It is, according to this, clear that, of the four points mentioned by Kirchmann, only the second touches the core of the pending question, although he leaves something to be desired in clearness of expression. It is declared to be a characteristic form of conscious knowledge that consciousness not merely knows its own content, but that it knows it also as content in contrast to its form, i.e., that it has it for object, wherewith at the same time the knowledge of itself is connected as subject. In truth, the knowledge of the form of consciousness as such, and of the opposition of the matter to the same, is only a result of a higher development of conscious intellect, but it remains, therefore, still correct that the actual existence of this contrast of form and matter of consciousness and the objectivity of the matter resulting from it is characteristic for conscious thinking. This is, however, only the case because for unconscious thinking this separation and this opposition of form and matter of knowledge, of subject and object of the thinking act, does not exist, because here subject and object are in direct identity, or rather still remain in indifference, have not yet stepped out of their original non-separation. This contrast first arises from the real conflict of opposing and mutually inhibiting individual wills. In the All-One, that has nothing outside itself, there is nought conceivable that could disturb the identity of the subject-object in the Unconscious Idea and lead to the separation of reflecting knowledge from thing known.—Kirchmann gives two reasons why unconscious knowledge must at the same time be knowledge of itself as knowledge, i.e., consciousness (or, more precisely, self-consciousness), whose probative force, however, has not become very clear to me, even taken in the sense of its author. He asserts, namely, that, in the first place, the selection of the most suitable means from the whole multitude of ideas, and, secondly, the presentation of volition as contrast of the logical, is not possible without, knowledge of knowledge. But now the suitable means are not deliberately set apart from a whole mass of actual inappropriate representations, but of all possible representations only those become efficient which are logically demanded (demanded, e.g., as means to end). It is not obvious what influence the logical or teleological determination of the quality of the awakening Idea could have on the destruction of the indifference of subject and object or of form and matter in the Unconscious Idea. (Other objections to the unconsciousness of the Absolute Idea derived from the positing of purpose have been already discussed, vol. ii. p. 255 ff.) As little evident is it how from the circumstance that the willing must for the Idea be a known one, the other assertion is to be derived that the coming to knowledge of the Will through the Idea must be conscious, or that with this knowledge there must be reflection on the knowledge as such. Not, as Kirchmann thinks, as represented goal, but as starting-point, must volition in some way or other become conscious, in order that a process may at all come to pass (see further vol. ii. p. 256–258; and vol. iii. p. 163–169). However, this consciousness is one entirely undetermined in content, that only gives an impulse to the unfolding of the Idea, but does not enter into its content.—Thus, on closer investigation, disappears every semblance of probative force for the proof attempted by Kirchmann of his assertion that the ideation of the Unconscious has all, or even only any one, of the determinations which make knowledge in man conscious knowledge.
P. 271, 1. 12.—Comp, here my memoir “Die Selbstzersetzung des Christenthums und die Religion der Zukunft,” 2 Aufl., Berlin, C. Duncker, 1874, particularly chap. vii.: “Die historischen Bausteine zur Religion der Zukunft.”
P. 271, 1. 31.—On the appearance of the sixth edition of this work it was still unknown to me that the hope here expressed had already begun to receive its realisation in a “Christliche Dogmatik” that had appeared simultaneously with my first edition (Zurich, Orell & Füssli, 1869). The author (A. E. Biedermann, Professor in Zürich) of this book, which I regard not merely as the most important theological, but also as one of the most distinguished speculative achievements of the last generation, may well claim a like position in the Protestant theology of the last third of this century to that of Schleiermacher in the first third, and stands in a similar relation to Hegel as Schleiermacher to Plato and Spinoza. In place of the nebulosity of Schleiermacher, he offers, however, a concentrated wealth of acute speculative thought, and stands on the shoulders of the historico critical school, whose results he does not hush up like the compromising theology, but accepts in all their clear fulness, and turns to good account as negative transition to his own positive speculation, which is to unfold the proper thought-content of the representable elements in the historical dogmas now breaking up through their immanent contradictions. If the historical continuity of Christianity were in any wise to be saved, it would without doubt be in this way; to my mind, however, the harmony of the thought historically transmitted with that finally sifted out by speculation is so far-fetched, that in the end only the name is saved, concealing something altogether new. But what is pertinent here is the fact that speculative reforming tendencies are showing themselves in the circles of Protestant theology itself, which sooner or later must gather round their flag all who seek to retain a living Christianity, thus are averse to a rigid orthodoxy, and yet find themselves just as much repelled by the rationalistic, illuminated, and pale sentimental irreligiosity of liberal Protestantism as by the obscurity and hushing-up system of the theology of compromise. The speculative content of this new reformed theology as a purified Hegelianism is very closely allied to the principles advocated by me, although in some points it departs from it in substance, in others only in terminology (cp. especially the sections “Das Wesen Gottes,” § 617–631; “Das Dasein Gottes,” § 632–640; and “Der Begriff des absoluten Geistes,” § 696–717).
Biedermann too seeks for the higher synthetic unity of a view of the world, which conceives the Absolute only as the vital force poured out in the All and of one, which apprehends it as spiritual personality, and sees in both only partially true modes of thinking, which must be sublated in the higher conception of the impersonal absolute Spirit (p. 645). That he terms the former view the pantheistic, appears to be an unessential difference of expression; it seems to me that the etymology of the word “pantheistic” would not at all admit of the setting aside of the immaterial spiritualistic moment, and that a view which comprehends the Absolute only as unspiritual natural force can only receive the name of Naturalism or Naturalistic Monism, but not that of Pantheism. On the other hand, the latter term is properly covered by the principle of an impersonal Absolute Spirit, for which Biedermann has not missed the adequate expression. His attempted synthesis of Theism and Pantheism is therefore substantially quite the same as that which is aimed at in my synthesis of Naturalistic Monism and Theism, namely, Spiritualistic Monism or Pantheism.
Biedermann openly acknowledges that the understanding must necessarily be led to conceive the indivisible absolute ground of the inner purposiveness of the world as impersonal and immanent, and that every attempt to refer the immanent conformity to law and purpose to the wise will of a personal Creator not only denudes it of its absoluteness, but also brings the immanent purpose of the world into an insoluble antinomy with the personal aims of its Creator (§ 628). He declares that God is not merely immanent in the world in his action, and transcendent to it in his being, but that he is immanent to it as very ground of its existence, and that this groundedness of the world is his being itself that does not lie as an otherness behind it (p. 629); that a transcendence of God in respect of the world can only be asserted so far as he remains unaffected by the forms of particular existence of the world (Spaceness and Timeness), i.e., as he is indeed everywhere and always immanent to finite existence as its ground, but yet himself is in no place and in no time (ibid) Nowhere have I found the arguments against the personality of the Absolute Spirit marshalled with such thoroughness, clearness, and acuteness as by Biedermann. He shows that all the proofs of the existence of God can only lead to the conception of an impersonal Absolute Spirit as ground of
the natural and moral order, but that the mind only arrives by an illegitimate leap at the supposition of a personality of the Absolute Spirit (§ 632–640). He further maintains that every one of the attributes of God assumed on the part of theology, thought out in all its consequences, leads to an antinomy between the absoluteness and the personality of God, which can always only be regarded as a specialised expression of the general contradiction existing between these conceptions (§ 617–631). Lastly, he deals with this contradiction in its general form, and shows the untenability of all the attempts made from the most diverse sides to obscure or to overcome it (§ 716). To these demonstrations of Biedermann, which excellently supplement my own, I refer all readers who might not feel satisfied and convinced by my expositions, which could not possibly penetrate far into the theological domain within the limits of the present book.
When we consider that Biedermann’s work was composed before the appearance of the first edition of the “Philosophy of the Unconscious,” we should not be surprised that the author still holds to the Hegelian categories of the Being-in-self and Being-for-self of the Absolute Spirit; that he speaks of a reflection of the natural processes and of the acts of individual spirits in the pure Being-in-self of the Absolute Spirit (p. 638), and accordingly of a self-consciousness of the latter (p. 561). It is, however, easily discernible that, with Biedermann’s metaphysical point of view, there is no longer any necessity at all for the assumption retained by him from the traditional Theism that everything ejected into natural actuality from the absolute Idea by the absolute Will notwithstanding that it does not cease to be comprehended in the creative Idea of the Absolute Spirit, is again superfluously reflected in the Absolute, and thus becomes conscious in the same. That in certain acts such a reflection takes place is true, but they are in comparison with the total action of the Absolute only partial reflections, and can therefore also only produce partial apperceptions, i.e., finite individual consciousnesses, but not lead to an indivisible collective consciousness of the Absolute Spirit, to a divine self-consciousness. If there really were such an absolute self-consciousness, this would be the absolute Ego, i.e., the absolute Personality, at least in intellectual reference, and Biedermann’s argument against the personality of the Absolute would in this respect be adduced in vain. But since that assertion is only a theistic reminiscence, no longer fitting in with Biedermann’s metaphysical Pantheism, it is to be hoped that the consistent following out of his perception of the untenability of the Personality of the Absolute Spirit will lead him likewise to abandon the self-consciousness and the consciousness, and therewith to come over in principle to our point of view. How near he stands to the latter, despite his apparently opposite mode of expression, even in his “Christliche Dogmatik,” is best proved by § 627, dealing with the divine omniscience. We there read: “In order to comprehend the knowledge of God as absolute, as omniscience, the doctrine of the Church commands us to think away all the discursive elements of finite human knowledge (§ 409). But the more this is actually done, the more disappears also all analogy with a personal knowing, and there only remains the impersonal spirituality of the immanent ground of the world, in which everything that flows from it is of necessity (?) again reflected in it (?).” Apart from this “being reflected,” by which the thought is disfigured, it is clear enough that “the pure spirituality of the essentially single ground of the whole world-process” (p. 566), which is to admit of no analogy with, personal knowing, is intended to affirm precisely the same as my unconscious intuition of the absolute Idea, except that it is here not yet clearly elevated into scientific consciousness, that the form of human knowledge, which must be abstracted from absolute knowledge, is nothing more than the form of consciousness.
Before we quit Biedermann, another inconsequence must be pointed out, which likewise must be regarded as a concession to the traditional Theism, namely, he asserts that, although personality must be excluded from the notion of the Absolute Spirit, it is yet the only possible image through which the essential being of God can be brought home to us, although inadequately, and that the religious feeling cannot dispense with the imaginative realisation of God (p. 645–646). Granted that the unsuitable image of a spiritual personality is always a relatively truer representation than that of an unspiritual natural force, granted also that human thinking can never entirely extricate itself from the soil of sensuous perception, it yet by no means follows from these premises that the “absolute personality” is and always must remain the only possible kind of the representation of God. For there is no dualism of concept and percept in human thinking, but thinking is itself “as pure thinking only a scientific elaboration of our perceptions” (p. 646). If accordingly, this process of elaboration has once reached such a point that the determination of personality is to be unconditionally eliminated from the idea of the Absolute Spirit, all relapse into a surmounted stage of this elaborative process of the ideas is to be unconditionally avoided,—notwithstanding the circumstance that even so there is still a residuum of perceptional elements in the concept of the Absolute Spirit,—and consequently without impairing religious feeling.
P. 286, 1. 3.—Yeast still proved after cooling from—113° C. a vital stimulator of fermentation (“Naturforscher,” 1874, No. 37, p. 351).
P. 287, 1. 5.—As these scientific facts are among those cited in my book which have encountered the most opposition, it affords me the greater satisfaction to be able to point to the memoir of a modern exact naturalist (Prof. W. Preyer, “Ueber die Erforschung des Lebens,” Jena, Mauke, 1873), who not only gives a connected history of the respective discoveries (from Leuwenhoek’s discovery in the year 1701) (p. 25–31 and p. 49–64), but also entirely agrees with my view that the condition in question exhibits the absolute cessation of all life, in contrast to all states of vital function, however reduced. He says (p. 31): “And yet there are very many at the present day who would declare all the observations and experiments I have cited, even those instituted by myself, illusions. Since such experiments can, however, be easily instituted (1 have demonstrated the facts in my own laboratory and auditorium very frequently for years), the doubts will certainly gradually disappear, and the old views of life be for ever abandoned.”—I therefore beg every one who intends to dispute the statements in question first to make himself acquainted with the passages referred to of the above-mentioned brochure. Preyer can the less be objected to on the scientific side as surety as he is an avowed materialist, and even from the fact that life may for a long time completely cease in an organism and then re-awaken, hastily thinks to be able to draw capital for his materialism.
P. 291, 1. 18.—A similar case to the stratified grains of Famintzin is presented by the interesting experiments of Moritz Traube (“Journal of the Meeting of Scientific Investigators in Breslau,” 1874, p. 191), who by introducing drops of glue into diluted tartaric acid obtained the chemical precipitate of a colloid membrane. The imitation of an organic cell thus obtained showed by intussusception of water the analogue of organic growth. With a proper concentration of the two agents, the compression of the molecules in the membrane is such that the passage of the chemically different molecules is prevented; on the other hand, the endosmosis of aqueous molecules into the interior of the cell goes on unhindered. In consequence of this, the drop swells, and the membrane is stretched by the pressure from within like a soap-bubble. It would soon burst, if the still undissolved glue in the interior did not form a reservoir, whence it may be recruited. The water, namely, that has effected an entrance, dissolves some glue, and as soon as the interstices between the molecules of the membrane become by the stretching of the latter so great, that the molecules of the glue and of the tannic acid can communicate with one another through the same, new molecules are precipitated owing to this chemical contact, which arrange themselves in the tissue of the membrane, and thereby strengthen it. If the drop of glue is attached in hanging fashion to the glass rod supporting it, the concentration of the gelatinou
s solution is everywhere pretty much the same, and the increase therefore tolerably equal at all parts, so that the spherical shape is on the whole preserved with the augmentation. On the other hand, if the drop is attached lying or standing to the upper end of the glass rod, the solution of glue is arranged by the influence of gravity in horizontal layers, that become ever more diluted above (remote from the glue-reservoir). In consequence of this, the parts of the membrane at the top of the cell are more unfavourably situated as regards the nutritive material; they become thinner than the others, and therefore yield more to the equal hydrostatic pressure. The result is that at the apex of the cell the tension of the membrane is strongest, therefore also the opportunity of growth greatest, i.e., that the cell stretches most in the direction opposed to gravity, thus grows into a horizontal sac.—These experiments are well adapted to explain the most elementary processes of organic cell-growth and the partial dependence of the favoured direction of growth on the direction of gravity, on the mechanical side, in that they set up analogous, but also certainly only analogous, relations. For the difference is at once evident that in the organic cell-growth the nutritive matter is received from without, whilst here it is given to the cell as an internal store of gelatinous material, and the cell swells only through the absorption of water. The living cell contains the phases of youth, age, and death morphologically preformed in itself; the glue-cell is simply limited in its growth to the quantity of its given store of food; it does not die of decrepitude, but because it has emptied its food-reservoir (in case the membrane holds out so long). The organic cell lives by morphological and chemical moulting, i.e., by change of matter; for that there is required, however, not merely reception of matter, but also excretion of matter. The glue-cell has no excretion of matter, and therefore no change of matter, i.e., no life; there takes place in it no chemical, and still less a morphological moulting process. The only chemical reaction that takes place in it is the first precipitate and the subsequent gradual strengthening of the membrane; this process belongs, however, in the organic cells to the vital process only so far as secretion belongs to the vital process of an organism, and the secretion as such can just as little be called living as the shell of the snail, the web of the spider, or the urine of man are called a living part of these organisms. Like the Moneres, most cells pass their youth, when they are most alive and perform the chief part of their functions, without precipitating a membrane, and with the secretion of such an encysting-stage already begins, in which the living intercourse with the outer world is limited or entirely abolished. This excluding precipitated membrane is therefore as little as the calcareous capsule of the gargol or trichine to be considered a living part of the organism, but at the most as a caput mortuum of past vital action. That vital action was secretion; but secretion can only be considered a vital function when it occurs as result of the change of matter or of the moulting of a living organism, and we can never reason backwards from the external resemblance of a chemical superficial precipitate with the superficial secretion of living cells to a vital process, when the criterion of such, the regular and predetermined change of matter, is obviously wanting.—It seemed necessary to recall these important differences between the organic cell and the inorganic glue-cell in order to avert hasty conclusions, which might be drawn on the part of materialism from these in themselves extremely interesting experiments, although their contriver would certainly be least inclined to overlook, in their resemblance, the difference in principle of the two phenomena.
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