ibid., p. xxiii).

The "principal co-ordination," "complexes of sensations" and the rest of the Machian banalities render faithful service to the proper people!

". . . What is the hereafter (das Jenseits ) from the solipsist point of view? It is only a possible future experience for me. . ." (ibid.). "Spiritualism . . . would be obliged to prove the existence of the Jenseits. But at any rate the materialism of natural science cannot be brought into the field against spiritualism, for this materialism, as we have seen, is only one aspect of the world process within the all-embracing spiritual connection" ( = the "principal co-ordination") (p. xxiv).

All this is said in that philosophical introduction to Die soziale Frage (1896) wherein Schubert-Soldern all the time appears arm in arm with Mach and Avenarius. Only for the handful of Russian Machians does Machism serve exclusively for purposes of intellectual prattle. In its native country its role as a flunkey to fideism is openly proclaimed!

4. WHITHER IS EMPIRIO-CRITICISM TENDING?

Let us now cast a glance at the development of Machism after Mach and Avenarius. We have seen that their philosophy is a hash, a pot-pourri of contradictory and disconnected epistemological propositions. We must now examine how and whither, i.e., in what direction, this philosophy is developing, for this will help us to settle certain "disputable" questions by referring to indisputable historical facts. And indeed, in view of the eclecticism and incoherence of the initial philosophical premises of the trend we are examining, varying interpretations of it and sterile disputes over particulars and trifles are absolutely inevitable. But empirio-criticism, like every ideological current, is a living thing, which grows and develops, and the fact that it is growing in one direction or another will help us more than long arguments to settle the basic question as to what the real essence of this philosophy is. We judge a person not by what he says or thinks of himself but by his actions. And we must judge philosophers not by the labels they give themselves ("positivism," the philosophy of "pure experience," "monism" or "empirio-monism," the "philosophy of natural science," etc.) but by the manner in which they actually settle fundamental theoretical questions, by their associates, by what they are teaching and by what they have taught their disciples and followers.

It is this last question which interests us now. Everything essential was said by Mach and Avenarius more than twenty years ago. It was bound to become clear in the interval how these "leaders" were understood by those who wanted to understand them, and whom they themselves (at least Mach, who has outlived his colleague) regard as their successors. To be specific, let us take those who themselves claim to be disciples of Mach and Avenarius (or their adherents) and whom Mach himself ranks as such. We shall thus obtain a picture of empirio-criticism as a philosophical current, and not as a collection of literary oddities.

In Mach's Introduction to the Russian translation of the Analysis of Sensations, Hans Cornelius is recommended as a "young investigator" who is following "if not quite the same, at least very close paths" (p. 4). In the text of the Analysis of Sensations Mach once again "mentions with pleasure the works" of Cornelius and others, "who have disclosed the kernel of Avenarius' ideas and have developed them further" (p. 48). Let us take Cornelius' Einleitung in die Philosophie [Introduction to Philosophy ] (Germ. ed., 1903) and we find that its author also speaks of his endeavour to follow in the footsteps of Mach and Avenarius (pp. viii, 32). We have before us then a disciple acknowledged by the teacher. This disciple also begins with sensations-elements (pp. 17, 24), categorically declares that he confines himself to experience (p. vi), calls his views "consistent or epistemological empiricism" (p. 335), emphatically condemns the "one sidedness" of idealism and the "dogmatism" of both the idealists and the materialists (p. 129), vehemently denies the possible "misconception" (p. 123) that his philosophy implies the recognition of the world as existing in the mind of man, flirts with naïve realism no less skilfully than Avenarius, Schuppe or Bazarov ("a visual, as well as every other sense perception, is located where we find it, and only where we find it, that is to say, where the naïvenaïve mind, untouched by a false philosophy, localises it" -- p. 125) -- and this disciple, acknowledged as such by his teacher, arrives at immortality and God. Materialism -- thunders this police sergeant in a professorial chair, I beg your pardon, this disciple of the "recent positivists" -- converts man into an automaton. "It need hardly be said that together with the belief in the freedom of our decisions it destroys all considerations of the moral value of our actions and our responsibility for them. Just as little room is left for the idea of the continuation of our life after death" (p. 116). The final note of the book is:

Education (or the youth stultified by this man of science presumably) is necessary not only for action but "above all . . . to inculcate veneration (Ehrfurcht ) not for the transitory values of a fortuitous tradition, but for the imperishable values of duty and beauty, for the divine (dem Göttlichen ) within us and without" (p. 357).

Compare this with Bogdanov's assertion that "there is absolutely no room " (Bogdanov's italics) and "there cannot be any room" for the idea of God, freedom of the will and immortality of the soul in Mach's philosophy in view of his denial of every "thing-in-itself" (p. xii). While Mach in this same book (p. 293) declares that "there is no Machian philosophy," and recommends not only the immanentists, but also Cornelius who had disclosed the kernel of Avenarius' ideas! Thus, in the first place, Bogdanov absolutely does not know the "Machian philosophy" as a current which not only nestles under the wing of fideism, but which itself goes to the length of fideism. In the second place, Bogdanov absolutely does not know the history of philosophy; for to associate a denial of the ideas mentioned above with a denial of the thing-in-itself is to insult the history of philosophy. Will Bogdanov take it into his head to deny that all consistent followers of Hume, by rejecting every kind of thing-in-itself, do leave room for these ideas? Has Bogdanov never heard of the subjective idealists, who reject every kind of thing in-itself and thereby make room for these ideas? "There can be no room" for these ideas solely in a philosophy that teaches that nothing exists but perceptual being, that the world is matter in motion, that the external world, the physical world familiar to all, is the sole objective reality -- i.e., in the philosophy of materialism. And it is for this, precisely for this, that materialism is combated by the immanentists recommended by Mach, by Mach's disciple Cornelius, and by modern professorial philosophy in general.

Our Machians began to repudiate Cornelius only after this indecency had been pointed out to them. Such repudiations are not worth much. Friedrich Adler evidently has not been "warned," and therefore recommends this Cornelius in a socialist journal (Der Kampf, 1908, 5, S. 235: "a work that is easy to read and highly to be commended"). Through the medium of Machism, downright philosophical reactionaries and preachers of fideism are palmed off on the workers as teachers!

Petzoldt, without having been warned, detected the falsity in Cornelius: but his method of combating this falsity is a gem. Listen to this: "To assert that the world is idea [as is asserted by the idealists -- whom we are combating, no joke!] has sense only when it implies that it is the idea of the predicator, or, if you like, of all predicators, i.e., that its existence depends exclusively upon the thought of that individual or of those individuals; it exists only inasmuch as he thinks about it, and what he does not think of does not exist. We, on the contrary, make the world dependent not upon the thought of an individual or individuals, or, to put it better and clearer, not upon the act of thinking, or upon any actual thought, but -- and exclusively in the logical sense -- upon thought in general. The idealist confuses one with the other, and the result is agnostic semi-solipsism, as we observe it in Cornelius" (Einführung, II, 317). <"p260">

Stolypin denied the existence of the cabinets noirs ![98] Petzoldt annihilates the idealists! It is truly astonishing how much this annihilation of idealism resembles a recommendation to the idealists to exercise more skill in concealing their idealism. To say that the world depends upon man's thought is perverted idealism. To say that the world depends upon thought in general is recent positivism, critical realism -- in a word, thoroughgoing bourgeois charlatanism! If Cornelius is an agnostic semi-solipsist, Petzoldt is a solipsist semi-agnostic. You are cracking a flea, gentlemen!

Let us proceed. In the second edition of his Erkenntnis und Irrtum, Mach says: "A systematic exposition [of Mach's views], one to which in all its essentials I can subscribe, is given by Professor Dr. Hans Kleinpeter" (Die Erkenntnistheorie der Naturforschung der Gegenwart, Leipzig, 1905: The Theory of Knowledge of Modern Natural Science ). Let us take Hans Number Two. This professor is an accredited disseminator of Machism: a pile of articles on Mach's views in philosophical journals, both in German and in English, translations of works recommended by Mach with introductions by Mach -- in a word, the right hand of the "teacher." Here are his views: ". . . All my (outer and inner) experience, all my thoughts and aspirations are given me as a psychical process, as a part of my consciousness" (op. cit. p. 18). "That which we call physical is a construction of psychical elements" (p. 144). "Subjective conviction, not objective certainty (Gewissheit ) is the only attainable goal of any science " (p. 9). (The italics are Kleinpeter's, who adds the following remark: "Something similar was already said by Kant in the Critique of Practical Reason.") "The assumption that there are other minds is one which can never be confirmed by experience" (p. 42). "I do not know. . . whether, in general, there exist other selves outside of myself" (p. 43). In § 5, entitled "Activity (Spontaneity) in Consciousness," we read that in the case of the animal-automaton the succession of ideas is purely mechanical. The same is true of us when we dream. "The quality of our consciousness in its normal state essentially differs from this. It possesses a property which these [the automata] entirely lack, and which it would be very difficult, to say the least, to explain mechanically or automatically: the so-called self-activity of the self. Every person can dissever himself from his states of consciousness, he can manipulate them, can make them stand out more clearly or force them into the background, can analyse them, compare various parts, etc. All this is a fact of (immediate) experience. Our self is therefore essentially different from the sum-total of the states of consciousness and cannot be put as an equivalent of it. Sugar consists of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen; were we to attribute a soul to it, then by analogy it would have to possess the faculty of directing the movement of the hydrogen, oxygen and carbon at will" (pp. 29-30). § 4 of the following chapter is headed: "The Act of Cognition -- an Act of Will (Willenshandlung )." "It must be regarded as definitely established that all my psychical experiences are divisible into two large main groups: compulsory acts and deliberate acts. To the former belong all impressions of the external world" (p. 47). "That it is possible to advance several theories regarding one and the same realm of facts . . . is as well known to physicists as it is incompatible with the premises of an absolute theory of knowledge. And this fact is also linked with the volitional character of our thought; it also implies that our volition is not bound by external circumstances" (p. 50).

Now judge how bold Bogdanov was in asserting that in Mach's philosophy "there is absolutely no room for free will," when Mach himself recommends such a specimen as Kleinpeter! We have already seen that the latter does not attempt to conceal either his own idealism or Mach's. In 1898-99 Kleinpeter wrote: "Hertz proclaims the same subjectivist view [i.e., as Mach] of the nature of our concepts. . . . If Mach and Hertz [with what justice Kleinpeter here implicates the famous physicist we shall soon see] deserve credit from the standpoint of idealism for having emphasised the subjective origin of all our concepts and of the connections between them -- and not only of certain individual ones -- from the standpoint of empiricism they deserve no less credit for having acknowledged that experience alone, as a court entirely independent of thought, can solve the question of their correctness" (Archiv für systematische Philosophie, Bd. V, 1898-99, S. 169-70). In 1900 he wrote that in spite of all the points on which Mach differs from Kant and Berkeley, "they at any rate are more akin to him than the metaphysical empiricism prevailing in natural science [i.e., materialism! The professor does not like to call the devil by name] which is indeed the main target of Mach's attacks" (op. cit., Bd. VI, S. 87). In 1903 he wrote: "The starting point of Berkeley and Mach is irrefutable. . . . Mach completed what Kant began" (Kantstudien, Bd. VIII, 1903, S. 314, 274).

In the preface to the Russian edition of the Analysis of Sensations Mach also mentions T. Ziehen, "who is following, if not the same, at least very close paths." We take Professor Theodor Ziehen's book The Psychophysiological Theory of Knowledge (Psychophysiologische Erkenntnistheorie, Jena, 1898) and hnd that the author refers to Mach, Avenarius, Schuppe, and so forth in the very introduction. Here therefore we again have a case of a disciple acknowledged by the teacher. Ziehen's "recent" theory is that only the "mob" is capable of believing that "real objects evoke our sensations" (p. 3), and that "over the portals of the theory of knowledge there can be no other inscription than the words of Berkeley: 'The external objects subsist not by themselves, but exist in our minds!'" (p. 5). "What is given us is sensations and ideas. Both are embraced by the word psychical. Non-psychical is a word devoid of meaning" (p. 100). The laws of nature are relations not of material bodies but of "reduced sensations" (p. 104. This "new" concept -- "reduced sensations" -- contains everything that is original in Ziehen's Berkeleianismt).

Petzoldt repudiated Ziehen as an idealist as far back as 1904 in the second volume of his Introduction (S. 298-301). By 1906 he had already included Cornelius, Kleinpeter, Ziehen and Verworn (Das Weltproblem, etc., S. 137 Fussnote) in the list of idealists or psychomonists. In the case of all these worthy professors, you see, there is a "misconception" in their interpretations "of the views of Mach and Avenarius" (ibid .).

Poor Mach and Avenarius! Not only were they slandered by their enemies for idealism and "even" (as Bogdanov expresses it) solipsism, but their very friends, disciples and followers, expert professors, also understood their teachers pervertedly, in an idealist sense. If empirio-criticism is developing into idealism, that by no means demonstrates the radical falsity of its muddled Berkeleian basic premises. God forbid!<"p264"> It is only a slight "misconception," in the Nozdriev-Petzoldt[99] sense of the term.

The funniest thing of all perhaps is that Petzoldt himself, the guardian of purity and innocence, firstly, "supplemented" Mach and Avenarius with his "logical a priori " and, secondly, coupled them with Wilhelm Schuppe, the vehicle of fideism.

Had Petzoldt been acquainted with Mach's English adherents he would have had very considerably to extend the list of Machians who had lapsed (because of a "misconception") into idealism. We have already referred to Karl Pearson, whom Mach praised, as an unadulterated idealist. Here are the opinions of two other "slanderers" who say the same thing of Pearson: "Professor Pearson is merely echoing a doctrine first given clear utterance by the truly great Berkeley" (Howard V. Knox, Mind, Vol. VI, 1897, p. 205). "There can be no doubt that Mr. Pearson is an idealist in the strictest sense of the word" (Georges Rodier, Revue philosophique, 1888, II, Vol. 26, p. 200). The English idealist, William Clifford, whom Mach regards as "coming very close" to his philosophy (Analysis of Sensations, p. 8), must be considered a teacher rather than a disciple of Mach, for Clifford's philosophical works appeared in the 'seventies. Here the "misconception" is due to Mach himself, who in 1901 "failed to notice" the idealism in Clifford's doctrine that the world is "mind-stuff," a "social object," a "highly organised experience," and so forth.* For a characterisation of the charlatanism of the German Machians, it is sufficient to note that Kleinpeter in 1905 elevated this idealist to the rank of founder of the "epistemology of modern science"!

On page 284 of the Analysis of Sensations, Mach mentions the "kindred" (to Buddhism and Machism) American philosopher, Paul Carus. Carus, who calls himself an "admirer and personal friend" of Mach, edits in Chicago

* William Kingdon Clifford, Lectues and Essays, 3rd ed., London, 1901, Vol. II, pp. 55, 65, 69: "On this point I agree entirely with Berkeley and not with Mr. Spencer" (p. 58); "The object, then, is a set of changes in my consciousness, and not anything out of it" (p. 52).

The Monist, a journal devoted to philosophy, and The Open Court, a journal devoted to the propagation of religion. "Science is divine revelation," say the editors of this popular little journal, and they express the opinion that science can bring about a reform of the church that will retain "all that is true and good in religion." Mach is a regular contributor to The Monist and publishes in it individual chapters from his latest works. Carus corrects Mach "ever so little" à la Kant, and declares that Mach "is an idealist or, as we would say, a subjectivist." "There are, no doubt, differences between Mach's views and mine," although "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 cxperience" (evidently a plagiarism from Bogclanov's Empirio-Monism !) . Carus' motto is: "Not agnosticism, but positive science, not mysticism, but clear thinking, not supernaturalism, not materialism, but a monistic view of the world, not a dogma, but religion, not creed, but faith." And in conformity with this motto Carus preaches a "new theology," a "scientific theology," or theonomy, which denies the literalness of the bible but insists that "all truth is divine and God reveals himself in science as he does in history."** It should be remarked that Kleinpeter, in his book on the theory of knowledge of modern science already referred to, recommends Carus, together with Ostwald, Avenarius and <"fnp266">

* The Monist,[100] Vol. XVI, 1906, July; P. Carus, "Professor Mach's Philosophy," pp. 320, 345, 333. The article is a reply to an article by Kleinpeter which appeared in the same journal.
** Ibid., Vol. XIII, p. 24 et seq., "Theology as a Science," an article by Carus.

the immanentists (pp. 151-52). When Haeckel issued his theses for a Monistic Alliance, Carus vigorously opposed him on the ground that, first, Haeckel vainly attempts to refute apriorism, which is "quite in keeping with scientific philosophy"; second, that Haeckel's doctrine of determinism "excludes the possibility of free will"; third, that Haeckel is mistaken "in emphasising the one-sided view of the naturalist against the traditional conservatism of the churches. Thus he appears as an enemy to the existing churches instead of rejoicing at their higher development into a new and truer interpretation of their dogmas . . ." (ibid., Vol. XVI, 1906, p. 122). 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 quite evident that we have here a leader of a gang of American literary fakers who are engaged in doping the people with religious opium. Mach and Kleinpeter joined this gang evidently as the result of a slight "misconception."

5. A. BOGDANOV'S "EMPIRIO-MONISM"

"I personally," writes Bogdanov of himself, "know so far of only one empirio-monist in literature -- a certain A. Bogdanov. But I know him very well and can answer for it that his views fully accord with the sacramental formula of the primacy of nature over mind. To wit, he regards all that exists as a continuous chain of development, the lower links of which are lost in the chaos of elements, while the higher links, known to us, represent the experience of men [Bogdanov's italics] -- psychical and, still higher, physical experience. This experience, and the knowledge resulting therefrom, correspond to what is usually called mind" (Empirio-Monism, III, xii).

The "sacramental" formula here ridiculed by Bogdanov is the well-known proposition of Engels, whom Bogdanov, however, diplomatically avoids mentioning! We do not differ from Engels, oh, no!

But let us examine more carefully Bogdanov's own summary of his famous "empirio-monism" and "substitution." The physical world is called the experience of men and it is declared that physical experience is "higher " in the chain of development than psychical. But this is utter nonsense! And it is precisely the kind of nonsense that is characteristic of all idealist philosophies. It is simply farcical for Bogdanov to class this "system" as materialism. With me, too, he says, nature is primary and mind secondary. If Engels' definition is to be thus construed, then Hegel is also a materialist, for with him, too, psychical experience (under the title of the Absolute Idea) comes first, then follow, "higher up," the physical world, nature, and, lastly, human knowledge, which through nature apprehends the Absolute Idea. Not a single idealist will deny the primacy of nature taken in this sense for it is not a genuine primacy, since in fact nature is not taken as the immediately given, as the starting point of epistemology. Nature is in fact reached as the result of a long process through abstraction of the "psychical." It is immaterial what these abstractions are called: whether Absolute Idea, Universal Self, World Will, and so on and so forth. These terms distinguish the different varieties of idealism, and such varieties exist in countless numbers. The essence of idealism is that the psychical is taken as the starting point; from it external nature is deduced, and only then is the ordinary human consciousness deduced from nature. Hence, this primary "psychical" always turns out to be a lifeless abstraction concealing a diluted theology. For instance, everybody knows what a human idea is; but an idea independent of man and prior to man, an idea in the abstract, an Absolute Idea, is a theological invention of the idealist Hegel. Everybody knows what human sensation is; but sensation independent of man, sensation prior to man, is nonsense, a lifeless abstraction, an idealist artifice. And it is precisely to such an idealistic artifice that Bogdanov resorts when he erects the following ladder.

1) The chaos of "elements" (we know that no other human concept lies back of the term "element" save sensation).

2) The psychical experience of men.

3) The physical experience of men.

4) "The knowledge emerging therefrom."

There are no sensations (human) without man. Hence, the first rung of this ladder is a lifeless idealist abstraction. As a matter of fact, what we have here is not the usual and familiar human sensations, but fictitious sensations, nobody's sensations, sensations in general, divine sensations -- just as the ordinary human idea became divine with Hegel when it was divorced from man and man's brain.

So away with the first rung!

Away also with the second rung, for the psychical before the physical (and Bogdanov places the second rung before the third) is something unknown to man or science. The physical realm existed before the psychical could have appeared, for the latter is the highest product of the highest forms of organic matter. Bogdanov's second rung is also a lifeless abstraction, it is thought without brain, human reason divorced from man.

Only when we throw out the hrst two rungs, and only then, can we obtain a picture of the world that truly corresponds to science and materialism. To wit: 1) the physical world exists independently of the mind of man and existed long prior to man, prior to any "human experience"; 2) the psychical, the mind, etc., is the highest product of matter (i.e., the physical), it is a function of that particularly complex fragment of matter 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, because they are immediate complexes" (p. xxxix).

And this precisely is idealism; for the psychical, i.e., consciousness, idea, sensation, etc., is taken as the immediate and the physical is deduced from it, substituted for it. 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 idea, says the immanentist Rehmke. Being is consciousness, says the immanentist Schuppe. The physical is a substitution for the psychical, says Bogdanov. One must be blind not to perceive the identical idealist essence under these various verbal cloaks.

"Let us ask ourselves the following 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 definite complex of 'immediate experiences.' [Mark, "primarily "!] Then, in the further development of experience, 'man' becomes both for himself and for others a physical body amidst other physical bodies."

Why, this is a sheer "complex" of absurdities, fit only for deducing the immortality of the soul, or the idea of God, and so forth. Man is primarily a complex of immediate expe- riences and in the course of further development becomes a physical body! That means that there are "immediate experiences" without a physical body, prior to a physical body! What a pity that this magnificent philosophy has not yet found acceptance in our theological seminaries! There its merits would have been fully appreciated.

". . . We have admitted that physical nature itself is a product [Bogdanov's italics] of complexes of an immediate character (to which psychical co-ordinations also belong), that it is the reflection of such complexes in others, analogous to them, but of the most complex type (in the socially organised experience of living beings)" (p. 146).

A philosophy which teaches that physical nature itself is a product, is a philosophy of the priests pure and simple. And its character is in no wise altered by the fact that personally Bogdanov emphatically repudiates all religion. Dühring was also an atheist; he even proposed to prohibit religion in his "socialitarian" order. Nevertheless, Engels was absolutely right in pointing out 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 a chance inconsistency but the very essence of his "empirio-monism" and of all his "substitution." If nature is a product, it is obvious that it can be a product only of some thing that is greater, richer, broader, mightier than nature, of something that exists; for in order to "produce" nature, it must exist independently of nature. That means that something exists outside nature, something which moreover produces nature. In plain language this is called God. The idealist philosophers have always sought to change this latter name, to make it more abstract, more vague and at the same time (for the sake of plausibility) to bring it nearer to the "psychical," as an "immediate complex," as the immediately given which requires no proof. Absolute Idea, Universal Spirit, World Will, "general substitution " of the psychical for the physical, are different formulations of one and the same idea. Every man knows, and science investigates, idea, mind, will, the psychical, as a function of the normally operating human brain. To divorce this function from substance organised in a definite way, to convert this function into a universal, general abstraction, to "substitute" this abstraction for the whole of physical nature, this is the raving of philosophical idealism and a mockery of science.

Materialism says that the "socially-organised experience of living beings" is a product of physical nature, a result of a long development of the latter, a development from a state of physical nature when no society, organisation, experience, or living beings existed or could have existed. Idealism says that physical nature is a product of this experience of living beings, and in saying this, idealism is equating (if not subordinating) nature to God. For God is undoubtedly a product of the socially-organised experience of living beings. No matter from what angle you look at it, Bogdanov's philosophy contains nothing but a reactionary muddle.

Bogdanov thinks that to speak of the social organisation of experience is "cognitive socialism" (Bk. III, p. xxxiv). This is insane twaddle. If socialism is thus regarded, the Jesuits are ardent adherents of "cognitive socialism," for the basis of their epistemology is divinity as "socially-organised experience." And there can be no doubt that Catholicism is a socially-organised experience; only, it reflects not objective truth (which Bogdanov denies, but which science reflects), but the exploitation of the ignorance of the masses by definite social classes.

But why speak of the Jesuits! We find Bogdanov's "cognitive socialism" in its entirety among the immanentists, so beloved of Mach. Leclair regards nature as the consciousness of "mankind" (Der Realismus, etc., S. 55), and not of the individual. The bourgeois philosophers will serve you up any amount of such Fichtean cognitive socialism. Schuppe also emphasises das generische, das gattungsmässige Moment des Bewusstseins (Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie, Bd. XVII, S. 379-80), i.e., the general, the generic factor of consciousness. To think that philosophical idealism vanishes when the consciousness of mankind is substituted for the consciousness of the individual, or the socially-organised experience for the experience of one person, is like thinking that capitalism vanishes when one capitalist is replaced by a joint-stock company.

Our Russian Machians, Yushkevich and Valentinov, echo the materialist Rakhmetov in asserting that Bogdanov is an idealist (at the same time foully abusing Rakhmetov himself). But they could not stop to think where this idealism came from. They make out that Bogdanov is an individual and chance phenomenon, an isolated case. This is not true. Bogdanov personally may think that he has invented an "original" system, but one has only to compare him with the afore mentioned disciples of Mach to realise the falsity of such an opinion. The difference between Bogdanov and Cornelius is far less than the difference between Cornelius and Carus. The difference between Bogdanov and Carus is less (as far as their philosophical systems are concerned, of course, and not the deliberateness of their reactionary implications) than the difference between Carus and Ziehen, and so on. Bogdanov is only one of the manifestations of that "socially-organised experience" which testifies to the growth of Machism into idealism. Bogdanov (we are here, of course, speaking exclusively of Bogdanov as a philosopher) could not have come into God's world had the doctrines of his teacher Mach contained no "elements". . . of Berkeleianism. And I cannot imagine a more "terrible vengeance" on Bogdanov than to have his Empirio-Monism translated, say, into German and presented for review to Leclair and Schubert-Soldern, Cornelius and Kleinpeter, Carus and Pillon (the French collaborator and disciple of Renouvier). The compliments that would be paid by these outright comrades-in-arms and, at times, direct followers of Mach to the "substitution" would be much more eloquent than their arguments.

However, it would scarcely be correct to regard Bogdanov's philosophy as a finished and static system. In the nine years from 1899 to 1908, Bogdanov has gone through four stages in his philosophical peregrinations. At the beginning he was a "natural-historical" materialist (i.e., semi-consciously and instinctively faithful to the spirit of science). His Fundamental Elements of the Historical Outlook on Nature bears obvious traces of that stage. The second stage was the "energetics" of Ostwald, which was so fashionable in the latter 'nineties, a muddled agnosticism which at times stumbled into idealism. From Ostwald (the title page of Ostwald's Lectures on Natural Philosophy bears the inscription: "Dedicated to E. Mach") Bogdanov went over to Mach, that is, he borrowed the fundamental premises of a subjective idealism that is as inconsistent and muddled as Mach's entire philosophy. The fourth stage is an attempt to eliminate some of the contradictions of Machism, and to create a semblance of objective idealism. "The theory of general substitution" shows that Bogdanov has described a curve of almost 180° from his starting position. Is this stage of Bogdanov's philosophy more remote or less remote from dialectical materialism than the previous stages? If Bogdanov remains in one place, then he is, of course, more remote. If he keeps moving along the same curve in which he has been moving for the last nine years, he is less remote. He now has only one serious step to make in order to return once more to materialism, namely, universally to discard his whole universal substitution. For this universal substitution gathers into one Chinese pigtail all the transgressions of half-hearted idealism and all the weaknesses of consistent subjective idealism, just as (si licet parva componere magnis ! -- if it is permissible to compare the great with the small) Hegel's "Absolute Idea" gathered together all the contradictions of Kantian idealism and all the weaknesses of Fichteanism. Feuerbach had to make only one serious step in order to return to materialism, namely, universally to discard, absolutely to eliminate, the Absolute Idea, that Hegelian "substitution of the psychical" for physical nature. Feuerbach cut off the Chinese pigtail of philosophical idealism, in other words, he took nature as the basis without any "substitution" whatever.

We must wait and see whether the Chinese pigtail of Machian idealism will go on growing for much longer.

6. THE "THEORY OF SYMBOLS" (OR HIEROGLYPHS)
AND THE CRITICISM OF HELMHOLTZ

As a supplement to what has been said above of the idealists as the comrades-in-arms and successors of empirio-criticism, it will be appropriate to dwell on the character of the Machian criticism of certain philosophical propositions touched upon in our literature. For instance, our Machian would-be

Marxists fastened with glee on Plekhanov's "hieroglyphs," that is, on the theory that man's sensations and ideas are not copies of real things and processes of nature, not their images, but conventional signs, symbols, hieroglyphs, and so on. Bazarov ridicules this hieroglyphic materialism; and, it should be stated, he would be right in doing so if he rejected hieroglyphic materialism in favour of non-hieroglyphic materialism. But Bazarov here again resorts to a sleight-of-hand and palms off his renunciation of materialism as a criticism of "hieroglyphism." Engels speaks neither of symbols nor of hieroglyphs, but of copies, photographs, images, mirror-reflections of things. Instead of pointing out the erroneousness of Plekhanov's deviation from Engels' formulation of materialism, Bazarov uses Plekhanov's error in order to conceal Engels' truth from the reader.

To make clear both Plekhanov's error and Bazarov's confusion we shall refer to an important advocate of the "theory of symbols" (calling a symbol a hieroglyph changes nothing), Helmholtz, and shall see how he was criticised by the materialists and by the idealists in conjunction with the Machians.

Helmholtz, a scientist of the first magnitude, was as inconsistent in philosophy as are the great majority of scientists. He tended towards Kantianism, but in his epistemology he did not adhere even to these views consistently. Here for instance are some passages on the subject of the correspondance of ideas and objects from his Handbook of Physiological Optics : "I have . . . designated sensations as merely symbols for the relations of the external world and I have denied that they have any similarity or equivalence to what they represent" (French translation, p. 579; German original, p. 442). This is agnosticism, but on the same page further on we read: "Our concepts and ideas are effects wrought on our nervous system and our consciousness by the objects that are perceived and apprehended." This is materialism. But Helmholtz is not clear as to the relation between absolute and relative truth, as is evident from his subsequent remarks. For instance, a little further on he says: "I therefore think that there can be no possible meaning in speaking of the truth of our ideas save as a practical truth. Our ideas of things cannot be anything but symbols, natural signs for things, which we learn to use in order to regulate our movements and actions. When we have learned to read these symbols rightly we are in a position with their aid to direct our actions so as to achieve the desired result. . . ." This is not correct. Helmholtz here lapses into subjectivism, into a denial of objective reality and objective truth. And he arrives at a flagrant untruth when he concludes the paragraph with the words: "An idea and the object it represents obviously belong to two entirely different worlds. . . ." Only the Kantians thus divorce idea from reality, consciousness from nature. However, a little further on we read: "As to the properties of the objects of the external world, a little reflection will show that all the properties we may attribute to them merely signify the effects wrought by them either on our senses or on other natural objects" (French ed., p. 581; German original, p. 445; I translate from the French). Here again Helmholtz reverts to the materialist position. Helmholtz was an inconsistent Kantian, now recognising a priori laws of thought, now tending towards the "transcendental reality" of time and space (i.e., to a materialist conception of them); now deriving human sensations from external objects, which act upon our sense organs, and now declaring sensations to be only symbols, i.e., certain arbitrary signs divorced from the "entirely different" world of the things signified (cf . Viktor Heyfelder, Ueber den Begriff der Erfahrung bei Helmholtz [Helmholtz's Conception of Experience ], Berlin 1897).

This is how Helmholtz expressed his views in a speech delivered in 1878 on "Facts in Perception" ("a noteworthy pronouncement from the realistic camp," as Leclair characterised this speech): "Our sensations are indeed effects wrought by external causes in our organs, and the manner in which such effects manifest themselves, of course, depends very essentially on the nature of the apparatus on which these effects are wrought. Inasmuch as the quality of our sensation informs us of the properties of the external action by which this sensation is produced, the latter can be regarded as its sign (Zeichen ), but not as its image. For a certain resemblance to the object imaged is demanded of an image. . . . But a sign need not resemble that of which it is a sign. . ." (Vorträge und Reden [Lectures and Speeches ], 1884, Bd. II, S. 226). If sensations are not images of things, but only signs or symbols which do "not resemble" them, then Helmholtz's initial materialist premise is undermined; the existence of external objects becomes subject to doubt; for signs or symbols may quite possibly indicate imaginary objects, and everybody is familiar with instances of such signs or symbols. Helmholtz, following Kant, attempts to draw something like an absolute boundary between the "phenomenon" and the "thing-in itself." Helmholtz harbours an insuperable prejudice against straightforward, clear, and open materialism. But a little further on he says: "I do not see how one could refute a system even of the most extreme subjective idealism that chose to regard life as a dream. One might declare it to be highly improbable and unsatisfactory -- I myself would in this case subscribe to the severest expressions of dissent -- yet it could be constructed consistently. . . . The realistic hypo thesis, on the contrary, trusts the evidence (Aussage ) of ordinary self-observation, according to which the changes of perception that follow a certain action have no psychical connection with the preceding impulse of volition. This hypothesis regards everything that seems to be substantiated by our everyday perception, viz., the material world outside of us, as existing independently of our ideas." (pp. 242-43.) "Undoubtedly, the realistic hypothesis is the simplest we can construct; it has been tested and verified in an extremely broad field of application; it is sharply defined in its several parts and, therefore, it is in the highest degree useful and fruitful as a basis of action" (p. 243). Helmholtz's agnosticism also resembles "shamefaced materialism," with certain Kantian twists, in distinction to Huxley's Berkeleian twists.

Albrecht Rau, a follower of Feuerbach, therefore vigorously criticises Helmholtz's theory of symbols as an inconsistent deviation from "realism." Helmholtz's basic view, says Rau, is a realistic hypothesis, according to which "we apprehend the objective properties of things with the help of our senses."* The theory of symbols cannot be reconciled with such a view (which, as we have seen, is wholly materialist), for it implies a certain distrust of perception, a distrust of the evidence of our sense-organs. It is beyond doubt that an image cannot wholly resemble the model, but an image is one thing, a symbol, a conventional sign, another. The image inevitably and of necessity implies the objective reality of that which it "images." "Conventional sign," symbol, hieroglyph are concepts which introduce an entirely unnecessary element of agnosticism. Albrecht Rau, therefore,

* Albrecht Rau, Empfinden und Denken [Sensation and Thought ], Giessen, 1896, S. 304.

is perfectly right in saying that Helmholtz's theory of symbols pays tribute to Kantianism. "Had Helmholtz," says Rau, "remained true to his realistic conception, had he consistently adhered to the basic principle that the properties of bodies express the relations of bodies to each other and also to us, he obviously would have had no need of the whole theory of symbols; he could then have said, briefly and clearly: the sensations which are produced in us by things are reflections of the nature of those things" (ibid., p. 320).

That is the way a materialist criticises Helmholtz. He rejects Helmholtz's hieroglyphic or symbolic materialism or semi-materialism in favour of Feuerbach's consistent materialism.

The idealist Leclair (a representative of the "immanentist school," so dear to Mach's heart and mind) also accuses Helmholtz of inconsistency, of wavering between materialism and spiritualism. (Der Realismus, etc., S. 154.) But for Leclair the theory of symbols is not insufficiently materialistic but too materialistic. Leclair says: "Helmholtz thinks that the perceptions of our consciousness offer sufficient support for the cognition of sequence in time as well as of the identity or non-identity of transcendental causes. This in Helmholtz's opinion is sufficient for the assumption and cognition of law in the realm of the transcendental" (i.e., in the realm of the objectively real) (p. 33). And Leclair thunders against this "dogmatic prejudice of Helmholtz's": "Berkeley's God," he exclaims, "as the hypothetical cause of the conformity to natural law of the ideas in our mind is at least just as capable of satisfying our need of causality as a world of external objects" (p. 31). "A consistent application of the theory of symbols. . . can achieve nothing without a generous admixture of vulgar realism" (i.e., materialism) (p. 35).

This is how a "critical idealist" criticised Helmholtz for his materialism in 1879. Twenty years later, in his article "The Fundamental Views of Ernst Mach and Heinrich Hertz on Physics,"[*] Kleinpeter, the disciple of Mach so highly praised by his teacher, refuted in the following way the "antiquated" Helmholtz with the aid of Mach's "recent" philosophy. Let us for the moment leave aside Hertz (who, in fact, was as inconsistent as Helmholtz) and examine Kleinpeter's comparison of Mach and Helmholtz. Having quoted a number of passages from the works of both writers, and having particularly stressed Mach's well-known statements to the effect that bodies are mental symbols for complexes of sensations and so on, Kleinpeter says:

"If we follow Helmholtz's line of thought, we shall encounter the following fundamental premises:

"1) There exist objects of the external world.

"2) A change in these objects is inconceivable without the action of some cause (which is thought of as real).

"3) 'Cause, according to the original meaning of the word, is the unchangeable residue or being behind the changing phenomena, namely, substance and the law of its action, force.' [The quotation is taken by Kleinpeter from Helmholtz.]

"4) It is possible to deduce all phenomena from their causes in a logically strict and uniquely determined manner.

"5) The achievement of this end is equivalent to the possession of objective truth, the acquisition (Erlangung ) of which is thus regarded as conceivable" (p. 163).

Rendered indignant by these premises, by their contradictoriness and their creation of insoluble problems, Klein- <"fnp281">

* Archiv für Philosophie, II, Systematische Philosophie,[101] Bd. V., 1899, S. 163-64.

peter remarks that Helmholtz does not hold strictly to these views and sometimes employs "turns of speech which are somewhat suggestive of Mach's purely logical understanding of such words" as matter, force, causality, etc.

"It is not difficult to find the source of our dissatisfaction with Helmholtz, if we recall Mach's fine, clear words. The false understanding of the words mass, force, etc., is the basic weakness of Helmholtz's whole argument. These are only concepts, products of our imagination and not realities existing outside of thought. We are not even in a position to know such things. From the observation of our senses we are in general unable, owing to their imperfection, to make even a single uniquely determined conclusion. We can never assert, for instance, that upon reading a certain scale (durch Ablesen einer Skala ) we shall obtain a definite figure: there are always, within certain limits, an infinite number of possible figures all equally compatible with the facts of the observation. And to have knowledge of something real lying outside us -- that is for us impossible. Let us assume, however, that it were possible, and that we did get to know reality; in that case we would have no right to apply the laws of logic to it, for they are our laws, applicable only to our conceptions, to our mental products [Kleinpeter's italics]. Between facts there is no logical connection, but only a simple succession; apodictic assertions are here unthinkable. It is therefore incorrect to say that one fact is the cause of another and, consequently, the whole deduction built up by Helmholtz on this conception falls to the ground. Finally, the attainment of objective truth, i.e., truth existing independently of any subject, is impossible, not only because of the nature of our senses, but also because as men (als Menschen ) we can in general have no notion of what exists quite independently of us (p. 164).

As the reader sees, our disciple of Mach, repeating the favourite phrases of his teacher and of Bogdanov, who does not own himself a Machian, rejects Helmholtz's whole philosophy, rejects it from the idealist standpoint. The theory of symbols is not even especially singled out by the idealist, who regards it as an unimportant and perhaps accidental deviation from materialism. And Helmholtz is chosen by Kleinpeter as a representative of the "traditional views in physics," "views shared to this day by the majority of phys icists (p. 160).

The result we have arrived at is that Plekhanov was guilty of an obvious mistake in his exposition of materialism, but that Bazarov completely muddled the matter, mixed up materialism with idealism and advanced in opposition to the "theory of symbols," or "hieroglyphic materialism," the idealist nonsense that "sense-perception is the reality existing out side us." From the Kantian Helmholtz, just as from Kant himself, the materialists went to the Left, the Machians to the Right.

7. TWO KINDS OF CRITICISM OF DÜHRING

Let us note another characteristic feature in the Machians' incredible perversion of materialism. Valentinov endeavours to beat the Marxists by comparing them to Büchner, who supposedly has much in common with Plekhanov, although Engels sharply dissociated himself from Buchner. Bogdanov, approaching the same question from another angle, defends, as it were, the "materialism of the natural scientists," which,

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he says, "is usually spoken of with a certain contempt" (Empirio-Monism, Bk. III, p. x). Both Valentinov and Bogdanov are wretchedly muddled on this question. Marx and Engels always "spoke contemptuously" of bad socialists; but from this it follows that they demanded the teaching of correct socialism, scientific socialism, and not a flight from socialism to bourgeois views. Marx and Engels always condemned bad (and, particularly, anti-dialectical) materialism; but they condemned it from the standpoint of a higher, more advanced dialectical materialism, and not from the standpoint of Humism or Berkeleianism. Marx, Engels and Dietzgen would discuss the bad materialists, reason with them and seek to correct their errors. But they would not even discuss the Humeans and Berkeleians, Mach and Avenarius, confining themselves to a single still more contemptuous remark about their trend as a whole. Therefore, the endless faces and grimaces made by our Machians over Holbach and Co., Büchner and Co., etc., are absolutely nothing but an attempt to throw dust in the eyes of the public, a cover for the departure of Machism as a whole from the very foundations of materialism in general, and a fear to take up a straightforward and clear position with regard to Engels.

And it would be hard 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 Ludwig Feuerbach. It is impossible not to understand Engels, unless one deliberately wishes to distort him. Marx and I are materialists -- says Engels in this chapter, explaining what fundamentally distinguishes all schools of materialism from the whole camp of the idealists, from all the Kantians and Humeans in general. And Engels reproaches Feuerbach for a certain pusillanimity, a certain frivolity of thought, as expressed in his rejection at times of materialism in general because of the mistakes of one or another school of materialists. Feuerbach "should not have confounded the doctrines of these hedge-preachers<"p285"> [Büchner and Co.] with materialism in general," says Engels (p. 21).[102] Only minds that are spoilt by reading and credulously accepting the doctrines of the German reactionary professors could have misunderstood the nature of such reproaches levelled by Engels at Feuerbach.

Engels says very clearly that Büchner and Co. "by no means overcame the limitations of their teachers," i.e., the materialists of the eighteenth century, that they had not made a single step forward. And it is for this, and this alone, that Engels took Büchner and Co. to task; not for their materialism, as the ignoramuses think, but because they did not advance materialism, because "it was quite outside their scope to develop the theory [of materialism] any further." It was for this alone that Engels took Büchner and Co. to task. And thereupon point by point Engels enumerates three fundamental "limitations" (Beschränktheit ) of the French materialists of the eighteenth century, from which Marx and Engels had emancipated themselves, but from which Büchner and Co. were unable to emancipate themselves. The first limitation was that the views of the old materialists were "mechanical," in the sense that they believed in "the exclusive application of the standards of mechanics to processes of a chemical and organic nature" (p. 19). We shall see in the next chapter that failure to understand these words of Engels' caused certain people to succumb to idealism through the new physics. Engels does not reject mechanical materialism for the faults attributed to it by physicists of the "recent" idealist (alias Machian) trend. The second limitation was the meta- physical character of the views of the old materialists, meaning the "anti-dialectical character of their philosophy." This limitation is fully shared with Büchner and Co. by our Machians, who, as we have seen, entirely failed to understand Engels' application of dialectics to epistemology (for example, absolute and relative truth). The third limitation was the preservation of idealism "up above," in the realm of the social sciences, a non-understanding of historical materialism.

Having enumerated these three "limitations" and explained them with exhaustive clarity (pp. 19-21), Engels then and there adds that they (Büchner and Co.) did not emerge "from these limits " (über diese Schranken ).

Exclusively for these three things and exclusively within these limits, does Engels refute both the materialism of the eighteenth century and the doctrines of Büchner and Co.! On all other, more elementary, questions of materialism (questions distorted by the Machians) there is and can be no difference between Marx and Engels on the one hand and all these old materialists on the other. It was only the Russian Machians who brought confusion into this perfectly clear question, since for their West-European teachers and co-thinkers the radical difference between the line of Mach and his friends and the line of the materialists generally is perfectly obvious. Our Machians found it necessary to confuse the issue in order to represent their break with Marxism and their desertion to the camp of bourgeois philosophy as "minor corrections" of Marxism!

Take Dühring. It is hard to imagine anything more contemptuous than the opinion of him expressed by Engels. But at the same time that Dühring was criticised by Engels, just see how he was criticised by Leclair, who praises Mach's "revolutionising philosophy." Leclair regards Dühring as the "extreme Left " of materialism, which "without any evasion declares sensation, as well as every activity of consciousness and intelligence in general, to be the secretion, function, supreme flower, aggregate effect, etc., of the animal organism" (Der Realismus, etc., 1879, S. 23-24).

Is it for this that Engels criticised Dühring? No. In this he was in full agreement with Dühring, as he was with every other materialist. He criticised Dühring from the diametrically opposite standpoint, namely, for the inconsistency of his materialism, for his idealist fancies, which left a loophole for fideism.

"Nature itself works both within ideating beings and from without, in order to create the required knowledge of the course of things by systematically producing coherent views." Leclair quotes these words of Dühring's and savagely attacks the materialism of such a point of view, the "crude metaphysics" of this materialism, the "self-deception," etc., etc. (pp. 160 and 161-63).

Is it for this that Engels criticised Dühring? No. He ridiculed all florid language, but as regards the cognition of objective law in nature, reflected by the consciousness, Engels was fully in agreement with Dühring, as he was with every other materialist.

"Thought is a form of reality higher than the rest. . . . A fundamental premise is the independence and distinction of the materially real world from the groups of manifestations of the consciousness." Leclair quotes these words of Dühring's together with a number of Dühring's attacks on Kant, etc., and for this accuses Dühring of "metaphysics" (pp. 218-22), of subscribing to "a metaphysical dogma," etc.

Is it for this that Engels criticised Dühring? No. That the world exists independently of the mind and that every deviation from this truth on the part of the Kantians, Humeans, Berkeleians, and so forth, is false, on this point Engels was fully in agreement with Dühring, as he was with every other materialist. Had Engels seen from what angle Leclair, in the spirit of Mach, criticised Dühring, he would have called both these philosophical reactionaries names a hundred times more contemptuous than those he called Dühring. To Leclair Dühring was the incarnation of pernicious realism and materialism (cf. also Beiträge zu einer monistischen Erkenntnistheorie, 1882, S. 45). In 1878, W. Schuppe, teacher and comrade-in-arms of Mach, accused Dühring of "visionary realism" (Traumrealismus )[*] in revenge for the epithet "visionary idealism" which Dühring had hurled against all idealists. For Engels, on the contrary, Dühring was not a sufficiently steadfast, clear and consistent materialist.

Marx and Engels, as well as J. Dietzgen, entered the philosophical arena at a time when materialism reigned among the advanced intellectuals in general, and in working-class circles in particular. It is therefore quite natural that they should have devoted their attention not to a repetition of old ideas but to a serious theoretical development of materialism, its application to history, in other words, to the completion of the edifice of materialist philosophy up to its summit. It is quite natural that in the sphere of epistemology they confined themselves to correcting Feuerbach's errors, to ridiculing the banalities of the materialist Dühring, to criticising the errors of Büchner (see J. Dietzgen), to emphasising what these most widely known and popular writers among the workers particularly lacked, namely, dialectics. Marx, Engels and J. Dietz-

* Dr. Wilhelm Schuppe, Erkenntnistheoretische Logik [Epistemological Logic ], Bonn, 1878, S. 56.

gen did not worry about the elementary truths of materialism, which had been cried by the hucksters in dozens of books, but devoted all their attention to ensuring that these elementary truths should not be vulgarised, should not be over-simplified, should not lead to stagnation of thought ("materialism below, idealism above"), to forgetfulness of the valuable fruit of the idealist systems, Hegelian dialectics -- that pearl which those farmyard cocks, the Büchners, the Dührings and Co. (as well as Leclair, Mach, Avenarius and so forth), could not pick out from the dungheap of absolute idealism.

If one envisages at all concretely the historical conditions in which the philosophical works of Engels and J. Dietzgen were written, it will be perfectly clear why they were more concerned to dissociate themselves from the vulgarisation of the elementary truths of materialism than to defend the truths themselves. Marx and Engels were similarly more concerned to dissociate themselves from the vulgarisation of the fundamental demands of political democracy than to defend these demands.

Only disciples of the philosophical reactionaries could have "failed to notice" this circumstance, and could have presented the case to their readers in such a way as to make it appear that Marx and Engels did not know what being a materialist means.

8. HOW COULD J. DIETZGEN HAVE FOUND
FAVOUR WITH THE REACTIONARY PHILOSOPHERS?

The previously cited example of Helfond already contains the answer to this question, and we shall not examine the innumerable instances in which J. Dietzgen receives Helfond- like treatment at the hands of our Machians. It is more expedient to quote a number of passages from J. Dietzgen himself in order to bring out his weak points.

"Thought is a function of the brain," says Dietzgen (Das Wesen der menschlichen Kopfarbeit, 1903, S. 52; there is a Russian translation). "Thought is a product of the brain. . . . My desk, as the content of my thought, is identical with that thought, does not differ from it. But my desk outside of my head is a separate object quite distinct from it" (p. 53). These perfectly clear materialistic propositions are, however, supplemented by Dietzgen thus: "Nevertheless, the non-sensible idea is also sensible, material, i.e., real. . . . The mind differs no more from the table, light, or sound than these things differ from each other" (p. 54). This is obviously false. That both thought and matter are "real," i.e., exist, is true. But to say that thought is material is to make a false step, a step towards confusing materialism and idealism. As a matter of fact this is only an inexact expression of Dietzgen's, who elsewhere correctly says: "Mind and matter at least have this in common, that they exist" (p. 80). "Thinking," says Dietzgen, "is a work of the body. . . . In order to think I require a substance that can be thought of. This substance is provided in the phenomena of nature and life. . . . Matter is the boundary of the mind, beyond which the latter cannot pass. . . . Mind is a product of matter, but matter is more than a product of mind. . ." (p. 64). The Machians refrain from analysing materialist arguments of the materialist Dietzgen such as these! They prefer to fasten on passages where he is inexact and muddled. For example, he says that scientists can be "idealists only outside their field" (p. 108). Whether this is so, and why it is so, on this the Machians are silent. But a page or so earlier Dietzgen recognises the "positive side of modern idealism" (p. 106) and the "inadequacy of the materialist principle," which should rejoice the Machians. The incorrectly expressed thought of Dietzgen's consists in the fact that the difference between matter and mind is also relative and not excessive (p. 107). This is true, but what follows from this is not that materialism as such is inadequate, but that metaphysical, anti-dialectical materialism is inadequate.

"Simple, scientific truth is not based on a person. It has its foundation outside [i.e., of the person], in its material; it is objective truth. . . . We call ourselves materialists. . . . Philosophical materialists are distinguished by the fact that they put the corporeal world at the beginning, at the head, and put the idea, or spirit, as the sequel, whereas their opponents, after the manner of religion, derive things from the word. . . the material world from the idea" (Kleinere philosophische Schriften, 1903, S. 59, 62). The Machians avoid this recognition of objective truth and repetition of Engels' definition of materialism. But Dietzgen goes on to say: "We would be equally right in calling ourselves idealists, for our system is based on the total result of philosophy, on the scientific investigation of the idea, on a clear insight into the nature of mind" (p. 63). It is not difficult to seize upon this obviously incorrect phrase in order to deny materialism. Actually, Dietzgen's formulation is more inexact than his basic thought, which amounts to this, that the old materialism was unable to investigate ideas scientifically (with the aid of historical materialism).

Here are Dietzgen's ideas on the old materialism. "Like our understanding of political economy, our materialism is a scientific, historical conquest. Just as definitely as we distinguish ourselves from the socialists of the past, so we distinguish ourselves from the old materialists. With the latter we have only this in common, that we acknowledge matter to be the premise, or prime base of the idea" (p. 140). This word "only" is significant! It contains the whole epistemological foundation of materialism, as distinguished from agnosticism, Machism, idealism. But Dietzgen's attention is here concentrated on dissociating himself from vulgar materialism.

But then follows a little further on a passage that is quite incorrect: "The concept matter must be broadened. It embraces all the phenomena of reality, as well as our faculty of knowing or explaining" (p. 141). This is a muddle which can only lead to confusing materialism and idealism under the guise of "broadening" the former. To seize upon this "broadening" would be to forget the basis of Dietzgen's philosophy, the recognition of matter as the primary, "the boundary of the mind." But, as a matter of fact, a few lines further down Dietzgen corrects himself: "The whole governs the part, matter the mind. . . . In this sense we may love and honour the material world . . . as the first cause, as the creator of heaven and earth" (p. 142). That the conception of "matter" must also include thoughts,<"p292"> as Dietzgen repeats in the Excursions [103] (op. cit., p. 214), is a muddle, for if such an inclusion is made, the epistemological contrast between mind and matter, idealism and materialism, a contrast upon which Dietzgen himself insists, loses all meaning. That this contrast must not be made "excessive," exaggerated, metaphysical, is beyond dispute (and it is to the great credit of the dialectical materialist Dietzgen that he emphasised this). The limits of the absolute necessity and absolute truth of this relative contrast are precisely those limits which define the trend of epistemological investigations. To operate beyond these limits with the distinction between matter and mind, physical and mental, as though they were absolute opposites, would be a great mistake.

Dietzgen, unlike Engels, expresses his thoughts in a vague, unclear, mushy way. But apart from his defects of exposition and his individual mistakes, he not unsuccessfully champions the "materialist theory of knowledge " (pp. 222 and 271), "dialectical materialism " (p. 224). "The materialist theory of knowledge then," says Dietzgen, "amounts to the recognition that the human organ of perception radiates no metaphysical light, but is a piece of nature which reflects other pieces of nature" (pp. 222-23). "Our perceptive faculty is not a supernatural source of truth, but a mirror-like instrument, which reflects the things of the world, or nature" (p. 243). Our profound Machians avoid an analysis of each individual proposition of Dietzgen's materialist theory of knowledge, but seize upon his deviations from that theory, upon his vagueness and confusion. J. Dietzgen could find favour with the reactionary philosophers only because he occasionally gets muddled. And, it goes without saying, where there is a muddle there you will find Machians.

Marx wrote to Kugelmann on December 5, 1868: "A fairly long time ago he [Dietzgen] sent me a fragment of a manuscript on the 'faculty of thought' which in spite of a certain confusion and of too frequent repetition, contains much that is excellent<"p293"> and -- as the independent product of a working man -- admirable" (Russ. trans., p. 53).[104] Mr. Valentinov quotes this opinion, but it never dawned on him to ask what Marx regarded as Dietzgen's confusion, whether it was that which brings Dietzgen close to Mach, or that which distinguishes Dietzgen from Mach. Mr. Valentinov does not ask this question because he read both Dietzgen and Marx's letters after the manner of Gogol's Petrushka. Yet it is not

difficult to find the answer to this question. Marx frequently called his world outlook dialectical materialism, and Engels' Anti-Dühring, the whole of which Marx read through in manuscript, expounds precisely this world outlook. Hence, it should have been clear even to the Valentinovs that Dietzgen's confusion could lie only in his deviation from a consistent application of dialectics, from consistent materialism, in particular from Anti-Dühring.

Does it now dawn upon Mr. Valentinov and his brethren that what Marx could call Dietzgen's confusion is only what brings Dietzgen close to Mach, who went from Kant not towards materialism, but towards Berkeley and Hume? Or was it that the materialist Marx called Dietzgen's materialist theory of knowledge confused, yet approved his deviations from materialism, that is, approved what differs from Anti-Dühring, which was written with his (Marx's) participation?

Whom are they trying to fool, our Machians, who desire to be regarded as Marxists and at the same time inform the world that "their " Mach approved of Dietzgen? Have our heroes failed to guess that Mach could approve in Dietzgen only that which Marx called confusion?

But taken as a whole, J. Dietzgen does not deserve so severe a censure. He is nine-tenths a materialist and never made any claims either to originality or to possessing a special philosophy distinct from materialism. He spoke of Marx frequently, and invariably as the head of the trend (Kleinere philosophische Schriften, S. 4 -- an opinion uttered in 1873; on page 95 -- 1876 -- he emphasises that Marx and Engels "possessed the necessary philosophical training"; on page 181 -- 1886 -- he speaks of Marx and Engels as the "acknowledged founders" of the trend).<"p294"> Dietzgen was a Marxist, and Eugene Dietzgen,[105] and -- alasl -- Comrade P.

Dauge are rendering him left-handed service by their invention of "Naturmonismus," "Dietzgenism," etc. "Dietzgenism" as distinct from dialectical materialism is confusion, a step towards reactionary philosophy, an attempt to create a trend not from what is great in Joseph Dietzgen (and in that worker-philosopher, who discovered dialectical materialism in his own way, there is much that is great!) but from his weak points.

I shall confine myself to two examples in order to illustrate how Comrade P. Dauge and Eugene Dietzgen are sliding into reactionary philosophy. <"p295">

In the second edition of the Akquisit [106] (p. 273), Dauge writes: "Even bourgeois criticism points out the connection between Dietzgen's philosophy and empirio-criticism and also the immanentist school," and, further on, "especially Leclair" (a quotation from a "bourgeois criticism").

That P. Dauge values and esteems J. Dietzgen cannot be doubted. But it also cannot be doubted that he is defaming him by citing without protest the opinion of a bourgeois scribbler who classes the sworn enemy of fideism and of the professors -- the "graduated flunkeys" of the bourgeoisie -- with the outspoken preacher of fideism and avowed reactionary, Leclair. It is possible that Dauge repeated another's opinion of the immanentists and of Leclair without himself being familiar with the writings of these reactionaries. But let this serve him as a warning: the road away from Marx to the peculiarities of Dietzgen -- to Mach -- to the immanentists -- is a road leading into a morass. To class him not only with Leclair but even with Mach is to lay stress on Dietzgen the muddlehead as distinct from Dietzgen the materialist.

I shall defend Dietzgen against Dauge. I assert that Dietzgen did not deserve the shame of being classed with Leclair. And I can cite a witness, a most authoritative one on such a question, one who is as much a reactionary, as much a fideist and "immanentist" philosopher as Leclair himself, namely, Schubert-Soldern. In 1896 he wrote: "The Social-Democrats willingly lean for support on Hegel with more or less (usually less) justification, but they materialise the Hegelian philosophy; cf. J. Dietzgen. . . . With Dietzgen, the absolute becomes the universal, and this becomes the thing-in-itself, the absolute subject, whose appearances are its predicates. That he [Dietzgen] is thus converting a pure abstraction into the basis of the concrete process, he does not, of course, realise any more than Hegel himself did. . . . He frequently chaotically lumps together Hegel, Darwin, Haeckel, and natural-scientific materialism" (Die soziale Frage, S. xxxiii). Schubert-Soldern is a keener judge of philosophical shades than Mach, who praises everybody indiscriminately, including the Kantian Jerusalem.

Eugene Dietzgen was so simple-minded as to complain to the German public that in Russia the narrow materialists had "insulted" Joseph Dietzgen, and he translated Plekhanov's and Dauge's articles on Joseph Dietzgen into German. (See Joseph Dietzgen, Erkenntnis und Wahrheit [Knowledge and Truth ], Stuttgart, 1908, Appendix). The poor "Natur-monist's" complaint rebounded on his own head. Franz Mehring, who may be regarded as knowing something of philosophy and Marxism, wrote in his review that Plekhanov was essentially right as against Dauge (Die Neue Zeit, 1908, No. 38, 19. Juni, Feuilleton, S. 432). That J. Dietzgen got into difficulties when he deviated from Marx and Engels (p. 431) is for Mehring beyond question. Eugene Dietzgen replied to

Mehring in a long, snivelling note, in which he went so far as to say that J. Dietzgen might be of service "in reconciling" the "warring brothers, the orthodox and the revisionists" (Die Neue Zeit, 1908, No. 44, 31. Juli, S. 652).

Another warning, Comrade Dauge: the road away from Marx to "Dietzgenism" and "Machism" is a road into the morass, not for individuals, not for Tom, Dick and Harry, but for the trend.

And do not complain, Messrs. Machians, that I quote the "authorities"; your objections to the authorities are but a screen for the fact that for the socialist authorities (Marx, Engels, Lafargue, Mehring, Kautsky) you are substituting bourgeois authorities (Mach, Petzoldt, Avenarius and the immanentists). You would do better not to raise the question of "authorities" and "authoritarianism"!