Reader. You are not serious, doctor. First of all, you know nothing about scholastic bombast. Were you to read one page of any of our great scholastic doctors, you would be amazed at the simplicity of their style, and at the utter recklessness of your allegation. In the second place, the times of bombast and charlatanism are not passing away. Read Huxley. Can you find anything more bombastic than his Lay Sermons? Read Darwin. Is he not a philosophical charlatan? Read your own Kraft und Stoff....
Büchner. Brilliancy is not charlatanism, sir. It is a fact that while the pretended high speculations of the old school are hopelessly unintelligible, our discoveries, [pg 437] “by directing investigation to facts, have compelled thought to leave the misty and sterile regions of speculative dreams, and to descend to real life” (p. xxii.) Can you condemn us for this? “It lies in the nature of philosophy that it should be common property. Expositions which are not intelligible to an educated man are scarcely worth the ink they are printed with. The philosophical mist which envelops the writings of scholars appears intended more to conceal than to exhibit their thoughts” (p. xix.)
Reader. It is all a mistake, doctor. If you reflect for a moment on your oracular sentences, you will see that they are mere nonsense. You say that it lies in the nature of philosophy that it should be common property. I wonder if this can be true. I fancy that philosophy, like any other science or discipline which is acquired by study, is the property of those alone who have studied it; and I hope that no man of sense will contest such an evident truth. You say that philosophical expositions should be intelligible to every educated man; but this is true only on the assumption that the education of which you speak includes a thorough training in philosophy; which, unfortunately, is not the case with a great number of so-called educated men. You say that whatever is clearly conceived can be clearly expressed; but you forget that what is clearly expressed for the scholar may still be obscure to the uninitiated. Is it possible that a doctor like you, and a president of a medical association, should overlook the fact that every science has a number of technical terms and scientific phrases which must be learned in special books and by special study before its speculations can be comprehended? It is therefore supremely ridiculous to talk of “the mist that envelops the writings of scholars.” Everything is misty to the uninstructed. Let him study, and the mist will disappear; for it is not the doctrine that wants clearness, but it is the eye of the ignorant that is blurred.
And now, what shall I say of that pompous phrase of yours, that modern discoveries “have compelled thought to leave the misty and sterile regions of speculative dreams, and to descend to real life”? I hope you will allow me to call it “modern bombast” and “philosophical charlatanism”; for I cannot call it by any other name. If you mean by such words to denounce Kant, Hegel, Schelling, and other German dreamers of the same school, I have nothing to say in their defence; but if you intend thereby to stigmatize the Catholic schools, to which you Germans, no less than the rest of the civilized world, owe your intellectual education, I cannot help saying, dear doctor, that your hostile insinuations are dictated by malice and hatred of truth. Why do you defame what you know not? How can you call a sterile region that speculative philosophy which formed all our great men? or dreams those evident conclusions against which reason cannot rebel without slaying itself? Is not this very strange in a doctor? You were confident that “intellectual jugglery,” to use Cotta's expression, would be stronger than historical truth; but we are quite prepared to meet you on this ground as on others; for we Catholic thinkers are not afraid of bombastic words. We do not even think that your “jugglery” is at all “intellectual.” For is it intellectual [pg 438] to make sweeping assertions when you can give no proofs? Or is it intellectual to sneer at your opponents, instead of replying to their arguments? I presume, dear doctor, that your freemasons alone would see anything intellectual in such a proceeding.
Büchner. You imagine, sir, that I must be a freemason. I shall not answer that, as it has nothing to do with my book. Yet I wish to inform you that freemasonry everywhere favors the progress of “modern science”; and therefore I would not object to being called a freemason, whether I am one or not. But as to making assertions of which I give no proofs, I defy you, sir, to substantiate the charge; and as to my not replying to my opponents, I am sure you will modify your judgment when you examine the prefaces to the various editions of my work.
Reader. I accept the challenge. It will not be more difficult to give you full satisfaction on these two points than it has been to rebut your flippant denunciations of the scholastic philosophy.
II. Tergiversation And Jugglery.
Reader. You say, then, that in the prefaces to the various editions of your work you have replied to your opponents.
Büchner. Certainly I do.