Tertium Organum

manifesting
side of life, its secret 
raison d'etre 
and the 
purpose 
of separate manifestations will remain forever hidden. 
For a savage the watch would be a very interesting, complex, but quite 
useless toy. Similarly, in the eyes of a scientist-materialist a 
man 
appears to 
be a 
mechanism
which came into being in an unknown manner, infinitely 
more complex but no less unknown as regards the purpose of its existence. 
We pictured to ourselves how incomprehensible would be the functions of 
a 
candle
and a 
coin
for a plane-being, studying two 
identical circles
on its 
plane. To a scientist who studies 
man
as a 
mechanism, 
his functions will be 
equally incomprehensible. It is clear why this should be so. It is because the 
candle and the coin are not 
two identical circles, 
but two quite different 
objects, having a totally different meaning and use in the world which is 
higher
than the plane-world. Similarly, a man is not a 
mechanism,
but 
something having a purpose and meaning in a world 
higher
than the visible 
world. 
The functions of the candle and the coin in our world are, for the imaginary
plane-being, an inaccessible 
noumenon. 
It is quite clear that the phenomenon 
of a 
circle 
cannot give any idea of the function of the candle and its difference 
from the coin. But 
two-dimensional perception 
exists not only on a plane. 
Materialistic thought tries to apply it to real life. As a result curious 
absurdities arise, the true meanings of which are, unfortunately,
incomprehensible to many people. One of such results is the 'economic man' ­
quite clearly a two-dimensional plane-being which moves in two directions ­
those of production and of consumption, i.e. a being living on the plane of 
production-consumption.
How is it possible to represent man in general in the 
form of such an obviously artificial being? And how is it possible to expect to 
understand the laws of man's life with his complex spiritual pursuits - with the 
main impulse of his life being desire to 
know, 
desire to understand everything 
around him and within him - by studying the imaginary laws of life of an 
imaginary being on an imaginary plane? The answer to this question remains 
the secret of the inventors. But the economic theory attracts people as do all 
simple theories which afford a short answer to a series of long questions. But 

---

we have become much too involved in materialistic theories and see nothing
beyond them. 
Positivist science does not fundamentally deny the doctrine of phenomena 
and noumena; it only affirms, in opposition to Kant, that by studying
phenomena we gradually approach noumena. The noumena of phenomena 
are, in the opinion of science, the movements of atoms and of ether, or the 
vibrations of electrons. Thus science regards the universe as a whirl of 
mechanical motion or as a field of manifestation of electro-magnetic energy
which, on being perceived by the organs of sense, assume for us 'phenomenal 
colouring'. 
Positivism asserts that the phenomena of life and consciousness are merely
the functions of physical phenomena and are no more than a certain complex 
combination of the latter; and further, that all the three kinds of phenomena 
are actually the same, and the 
higher, 
i.e. the phenomena of life and 
consciousness, are nothing but different manifestations of the 
lower,
i.e. of 
one and the same physico-mechanical or electro-magnetic energy. 
But one argument can be advanced against all this. If this were true, it 
would have been proven long ago. Nothing is easier than to prove the 
energetic hypothesis of life and consciousness. All that is needed is to obtain