And so on—and this is only a hastily gathered bouquet of flowers from Herr Duehring's rose garden. It will be understood that if these amiable insults which should be forbidden Herr Duehring on any grounds of politeness, are found somewhat disreputable and unpleasant, they are, still, final truths of the last instance. Even now we shall guard against any doubt of his profundity because we might otherwise be forbidden to discover the particular category of idiots to which we belong. We have but considered it our duty on the one hand to give what Herr Duehring calls "The quintessence of a modest mode of expression," and on the other hand, to show that in Herr Duehring's eyes the objectionableness of his predecessors is no less firmly established than his own infallibility. Accordingly if all this is actually true we bow in reverence humbly before the mighty genius of modern times.
PART I
CHAPTER IV[ToC]
PHILOSOPHY
Apriorism.
Philosophy is, according to Herr Duehring, the development of the highest forms of consciousness of the world and life, and embraces, in a wider sense, the principles of all knowledge and volition. Wherever a series of perceptions, or motives or a group of forms of life becomes a matter of consideration in the human mind the principles which underly these forms, of necessity, become an object of philosophy. These principles are single, or, up to the present, have been considered as single ingredients out of which are composed the complexities of knowledge and volition. Like the chemical composition of material bodies, the entire universe may be also resolved into fundamental forms and elements. These elementary constituents and principles serve, when once discovered, not only for the known tangible world but for that also, which is unknown and inaccessible. Philosophical principles therefore constitute the last complement required by the sciences in order that they may become a uniform system by means of which nature and human life are explained. In addition to the examination of the fundamental forms of all existence, philosophy has only two particular objects of investigation, Nature and Humanity. Hence our material may be classified into three main groups,—a general scheme of the universe, the teaching of the principles of nature and finally the principles which regulate Humanity. This arrangement at the same time comprises an inner logical order, for the formal principles which are true for all existence take precedence, and the concrete realms in which these principles display themselves follow in the gradation of their successive arrangements. So far, this is Herr Duehring's conception of things given almost in his very words.
He is therefore engaged with principles, formal conceptions, which are subjective and not derived from the knowledge of external phenomena, but which are applied to Nature and Humanity, as the principles according to which Nature and Humanity must regulate themselves. But how are these subjective principles derived? From thought itself? No, for Herr Duehring himself says: the purely ideal realm is limited to logical arrangements and mathematical conceptions (which latter as we shall later see is false). Logical arrangements can only be referred to forms of thought, but we are engaged here only with forms of existence, the external world, and these forms can never be created by thought nor derived from it but only from the external world. Hereupon the entire matter undergoes a change. We see that principles are not the starting point of investigation but the conclusion of it, they are not to be applied to nature and history but are derived from them. Nature and Humanity are not steered by principles, but principles are, on the other hand, only correct so far as they correspond with nature and history. That is just the materialistic conception of the matter, and the opposite, that of Herr Duehring is the idealistic conception, it turns things upside down and constructs a real world out of the world of thought, arrangements, plans and categories existing from everlasting before the world, just like Hegelianism.