V.I. Lenin

MATERIALISM and EMPIRIO-CRITICISM

Critical Comments on a Reactionary Philosophy ( Chapter Four: The Philosophical Idealists as Comrades-In-Arms and Successors of Empirio-Criticism )

4. Whither is Empirio-Criticism
Tending?

Let us now cast a glance at the development of Machism after
Mach and Avenarius. We have seen that their philosophy is a
hash, a pot-pourri of contradictory and disconnected epistemological propositions. We must now examine how and
whither, i.e., in what direction, this philosophy is developing, for this will help us to settle certain
“disputable” questions by referring to indisputable historical facts. And indeed, in view of the
eclecticism and incoherence of the initial philosophical
premises of the trend we are examining, varying interpretations of it and sterile disputes over particulars
and trifles are absolutely inevitable. But empirio-criticism,
like every ideological current, is a living thing, which grows
and develops, and the fact that it is growing in one direction
or another will help us more than long arguments to settle the
basic question as to what the real essence of this philosophy is. We judge a person not by what he says or thinks
of himself but by his actions. And we must judge philosophers
not by the labels they give themselves (“positivism,” the philosophy of “pure experience,”
“monism” or “empirio-monism,” the “philosophy of natural science,” etc.) but by the
manner in which they actually settle fundamental theoretical
questions, by their associates, by what they are teaching and
by what they have taught their disciples and followers.

It is this last question which interests us now. Everything
essential was said by Mach and Avenarius more than twenty
years ago. It was bound to become clear in the interval
how these “leaders” were understood by those who wanted to understand them,
and whom they themselves (at least Mach, who has outlived his
colleague) regard as their successors. To be specific, let us
take those who themselves claim to be disciples of Mach and
Avenarius (or their adherents) and whom Mach himself ranks as
such. We shall thus obtain a picture of empirio-criticism as a
philosophical current, and not as a collection of literary oddities.

In Mach’s Introduction to the Russian translation of the
Analysis of Sensations, Hans Cornelius is recommended as a “young investigator” who is following
“if not quite the same, at least very close paths” (p. 4). In the text of the Analysis of Sensations
Mach once again “mentions with pleasure the works” of Cornelius and others, “who have disclosed the kernel
of Avenarius’ ideas and have developed them further” (p. 48). Let us take Cornelius’
Introduction to the Philosophy [1] and we find that its author
also speaks of his endeavour to follow in the footsteps of
Mach and Avenarius (pp. viii, 32). We have before us then a
disciple acknowledged by the teacher . This disciple also begins with sensations-elements (pp. 17, 24),
categorically declares that he confines himself to experience
(p. vi), calls his views “consistent or epistemological
empiricism” (p. 335), emphatically condemns the “one sidedness” of idealism and the
“dogmatism” of both the idealists and the materialists (p. 129), vehemently denies the possible
“misconception” (p. 123) that his philosophy implies the recognition of the world as existing in the mind
of man, flirts with naïve realism no less skilfully than
Avenarius, Schuppe or Bazarov (“a visual, as well as every
other sense perception, is located where we find it, and only
where we find it, that is to say, where the naïvenaïve mind, untouched by a false philosophy,
localises it”—p. 125)—and this disciple, acknowledged as such by his teacher, arrives at
immortality and
God . Materialism—thunders this police sergeant in a professorial chair, I beg your pardon, this disciple of
the “recent positivists”—converts man into an automaton. “It need hardly be said that together with
the belief in the freedom of our decisions it destroys all
considerations of the moral value of our actions and our
responsibility for them. Just as little room is left for the
idea of the continuation of our life after death” (p. 116). The final note of the book is:

Education (or the youth stultified by this man of science
presumably) is necessary not only for action but “above
all . . . to inculcate veneration (Ehrfurcht) not for the transitory values of a fortuitous tradition, but for the
imperishable values of duty and beauty, for the divine (dem Göttlichen) within us and without”
(p. 357).

Compare this with Bogdanov’s assertion that “there is absolutely no room ” (Bogdanov’s
italics) and “there cannot be any room” for the idea of God, freedom of the will and immortality of the soul
in Mach’s philosophy in view of his denial of every “thing-in-itself” (p. xii). While Mach in this
same book (p. 293) declares that “there is no Machian philosophy,” and recommends not only the immanentists,
but also Cornelius who had disclosed the kernel of
Avenarius’ ideas! Thus, in the first place, Bogdanov absolutely does not know the “Machian
philosophy” as a current which not only nestles under the wing of fideism, but which itself goes to the length of
fideism. In the second place, Bogdanov absolutely does not know the history of philosophy; for to associate a denial
of the ideas mentioned above with a denial of the thing-in-itself is to insult the history of philosophy. Will
Bogdanov take it into his head to deny that all consistent
followers of Hume, by rejecting every kind of thing-in-itself,
do leave room for these ideas? Has Bogdanov never heard of the subjective idealists, who reject every kind of
thing in-itself and thereby make room for these ideas?
“There can be no room” for these ideas solely in a philosophy that teaches that nothing
exists but perceptual being, that the world is matter in
motion, that the external world, the physical world familiar
to all, is the sole objective reality— i.e., in the philosophy of materialism. And it is for this, precisely
for this, that materialism is combated by the immanentists
recommended by Mach, by Mach’s disciple Cornelius, and by modern professorial philosophy in general.

Our Machians began to repudiate Cornelius only after this
indecency had been pointed out to them. Such repudiations are
not worth much. Friedrich Adler evidently has not been “warned,” and therefore recommends this Cornelius
in a socialist journal (Der Kampf, 1908, 5, S. 235:
“a work that is easy to read and highly to be commended”). Through the medium of Machism, downright
philosophical reactionaries and preachers of fideism are
palmed off on the workers as teachers!

Petzoldt, without having been warned, detected the falsity in
Cornelius: but his method of combating this falsity is a
gem. Listen to this: “To assert that the world is idea
[as is asserted by the idealists—whom we are combating,
no joke!] has sense only when it implies that it is the idea
of the predicator, or, if you like, of all predicators,
i.e., that its existence depends exclusively upon the thought of that individual or of those individuals; it exists
only inasmuch as he thinks about it, and what he does not
think of does not exist. We, on the contrary, make the world
dependent not upon the thought of an individual or individuals, or, to put it better and clearer, not upon the
act of thinking, or upon any actual thought, but—and exclusively in the logical sense—upon thought in
general. The idealist confuses one with the other, and the
result is agnostic semi-solipsism, as we observe it in
Cornelius” (Einführung, II, 317).

Stolypin denied the existence of the cabinets noirs ! [5]
Petzoldt annihilates the idealists! It is truly astonishing
how much this annihilation of idealism resembles a recommendation to the idealists to exercise more skill in
concealing their idealism. To say that the world depends upon
man’s thought is perverted idealism. To say that the world depends upon thought in general is recent positivism,
critical realism—in a word, thoroughgoing bourgeois charlatanism!

If Cornelius is an agnostic semi-solipsist, Petzoldt is a solipsist semi-agnostic. You are cracking a
flea, gentlemen!

Let us proceed. In the second edition of his Erkenntnis und Irrtum, Mach says: “A systematic exposition [of
Mach’s views], one to which in all its essentials I can
subscribe, is given by Professor Dr. Hans Kleinpeter” (Die Erkenntnistheorie der Naturforschung der Gegenwart, Leipzig, 1905: The Theory of Knowledge of Modern Natural Science) . Let us take Hans Number
Two. This professor is an accredited disseminator of Machism:
a pile of articles on Mach’s views in philosophical journals, both in German and in English, translations of works
recommended by Mach with introductions by Mach—in a word, the right hand of the “teacher.” Here are
his views: “. . . All my (outer and inner) experience, all my thoughts and aspirations are given me as a psychical
process, as a part of my consciousness” (op. cit. p. 18). “That which we call physical is a
construction of psychical elements” (p. 144). “ Subjective conviction, not objective certainty (Gewissheit) is the only attainable goal of any science ” (p. 9). (The
italics are Kleinpeter’s, who adds the following remark:
“Something similar was already said by Kant in the
Critique of Practical Reason .”) “The assumption that there are other minds is one which can never be confirmed
by experience” (p. 42). “I do not know. . . whether, in general, there exist other
selves outside of myself” (p. 43). In § 5, entitled “Activity (Spontaneity) in
Consciousness,” we read that in the case of the animal-automaton the succession of ideas is purely
mechanical. The same is true of us when we dream. “The quality of our consciousness in its normal state essentially
differs from this. It possesses a property which these [the
automata] entirely lack, and which it would be very difficult,
to say the least, to explain mechanically or automatically:
the so-called self-activity of the self . Every person can dissever himself from his states of consciousness, he can
manipulate them, can make them stand out more clearly or force
them into the background, can analyse them, compare various
parts, etc. All this is a fact of (immediate) experience. Our
self is therefore essentially different from the sum-total of the states of consciousness and cannot be put as
an equivalent of it. Sugar consists of carbon, hydrogen and
oxygen; were we to attribute a soul to it, then by analogy it
would have to possess the faculty of directing the movement of
the hydrogen, oxygen and carbon at will” (pp. 29–30). § 4 of the following chapter is headed:
“The Act of Cognition—an Act of Will (Willenshandlung) .” “It must be regarded
as definitely established that all my psychical experiences
are divisible into two large main groups: compulsory acts and
deliberate acts. To the former belong all impressions of the
external world” (p. 47). “That it is possible to advance several theories regarding one and the same realm of
facts . . . is as well known to physicists as it is incompatible with the premises of an absolute theory of
knowledge. And this fact is also linked with the volitional
character of our thought; it also implies that our volition is
not bound by external circumstances” (p. 50).

Now judge how bold Bogdanov was in asserting that in
Mach’s philosophy “there is absolutely no room for free will,” when Mach himself recommends such a specimen
as Kleinpeter! We have already seen that the latter does not
attempt to conceal either his own idealism or Mach’s. In
1898-99 Kleinpeter wrote: “Hertz proclaims the same subjectivist view [ i.e. , as Mach] of the nature of
our concepts. . . . If Mach and Hertz [with what justice
Kleinpeter here implicates the famous physicist we shall soon
see] deserve credit from the standpoint of idealism for having
emphasised the subjective origin of all our concepts and of the connections between them—and not only of
certain individual ones—from the standpoint of empiricism they deserve no less credit for having acknowledged
that experience alone, as a court entirely independent of
thought, can solve the question of their correctness” (Archiv für systematische Philosophie, Bd. V,
1898-99, S. 169-70). In 1900 he wrote that in spite of all the
points on which Mach differs from Kant and Berkeley, “they at any rate are more akin to him than the
metaphysical empiricism prevailing in natural science
[ i.e. , materialism! The professor does not like to call the devil by name] which is indeed the main target of
Mach’s attacks” (op. cit., Bd. VI, S. 87). In 1903 he wrote: “The starting point of Berkeley and Mach is
irrefutable. . . . Mach completed what Kant began” (Kantstudien, Bd. VIII, 1903, S. 314, 274).

In the preface to the Russian edition of the Analysis of Sensations Mach also mentions T. Ziehen, “who is
following, if not the same, at least very close paths.”
We take Professor Theodor Ziehen’s book The Psychophysiological Theory of Knowledge (Psychophysiologische Erkenntnistheorie, Jena, 1898) and hnd that the author
refers to Mach, Avenarius, Schuppe, and so forth in the very
introduction. Here therefore we again have a case of a disciple acknowledged by the teacher. Ziehen’s
“recent” theory is that only the “mob” is capable of believing that “real objects evoke our
sensations” (p. 3), and that “over the portals of the theory of knowledge there can be no other inscription than
the words of Berkeley: ‘The external objects subsist not
by themselves, but exist in our minds!’” (p. 5). “What is given us is sensations and ideas. Both
are embraced by the word psychical. Non-psychical is a word
devoid of meaning” (p. 100). The laws of nature are relations not of material bodies but of “reduced
sensations” (p. 104. This “new” concept—“reduced sensations”—contains everything
that is original in Ziehen’s Berkeleianismt).

Petzoldt repudiated Ziehen as an idealist as far back as 1904
in the second volume of his Introduction (S. 298-301). By 1906 he had already included Cornelius,
Kleinpeter, Ziehen and Verworn (Das Weltproblem, etc ., S. 137 Fussnote) in the list of idealists or psychomonists . In the case of all these worthy
professors, you see, there is a “misconception” in their interpretations “of the views of Mach and
Avenarius” (ibid .).

Poor Mach and Avenarius! Not only were they slandered by their
enemies for idealism and “even” (as Bogdanov expresses it) solipsism, but their very friends, disciples and
followers, expert professors, also understood their teachers
pervertedly, in an idealist sense. If empirio-criticism is
developing into idealism, that by no means demonstrates the
radical falsity of its muddled Berkeleian basic premises. God
forbid! It is only a slight “misconception,” in the
Nozdriev-Petzoldt [6] sense of the term.

The funniest thing of all perhaps is that Petzoldt himself,
the guardian of purity and innocence, firstly, “supplemented” Mach and Avenarius with his
“logical a priori ” and, secondly, coupled them with Wilhelm Schuppe, the vehicle of fideism.

Had Petzoldt been acquainted with Mach’s English adherents he would have had very considerably to extend the
list of Machians who had lapsed (because of a “misconception”) into idealism. We have already referred
to Karl Pearson, whom Mach praised, as an unadulterated
idealist. Here are the opinions of two other “slanderers” who say the same thing of Pearson:
“Professor Pearson is merely echoing a doctrine first given clear utterance by the truly great Berkeley”
(Howard V. Knox, Mind, Vol. VI, 1897,
p. 205). “There can be no doubt that Mr. Pearson is an
idealist in the strictest sense of the word” (Georges
Rodier, Revue philosophique , [7] 1888, II, Vol. 26,
p. 200). The English idealist, William Clifford, whom Mach regards
as “coming very close” to his philosophy (Analysis of Sensations, p. 8), must be considered a teacher rather
than a disciple of Mach, for Clifford’s philosophical works appeared in the seventies. Here the
“misconception” is due to Mach himself, who in
1901 “failed to notice” the idealism in
Clifford’s doctrine that the world is “mind-stuff,” a “social object,” a
“highly organised experience,” and so forth. [2]

For a characterisation of the charlatanism of the German Machians,
it is sufficient to note that Kleinpeter in 1905 elevated this
idealist to the rank of founder of the “epistemology of
modern science”!

On page 284 of the Analysis of Sensations, Mach mentions the “kindred” (to Buddhism and Machism)
American philosopher, Paul Carus. Carus, who calls himself an
“admirer and personal friend” of Mach, edits in
Chicago The Monist, a journal devoted to philosophy, and The Open Court , [8] a journal devoted to the
propagation of religion. “Science is divine revelation,” say the editors of this popular little
journal, and they express the opinion that science can bring
about a reform of the church that will retain “all that
is true and good in religion.” Mach is a regular contributor to The Monist and publishes in it
individual chapters from his latest works. Carus corrects Mach
“ever so little” à la Kant, and declares that Mach “is an idealist or, as we would say,
a subjectivist.” “There are, no doubt, differences between Mach’s views and mine,” although “I
at once recognised in him a kindred spirit”. [3] “Our Monism,” says
Carus, “is not materialistic, not spiritualistic, not agnostic; it merely means consistency . . . it takes
experience as its basis and employs as method the systematic
forms of the relations of cxperience” (evidently a plagiarism from Bogclanov’s Empirio-Monism !)
. Carus’ motto is: “Not agnosticism, but positive science, not mysticism, but clear thinking, not
supernaturalism, not materialism, but a monistic view of the
world, not a dogma, but religion, not creed, but faith.”
And in conformity with this motto Carus preaches a “new
theology,” a “scientific theology,” or theonomy, which denies the literalness of the bible but
insists that “all truth is divine and God reveals himself in science as he does in
history.” [4]

It should be remarked that Kleinpeter, in his book on the theory of knowledge of modern science already referred to,
recommends Carus, together with Ostwald, Avenarius and the
immanentists (pp. 151-52). When Haeckel issued his theses for
a Monistic Alliance, Carus vigorously opposed him on the
ground that, first, Haeckel vainly attempts to refute apriorism, which is “quite in keeping with scientific
philosophy”; second, that Haeckel’s doctrine of determinism “excludes the possibility of free will”;
third, that Haeckel is mistaken “in emphasising the one-sided view of the naturalist against the traditional
conservatism of the churches. Thus he appears as an enemy to
the existing churches instead of rejoicing at their higher
development into a new and truer interpretation of their
dogmas . . .” (ibid ., Vol. XVI, 1906,
p. 122). Carus himself admits that “I appear reactionary
to many freethinkers who blame me for not joining their chorus
in denouncing all religion as superstition” (p. 355).

It is quite evident that we have here a leader of a gang of
American literary fakers who are engaged in doping the people
with religious opium. Mach and Kleinpeter joined this gang
evidently as the result of a slight “misconception.”

---
Notes:
[1]
Cornelius, Einleitung in die Philosophie [ Introduction to Philosophy] (Germ. ed., 1903)

— Ed .

[2]
William
Kingdon Clifford, Lectues and Essays, 3rd ed., London, 1901, Vol. II, pp. 55, 65, 69: “On this point I
agree entirely with Berkeley and not with Mr. Spencer” (p. 58); “The object, then, is a set of changes
in my consciousness, and not anything out of it” (p. 52).
— Lenin

[3]
The Monist , [9] Vol. XVI, 1906, July; P. Carus, “Professor Mach’s Philosophy,” pp. 320, 345,
333. The article is a reply to an article by Kleinpeter which
appeared in the same journal.
— Lenin

[4]
Ibid ., Vol. XIII, p. 24 et seq ., “Theology as a Science,” an article by
Carus.
— Lenin

[5]
Lenin is referring to the lying statement of P. A. Stolypin,
Chairman of the Council of Ministers, who denied the existence
in the postal service of “cabinets Theirs” engaged in examining the correspondence of persons regarded as
suspects by the tsarist government.

[6]
Nosdrev —a character in N. V. Gogol’s novel
Dead Souls; a landlord, swindler and trouble-maker. Gogol called him a “historical
personage”, since wherever he appeared “histories” and rows developed.

[7]
Revue philosephique de la France et de l’Etranger (Philosophical Review of France and Abroad) —a
journal founded in Paris in 1876 by the French psychologist
Thédodule Bibot.

[8]
The Open Court —a journal of a religious tendency, published in Chicago from 1887 to 1936.

[9]
The Monist—an American philosophical journal of an idealist tendency, edited by Paul Carus. It was published
in Chicago from 1890 to 1936.