The actual experience, then, that anything and everything may serve as an idol should clearly convince you that no one thing, but only the universe is the true God, is truth and life.
Now, is this logic or is it theology?
It is both. At closer range you will notice that all great logicians occupy themselves a great deal with God and deity, and that on the other hand all honest theologians are trying to base their faith on some logical order. Logic is by its whole nature metaphysical.[3]
There exists a class of logicians who attempt to deny the inevitable connection between the celestial region and the tangible universe. Some of them do so from excessive religious delicacy of feeling, in order to protect the sublime from the disintegrating effects of critique. Others have such an antipathy against the religious abuses that they do not wish to hear any more about religion. Both classes adhere to the so-called formal logic.
These adherents of formal logic may be compared to a maker of porcelain dishes who would contend that he was simply paying attention to the form of his dishes, pots, and vases, but that he did not have anything to do with the raw material, while it is evident that he is compelled to form the body in trying to embody forms. These things can be separated by words only, but not by actions. In the same way as body and form, the finite and infinite or so-called celestial spheres, the physical and the metaphysical, are inseparable.
Logic analyzes thought. But it analyzes thought as it is in reality, and therefore it unavoidably searches for truth. And whether this truth is found above or below, or anywhere, is a question which just as inevitably brings the logician into contact with the theologian. To think of avoiding such a meeting from considerations of sympathy or antipathy, would be a rude lack of consideration for science.
Metaphysical logic which aims to extend its field to eternity, which looks for logical order even in heaven, and seeks to solve even the so-called last questions of all knowledge, differs in a distinct way from formal logic, which selects a restricted field for its research and confines itself to investigating the logical order of the socalled physical world. This difference is worthy of your special attention, because in it there is hidden the kernel of our whole correspondence.
It is quite a practical method to set a limit for one's investigations, not to fly into clouds, not to undertake anything that cannot be accomplished. Yet you must not forget that practical boundaries are not theoretical boundaries, that they are not invariable boundaries for you, or for others. Although you cannot fly to heaven and will give up the idea of flying machines from considerations of practical expediency, yet you will not wish to deny to man the theoretical freedom of infinite striving even in the matter of airships, and you will not be so small as to give up the idea of the capacity for our race for metaphysical, or in other words, infinite development.
FOOTNOTE:
[3] In the sense of: mental and physical world embracing, all-embracing.—Editor.