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direct method
of objective investigation, without the help
of speech,
or without the aid of deduction
by analogy
we shall not discover
any psychological life in another man. That which is inaccessible to a direct
method of investigation, and yet
exists,
is
NOUMENAL
. Consequently we shall
not be able to determine the function and meaning of man in a section of the
world other than the world of Euclidean geometry which is alone accessible
to 'direct methods of investigation'. Therefore we have every right to regard
'man's mind' as his function in a section of the world different from the
three
dimensional
section in which 'man's body' functions.
Having established this, we may ask ourselves the question: have we not
the right to draw the reverse conclusion and regard the unknown function of
the 'world' and of 'things' outside the three-dimensional section as
their own
kind of mind?
Our ordinary positivist view regards
mind as the function of the brain.
Without the brain we cannot imagine any mental life.
Max Nordau, when wishing to imagine the 'world's consciousness' (in
Paradoxes)
had to say that we cannot be certain that somewhere in the
infinite space of the universe
is not repeated on a colossal scale the
same combination of physical and chemical elements as constitutes our brain
This is
very characteristic and typical of 'positivist science' Wishing to imagine the 'world's
consciousness', positivism must first of all imagine a
gigantic brain
Does not this at
once savour of the two-dimensional plane-world? In actual fact the idea of a gigantic
brain somewhere beyond the stars shows the astonishing poverty and feebleness of
positivist thought This thought cannot get out of the customary rut, and it has no wings
to fly
Imagine some inquiring inhabitant of seventeenth-century Europe trying to visualize
the means of transportation of the twentieth century and picturing to himself an
enormous stage-coach, the size of a large inn, drawn by a thousand horses He would be
very near the truth . . and at the same time infinitely far from it And yet even in his
time there were some minds which worked in the right direction;
the idea of a steam engine was already shaping itself, models were already appearing
The thought expressed by Nordau is reminiscent of the favourite theories of popular
philosophy relating to an idea casually picked up, that the planets and stars of the
visible world are merely the molecules of some great body, of which our universe is
but an insignificant part. . . .
'Perhaps the whole universe is contained in the little finger of some great being,' says
a philosophizing man-in-the-street. 'And perhaps our molecules are also worlds.
Maybe my little finger also holds several universes!' And the man-in-the-street
becomes frightened. But all such reasonings are nothing but a gigantic
stage-coach.*
Such reasoning is similar to the reflections of a little girl about whom I once read, I
think, in the
Theosophical Review.
The girl sat by the fire; beside her slept a cat. 'Here
is the cat, asleep,' thought the little girl, 'Perhaps it is dreaming that it is not a cat but a
little girl. And maybe I am
not really a little girl at all, but a cat, and I am only
dreaming that I am a little girl. . .
.' The next moment a piercing shriek shakes the
house and the little girl's parents have a hard time to persuade her that she is not a cat
but truly a little girl.
All this shows that philosophizing needs a certain skill. Our thought is surrounded
by a great many blind alleys And positivism,
* The error lies here not in the idea itself but in the literal analogy In itself the idea
that molecules are worlds and worlds are molecules is absolutely correct and is worthy
of attention and study, it may serve as a means for a right understanding of the world
My readers will have to meet with this idea later and then they will see how much is
contained in this idea and how much is explained by taking this idea as one's starting
point But the same thought, enclosed in a literal analogy without the idea of the
Unknown and the Unknowable, is destroyed and becomes a caricature
always and everywhere trying to apply the rule of three, is a blind alley in
itself.
Our analysis of phenomena and the relation we have established between
physical phenomena, phenomena of life and psychological phenomena
permits us to affirm
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