PHILOSOPHY
ANTI DUHRING
Dialectics
Chapter 14: Conclusion.
XII. Dialectics.
Quantity and Quality
“The first and most important principle of the basic
logical properties of being refers to the exclusion of contradiction.
Contradiction is a category which can only appertain to a combination of
thoughts, but not to reality. There are no contradictions in things, or, to put
it another way, contradiction accepted as reality is itself the apex of
absurdity {D. Ph. 30} ...
The antagonism of forces measured against each other
and moving in opposite directions is in fact the basic form of all actions m
the life of the world and its creatures. But this opposition of the directions
taken by the forces of elements and individuals does not in the slightest
degree coincide with the idea of absurd contradictions {31} ... We can be
content here with having cleared the fogs which generally rise from the
supposed mysteries of logic by presenting a clear picture of the actual
absurdity of contradictions in reality and with having shown the uselessness of
the incense which has been burnt here and there in honour of the dialectics of
contradiction — the very clumsily carved wooden doll which is substituted
for the antagonistic world schematism” {32}
This is practically all we are told about dialectics in the
Cursus der Philosophie. In his Kritische Geschichte, on the
other hand, the dialectics of contradiction, and with it particularly Hegel, is
treated quite differently.
“Contradiction, according to the Hegelian logic, or
rather Logos doctrine, is objectively present not in thought, which by its
nature can only be conceived as subjective and conscious, but in things and
processes themselves and can be met with in so to speak corporeal form, so that
absurdity does not remain an impossible combination of thought but becomes an
actual force. The reality of the absurd is the first article of faith in the
Hegelian unity of the logical and the illogical.... The more contradictory a
thing the truer it is, or in other words, the more absurd the more credible it
is. This maxim, which is not even newly invented but is borrowed from the
theology of the Revelation and from mysticism, is the naked expression of the
so-called dialectical principle” {D. K. G. 479-80}.
The thought-content of the two passages cited can be summed up
in the statement that contradiction=absurdity, and therefore cannot occur in
the real world. People who in other respects show a fair degree of common sense
may regard this statement as having the same self-evident validity as the
statement that a straight line cannot be a curve and a curve cannot be
straight.
But, regardless of all protests made by common sense, the
differential calculus under certain circumstances nevertheless equates straight
lines and curves, and thus obtains results which common sense, insisting on the
absurdity of straight lines being identical with curves, can never attain. And
in view of the important role which the so-called dialectics of contradiction
has played in philosophy from the time of the ancient Greeks up to the present,
even a stronger opponent than Herr Dühring should have felt obliged to attack
it with other arguments besides one assertion and a good many abusive
epithets.
True, so long as we consider things as at rest and lifeless, each one by
itself, alongside and after each other, we do not run up against any
contradictions in them. We find certain qualities which are partly common to,
partly different from, and even contradictory to each other, but which in the
last-mentioned case are distributed among different objects and therefore
contain no contradiction within. Inside the limits of this sphere of
observation we can get along on the basis of the usual, metaphysical mode of
thought. But the position is quite different as soon as we consider things in
their motion, their change, their life, their reciprocal influence on one
another. Then we immediately become involved in contradictions.
Motion itself
is a contradiction: even simple mechanical change of position can only come
about through a body being at one and the same moment of time both in one place
and in another place, being in one and the same place and also not in it. And
the continuous origination and simultaneous solution of this contradiction is
precisely what motion is.
Here, therefore, we have a contradiction which “is objectively present
in things and processes themselves and can be met with in so to speak corporeal
form”. And what has Herr Dühring to say about it? He asserts that
up to the present there is “no bridge” whatever
“in rational mechanics from the strictly static to the dynamic” {D.
Ph. 80}.
The reader can now at last see what is hidden behind this
favourite phrase of Herr Dühring’s — it is nothing but this: the
mind which thinks metaphysically is absolutely unable to pass from the idea of
rest to the idea of motion, because the contradiction pointed out above blocks
its path. To it, motion is simply incomprehensible because it is a
contradiction. And in asserting the incomprehensibility of motion, it admits
against its will the existence of this contradiction, and thus admits the
objective presence in things and processes themselves of a contradiction which
is moreover an actual force.
If simple mechanical change of position contains a contradiction this is
even more true of the higher forms of motion of matter, and especially of
organic life and its development. We saw above that life consists precisely and
primarily in this — that a being is at each moment itself and yet
something else. Life is therefore also a contradiction which is present in
things and processes themselves, and which constantly originates and resolves
itself; and as soon as the contradiction ceases, life, too, comes to an end,
and death steps in. We likewise saw that also in the sphere of thought we could
not escape contradictions, and that for example the contradiction between man's
inherently unlimited capacity for knowledge and its actual presence only in men
who are externally limited and possess limited cognition finds its solution in
what is — at least practically, for us — an endless succession of
generations, in infinite progress.
We have already noted that one of the basic principles of higher mathematics
is the contradiction that in certain circumstances straight lines and curves
may be the same. It also gets up this other contradiction: that lines which
intersect each other before our eyes nevertheless, only five or six centimetres
from their point of intersection, can be shown to be parallel, that is, that
they will never meet even if extended to infinity. And yet, working with these
and with even far greater contradictions, it attains results which are not only
correct but also quite unattainable for lower mathematics.
But even lower mathematics teems with contradictions. It is for example a
contradiction that a root of A should be a power of A, and yet A1/2
= 
. It is a contradiction that a
negative quantity should be the square of anything, for every negative quantity
multiplied by itself gives a positive square. The square root of minus one is
therefore not only a contradiction, but even an absurd contradiction, a real
absurdity. And yet 
is in
many cases a necessary result of correct mathematical operations. Furthermore,
where would mathematics — lower or higher — be, if it were
prohibited from operation with ?
. It is a contradiction that a
negative quantity should be the square of anything, for every negative quantity
multiplied by itself gives a positive square. The square root of minus one is
therefore not only a contradiction, but even an absurd contradiction, a real
absurdity. And yet is in
many cases a necessary result of correct mathematical operations. Furthermore,
where would mathematics — lower or higher — be, if it were
prohibited from operation with ?
In its operations with variable quantities mathematics itself enters the
field of dialectics, and it is significant that it was a dialectical
philosopher, Descartes, who introduced this advance. The relation between the
mathematics of variable and the mathematics of constant quantities is in
general the same as the relation of dialectical to metaphysical thought. But
this does not prevent the great mass of mathematicians from recognising
dialectics only in the sphere of mathematics, and a good many of them from
continuing to work in the old, limited, metaphysical way with methods that were
obtained dialectically.
It would be possible to go more closely into Herr Dühring’s antagonism
of forces and his antagonistic world schematism only if he had given us
something more on this theme than the mere phrase. After accomplishing
this feat this antagonism is not even once shown to us at work, either in his
world schematism or in his natural philosophy — the most convincing
admission that Herr Dühring can do absolutely nothing of a positive character
with his “basic form of all actions in the life of the world and its
creatures”. When someone has in fact lowered Hegel’s
“Doctrine of Essence” to the platitude of forces moving in opposite
directions but not in contradictions, certainly the best thing he can do is to
avoid any application of this commonplace.
Marx's Capital furnishes Herr Dühring with another occasion for
venting his anti-dialectical spleen.
“The absence of natural and intelligible logic which
characterises these dialectical frills and mazes and conceptual arabesques...
Even to the part that has already appeared we must apply the principle that in
a certain respect and also in general” (!), “according to a
well-known philosophical preconception, all is to be sought in each and each in
all, and that therefore, according to this mixed and misconceived idea, it all
amounts to one and the same thing in the end” {D. K. G. 496}.
This insight into the well-known philosophical preconception
also enables Herr Dühring to prophesy with assurance what will be the
“end” of Marx's economic philosophising, that is, what the
following volumes of Capital will contain, and this he does exactly
seven lines after he has declared that
“speaking in plain human language it is really
impossible to divine what is still to come in the two” (final)
“volumes” [61] {496}.
This, however, is not the first time that Herr Dühring’s
writings are revealed to us as belonging to the “things” in which
“contradiction is objectively present and can be
met with in so to speak corporeal form” {479-80}. But this does
not prevent him from going on victoriously as follows:
“Yet sound logic will in all probability triumph over
its caricature... This presence of superiority and this mysterious dialectical
rubbish will tempt no one who has even a modicum of sound judgment left to have
anything to do ... with these deformities of thought and style. With the demise
of the last relics of the dialectical follies this means of duping ... will
lose its deceptive influence, and no one will any longer believe that he has to
torture himself in order to get behind some profound piece of wisdom where the
husked kernel of the abstruse things reveals at best the features of ordinary
theories if not of absolute commonplaces... It is quite impossible to reproduce
the” (Marxian) “maze in accordance with the Logos doctrine without
prostituting sound logic” {D. K. C. 497}. Marx's method, according to
Herr Dühring, consists in “performing dialectical miracles for his
faithful followers” {498}, and so on.
We are not in any way concerned here as yet with the correctness
or incorrectness of the economic results of Marx's researches, but only with
the dialectical method used by Marx. But this much is certain: most readers of
Capital will have learnt for the first time from Herr Dühring what it
is in fact that they have read. And among them will also be Herr Dühring
himself, who in the year 1867 (Ergänzungsblätter III, No. 3) was still
able to provide what for a thinker of his calibre was a relatively rational
review of the book; and he did this without first being obliged as he now
declares is indispensable, to translate the Marxian argument into Dühringian
language. And though even then he committed the blunder of identifying Marxian
dialectics with the Hegelian, he had not quite lost the capacity to distinguish
between the method and the results obtained by using it, and to understand that
the latter are not refuted in detail by lampooning the former in general.
At any rate, the most astonishing piece of information given by Herr Dühring
is the statement that from the Marxian standpoint “it all amounts to one
and the same thing in the end” {496}, that therefore to Marx, for
example, capitalists and wage-workers, feudal, capitalist and socialist modes
of production are also “one and the same
thing” — no doubt in the end even Marx and Herr Dühring are
“one and the same thing”. Such utter nonsense can only be explained
if we suppose that the mere mention of the word dialectics throws Herr Dühring
into such a state of mental irresponsibility that, as a result of a certain
mixed and misconceived idea, what he says and does is “one and the same
thing” in the end.
We have here a sample of what Herr Dühring calls
“my historical depiction in the grand style”
{556}, or “the summary treatment which settles with genus and type, and
does not condescend to honour what a Hume called the learned mob with an
exposure in micrological detail; this treatment in a higher and nobler style is
the only one compatible with the interests of complete truth and with one's
duty to the public which is free from the bonds of the guilds” {507}.
Historical depiction in the grand style and the summary
settlement with genus and type is indeed very convenient for Herr Dühring,
inasmuch as this method enables him to neglect all known facts as micrological
and equate them to zero, so that instead of proving anything he need only use
general phrases, make assertions and thunder his denunciations. The method has
the further advantage that it offers no real foothold to an opponent, who is
consequently left with almost no other possibility of reply than to make
similar summary assertions in the grand style, to resort to general phrases and
finally thunder back denunciations at Herr Dühring — in a word, as they
say, engage in a clanging match, which is not to everyone“s taste. We
must therefore be grateful to Herr Dühring for occasionally, by way of
exception, dropping the higher and nobler style, and giving us at least two
examples of the unsound Marxian Logos doctrine.
“How comical is the reference to the confused, hazy
Hegelian notion that quantity changes into quality, and that therefore an
advance, when it reaches a certain size, becomes capital by this quantitative
increase alone” {498}.
In this “expurgated” presentation by Herr Dühring
that statement certainly seems curious enough. Let us see how it looks in the
original, in Marx. On page 313 (2nd edition of Capital), Marx, on the
basis of his previous examination of constant and variable capital and
surplus-value, draws the conclusion that “not every sum of money, or of
value, is at pleasure transformable into capital. To effect this
transformation, in fact, a certain minimum of money or of exchange-value must
be presupposed in the hands of the individual possessor of money or
commodities.” He takes as an example the case of a labourer in any branch
of industry, who works daily eight hours for himself — that is, in
producing the value of his wages — and the following four hours for the
capitalist, in producing surplus-value, which immediately flows into the pocket
of the capitalist. In this case, one would have to have at his disposal a sum
of values sufficient to enable one to provide two labourers with raw materials,
instruments of labour and wages, in order to pocket enough surplus-value every
day to live on as well as one of his labourers.
And as the aim of capitalist
production is not mere subsistence but the increase of wealth, our man with his
two labourers would still not be a capitalist. Now in order that he may live
twice as well as an ordinary labourer, and turn half of the surplus-value
produced again into capital, he would have to be able to employ eight
labourers, that is, he would have to possess four times the sum of values
assumed above. And it is only after this, and in the course of still further
explanations elucidating and substantiating the fact that not every petty sum
of values is enough to be transformable into capital, but that in this respect
each period of development and each branch of industry has its definite minimum
sum, that Marx observes: “Here, as in natural science, is shown
the correctness of the law discovered by Hegel in his Logic, that
merely quantitative changes beyond a certain point pass into qualitative
differences.”
And now let the reader admire the higher and nobler style, by virtue of
which Herr Dühring attributes to Marx the opposite of what he really said. Marx
says: The fact that a sum of values can be transformed into capital only when
it has reached a certain size, varying according to the circumstances, but in
each case definite minimum size — this fact is a proof of the
correctness of the Hegelian law. Herr Dühring makes him say:
Because, according to the Hegelian law, quantity changes into quality,
“therefore an advance, when it reaches a
certain size, becomes capital” {D. K. G. 498}. That is to say, the
very opposite.
In connection with Herr Dühring’s examination of the Darwin case, we
have already got to know his habit, “in the
interests of complete truth” and because of his “duty to the public
which is free from the bonds of the guilds” {507}, of quoting
incorrectly. It becomes more and more evident that this habit is an inner
necessity of the philosophy of reality, and it is certainly a very “summary treatment” {507}. Not to mention
the fact that Herr Dühring further makes Marx speak of any kind of
“advance” whatsoever, whereas Marx only refers to an advance made
in the form of raw materials, instruments of labour, and wages; and that in
doing this Herr Dühring succeeds in making Marx speak pure nonsense. And then
he has the cheek to describe as comic the nonsense which he himself
has fabricated. Just as he built up a Darwin of his own fantasy in order to try
out his strength against him, so here he builds up a fantastic Marx. “Historical depiction in the grand style”
{556}, indeed!
We have already seen earlier, when discussing world schematism, that in
connection with this Hegelian nodal line of measure relations — in which
quantitative change suddenly passes at certain points into qualitative
transformation — Herr Dühring had a little accident: in a weak moment he
himself recognised and made use of this line. We gave there one of the
best-known examples — that of the change of the aggregate states of
water, which under normal atmospheric pressure changes at 0° C from the liquid
into the solid state, and at 100°C from the liquid into the gaseous state, so
that at both these turning-points the merely quantitative change of temperature
brings about a qualitative change in the condition of the water.
In proof of this law we might have cited hundreds of other similar facts
from nature as well as from human society. Thus, for example, the whole of Part
IV of Marx's Capital — production of relative surplus-value
— deals, in the field of co-operation, division of labour and
manufacture, machinery and modern industry, with innumerable cases in which
quantitative change alters the quality, and also qualitative change alters the
quantity, of the things under consideration; in which therefore, to use the
expression so hated by Herr Dühring, quantity is transformed into quality and
vice versa. As for example the fact that the co-operation of a number of
people, the fusion of many forces into one single force, creates, to use Marx's
phrase, a “new power”, which is essentially different from the sum
of its separate forces.
“the eminently modern educative elements provided by
the natural-scientific mode of thought are lacking precisely among those who,
like Marx and his rival Lassalle, make half-science and a little
philosophistics the meagre equipment with which to vamp up their
learning” {D. K. G. 504} —
while with Herr Dühring
“the main achievements of exact knowledge in mechanics,
physics and chemistry” {D. Ph. 517} and so forth serve as the basis
—
we have seen how. However, in order to enable third persons,
too, to reach a decision in the matter, we shall look a little more closely
into the example cited in Marx's footnote.
What is referred to here is the homologous series of carbon compounds, of
which a great many are already known and each of which has its own algebraic
formula of composition. If, for example, as is done in chemistry, we denote an
atom of carbon by C, an atom of hydrogen by H, an atom of oxygen by O, and the
number of atoms of carbon contained in each compound by n, the molecular
formulas for some of these series can be expressed as follows:
CnH2n+2 — the series of normal
paraffins
CnH2n+2O — the series of primary alcohols
CnH2nO2 — the series of the monobasic fatty acids.
CnH2n+2O — the series of primary alcohols
CnH2nO2 — the series of the monobasic fatty acids.
Let us take as an example the last of these series, and let us
assume successively that n=l, n=2, n=3, etc. We then obtain the following
results (omitting the isomers):
CH2O2 — formic acid: boiling point
100° melting point 1°
C2H4O2 — acetic acid: 118° melting point 17°
C3H6O2 — propionic acid: 140° " "
C8H8O2 — butyric acid: 162°
C5H10O2 — valerianic acid: 175°
C2H4O2 — acetic acid: 118° melting point 17°
C3H6O2 — propionic acid: 140° " "
C8H8O2 — butyric acid: 162°
C5H10O2 — valerianic acid: 175°
and so on to C50H60O2, melissic
acid, which melts only at 80° and has no boiling point at all, because it
cannot evaporate without disintegrating.
Here therefore we have a whole series of qualitatively different bodies,
formed by the simple quantitative addition of elements, and in fact always in
the same proportion. This is most clearly evident in cases where the quantity
of all the elements of the compound changes in the same proportion. Thus, in
the normal paraffins CnH2n+2, the lowest is methane, CH4,
a gas; the highest known, hexadecane, C16H34, is a solid
body forming colourless crystals which melts at 21° and boils only at 278°.
Each new member of both series comes into existence through the addition of
CH2, one atom of carbon and two atoms of hydrogen, to the molecular formula of
the preceding member, and this quantitative change in the molecular formula
produces each time a qualitatively different body.
These series, however, are only one particularly obvious example; throughout
practically the whole of chemistry, even in the various nitrogen oxides and
oxygen acids of phosphorus or sulphur, one can see how “quantity changes into
quality”, and this allegedly confused, hazy Hegelian notion appears in so to
speak corporeal form in things and processes — and no one but Herr
Dühring is confused and befogged by it. And if Marx was the first to call
attention to it, and if Herr Dühring read the reference without even
understanding it (otherwise he would certainly not have allowed this
unparalleled outrage to pass unchallenged), this is enough — even without
looking back at the famous Dühringian philosophy of nature — to make it
clear which of the two, Marx or Herr Dühring, is lacking in “the eminently modern educative elements provided by the
natural-scientific mode of thought” {D. K. G. 504} and in acquaintance
with the “main achievements of ... chemistry” {D.
Ph. 517}.
In conclusion we shall call one more witness for the transformation of
quantity into quality, namely — Napoleon. He describes the combat between
the French cavalry, who were bad riders but disciplined, and the Mamelukes, who
were undoubtedly the best horsemen of their time for single combat, but lacked
discipline, as follows:
“Two Mamelukes were undoubtedly more than a match for three
Frenchmen; 100 Mamelukes were equal to 100 Frenchmen; 300 Frenchmen could
generally beat 300 Mamelukes, and 1,000 Frenchmen invariably defeated 1,500
Mamelukes.”
Just as with Marx a definite, though varying, minimum sum of
exchange-values was necessary to make possible its transformation into capital,
so with Napoleon a detachment of cavalry had to be of a definite minimum number
in order to make it possible for the force of discipline, embodied in closed
order and planned utilisation, to manifest itself and rise superior even to
greater numbers of irregular cavalry, in spite of the latter being better
mounted, more dexterous horsemen and fighters, and at least as brave as the
former. But what does this prove as against Herr Dühring? Was not Napoleon
miserably vanquished in his conflict with Europe? Did he not suffer defeat
after defeat? And why? Solely in consequence of having introduced the confused,
hazy Hegelian notion into cavalry tactics!
XIII. Dialectics.
Negation of the Negation
“This historical sketch” (of the genesis of the
so-called primitive accumulation of capital in England) “is relatively
the best part of Marx's book, and would be even better if it had not relied on
the dialectical crutch to help out its scholarly crutch. The Hegelian negation
of the negation, in default of anything better and clearer, has in fact to
serve here as the midwife to deliver the future from the womb of the past.
The
abolition of ‘individual property’, which since the sixteenth
century has been effected in the way indicated above, is the first negation. It
will be followed by a second, which bears the character of a negation of the
negation and hence of a restoration of ‘individual property’, but
in a higher form, based on the common ownership of land and of the instruments
of labour. Herr Marx calls this new ‘individual property’ also
‘social property’, and in this there appears the Hegelian higher
unity, in which the contradiction is supposed to be sublated, that is to say,
in the Hegelian verbal jugglery, both overcome and preserved...
According to
this, the expropriation of the expropriators is, as it were, the automatic
result of historical reality in its materially external relations... It would
be difficult to convince a sensible man of the necessity of the common
ownership of land and capital, on the basis of credence in Hegelian
wordjuggling such as the negation of the negation {D. K. G. 502-03}...
The
nebulous hybrids of Marx’s conceptions will not however appear strange to
anyone who realises what nonsense can be concocted with Hegelian dialectics as
the scientific basis, or rather what nonsense must necessarily spring from it.
For the benefit of the reader who is not familiar with these artifices, it must
be pointed out expressly that Hegel’s first negation is the catechismal
idea of the fall from grace and his second is that of a higher unity leading to
redemption.
The logic of facts can hardly be based on this nonsensical analogy
borrowed from the religious sphere {504} ... Herr Marx remains cheerfully in
the nebulous world of his property which is at once both individual and social
and leaves it to his adepts to solve for themselves this profound dialectical
enigma” {505}
Thus far Herr Dühring.
So Marx has no other way of proving the necessity of the social revolution,
of establishing the common ownership of land and of the means of production
produced by labour, except by citing the Hegelian negation of the negation; and
because he bases his socialist theory on these nonsensical analogies borrowed
from religion, he arrives at the result that in the society of the future there
will be dominant an ownership at once both individual and social, as Hegelian
higher unity of the sublated contradiction.
But let the negation of the negation rest for the moment and let us have a
look at the “ownership” which is “at once both individual and social”. Herr
Dühring characterises this as a “nebulous
world”, and curiously enough he is really right on this point.
Unfortunately, however, it is not Marx but again Herr Dühring himself who is in
this nebulous world. Just as his dexterity in handling the Hegelian method of
“delirious raving” {D. Ph. 227, 449}
enabled him without any difficulty to determine what the still unfinished
volumes of Capital are sure to contain, so here, too, without any
great effort he can put Marx right à la Hegel, by imputing to him the
higher unity of a property, of which there is not a word in Marx.
Marx says: “It is the negation of negation. This re-establishes
individual property, but on the basis of the acquisitions of the capitalist
era, i.e., on co-operation of free workers and their possession in common of
the land and of the means of production produced by labour. The transformation
of scattered private property, arising from individual labour, into capitalist
private property is, naturally, a process, incomparably more protracted,
arduous, and difficult, than the transformation of capitalistic private
property, already practically resting on socialised production, into socialised
property.” [K. Marx, Das Kapital, p. 793.] [Capital, volume I, Chapter 33, page 384 in the MIA pdf
file.]
That is all. The state of things brought about by the
expropriation of the expropriators is therefore characterised as the
re-establishment of individual property, but on the basis of the
social ownership of the land and of the means of production produced by labour
itself. To anyone who understands plain talk this means that social ownership
extends to the land and the other means of production, and individual ownership
to the products, that is, the articles of consumption.
And in order to make the
matter comprehensible even to children of six, Marx assumes on page 56 [Chapter 1, page 48 in the MIA pdf] “a community
of free individuals, carrying on their work with the means of production in
common, in which the labour-power of all the different individuals is
consciously applied as the combined labour-power of the community”, that
is, a society organised on a socialist basis; and he continues: “The
total product of our community is a social product. One portion serves as fresh
means of production and remains social. But another portion is
consumed by the members as means of subsistence. A distribution of this
portion amongst them is consequently necessary.” And surely that is
clear enough even for Herr Dühring, in spite of his having Hegel on his
brain.
The property which is at once both individual and social, this confusing
hybrid, this nonsense which necessarily springs from Hegelian dialectics, this
nebulous world, this profound dialectical enigma, which Marx leaves his adepts
to solve for themselves — is yet another free creation and imagination on
the part of Herr Dühring. Marx, as an alleged Hegelian, is obliged to produce a
real higher unity, as the outcome of the negation of the negation, and as Marx
does not do this to Herr Dühring's taste, the latter has to fall again into his
higher and nobler style, and in the interests of complete truth impute to Marx
things which are the products of Herr Dühring's own manufacture.
A man who is
totally incapable of quoting correctly, even by way of exception, may well
become morally indignant at the “Chinese
erudition” {D. K. G. 506} of other people, who always quote
correctly, but precisely by doing this “inadequately conceal their lack of insight into the
totality of ideas of the various writers from whom they quote”.
Herr Dühring is right. Long live historical depiction in the grand style
{556}!
Up to this point we have proceeded from the assumption that Herr Dühring's
persistent habit of misquoting is done at least in good faith, and arises
either from his total incapacity to understand things or from a habit of
quoting from memory — a habit which seems to be peculiar to historical
depiction in the grand style, but is usually described as slovenly. But we seem
to have reached the point at which, even with Herr Dühring, quantity is
transformed into quality.
For we must take into consideration in the first
place that the passage in Marx is in itself perfectly clear and is moreover
amplified in the same book by a further passage which leaves no room whatever
for misunderstanding; secondly, that Herr Dühring had discovered the
monstrosity of “property which is at once both
individual and social” {505} neither in the critique of
Capital, in the Ergänzungsblätter which was referred to
above, nor even in the critique contained in the first edition of his
Kritische Geschichte, but only in the second edition
— that is,
on the third reading of Capital; further, that in this second
edition, which was rewritten in a socialist sense, it was deemed necessary by
Herr Dühring to make Marx say the utmost possible nonsense about the future
organisation of society, in order to enable him, in contrast, to bring forward
all the more triumphantly — as he in fact does — “the
economic commune as described by me in economic and juridical outline
in my Cursus” {504} — when we take all this into
consideration, we are almost forced to the conclusion that Herr Dühring has
here deliberately made a “beneficent extension” of Marx's idea
— beneficent for Herr Dühring.
But what role does the negation of the negation play in Marx? On page 791
and the following pages he sets out the final conclusions which he draws from
the preceding fifty pages of economic and historical investigation into the
so-called primitive accumulation of capital. [62] Before the capitalist era, petty industry existed,
at least in England, on the basis of the private property of the labourer in
his means of production. The so-called primitive accumulation of capital
consisted there in the expropriation of these immediate producers, that is, in
the dissolution of private property based on the labour of its owner.
This
became possible because the petty industry referred to above is compatible only
with narrow and primitive bounds of production and society and at a certain
stage brings forth the material agencies for its own annihilation. This
annihilation, the transformation of the individual and scattered means of
production into socially concentrated ones, forms the prehistory of capital. As
soon as the labourers are turned into proletarians, their conditions of labour
into capital, as soon as the capitalist mode of production stands on its own
feet, the further socialisation of labour and further transformation of the
land and other means of production, and therefore the further expropriation of
private proprietors, takes a new form.
“That which is now to be expropriated is no longer the
labourer working for himself, but the capitalist exploiting many labourers.
This expropriation is accomplished by the action of the immanent laws of
capitalistic production itself, by the concentration of capitals. One
capitalist always kills many. Hand in hand with this concentration, or this
expropriation of many capitalists by few, develop, on an ever extending scale,
the co-operative form of the labour-process, the conscious technical
application of science, the methodical collective cultivation of the soil, the
transformation of the instruments of labour into instruments of labour only
usable in common, the economising of all means of production by their use as
the jointly owned means of production of combined, socialised labour.
Along
with the constantly diminishing number of the magnates of capital, who usurp
and monopolise all advantages of this process of transformation, grows the mass
of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with this too
grows the revolt of the working class, a class always increasing in numbers,
and disciplined, united, organised by the very mechanism of the process of
capitalist production itself. Capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of
production, which has sprung up and flourished along with, and under it.
Concentration of the means of production and socialisation of labour at last
reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument.
This integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property
sounds. The expropriators are expropriated.”
And now I ask the reader: where are the dialectical frills and mazes and
conceptual arabesques; where the mixed and misconceived ideas according to
which everything is all one and the same thing in the end; where the
dialectical miracles for his faithful followers; where the mysterious
dialectical rubbish and the maze in accordance with the Hegelian Logos
doctrine, without which Marx, according to Herr Dühring, is unable to put his
exposition into shape?
Marx merely shows from history, and here states in a
summarised form, that just as formerly petty industry by its very development
necessarily created the conditions of its own annihilation, i.e., of the
expropriation of the small proprietors, so now the capitalist mode of
production has likewise itself created the material conditions from which it
must perish. The process is a historical one, and if it is at the same time a
dialectical process, this is not Marx's fault, however annoying it may be to
Herr Dühring.
It is only at this point, after Marx has completed his proof on the basis of
historical and economic facts, that he proceeds:
“The capitalist mode of production and appropriation,
hence the capitalist private property, is the first negation of individual
private property founded on the labour of the proprietor. Capitalist production
begets, with the inexorability of a process of nature, its own negation. It is
the negation of the negation” — and so on (as quoted above).
Thus, by characterising the process as the negation of the negation, Marx
does not intend to prove that the process was historically necessary. On the
contrary: only after he has proved from history that in fact the process has
partially already occurred, and partially must occur in the future, he in
addition characterises it as a process which develops in accordance with a
definite dialectical law. That is all.
It is therefore once again a pure
distortion of the facts by Herr Dühring when he declares that the negation of
the negation has to serve here as the midwife to deliver the future from the
womb of the past {D. K. G. 502-03}, or that Marx wants anyone to be convinced
of the necessity of the common ownership of land and capital {503} (which is
itself a Dühringian contradiction in corporeal form) on the basis of credence
in the negation of the negation {479-80}.
Herr Dühring's total lack of understanding of the nature of dialectics is
shown by the very fact that he regards it as a mere proof-producing instrument,
as a limited mind might look upon formal logic or elementary mathematics. Even
formal logic is primarily a method of arriving at new results, of advancing
from the known to the unknown — and dialectics is the same, only much
more eminently so; moreover, since it forces its way beyond the narrow horizon
of formal logic, it contains the germ of a more comprehensive view of the
world.
The same correlation exists in mathematics. Elementary mathematics, the
mathematics of constant quantities, moves within the confines of formal logic,
at any rate on the whole; the mathematics of variables, whose most important
part is the infinitesimal calculus, is in essence nothing other than the
application of dialectics to mathematical relations. In it, the simple question
of proof is definitely pushed into the background, as compared with the
manifold application of the method to new spheres of research.
But almost all
the proofs of higher mathematics, from the first proofs of the differential
calculus on, are from the standpoint of elementary mathematics strictly
speaking, wrong. And this is necessarily so, when, as happens in this case, an
attempt is made to prove by formal logic results obtained in the field of
dialectics. To attempt to prove anything by means of dialectics alone to a
crass metaphysician like Herr Dühring would be as much a waste of time as was
the attempt made by Leibniz and his pupils to prove the principles of the
infinitesimal calculus to the mathematicians of their time.
The differential
gave them the same cramps as Herr Dühring gets from the negation of the
negation, in which, moreover, as we shall see, the differential also plays a
certain role. Finally these gentlemen — or those of them who had not died
in the interval — grudgingly gave way, not because they were convinced,
but because it always came out right. Herr Dühring, as he himself tells us, is
only in his forties, and if he attains old age, as we hope he may, perhaps his
experience will be the same.
But what then is this fearful negation of the negation, which makes life so
bitter for Herr Dühring and with him plays the same role of the unpardonable
crime as the sin against the Holy Ghost does in Christianity? — A very
simple process which is taking place everywhere and every day, which any child
can understand as soon as it is stripped of the veil of mystery in which it was
enveloped by the old idealist philosophy and in which it is to the advantage of
helpless metaphysicians of Herr Dühring’s calibre to keep it enveloped.
Let us take a grain of barley. Billions of such grains of barley are milled,
boiled and brewed and then consumed.
But if such a grain of barley meets with
conditions which are normal for it, if it falls on suitable soil, then under
the influence of heat and moisture it undergoes a specific change, it
germinates; the grain as such ceases to exist, it is negated, and in its place
appears the plant which has arisen from it, the negation of the grain. But what
is the normal life-process of this plant? It grows, flowers, is fertilised and
finally once more produces grains of barley, and as soon as these have ripened
the stalk dies, is in its turn negated.
As a result of this negation of the
negation we have once again the original grain of barley, but not as a single
unit, but ten-, twenty- or thirtyfold. Species of grain change extremely
slowly, and so the barley of today is almost the same as it was a century ago.
But if we take a plastic ornamental plant, for example a dahlia or an orchid,
and treat the seed and the plant which grows from it according to the
gardener’s art, we get as a result of this negation of the negation not
only more seeds, but also qualitatively improved seeds, which produce more
beautiful flowers, and each repetition of this process, each fresh negation of
the negation, enhances this process of perfection. —
With most insects,
this process follows the same lines as in the case of the grain of barley.
Butterflies, for example, spring from the egg by a negation of the egg, pass
through certain transformations until they reach sexual maturity, pair and are
in turn negated, dying as soon as the pairing process has been completed and
the female has laid its numerous eggs.
We are not concerned at the moment with
the fact that with other plants and animals the process does not take such a
simple form, that before they die they produce seeds, eggs or offspring not
once but many times; our purpose here is only to show that the negation of the
negation really does take place in both kingdoms of the organic world.
Furthermore, the whole of geology is a series of negated negations, a series of
successive chatterings of old and deposits of new rock formations.
First the
original earth crust brought into existence by the cooling of the liquid mass
was broken up by oceanic, meteorological and atmospherico-chemical action, and
these fragmented masses were stratified on the ocean bed. Local upheavals of
the ocean bed above the surface of the sea subject portions of these first
strata once more to the action of rain, the changing temperature of the seasons
and the oxygen and carbonic acid of the atmosphere.
These same influences act
on the molten masses of rock which issue from the interior of the earth, break
through the strata and subsequently cool off. In this way, in the course of
millions of centuries, ever new strata are formed and in turn are for the most
part destroyed, ever anew serving as material for the formation of new strata.
But the result of this process has been a very positive one: the creation of a
soil composed of the most varied chemical elements and mechanically fragmented,
which makes possible the most abundant and diversified vegetation.
It is the same in mathematics. Let us take any algebraic quantity whatever:
for example, a. If this is negated, we get -a (minus a). If we negate
that negation, by multiplying -a by -a, we get
+a2, i.e., the original positive quantity, but at a higher degree,
raised to its second power. In this case also it makes no difference that we
can obtain the same a2 by multiplying the positive a by
itself, thus likewise getting a2. For the negated negation is so
securely entrenched in a2 that the latter always has two square
roots, namely, a and — a. And the fact that it is
impossible to get rid of the negated negation, the negative root of the square,
acquires very obvious significance as soon as we come to quadratic equations.
—
The negation of the negation is even more strikingly obvious in higher
analysis, in those “summations of indefinitely small magnitudes”
{D. Ph. 418} which Herr Dühring himself declares are the highest operations of
mathematics, and in ordinary language are known as the differential and
integral calculus. How are these forms of calculus used? In a given problem,
for example, I have two variables,x and y, neither of which
can vary without the other also varying in a ratio determined by the facts of
the case. I differentiate x and y, i.e., I take x
and y as so infinitely small that in comparison with any real
quantity, however small, they disappear, that nothing is left of x and
y but their reciprocal relation without any, so to speak, material
basis, a quantitative ratio in which there is no quantity.
Therefore,
dy/dx, the ratio between the differentials of x and
y, is dx equal to 0/0 but 0/0 taken as the expression of
y/x. I only mention in passing that this ratio between two
quantities which have disappeared, caught at the moment of their disappearance,
is a contradiction; however, it cannot disturb us any more than it has
disturbed the whole of mathematics for almost two hundred years. And now, what
have I done but negatex and y, though not in such a way that
I need not bother about them any more, not in the way that metaphysics negates,
but in the way that corresponds with the facts of the case? In place
ofx and y, therefore, I have their negation, dx and
dy, in the formulas or equations before me.
I continue then to operate
with these formulas, treating dx and dy as quantities which
are real, though subject to certain exceptional laws, and at a certain point I
negate the negation, i.e., I integrate the differential formula, and
in place of dx and dy again get the real quantities
x and y, and am then not where I was at the beginning, but by
using this method I have solved the problem on which ordinary geometry and
algebra might perhaps have broken their jaws in vain.
It is the same in history, as well. All civilised peoples begin with the
common ownership of the land. With all peoples who have passed a certain
primitive stage, this common ownership becomes in the course of the development
of agriculture a fetter on production. It is abolished, negated, and after a
longer or shorter series of intermediate stages is transformed into private
property. But at a higher stage of agricultural development, brought about by
private property in land itself, private property conversely becomes a fetter
on production, as is the case today both with small and large landownership.
The demand that it, too, should be negated, that it should once again be
transformed into common property, necessarily arises. But this demand does not
mean the restoration of the aboriginal common ownership, but the institution of
a far higher and more developed form of possession in common which, far from
being a hindrance to production, on the contrary for the first time will free
production from all fetters and enable it to make full use of modern chemical
discoveries and mechanical inventions.
Or let us take another example: The philosophy of antiquity was primitive,
spontaneously evolved materialism. As such, it was incapable of clearing up the
relation between mind and matter. But the need to get clarity on this question
led to the doctrine of a soul separable from the body, then to the assertion of
the immortality of this soul, and finally to monotheism. The old materialism
was therefore negated by idealism. But in the course of the further development
of philosophy, idealism, too, became untenable and was negated by modern
materialism.
This modern materialism, the negation of the negation, is not the
mere re-establishment of the old, but adds to the permanent foundations of this
old materialism the whole thought-content of two thousand years of development
of philosophy and natural science, as well as of the history of these two
thousand years. It is no longer a philosophy at all, but simply a world outlook
which has to establish its validity and be applied not in a science of sciences
standing apart, but in the real sciences. Philosophy is therefore “sublated”
here, that is, “both overcome and preserved” {D. K. G. 503}; overcome as
regards its form, and preserved as regards its real content. Thus, where Herr
Dühring sees only “verbal jugglery”, closer
inspection reveals an actual content.
Finally: Even the Rousseau doctrine of equality — of which Dühring's
is only a feeble and distorted echo — could not have seen the light but
for the midwife’s services rendered by the Hegelian negation of the negation
{502-03} —
though it was nearly twenty years before Hegel was born. [63] And far from being
ashamed of this, the doctrine in its first presentation bears almost
ostentatiously the imprint of its dialectical origin. In the state of nature
and savagery men were equal; and as Rousseau regards even language as a
perversion of the state of nature, he is fully justified in extending the
equality of animals within the limits of a single species also to the
animal-men recently classified by Haeckel hypothetically as Alali:
speechless.
But these equal animal-men had one quality which gave them an
advantage over the other animals: perfectibility, the capacity to develop
further; and this became the cause of inequality. So Rousseau regards the rise
of inequality as progress. But this progress contained an antagonism: it was at
the same time retrogression.
“All further progress” (beyond the original state) “meant so
many steps seemingly towards the perfection of the individual man, but
in reality towards the decay of the race... Metallurgy and agriculture
were the two arts the discovery of which produced this great revolution” (the
transformation of the primeval forest into cultivated land, but along with this
the introduction of poverty and slavery through property). “For the poet it is
gold and silver, but for the philosopher iron and corn, which have civilised
men and ruined the human race.”
Each new advance of civilisation is at the same time a new
advance of inequality. All institutions set up by the society which has arisen
with civilisation change into the opposite of their original purpose.
“It is an incontestable fact, and the fundamental principle
of all public law, that the peoples set up their chieftains to safeguard their
liberty and not to enslave them.”
And nevertheless the chiefs necessarily become the oppressors of
the peoples, and intensify their oppression up to the point at which
inequality, carried to the utmost extreme, again changes into its opposite,
becomes the cause of equality: before the despot all are equal — equally
ciphers.
“Here we have the extreme measure of inequality, the
final point which completes the circle and meets the point from which we set
out: here all private individuals become equal once more, just because
they are ciphers, and the subjects have no other law but their master's will.”
But the despot is only master so long as he is able to use force and therefore
“when he is driven out”, he cannot “complain of the use of force... Force alone
maintained him in power, and force alone overthrows him; thus everything takes
its natural course”.
And so inequality once more changes into equality; not, however,
into the former naive equality of speechless primitive men, but into the higher
equality of the social contract. The oppressors are oppressed. It is the
negation of the negation.
Already in Rousseau, therefore, we find not only a line of thought which
corresponds exactly to the one developed in Marx’s Capital, but also,
in details, a whole series of the same dialectical turns of speech as Marx
used: processes which in their nature are antagonistic, contain a
contradiction; transformation of one extreme into its opposite; and finally, as
the kernel of the whole thing, the negation of the negation.
And though in 1754
Rousseau was not yet able to speak the Hegelian jargon {D. K. G. 491}, he was
certainly, sixteen years before Hegel was born, deeply bitten with the Hegelian
pestilence, dialectics of contradiction, Logos doctrine, theologies, and so
forth. And when Herr Dühring, in his shallow version of Rousseau’s theory of
equality, begins to operate with his victorious two men, he is himself already
on the inclined plane down which he must slide helplessly into the arms of the
negation of the negation. The state of things in which the equality of the two
men flourished, which was also described as an ideal one, is characterised on
page 271 of his Philosophie as the “primitive state”.
This primitive
state, however, according to page 279, was necessarily sublated by the “robber
system” — the first negation. But now, thanks to the philosophy of
reality, we have gone so far as to abolish the robber system and establish in
its stead the economic commune {504} based on equality which has been
discovered by Herr Dühring — negation of the negation, equality on a
higher plane. What a delightful spectacle, and how beneficently it extends our
range of vision: Herr Dühring's eminent self committing the capital crime of
the negation of the negation!
And so, what is the negation of the negation? An extremely general —
and for this reason extremely far-reaching and important — law of
development of nature, history, and thought; a law which, as we have seen,
holds good in the animal and plant kingdoms, in geology, in mathematics, in
history and in philosophy — a law which even Herr Dühring, in spite of
all his stubborn resistance, has unwittingly and in his own way to follow.
It
is obvious that I do not say anything concerning the particular
process of development of, for example, a grain of barley from germination to
the death of the fruit-bearing plant, if I say it is a negation of the
negation. For, as the integral calculus is also a negation of the negation, if
I said anything of the sort I should only be making the nonsensical statement
that the life-process of a barley plant was integral calculus or for that
matter that it was socialism.
That, however, is precisely what the
metaphysicians are constantly imputing to dialectics. When I say that all these
processes are a negation of the negation, I bring them all together under this
one law of motion, and for this very reason I leave out of account the specific
peculiarities of each individual process. Dialectics, however, is nothing more
than the science of the general laws of motion and development of nature, human
society and thought.
But someone may object: the negation that has taken place in this case is
not a real negation: I negate a grain of barley also when I grind it, an insect
when I crush it underfoot, or the positive quantity a when I cancel
it, and so on. Or I negate the sentence: the rose is a rose, when I say: the
rose is not a rose; and what do I get if I then negate this negation and say:
but after all the rose is a rose? —
These objections are in fact the
chief arguments put forward by the metaphysicians against dialectics, and they
are wholly worthy of the narrow-mindedness of this mode of thought. Negation in
dialectics does not mean simply saying no, or declaring that something does not
exist, or destroying it in any way one likes. Long ago Spinoza said: Omnis
determinatio est negatio — every limitation or determination is at
the same time a negation. [64] And further: the kind of negation is here
determined, firstly, by the general and, secondly, by the particular nature of
the process. I must not only negate, but also sublate the negation. I must
therefore so arrange the first negation that the second remains or becomes
possible. How? This depends on the particular nature of each individual case.
If I grind a grain of barley, or crush an insect, I have carried out the first
part of the action, but have made the second part impossible.
Every kind of
thing therefore has a peculiar way of being negated in such manner that it
gives rise to a development, and it is just the same with every kind of
conception or idea. The infinitesimal calculus involves a form of negation
which is different from that used in the formation of positive powers from
negative roots. This has to be learnt, like everything else.
The bare knowledge
that the barley plant and the infinitesimal calculus are both governed by
negation of negation does not enable me either to grow barley successfully or
to differentiate and integrate; just as little as the bare knowledge of the
laws of the determination of sound by the dimensions of the strings enables me
to play the violin. —
But it is clear that from a negation of the
negation which consists in the childish pastime of alternately writing and
cancelling a, or in alternately declaring that a rose is a rose and
that it is not a rose, nothing eventuates but the silliness of the person who
adopts such a tedious procedure. And yet the metaphysicians try to make us
believe that this is the right way to carry out a negation of the negation, if
we ever should want to do such a thing.
Once again, therefore, it is no one but Herr Dühring who is mystifying us
when he asserts that the negation of the negation is a stupid analogy invented
by Hegel, borrowed from the sphere of religion and based on the story of the
fall of man and his redemption {D. K. G. 504}.
Men thought dialectically long
before they knew what dialectics was, just as they spoke prose long before the
term prose existed. [An allusion to Molière's comedy Le Bourgeois
gentilhomme, Act II, Scene 6 — Ed.]
The law of negation of
the negation, which is unconsciously operative in nature and history and, until
it has been recognised, also in our heads, was only first clearly formulated by
Hegel. And if Herr Dühring wants to operate with it himself on the quiet and it
is only that he cannot stand the name, then let him find a better name. But if
his aim is to banish the process itself from thought, we must ask him to be so
good as first to banish it from nature and history and to invent a mathematical
system in which -a x -a is not +a2 and in which
differentiation and integration are prohibited under severe penalties.
Anti-Dühring Table of Contents | Marx-Engels Archive
XIV. Conclusion
We have now finished with philosophy; such other fantasies of the future as the Cursus
contains will de dealt with when we come to Herr Dühring’s revolution
in socialism. What did Herr Dühring promise us? Everything. And what
promises has he kept? None. “The elements of a philosophy which is real
and accordingly directed to the reality of nature and of life” {D. Ph.
430}, the “strictly scientific {387} conception of the world”, the “system-creating ideas”
{525}, and all Herr Dühring's other achievements, trumpeted forth to
the world by Herr Dühring in high-sounding phrases, turned out, wherever
we laid hold of them, to be pure charlatanism.
The world schematism which, “without the slightest detraction from the profundity of thought, securely established the basic forms of being”
{556-57}, proved to be an infinitely vulgarised duplicate of Hegelian
logic, and in common with the latter shares the superstition that these “basic forms” {9} or logical categories have led a mysterious existence somewhere before and outside of the world, to which they are “to be applied” {15}.
The philosophy of nature offered us a cosmogony whose starting-point is a “self-equal state of matter”
{87} — a state which can only be conceived by means of the most
hopeless confusion as to the relation between matter and motion; a state
which can, besides, only be conceived on the assumption of an
extramundane personal God who alone can induce motion in this state of
matter. In its treatment of organic nature, the philosophy of reality
first rejected the Darwinian struggle for existence and natural
selection as “a piece of brutality directed against humanity”
{117}, and then had to readmit both by the back-door as factors
operative in nature, though of second rank.
Moreover, the philosophy of
reality found occasion to exhibit, in the biological domain, ignorance
such as nowadays, when popular science lectures are no longer to be
escaped, could hardly be found even among the daughters of the “educated
classes”. In the domain of morality and law, the philosophy of reality
was no more successful in its vulgarisation of Rousseau than it had been
in its previous shallow version of Hegel; and, so far as jurisprudence
is concerned, in spite of all its assurances to the contrary, it
likewise displayed a lack of knowledge such as is rarely found even
among the most ordinary jurists of old Prussia.
The philosophy “which
cannot allow the validity of any merely apparent horizon” is content, in
juridical matters, with a real horizon which is coextensive with the
territory in which Prussian law exercises jurisdiction. We are still
waiting for the “earths and heavens of outer and inner nature” {D. Ph.
430} which this philosophy promised to reveal to us in its mighty
revolutionising sweep; just as we are still waiting for the “final and ultimate truths” {2} and the “absolutely fundamental” {150} basis.
The philosopher whose mode of thought “excludes” any tendency to a “subjectively limited conception of the world”
{13} proves to be subjectively limited not only by what has been shown
to be his extremely defective knowledge, his narrowly construed
metaphysical mode of thought and his grotesque conceit, but even by his
childish personal crotchets. He cannot produce his philosophy of reality
without dragging in his repugnance to tobacco, cats and Jews as a
general law valid for all the rest of humanity, including the Jews. His
“really critical standpoint” {404} in relation to
other people shows itself by his insistently imputing to them things
which they never said and which are of Herr Dühring’s very own
fabrication.
His verbose lucubrations on themes worthy of philistines,
such as the value of life and the best way to enjoy life, are themselves
so steeped in philistinism that they explain his anger at Goethe's Faust
{112-13, 423}. It was really unpardonable of Goethe to make the unmoral
Faust and not the serious philosopher of reality, Wagner, his hero. —
In short, the philosophy of reality proves to be on the whole what Hegel
would call “the weakest residue of the German would-be Enlightenment”
— a residue whose tenuity and transparent commonplace character are
made more substantial and opaque only by the mixing in of crumbs of
oracular rhetoric.
And now that we have finished the book we are just as
wise as we were at the start; and we are forced to admit that the “new mode of thought” {543}, the "from the ground up original conclusions and views" and the “system-creating ideas”
{525}, though they have certainly shown us a great variety of original
nonsense, have not provided us with a single line from which we might
have been able to learn something.
And this man who praises his talents
and his wares to the noisy accompaniment of cymbals and trumpets as
loudly as any market quack, and behind whose great words there is
nothing, absolutely nothing whatsoever — this man has the temerity to
say of people like Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, the least of whom is a
giant compared with him, that they are charlatans. Charlatan, indeed!
But to whom had it best be applied?
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