It occurs to me that you or some teacher of logic might accuse my letters of lack of logic. It may seem that these lectures fail to present the subject matter in a strictly systematized form. You will, please, excuse this in part with the fact that they appear in the form of letters. This form demands that the contents should be logically arranged and rounded off in each letter. It should furthermore serve as an excuse for any defect, that my subject is not a finished one, not perfectly elaborated by others before me. I am here not merely a lecturer, but also an explorer on a field which, though much investigated, yet is still rather obscure.
The conclusion of my last letter explained that the use of the term God for the universe has much to recommend it and much to disqualify it. But it is easily apparent that the universe with its absolute qualities is closely related to that infinite being of whom Jakob Böhme, the philosophical shoemaker, said: "He is neither the light nor the darkness, neither love nor anger, but the eternal One.... Hence all forces are merely one sole force."
That nothing exists outside of the universe, that everything is contained in the All, that the All, with all real and imagined beings, is everything, that it is neither sweet nor sour, neither great nor small, but just everything and all, this statement is as obvious as the often and long repeated statement of identity: A equals A.
The All is omnipotent, omnipresent, all-wise. This last term might be questioned, since the universe is not a dummy with a monster head and giant brain. For this very reason it was considered inappropriate to apply the name of God to the universe, because that creates the impression of a personal being. The All thinks only by means of human brains, and for this reason omniscience cannot be anything but common human knowledge. Of course, you, I, and every other man, are very limited in our knowledge. But still we may indulge in the hope that the things which we do not know are known by other men or will be discovered by future generations, so that the collective human mind will know everything that is knowable. We cannot see everything that is visible; there are animals that can see even better than we can. But since even the most intelligent animal is supposed to lack the highest degree of intelligence, reason and science, there is no one who knows anything except the human race. Mankind is omniscient. But since all our science is derived only from the world, mankind is only the formal bearer of intelligence, and it belongs to the fountain of all things, to eternal nature. Our wisdom is the wisdom of nature, is world wisdom. Although there may be inhabitants of the moon and of other stars who may know things which are unknown to us, still that is in the first place a mere speculation of little value, and in the second place universal omniscience or the omniscient universe would not in the least be affected thereby. It is a reasonable use of the language to regard human wisdom as the only and omniscient wisdom, just as all natural and wet water is called water without any further modification. I believe in the statement of Protagoras: "Man is the measure of all things." Whoever uses a different measure, uses a superhuman, transcendental measure.[6]
Hence, when I call the cosmic essence of all existence omnipotent, you will not think of a senseless magic power which forges knives without handles and blades, nor will you read any transcendental meaning into my use of the term omniscience.
Omniscience belongs obviously under the head of logic, because the organ of science and wisdom is the object of the study of logic. And it must now be stated that the human mind does not only exceed the animal mind by far, but is also the non plus ultra of all minds. But it must be retained that this mind can only be whatever it is in connection with the divine universe which I may also be permitted to call worldly deity. This name is fitting because it is a means of understanding that in the first place no monster mind rules the world, and in the second place the natural universe is not a mere sum of all things, but truth and life.
Of course, the identification of the universe with the religious God is only a comparison, and comparisons are lame. Still we may compare the sun with an eternal lamp or the moon with a candle, or the German prime minister with a butler.
Logic shall teach you that everything which may be distinguished by the faculty of understanding is of the same kind, everything is of common clay, but the whole is sublimely elevated above all that is commonplace. Mere frivolous atheism, as created by the free-thinkers, is not sufficient. A bare denial of God always creates some other idol worship. The positive understanding of the divine world truth is an indispensable requirement for the radical extermination of all idol worship.
Logic must begin with the sublime, infinite, absolute. All logical, consistent or interconnected thinking must take its departure from it. The so-called scientific research after temporal causes, after the egg from which the chicken was hatched, after the hen from which the egg came, after the kindred organisms which developed the hen by natural selection and adaption according to Darwin, this is a very valuable research without which we can never understand the world process. But nevertheless, such research must not satisfy the thinking man. Logic demands from everybody that he or she should search for the highest, for the cause of all causes. Whoever feels the desire to bring logical order into his consciousness, must know that the finite and infinite, the relative and the absolute, the special truths and the one general truth, are contained in one another.
Logical thought as demanded by science means nothing but to be aware of the final cause, the absolute foundation of all thought. This foundation is the universe, an attribute of which is the external and internal human head. The thousand year old dispute between the materialists and the idealists turns on the question whether the spirit is material or the world spiritual. Our answer is plain and clear: They both belong together, they together make up the one thing, the thing of all things. Mind and matter are two attributes of the same substance. They may be compared the same as fish and flesh, the former being called very appropriately by some African tribes "water flesh." In this way, matter and mind are two kinds of meat of a different and yet of the same nature.