Although we know that there is no actual beginning, because we are living in the universe without beginning and end, still we mortals must always begin at a certain point. So I have begun one of my retrospects over the history of my subject with Plato, and at another time I have ended with Hegel, although before and after them there has been much philosophical thought. These two names are luminant points which throw their light over everything which is situated between them.

The errors of our predecessors are just as useful for the purpose of illustration as their positive achievements. More even: the errors form the steps of a ladder which leads toward a universal world philosophy. We clamber up and down on it, perhaps a little irregularly, but nowadays the crooked roads of an English park are preferred to the straight French avenues.

It was an achievement on the part of the Socratic and Platonic schools to seek the good not in good specialties, but in general good, as a "pure" or absolute thing, to search for virtue in general instead of virtues. But it was a mistake which prevented their success, to exaggerate the distinction between the special and the general. According to Plato, the black and white horses canter over terrestrial pavements, but the horse in general, which is neither brown, black, nor white, neither as slender as a race horse nor as clumsy as a draft horse, cantered along in the Platonic "idea," in the ideal mists. Platonic logic lacked what is taught by our present, or if you prefer, future proletarian logic, viz., the general understanding of the interrelation of all things, the truth that in spite of their individual differences all things belong together as individuals of the same genus. The logical relation between individual and genus stuck upside down in the brain of the noble Plato.

He lived in a time which is similar to our own time in that the world of the gods of the ancients was in the same state of dissolution in which the Christian religions are today. Plato was as little satisfied with Grecian mythology as a basis for a reasonable explanation of the world, as we are with Christian mythology. He wanted to ascend to the universal truth, not by way of little traditional stories, but by scientific philosophy. His intention was good, but his weak flesh wrestled with a task which required thousands of years for its solution.

A while ago I said that it was that topsy-turvy view of religion as to the relation between the special and the general which thwarted Plato. Let me illustrate a little more in detail in what this religious topsy-turvydom consisted.

Here we have wind, the waters of the seas, the rays of the sun, chemical and physical forces, forces of nature. These are specimens of the universal force of nature. These specimens were regarded with sober enough eyes by the Greeks, but the general nature sat high upon Olympus in the form of Zeus. In the same way, the Greeks were familiar with beautiful things, but beauty was an unapproachable goddess, Aphrodite. True, the philosopher no longer believed in the gods, but he was nevertheless still under the influence of transcendental concepts and thus he mystified the general under the name of the "idea." The Platonic ideas, like the gods of the heathen, are mystifications of the general. Plato furthermore shows himself as a descendant of polytheism in this: Although he clearly distinguished between virtue and virtuous things, between beauty and beautiful things, between truth and true things, yet he did not rise to the understanding that all generalities are amalgamated and unified in the absolute generality, that, in so far, the good, the true, and the beautiful are identical. The research for the absolute did not become monistic until Christian monotheism lent a hand. You will see from this that religion and philosophy form a common chapter which has the genus of all genera for its object. Faith is distinguished from science in that the latter no longer bows to the dictates of imagination and of its organs, the priests, but seeks to fathom the object of its studies by the exact use of the intellect. A partial amalgamation of the two is, therefore, quite natural.

"When a woman is strong, isn't she strong after the same conception and the same strength? By the term same," says the Platonic Socrates, "I mean that it makes no difference whether the strength is in the man or in the woman."

This quotation, taken from Plato's "Menon," shows that Platonic research deals with the general, in this case the general concept of strength which is the same in man or woman, ox or mule, Tom and Jerry. It is the genus by means of which black and white horses are known as horses, dogs and monkeys as animals, animals and plants as organisms, and finally the variations of the whole world as the universe, as the same. Plato has grasped this same-ness in a limited way, for instance in regard to strength, reason, virtue, etc. But that in an infinite sense everything is the same, that things as well as ideas, bodies, and souls, are the same, remained for radical proletarian logic to discover.

Hand in hand with the narrow Platonic conception of the general went a narrow theory of understanding or science, a wrong conception of the intellect and its functions. The Socratic Plato and the Platonic Socrates both call understanding by the name of "remembering." By praising understanding, they teach us that we must not believe the priests, but study by the help of our senses. But, nevertheless, they still teach a wrong method, a narrow art of thought.

In "Menon," the object of study is virtue. Socrates does not exactly pose as a schoolmaster. He knows that he is called the wisest of men, but explains that this is so, because others have a conceited opinion of their wisdom, while his wisdom consists in humbly knowing that he knows nothing. He does not so much try to teach what virtue is, as to stimulate his disciples to search for it. But his idea of research is distorted.

Among the immortal things which he transcendentally separates from mortal things, he also classifies the soul, "the immortal soul" which dies and lives again, and has always lived, knows everything, but must "remember." Thus his research becomes a cudgeling of the brain, an introspective speculation. He is not looking for understanding by way of natural science, through the interrelations of the world, but speculatively through the inside of the human skull.

In order to make his theory of memory plain, Socrates in "Menon" calls an ignorant slave and instructs him in the fundamentals of geometry. He quickly succeeds in getting from the ignorant fellow, who at first gives wrong answers, the correct statements by recalling the connections of thought by clever questioning. He thus demonstrates to his satisfaction that man has wisdom a priori in his head. But the Socratic-Platonic art of logic has overlooked that such wisdom requires concepts which are fixed in memory by internal and external interrelations. The socalled immortal soul with its innate wisdom has troubled the world a good while thereafter.

You must not think that I have a poor opinion of Plato, because I criticize him in this way. On the contrary, I am highly delighted with his divine and immortal writings. "Honor to Socrates, honor to Plato, but still more honor to truth." I also assure you that I am a great admirer of natural science, but nevertheless I should like to show you that it indulges in narrow reasoning.

Robert Mayer, the talented discoverer of the equivalent of heat, has proven that the force of gravitation, of electricity, of steam, of heat, etc., represents different modes of expression of the same force, of the force of nature in general. But no, not quite so! He has ascertained the numerical relation by which the transformations of one force into another is accomplished. Thus a logical understanding sees that the various forces and force in general are distinguished in detail but identical in general. Darwin in his "Origin of Species" has accomplished a similar demonstration. But neither Mayer nor Darwin have given that general expression to world unity which is required by the art of logic. In order to become an adept at this art, you must rise to the understanding that all forces are various modes of expression of the one force, all animals and species transformations of animaldom, that on the moon a part is smaller than the whole, the same as on earth, that there as well as here fire burns, and that as surely as you have no doubt of your being, just as surely is there only one being, the infinite, divine universe which has no other gods beside it, but contains all forces, materials, and transformations.

This is an innate science which is the cause of all other science, an innate science which, indeed, must first be awakened in you by "memory."

Hence our proletarian logic instructs you not to rack your brain by mere introspection, as the ancient philosophers used to do, not to call the senses impostors nor to search for truth without eyes, nose, and ears, nor on the other hand to start out with the idea of certain natural scientists who try to see, hear, and smell understanding without the help of the intellect.

The mistake committed in making a wrong use of the intellect is a "sin against the holy ghost." The Socratic-Platonic doctrine of memory is one extreme side of this sin; the other extreme side is represented by that modern science which tries to find truth by mere external means and rejects everything as untrue which is not ponderable or tangible.

As this letter is more intimately connected with the following one than is ordinarily the case, I take the liberty to unite them under the same number and mark them with the letters A and B.