For this reason, the true method of reasoning still requires many explanations. The socialist, for instance, is charged with inciting the people, with promising more than he can keep and with sowing strife in the hearts of men. Those who make this charge in the commonplace sense, tear two things, viz., peace and strife, out of their due connection. As a matter of fact, peace and strife must always dwell together. A nation whose peace were not intermingled with a certain strife, would be a nation of sluggards. Thanks to the strife in their breasts, the nations are progressive and stirring. Motion is the essence of the world, and national motion is inconceivable without the striving of men. For the sake of development and culture, nations must always demand more than they can immediately attain. On the other hand, striving of this sort is not sufficient. One must not demand more than one can obtain, nor promise more than one can give. For this reason the logical socialist must know that even in the future society the trees will not grow into the clouds, and that the peace for which we hope and strive will always be mixed with strife. The music of the future, although more harmonious than the music of the present, will nevertheless be eternally marred by disharmony. There is nothing perfect in the world, because only the whole universe is perfect, because the universe alone is perfectness itself.
Eternal peace, as the warriors may justly claim, is an illusion, so long as we think of peace in a transcendental way and as being separated from strife. But the sons of the war god who would like to continue the thunder of cannons and the rattle of sabers eternally, are no less the victims of illusion, if not something worse. Eternal is only war in peace and peace in war, although that may seem senseless to the logicians of the old school. Thus even the inevitable war will become more peaceful and humane in the course of time. The barbarian form of war, of which the Prussians are masters, is not destined to last forever, unless we speak of the illogical eternity of the preacher which opens its doors by leaving the temporal world. In defending the social war, I wish to have it understood that neither the conceptions nor the things called war and peace are separated by a Chinese wall.
Everything is interconnected and interdependent. It is true that strife and animosities may be exaggerated, and so may peace. But whatever blame attaches to this, refers only to the exaggeration. It is not the animosity, but the excessive animosity which deserves censure. By recognizing the logical interconnection between peace and strife, the dispute of the parties is rendered saner. There is then no longer a question of a yawning chasm between satisfaction and dissatisfaction, but of something about which an agreement is possible, viz., how much there is of either.
As peace and war in the human breast, so all variety intermingles in the cosmic unit. In the novel "Homo Sum," by Ebers, the monk Paulus, who tasted the delights of the preliminary celestial ecstasy when castigating his body, says: "I truly believe that it is just as difficult on this globe to find pain without joy as joy without pain." And Till Eulenspiegel, that type of a practical joker, showed an understanding of dialectics when he lightened the difficulty of ascending a mountain by the reflection that the descent on the other side would be so much easier. Logic is no more senseless in teaching that all things, even the most opposite, are of the same substance than it is in showing that night belongs to day and weeds to herbs.
In order that these petty illustrations may not confuse your mind, it should be remembered that the essential point is the elucidation of the great contradiction between mind and matter, between thinking and being, which includes all petty contradictions.
In order to think in accordance with logical consistency, you must not regard a thing as something independent, but consider everything as fluid particles of the same substance, which is the thing of all things, the world, the truth, and life.
Our logic is therefore the science of truth. This truth is neither above nor below, neither in Jerusalem nor in Jericho, neither in the spirit nor in the flesh, but everywhere.
Our logic is the science of understanding. It teaches that you must not search for understanding by cudgeling your brain, but only in connection with experience, with the interrelation of things.
Since man in his experience also meets errors, science was dominated for centuries by the question whether truth and experience are not two different things, whether all our experience is only an illusion of our senses. Cartesius replied to this: "No; the belief in a perfect, true being cannot admit of such a delusion." By substituting the concept of truth for the concept of God, we are certain that the world of experience is not a ghost, but the most actual reality.