Landmarks of Scientific Socialism Part 2

This later German philosophy found its conclusion in the philosophy of Hegel where for the first time, and this is his greatest service, the entire natural, historical and spiritual universe was regarded as a process, that is, as in constant progress, change, transformation and development, and the attempt was made to show the more subtle relations of this process and development. From this historical point of view the history of mankind no longer appeared as a barren confusion of mindless forces, all alike subject to rejection before the judgment seat of the most recently ripened philosophy, and which, at the very best, man puts out of his mind as soon as possible, but as the development-process of humanity itself, to follow the process of which, little by little, through all its ramifications, and to establish the essential laws of which, in spite of all apparent accidents, is now the task of philosophic thought.

It is immaterial at this place that Hegel did not solve this problem.

His epoch-making service was to have proposed it. It is a problem, moreover, which no individual can solve. Though Hegel, next to Saint Simon, was the most universal intellect of his time he was still limited, in the first place, through the necessarily narrow grasp of his own knowledge and in addition through the limitations of the contemporary conditions of knowledge. There was a third reason, too.

Hegel was an idealist, that is he regarded thought not as a mere abstract representation of real phenomena, but, on the contrary, phenomena and their development appeared to him as the representations of the Idea which existed before the world. The result was an inversion of everything, the actual interrelations of the universe were turned completely upside down, and though of these interrelations, many single ones were set out justly and correctly by Hegel, much of the detail is patched, labored, made up, in short, incorrect. The Hegelian system was, to speak briefly, a colossal miscarriage, and the last of its kind. It rested on an incurable contradiction; on the other hand, it actually proclaimed the historical conception according to which human history is a process of development, which, in its very nature, cannot find its intellectual conclusion in the discovery of a so-called absolute truth, on the other hand it declared itself to be the central idea of just such an absolute truth. An all embracing and determined knowledge of nature and history is in absolute contradiction with the foundations of dialectic thought, but it is not denied, on the contrary, it is strongly affirmed, that the systematic knowledge of the entire external world may from age to age make giant strides.

The total perversion of modern German idealism of necessity drove men to materialism, but not, and this is well worth noting, to the mere metaphysical mechanical materialism of the eighteenth century. In contradiction to the navely simple revolutionary pus.h.i.+ng on one side of all earlier history, modern materialism sees in history the process of the development of society, to discover the laws of whose development is its task. In contradistinction to the conception of nature which prevailed among the French philosophers, as well as with Hegel, as something moving in a narrow circle with an eternal and unchangeable substantial form, as Newton conceived it, and with invariable species of organic beings, as Linnaeus thought, materialism embraces the more recent discoveries of natural science, according to which nature has also a history in time. For the forms of the worlds, like the species of organisms by which they are inhabited under suitable conditions, come into being and pa.s.s away, and the cycles of their progress, in so far as it is permissible to use the term, take on eternally more magnificent dimensions. In either case it is entirely dialectic and no longer forces a static philosophy upon the other sciences. As soon as the demand is made upon each separate branch of science that it make clear its relation to things in general, and science as a whole, the individual science thereupon becomes superfluous. Of all philosophy up to the present time the only peculiar property which remains as its characteristic is the study of thought and the formal laws of thought--logic and the dialectic. All else belongs to the positive sciences of nature and history.

While the revolution in natural science was only able to be completely carried out in proportion as investigation furnished the necessary positive material, there were known a mult.i.tude of earlier historical facts which gave a distinct bias to the philosophy of history. In 1831 in Lyons the first purely working cla.s.s revolt occurred. The first national working cla.s.s movement, that of the English Chartists, reached its height between 1838 and 1842. The cla.s.s war between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie proceeded historically in the most advanced European countries just in proportion as the newly developed greater industry has progressed, on the one hand, and the political power of the bourgeoisie on the other. The teachings of the bourgeois economists with respect to the ident.i.ty of the interests of capital and labor and with respect to the universal peace and well being which would follow as a matter of course from the adoption of free trade were more and more contradicted by facts. All these things could be as little ignored as the French and English socialism which was their theoretical though very insufficient expression. But the old idealistic philosophy of history which was as yet by no means laid aside knew nothing of cla.s.s wars dependent upon material interests, and nothing of material interests, specially. Production, like all economic phenomena only occupied a subordinate position as a secondary element of the "history of civilisation." The new facts, moreover rendered necessary a new investigation of all preceding history and then it became evident that all history up to then had been a history of cla.s.s struggles and that these mutually conflicting cla.s.ses are the results of a given method of production and distribution at a given period, in a word, of the economic conditions of that epoch. Hence, that the economic structure of society at a given time furnishes the real foundations upon which the entire superstructure of political and juristic inst.i.tutions as well as the religious, philosophical and other abstract notions of a given period are to be explained in the last instance. Idealism was thereupon driven from its last refuge, the philosophy of history; a materialistic philosophy of history was set up, and the path was discovered by which the consciousness of man could be shown as springing from his existence rather than his existence from his consciousness.

But the socialism which had existed so far was just as incompatible with the materialistic conception of history as was the naturalistic French materialism with the dialectic and the modern discoveries in natural science. The then existing socialism criticised the prevailing capitalistic methods of production and their results but it could not explain them and thus could not match itself against them, it could only brush them on one side as being bad. But it was necessary to show, on the one hand, the capitalistic methods of production in their historical connection, and their necessity at a given historical epoch and therefore the necessity of their ultimate disappearance. On the other hand their inner character had to be explained and this was all the more concealed for criticism had up to then been chiefly engaged in pointing out the evil results flowing from them rather than in destroying the thing itself. This was made clear by the discovery of surplus value.

It was shown that the appropriation of unpaid labor is the basis of the capitalistic mode of production and the robbery of the worker is carried out by its means; that the capitalist, although he buys the labor-force of the worker at the full value which it possesses in the market as a commodity, yet derives more from it than he has paid for it, and that in the last instance this surplus creates the total amount of value from which the capital steadily increasing in the hands of the capitalistic cla.s.s is ama.s.sed. The phenomenon not only of capitalistic production but of the creation of capital has thus been explained.

For these two great discoveries, the materialistic conception of history and the disclosure of the mystery of capitalistic production we must thank Marx. Granted these, socialism became a science, which thereupon had to busy itself in the working out of these ideas in their individual aspects and connections.

Thus matters stood in the realm of theoretical socialism and the dead philosophy (of metaphysics Ed.) when Herr Eugene Duehring, with no slight impress.e.m.e.nt sprang up before the public and announced that he had accomplished a complete revolution in political economy and socialism.

Let us now see what Herr Duehring promises and--how he keeps his promises.

_II. What Herr Duehring Has to Say._

Up to now, the notable writings of Herr Duehring are his "Course of Philosophy," his "Course of Political and Social Science" and his "Critical History of Political Economy and Socialism." The first work is the one which particularly claims our attention.

Right on the first page Herr Duehring announces himself as "one who claims to represent this power (of philosophy) at the present time and its unfolding in the undiscoverable future." He discovers himself, therefore, as the one true philosopher for the present and the hidden future. Whoso differs from him differs from truth. Many people even before Herr Duehring, have thought this about themselves or something like it, but, with the exception of Richard Wagner, he is the first who has allowed himself to say it right out. And, as a matter of fact, the truth, as it is handled by him is "a final truth of the last instance." Herr Duehring's philosophy is "the natural system, or the philosophy of reality.... Reality is so understood as to exclude every sudden impulse towards an unreal and subjectively limited comprehension of the universe." The philosophy is therefore so shaped as to exclude Herr Duehring himself from the somewhat obvious limitations of his own personal, subjective narrowness. It is quite necessary to explain how this miracle is worked, if he is in a position to lay down unquestionable truths of the last instance, though, for our part, we cannot discover any particular merit in them.

This "natural system of valuable knowledge" has "with great profundity established the foundation forms of existence." Out of his real critical att.i.tude proceed the elements of a real critical philosophy, based on the realities of nature and life, which does not allow of any merely imaginary horizon but in its mighty revolutionary progress opens up the earth and heaven of external and inner nature; it is a "new method of thought" and its results are "from the bottom up, peculiar results and philosophies ... system-shaping ideas ... fixed truths." We have in it before us "a work which must seek its force in the concentrated initiative," whatever that may mean; an "investigation reaching to the roots ... a rooted science ... a severely scientific conception of things and men ... a comprehensive thorough effort of the mind ... a creative sketch of suppositions and conclusions from overmastering ideas ... the absolute fundamental." In the realm of political economy he gives us not only "historical and systematic comprehensive efforts" of which the historical are moreover distinguished by "my presentation of history in the grand style" and those in political economy have produced "creative movements," but closes with a special completely elaborated scientific scheme for a future society which is "the actual fruit of a clear and basic theory," and is therefore just as free from the possibility of error and as individual as Duehring's philosophy ... for "only in that socialistic structure which I have disclosed in my "Course of Political and Social Science" can a true owners.h.i.+p arise in place of the present apparent private property which rests on force such an owners.h.i.+p as must be recognised in the future."

These flowers of rhetoric from the praises of Herr Duehring by Herr Duehring might be increased tenfold with ease. They must cause a doubt to arise in the mind of the reader whether he is reading the words of a philosopher or of a--but we must ask him to withhold his judgment until he shall have learnt the aforesaid grasp of the root of things by a closer acquaintance. We only quote the foregoing flowery remarks to show that we have to do with no ordinary philosopher and socialist who simply speaks what he thinks and leaves the future to decide with respect to their value, but with an extraordinary personality like the Pope whose individual teachings must be received if the d.a.m.nable sin of heresy is to be avoided. We have not by any means to deal with the kind of work which abounds in all the socialist writings, and the later German ones, in particular, works in which people of varying calibre seek to explain in the most nave fas.h.i.+on their notions of things in general and for an answer to whom there is more or less material available. But whatever may be the literary or scientific deficiencies of these works their goodwill towards socialism is always manifest. On the other hand, Herr Duehring presents us with statements which he declares to be final truths of the last instance, exclusive truths, according to which any other opinion is absolutely false. Thus he owns the only scientific methods of investigation, and all others are unscientific in comparison. Either he is right and we are face to face with the greatest genius of our time, the first superhuman, because infallible, man; or he is wrong, and then, since our judgment may always be at fault, benevolent regard for his possible good intentions would be the deadliest insult to Herr Duehring.

When one is in possession of final truths of the last instance and the only absolutely scientific knowledge one must have a certain contempt for the rest of erring and unscientific humanity. We cannot therefore be surprised that Herr Duehring employs very abusive terms with regard to his predecessors, and that only a few exceptional people, recognised by him as great men, find favor in face of his comprehension of fundamental truths.

(Then follows a list of the epithets applied by Duehring to philosophers, naturalists, Darwin, in particular, and to the socialist writers. This list has been omitted as it contributes nothing of value to the general discussion and is only useful for the particular controversial matter in hand. Ed.)

And so on--and this is only a hastily gathered bouquet of flowers from Herr Duehring's rose garden. It will be understood that if these amiable insults which should be forbidden Herr Duehring on any grounds of politeness, are found somewhat disreputable and unpleasant, they are, still, final truths of the last instance. Even now we shall guard against any doubt of his profundity because we might otherwise be forbidden to discover the particular category of idiots to which we belong. We have but considered it our duty on the one hand to give what Herr Duehring calls "The quintessence of a modest mode of expression," and on the other hand, to show that in Herr Duehring's eyes the objectionableness of his predecessors is no less firmly established than his own infallibility. Accordingly if all this is actually true we bow in reverence humbly before the mighty genius of modern times.

CHAPTER IV

PHILOSOPHY

_Apriorism._

Philosophy is, according to Herr Duehring, the development of the highest forms of consciousness of the world and life, and embraces, in a wider sense, the principles of all knowledge and volition. Wherever a series of perceptions, or motives or a group of forms of life becomes a matter of consideration in the human mind the principles which underly these forms, of necessity, become an object of philosophy. These principles are single, or, up to the present, have been considered as single ingredients out of which are composed the complexities of knowledge and volition. Like the chemical composition of material bodies, the entire universe may be also resolved into fundamental forms and elements. These elementary const.i.tuents and principles serve, when once discovered, not only for the known tangible world but for that also, which is unknown and inaccessible.

Philosophical principles therefore const.i.tute the last complement required by the sciences in order that they may become a uniform system by means of which nature and human life are explained. In addition to the examination of the fundamental forms of all existence, philosophy has only two particular objects of investigation, Nature and Humanity. Hence our material may be cla.s.sified into three main groups,--a general scheme of the universe, the teaching of the principles of nature and finally the principles which regulate Humanity. This arrangement at the same time comprises an inner logical order, for the formal principles which are true for all existence take precedence, and the concrete realms in which these principles display themselves follow in the gradation of their successive arrangements. So far, this is Herr Duehring's conception of things given almost in his very words.

He is therefore engaged with principles, formal conceptions, which are subjective and not derived from the knowledge of external phenomena, but which are applied to Nature and Humanity, as the principles according to which Nature and Humanity must regulate themselves. But how are these subjective principles derived? From thought itself? No, for Herr Duehring himself says: the purely ideal realm is limited to logical arrangements and mathematical conceptions (which latter as we shall later see is false). Logical arrangements can only be referred to forms of thought, but we are engaged here only with forms of existence, the external world, and these forms can never be created by thought nor derived from it but only from the external world. Hereupon the entire matter undergoes a change. We see that principles are not the starting point of investigation but the conclusion of it, they are not to be applied to nature and history but are derived from them.

Nature and Humanity are not steered by principles, but principles are, on the other hand, only correct so far as they correspond with nature and history. That is just the materialistic conception of the matter, and the opposite, that of Herr Duehring is the idealistic conception, it turns things upside down and constructs a real world out of the world of thought, arrangements, plans and categories existing from everlasting before the world, just like Hegelianism.

As a matter of fact, we prefer Hegel's "Encyclopedia," with all its fever phantoms, to the "final truths of the last instance" of Herr Duehring. In the first place, according to Herr Duehring we have the general scheme of the universe which by Hegel is called "logic." Then according to both of them we have the application of this scheme to nature by means of the logical categories, the philosophy of nature, and finally their application to Humanity, by what Hegel calls "the Philosophy of the Spirit." "The inner logical arrangement" of Duehring's scheme brings us therefore logically back to Hegel's "Encyclopedia" from which it is taken with a fidelity which would move that Wandering Jew of the Hegelian school, Professor Michelet of Berlin, to tears.

Such a result follows if one takes it for granted that "consciousness," "thought," is something which has existed from the beginning in contradistinction to nature. It would then be of the greatest importance to bring consciousness and Nature, thought and existence, into harmony, to harmonise the laws of thought and the laws of Nature. But one enquires further what are thought and consciousness and whence do they originate. It is consequently discovered that they are products of the brain of man, and that Humanity is itself a product of nature which has developed in and along with its environment; wherefore it becomes self-apparent that the products of the brain of man being themselves, in the last instance, natural products, do not contradict all the rest of Nature but correspond with it.

But Herr Duehring cannot allow so simple a treatment of the subject.

He thinks not only in the name of Humanity which would be quite a large affair, but in the name of the conscious and thinking beings of the whole universe. Indeed, it would be "a degradation of the foundation concepts of knowledge and consciousness if one should wish to exclude or even to throw suspicion upon their sovereign value and undoubted claims to truth by means of the epithet 'human.'" In order that there may be no suspicion that upon some heavenly body or other twice two may make five, Herr Duehring does not venture to call thought a human attribute, and therefore he is obliged to separate it from the only true foundation on which it rests, as far as we are concerned, namely, from man and nature, and thereby falls, without any possibility of getting out, into an "ideology" which causes him to play baby to Hegel. It is self-evident that one cannot build materialistic doctrines on foundations so ideological. We shall see later that Herr Duehring is compelled to push nature to the front as a conscious agent and, therefore, as that, which people in plain English call G.o.d.

Indeed, our philosopher had other motives in s.h.i.+fting the foundation of reality from the material world to that of thought. The knowledge of this general scheme of the universe, of these formal principles of being is just the foundation of Herr Duehring's philosophy. If we derive the scheme of the universe not from our own brain, but merely by means of our own brain, from the material world, we need no philosophy, but simply knowledge of the world and what occurs in it, and the results of this knowledge likewise do not const.i.tute a philosophy, but positive science. In such a case, however, Herr Duehring's entire book would have been love's labor lost.

Further, if no philosophy, as such, is longer required there is no longer the necessity of any philosophy of nature even. The view that all the phenomena of nature stand in systematic mutual relations compels science to prove this systematic interconnection in all respects, in single cases as well as in the entirety. But an appropriate creative, scientific representation of this mutual connection in such a way as to show the composition of an exact thought-picture of the system of the universe in which we live remains not only for us but for all time an impossibility. Should such a final conclusive system of the interconnection of the various activities of the universe, physical, as well as intellectual and historical, ever be brought to completion at any point of time in the history of the human race, human knowledge would forthwith come to an end and future historical progress would be cut off from the very moment in which society was directed in accordance with the system, which would be an absurdity, mere nonsense.

Man is therefore confronted by a contradiction, on the one hand he is obliged to study the interconnections of the world-system exhaustively, and, on the other hand, he is unable to fully accomplish the task either as regards himself or as regards the system of nature.

This contradiction, however, does not consist solely in the nature of the two factors World and Man; it is the main lever also of universal intellectual progress and is solved every day and for ever in an endless progressive development of humanity, just as mathematical problems find their solution in an endless progression of a recurring decimal. As a matter of fact also every concept of the universe is subject to objective limitations owing to the conditions of historical knowledge, and subjectively in addition owing to the physical and mental make up of the author of the concept. But Herr Duehring exhibits a mode of thought which is confined in its application to a limited and subjective idea of the universe. We saw earlier that he was omnipresent, in all possible forms of the universe, now we see that he is omniscient. He has solved the final problems of science and has nailed up tight all future knowledge.

Herr Duehring considers that he can, as with the fundamental forms of existence, produce aprioristically by means of his own cogitations the whole of pure mathematics without making any use of the experience which is afforded us in the objective world. In pure mathematics the understanding is engaged "in its own free creations and imaginations"; the concepts of number and form are "self-sufficient objects proceeding from themselves" and so have "a value independent of individual experience and actual objective reality."

That pure mathematics has a significance independent of particular individual experience is quite true as are also the established facts of all the sciences and indeed of all facts. The magnetic poles, the formation of water from oxygen and hydrogen, the fact that Hegel is dead and that Herr Duehring is alive, are facts independent of my experience or that of any other single individual, and will be independent of that of Herr Duehring himself, as soon as he shall sleep the sleep of the just. But in pure mathematics the mind is not by any means engaged with its own creations and imaginings. The concepts of number and form have only come to us by the way of the real world. The ten fingers on which men count and thereby performed the first arithmetical calculations are anything but a free creation of the mind. To count not only requires objects capable of being counted but the ability, when these objects are regarded, of subtracting all qualities from them except number and this ability is the product of long historical development of actual experience. The concept form is, like that of number, derived exclusively from the external world and is not a purely mental product. To it things possessed of shape were necessary and these shapes men compared until the concept form was arrived at. Pure mathematics considers the shapes and quant.i.ties of things in the actual world, very real objects. The fact that these objects appear in a very abstract form only superficially conceals their origin in the world of external nature.

In order to understand these forms and qualities in their purity it is necessary to separate them from their content and thus one gets the point, without dimensions, the line, without breadth and thickness, a and b, x and y, constants and variables, and we finally first arrive at independent creations of the imagination and intellect, imaginary magnitudes. Also the apparent derivation of mathematical magnitudes from each other does not prove their aprioristic origin, but only their rational interconnection. Before one attained the concept that the form of a cylinder was derived from the revolution of a rectangle round one of its sides, he must have examined a number of rectangles and cylinders even if of imperfect form. Like all sciences, mathematics has sprung from the necessities of men, from the measurement of land and the content of vessels, from the calculation of time and mechanics. But, as in every department of thought, at a certain stage of development, laws are abstracted from the actual phenomena, are separated from them and set over against them, as something independent of them, as laws, which apparently come from the outside, in accordance with which the material world must necessarily conduct itself. So, it has happened in society and the state, so, and not otherwise, pure mathematics though borrowed from the world is applied to the world, and though it only shows a portion of its component factors is all the better applicable on that account.

But as Herr Duehring imagines that the whole of pure mathematics can be derived from the mathematical axioms, "which according to purely logical concepts are neither capable of proof nor in need of any, and without empirical ingredients anywhere and that these can be applied to the universe, he likewise imagines, in the first place, the foundation forms of being, the single ingredients of all knowledge, the axioms of philosophy, to be produced by the intellect of man; he imagines also that he can derive the whole of philosophy or plan of the universe from these, and that his sublime genius can compel us to accept this, his conception of nature and humanity." Unfortunately nature and humanity are not const.i.tuted like the Prussians of the Manteuffel regime of 1850.

The axioms of mathematics are expressions of the most elementary ideas which mathematics must borrow from logic. They may be reduced to two.

(1) The whole is greater than its part; this statement is mere tautology, since the quant.i.tatively limited concept, "part,"

necessarily refers to the concept, "whole,"--in that "part" signifies no more than that the quant.i.tative "whole" is made up of quant.i.tative "parts." Since the so-called axiom merely a.s.serts this much we are not a step further. This can be shown to be a tautology if we say "The whole is that which consists of several parts--a part is that several of which make up a whole, therefore the part is less than the whole."

Where the barrenness of the repet.i.tion shows the lack of content all the more strongly.

(2) If two magnitudes are equal to a third they are equal to one another; this statement is, as Hegel has shown, a conclusion, upon the correctness of which all logic depends, and which is demonstrated therefore outside of pure mathematics. The remaining axioms with regard to equality and inequality are merely logical extensions of this conclusion. Such barren statements are not enticing either in mathematics or anywhere else. To proceed we must have realities, conditions and forms taken from real material things; representations of lines, planes, angles, polygons, spheres, etc., are all borrowed from reality, and it is just naive ideology to believe the mathematicians, who a.s.sert that the first line was made by causing a point to progress through s.p.a.ce, the first plane by means of the movement of a line, and the first solid by revolving a plane, etc.

Even speech rebels against this idea. A mathematical figure of three dimensions is called a solid--corpus solidum--and hence, according to the Latin, a body capable of being handled. It has a name derived, therefore, by no means from the independent play of imagination but from solid reality.

But to what purpose is all this prolixity? After Herr Duehring has enthusiastically proclaimed the independence of pure mathematics of the world of experience, their apriorism, their connection with free creation and imagination, he says "it will be readily seen that these mathematical elements (number, magnitude, time, s.p.a.ce, geometric progression), are therefore ideal forms with relation to absolute magnitudes and therefore something quite empiric, no matter to what species they belong." But "mathematical general notions are, apart from experience, nevertheless capable of sufficient characterization,"

which latter proceeds, more or less, from each abstraction, but does not by any means prove that it is not deprived from the actual. In the scheme of the universe of our author pure mathematics originated in pure thought, in his philosophy of nature it is derived from the external world and then set apart from it. What are we then to believe?

_The Scheme of the Universe._

"All-comprehending existence is sole. It is sufficient to itself and has nothing above or below it. To a.s.sociate a second existence with it would be to make it just what it is not, a part of a const.i.tuent or all-embracing whole. When we conceive of our idea of soleness as a frame there is nothing which can enter into this, nothing which retains twofoldness can enter into this concept of unity. But nothing can alienate itself from this concept of unity. The essence of all thought consists in uniting the elements of consciousness in a unity.

The indivisible concept of the universe has arisen by comprehending everything, and the universe, as the word signifies, is recognised as something in which everything is united into one unity."

So far Herr Duehring is quoted. The mathematical method, "Everything must be decided on simple axiomatic foundation principles, just as if it were concerned with the simple principles of mathematics," this method is for the first time here applied.

"The all-embracing existence is sole." If tautology, simple repet.i.tion in the predicate of what has been stated in the subject, if this const.i.tutes an axiom, then we have a splendid specimen. In the subject Herr Duehring tells us that existence comprehends everything, in the predicate he explains intrepidly that there is nothing outside it.

What a system-shaping thought. It is indeed system-shaping until we find six lines further down that Herr Duehring has transformed the soleness of being by means of our idea of unity into its one-ness. As the work of all thought consists in the bringing together of all thought into a unity so is existence, as soon as it is conceived, thought of as a unity, an indivisible concept of the universe, and because existence so conceived is the sole universal concept, so is real existence, the real universe, just as much an indivisible unity, and consequently "the beings in the beyond have no further place as soon as the mind has learned to comprehend existence in the h.o.m.ogeneous universality."

That is a campaign with which in comparison Austerlitz and Jena, Koeniggratz and Sedan sink in insignificance. In a couple of expressions after we have set the first axiom moving we have abolished, put away, and destroyed all the inhabitants of the spirit-world, G.o.d, the heavenly hierarchies, heaven, h.e.l.l and purgatory as well as the immortality of the soul.

How do we arrive at the idea of the unity of existence from that of its soleness? As a matter of fact, we generally conceive it. As we spread out our idea of unity as a frame around it the concept of existence becomes the concept of unity, for the existence of all thought consists in the bringing of elements of consciousness into unity.