The Kantian critique of reason did not understand the universality of truth. It still affirmed the existence of two worlds and two truths without any unity. And as it is the curse of the evil deed to generate more evil, it produced two intellects. (1) The poor little subservient intellect of man, and (2) the enormous and abnormal intellect of the Lord, who is supposed to understand the incomprehensible and to untie the most senseless contradictions like so many knots.
The truth which is the universe, the cosmic or universal truth, will reveal to you the absurdity of abnormal humility which is contained in the dualistic doctrine of the two minds. Of course, the philosopher Kant had a greater intellect than Peter Simple. But nevertheless all intellects partake of the nature of the general intellect, and no intellect can step above or below this general nature without losing sense or reason. One cannot speak of another, higher, faculty of thought than that acquired by man through experience without dropping from logic to absurdity. No doubt the animal world possesses something similar to intellect. No doubt, also, the animal mind may be separated from the human mind by some special name, for instance "instinct." No doubt, furthermore, our reason is strengthened by culture from generation to generation. But that anywhere and at any time there should come into existence a faculty of thought which would stand outside of the cosmic interconnection, that is an absurd conception and a senseless thing. Just as necessarily as all water has one and the same nature, that of being wet, just so necessarily every intelligence and every thought partakes of the general nature of thought and must logically be a part, a particular part, of the one universal and empirical world.
FOOTNOTES:
[4] Religion denotes here as much as conception of the world and explanation of its last questions; and metaphysics stands here for everything conceivable, which meaning embraces more than the mere tangible.—Editor.
[5] When we consider its many parts as such.—Editor.
NINTH LETTER
Repetition, my dear Eugene, is the mother of all study.
Logic aims to teach you the proper use of the intellect, not only in this or that branch of study, but in the general branch of truth. Its result is the following precept: In all things always remember the universal interrelation.
In order to illustrate this statement a little, let me point out that in the period of scholasticism thinking was practiced without any interconnection with the rest of the world, merely by brown study. The present age of natural sciences then cultivated a better method. But the method of the natural sciences has not succeeded so far in being applied to the field of law, morals, politics, psychology, and philosophy, because the logical understanding of the total interrelation of the indivisible world truth was lacking, because the concept of truth was enveloped in darkness, and because the privileged classes have a great interest in maintaining darkness.