The thinking understanding—this is the result of philosophy—is no more evident than anything else and derives its existence not from itself, but from the universal life. This universal life from which thought derives its perceptions, from which understanding derives its enlightenment, does not only exist as a general thing, but also in the form of infinitely varied individualities. And generalization, the relation of things, their number and extension, are no more, and no less, infinite than individualization and specialization. Every tree in the forest, every grain of a pile of sand, are individual, separate, distinct. Every particle of every grain of sand is distinctly individual. And the infinite individualization of nature goes so far that, just as the human individual is different every day, every hour, every moment, so is the individual grain of sand, even though its transformations were not to become noticeable until after thousands of years, by accumulated changes. By classifying this contradictory, infinitely general and infinitely individual nature in groups according to time and space, in classes, genera, families, species, orders, and other subdivisions, we are discerning and understanding.
In the universe, every group is an individual and every individual is a group. The uniformity of nature is not greater than its variety. Both of them are infinite. We distinguish between time and space. Every moment is composed of little moments. The smallest division of time cannot be denominated any more than the largest, just because there is no smallest and no largest in the universe, neither in time nor in space. Atoms are groups. As smallest parts they exist only in our thoughts and thus give excellent service in chemistry. The consciousness that they are not tangible, but only mental things, does not detract from their usefulness, but heightens it still more.
It is the nature of human intelligence to divide, classify, group. We divide the world into four cardinal points; we also divide it into two kingdoms, the kingdom of the mind and the kingdom of nature; the latter we again subdivide into the organic and the inorganic, or perhaps into the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms. In short, science seeks to illumine the universe by division. The question then arises: Which is the genuine and true division? Where does the variety of science, its undecided vacillation end, and when does understanding become stable?
The reader should remember that the things, the objects of understanding, are not fixed, but also variable objects, and that the whole universe is moving, progressing; that especially the human mind becomes more and more affluent from century to century, from year to year, and that for this reason science is not alone compelled to fix things, but also to remain in flow. The fixed and the fluid are not so widely separated in science any more, that the evidence could not be evident and yet at the same time a little doubtful.
Man and his understanding are progressive, and for this reason he must progress by experience in his classifications, conceptions, and sciences.
The fixed, impregnable, socalled apodictical facts are nothing but tautologies, if seen at close range. After it has become common usage to call only heavy and tangible things bodies, it is an apodictical fact that all bodies are heavy and tangible. If the conceptions of vapor, water and ice are restricted by common usage and by science to the three stages of aggregation of the same substance, then we need not wonder at our firm assurance that the water will always remain fluid in all time to come, also above the stars. This signifies nothing more than that we conceive of the things as solid which we call solid, and of those as fluid which we call fluid, but it does not change the fact that our faculty of understanding or perceiving gives us only an approximate picture of natural processes, in which the solid and the fluid are neither wholly opposed nor different, but where the positive and the negative gradually flow into one another.
The philosophers produced a very good conception of understanding by developing the concept of truth step by step and finally coming to quite exact results. But this "quite exact" must only be accepted in a reasonable sense, not in an extravagant one. Truth as the infinite, as the sum total of all things and qualities, is "in itself" quite right, but it cannot be accurately reproduced, not even by means of the mind, of reason, or understanding. The means is smaller than the purpose, is subordinate to purpose. So is our faculty of understanding only a subordinate servant of truth, of the universe. The latter is absolutely evident, true, indubitable, and positive. It does not vitiate the sublimity of this world in the least that it is veiled by appearances, by error, by untruth. On the contrary. Without sin there is no virtue, and without error there is no understanding, no truth. The negative, the weakness, the sin and error, are overcome, and thereby truth shines in full splendor. The universe, the general truth, is a progressive thing. It is absolute, but not at any fixed time or place, but only in the combined unity of all time and space.
It is sometimes said that this is too much for our intellect, that we cannot understand this. It is true that we cannot squeeze this into any of our categories, of our fundamental conceptions, unless we place the category of illimited and indeterminable and infinite truth at the beginning of them. If that is not quite clear and plain, it should serve to teach us that the category of clear and plain human understanding is destined to recognize its function as a subordinate factor of nature.
Such an understanding of understanding, such a higher consciousness standing ever behind us, promotes a meek pride or a proud meekness which is well distinguished from the mental poverty of theologians, from the transcendental distinction between God and the world, between creator and creature. To us the perishable soul is not a narrow-minded servant for whom the plans of the imperishable monster soul are incomprehensible. A philosophically educated and self-understanding mind is a part of absolute nature. This mind is not only a limited human mind, but the mind of the infinite eternal, omnipotent universe from which it derived the faculty of knowing everything knowable. But when this mind demands the ability to absolutely know everything, it demands that knowledge should be everything, it becomes transcendental and insolent, it misconceives the relation of science to infinity. The latter is more than science, it is the object of science.