V. I.

Lenin

MATERIALISM and EMPIRIO-CRITICISM

Critical Comments on a Reactionary Philosophy

Chapter Three:

The Theory of Knowledge of Dialectical
Materialism and of Empirio-Criticism. III

1. What Is Matter? What Is
Experience?

The first of these questions is constantly being hurled by the idealists and
agnostics, including the Machians, at the materialists; the second
question by the materialists at the Machians. Let us try to make
the point at issue clear.

Avenarius says on the subject of matter:

“ Within the purified, ‘complete experience’ there is nothing
‘physical’—‘matter’ in the metaphysical absolute conception—for ‘matter’
according to this conception is only an abstraction; it would be
the total of the counter-terms abstracted from every central
term. Just as in the principal co-ordination, that is, ‘complete experience,’ a counter-term is
inconceivable ( undenkbar ) without a central term, so
‘matter’ in the metaphysical absolute conception is a complete chimera ( Unding )”
( Bemerkungen [ Notes ], S. 2, in the journal cited, § 119).

In all this gibberish one thing is evident, namely, that
Avenarius designates the physical or matter by the terms
absolute and metaphysics, for, according to his theory of the
principal co-ordination (or, in the new way, “complete expcrience"), the counter-term is inseparable from the central
term, the environment from the self ; the non-self is inseparable from the self (as
J. G. Fichte said). That this theory is disguised subjective
idealism we have already shown, and the nature of
Avenarius’ attacks on “matter” is quite obvious: the idealist denies physical being that is independent
of the

mind and therefore rejects the concept elaborated by philosophy for such being. That matter is “physical”
( i.e. ., that which is most familiar and immediately given to man, and the existence of which no one save an inmate
of a lunatic asylum can doubt) is not denied by Avenarius; he
only insists on the acceptance of “ his ” theory of the indissoluble connection between the environment
and the self .

Mach expresses the same thought more simply, without philosophical flourishes: “What we call matter is a
certain systematic combination of the elements (sensations)” ( Analysis of Sensations ,
p. 265). Mach thinks that by this assertion he is effecting a
“radical change” in the usual world outlook. In reality this is the old, old subjective idealism, the nakedness
of which is concealed by the word “element.”

And lastly, the English Machian, Pearson, a rabid antagonist of
materialism, says: “Now there can be no scientific objection to our classifying certain more or less permanent
groups of sense-impressions together and terming them matter,—to do so indeed leads us very near to John Stuart
Mill’s definition of matter as a ‘permanent possibility of sensation,’—but this definition of
matter then leads us entirely away from matter as the thing
which moves” ( The Grammar of Science , 2nd ed., 1900, p. 249). Here there is not even the fig-leaf of the
“elements,” and the idealist openly stretches out a hand to the agnostic.

As the reader sees, all these arguments of the founders of
empirio-criticism entirely and exclusively revolve around the
old epistemological question of the relation of thinking to
being, of sensation to the physical. It required the extreme
naïveté of the Russian Machians to discern anything here that is even remotely related to “recent
science,” or “recent positivism.” All the philosophers mentioned by us, some frankly, others guardedly,
replace the fundamental philosophical line of materialism (from
being to thinking, from matter to sensation) by the reverse line
of idealism. Their denial of matter is the old answer to
epistemological problems, which consists in denying the
existence of an external, objective source of our sensations, of
an objective reality corresponding to our sensations. On the
other hand, the recognition of the philosophical line denied by
the idealists and agnostics is expressed in the definitions:

matter is that which, acting upon our sense-organs, produces
sensation; matter is the objective reality given to us in
sensation, and so forth.

Bogdanov, pretending to argue only against Beltov and cravenly
ignoring Engels, is indignant at such definitions, which,
don’t you see, “prove to be simple repetitions” ( Empirio-Monism , Bk. III, p. xvi)
of the “formula” ( of Engels , our “Marxist” forgets to add) that for one trend in
philosophy matter is primary and spirit secondary, while for the
other trend the reverse is the case. All the Russian Machians
exultantly echo Bogdanov’s “refutation"! But the slightest reflection could have shown these people that it is
impossible, in the very nature of the case, to give any
definition of these two ultimate concepts of epistemology save
one that indicates which of them is taken as primary. What is
meant by giving a “definition"? It means essentially to
bring a given concept within a more comprehensive concept. For
example, when I give the definition “an ass is an animal,” I am bringing the concept “ass”
within a more comprehensive concept. The question then is, are
there more comprehensive concepts, with which the theory of
knowledge could operate, than those of being and thinking,
matter and sensation, physical and mental? No. These are the
ultimate concepts, the most comprehensive concepts which
epistemology has in point of fact so far not surpassed (apart
from changes in nomenclature , which are always possible). One must be a charlatan or an utter blockhead to
demand a “definition” of these two “series” of concepts of ultimate comprehensiveness
which would not be a “mere repetition": one or the other
must be taken as the primary. Take the three afore-mentioned
arguments on matter. What do they all amount to? To this, that
these philosophers proceed from the mental or the self ,
to the physical, or environment, as from the central term to the
counter-term—or from sensation to matter, or from sense-perception to matter. Could Avenarius, Mach and Pearson in
fact have given any other “definition” of these fundamental concepts, save by pointing to the trend of
their philosophical line? Could they have defined in any other
way, in any specific way, what the self is, what sensation is, what sense-perception is? One has only to
formulate the question clearly to realise what utter non-sense the Machians are talking when they demand that the materialists
give a definition of matter which would not amount to a
repetition of the proposition that matter, nature, being, the
physical—is primary, and spirit, consciousness, sensation,
the psychical—is secondary.

One expression of the genius of Marx and Engels was that they
despised pedantic playing with new words, erudite terms, and
subtle “isms,” and said simply and plainly: there is a materialist line and an idealist line in philosophy, and
between them there are various shades of agnosticism. The
painful quest for a “new” point of view in philosophy betrays the same poverty of mind that is revealed in
the painful effort to create a “new” theory of value, or a “new” theory of rent, and so forth.

Of Avenarius, his disciple Carstanjen says that he once
expressed himself in private conversation as follows: “I
know neither the physical nor the mental, but only some
third.” To the remark of one writer that the concept of
this third was not given by Avenarius, Petzoldt replied:
“We know why he could not advance such a concept. The third lacks a counter-concept ( Gegenbegriff ). . . . The
question, what is the third? is illogically put” ( Einf .
i . d .
Ph . d . r . E ., II, 329). [ Einführung in die Philosophie der reinen Erfahrung [ Introduction to the Philosophy of Pure Experience ], Vol. II, p. 329. – Ed ]
Petzoldt understands that an ultimate concept cannot be
defined. But he does not understand that the resort to a
“third” is a mere subterfuge, for every one of us knows what is physical and what is mental, but none of us knows
at present what that “third” is. Avenarius was merely covering up his tracks by this subterfuge and
actually was declaring that the self is the primary (central term) and nature (environment) the secondary
(counter-term).

Of course, even the antithesis of matter and mind has absolute
significance only within the bounds of a very limited field—in this case exclusively within the bounds of the
fundamental epistemological problem of what is to be regarded as
primary and what as secondary. Beyond these bounds the relative
character of this antithesis is indubitable.

Let us now examine how the word “experience” is used in empirio-critical philosophy. The first paragraph of
The Critique of Pure Experience expounds the following “assumption":

“Any part of our environment stands in relation to human individuals in such a way that, the former
having been given, the latter speak of their experience as
follows: ‘this is experienced,’ ‘this is an experience’; or ‘it followed from experience,’
or ‘it depends upon experience.’” (Russ. trans., p. 1.) Thus experience is defined in terms of
these same concepts: self and environment; while the “doctrine” of their “indissoluble”
connection is for the time being tucked out of the way. Further:
“The synthetic concept of pure experience"—namely, experience “as a predication for which, in all its
components, only parts of the environment serve as a premise” (pp. 1 and 2). If we assume that the environment
exists independently of “declarations” and “predications” of man, then it becomes possible to
interpret experience in a materialist way! “The analytical
concept of pure experience"—"namely, as a predication to
which noth ing is admixed that would not be in its turn
experience and which, therefore, in itself is nothing but
experience” (p. 2). Experience is experience. And there
are people who take this quasi-erudite rigmarole for true
wisdom!

It is essential to add that in the second volume of The Critique of Pure Experience Avenarius regards
“experience” as a “special case” of the mental ; that he divides experience into
sachhafte Werte (thing-values) and gedankenhafte Werte (thought-values); that “experience in the broad
sense” includes the latter; that “complete experience” is identified with the principal
co-ordination ( Bemerkungen ). In short, you pay your money and take your choice. “Experience” embraces
both the materialist and the idealist line in philosophy and
sanctifies the muddling of them. But while our Machians
confidingly accept “pure experience” as pure coin of the realm, in philosophical literature the representatives of
the various trends are alike in pointing to Avenarius’ abuse of this concept. “What pure experience is,”
A. Riehl writes, “remains vague with Avenarius, and his
explanation that ‘pure experience is experience to which
nothing is admixed that is not in its turn experience’ obviously revolves in a circle” ( Systematische Philosophie [ Systematic Philosopby ], Leipzig,
1907, S. 102). Pure experience for Avenarius, writes Wundt, is
at times any kind of fantasy, and at others, a predication with
the character of “corporeality” ( Philosophische Studien , XIII. Band, S. 92-93). Avenarius
stretches the concept experience (S. 382). “On the precise definition of the terms experience and pure
experience,” writes Cauwelaert, “depends the meaning of the whole of this philosophy. Avenarius does not give
a precise definition” ( Revue néo-scolastique , fevrier 1907, p. 61). “The
vagueness of the term ‘experience’ stands him in good stead, and so in the end Avenarius falls back on the
timeworn argument of subjective idealism” (under the pretence of combating it), says Norman Smith ( Mind ,
Vol. XV, p. 29).

“ I openly declare that the inner sense, the soul of my
philosophy consists in this that a human being possesses nothing
save experience; a human being comes to everything to which he
comes only through experience. . . .” A zealous philosopher of pure experience, is he not? The author of these
words is the subjective idealist Fichte ( Sonnenklarer Bericht , usw ., S. 12). We know from the history of
philosophy that the interpretation of the concept experience
divided the classical materialists from the idealists. Today
professorial philosophy of all shades disguises its reactionary
nature by declaiming on the subject of “experience.”
All the immanentists fall back on experience. In the preface to
the second edition of his Knowledge and Error , Mach praises a book by Professor Wilhelm Jerusalem in which we read:
“The acceptance of a divine original being is not contradictory to experience” ( Der kritische Idealismus und die reine Logik [ Critical Idealism and Pure Logic ], S. 222).

One can only commiserate with people who believed Avenarius and
Co. that the “obsolete” distinction between materialism and idealism can be surmounted by the word
“experience.” When Valentinov and Yushkevich accuse
Bogdanov, who departed somewhat from pure Machism, of abusing
the word experience, these gentlemen are only betraying their
ignorance. Bogdanov is “not guilty” in this case; he only slavishly borrowed the muddle of Mach and
Avenarius. When Bogdanov says that “consciousness and immediate mental experience are identical concepts”
( Empirio-Monism , Bk. II, p. 53) while matter is “not experience” but “the unknown which
evokes everything known” ( Empirio-Monism , Bk. III, p. xiii), he is interpreting experience
idealistically .

And, of course, he is not the first [1]
[1] In England Comrade Belfort Bax has been exercising himsclf in this way for a long time. A French reviewer of his book, The Roots of Reality , rather bitingly remarked: experience is only another word for consciousness"; then come forth as an open idealist! ( Revue de philosophie , [2] 1907, No. 10, p. 399). — Lenin nor the
last to build petty idealist systems on the word experience. When he replies to the reactionary philosophers by
declaring that attempts to transcend the boundaries of experience lead in fact “only to empty abstractions and
contradictory images, all the elements of which have nevertheless been taken from experience” (Bk. I, p. 48),
he is drawing a contrast between the empty abstractions of the
human mind and that which exists outside of man and independently of his mind, in other words, he is interpreting
experience as a materialist.

Similarly, even Mach, although he makes idealism his starting
point (bodies are complexes of sensations or “elements")
frequently strays into a materialist interpretation of the word
experience. “We must not philosophise out of ourselves ( nicht aus uns herausphilosophieren ), but must take
from experience,” he says in the Mechanik (3rd
Germ. ed., 1897, p. 14). Here a contrast is drawn between
experience and philosophising out of ourselves, in other words,
experience is regarded as something objective, something given
to man from the outside; it is interpreted materialistically. Here is another example: “What we
observe in nature is imprinted, although uncomprehended and
unanalysed, upon our ideas, which, then, in their most general
and strongest ( stärksten ) features imitate ( nachahmen ) the processes of nature. In these
experiences we possess a treasure-store ( Schatz ) which
is ever to hand. . .” ( op . cit .,
p. 27). Here nature is taken as primary and sensation and
experience as products. Had Mach consistently adhered to this
point of view in the fundamental questions of epistemology, he
would have spared humanity many foolish idealist “complexes.” A third example: “The close
connection of thought and experience creates modern natural
science. Experience gives rise to a thought. The latter is
further elaborated and is again compared with experience”
( Erkenntnis und Irrtum , S. 200). Mach’s special “philosophy” is here thrown overboard, and the
author instinctively accepts the customary standpoint of the
scientists, who regard experience materialistically.

To summarise: the word “experience,” on which the
Machians build their systems, has long been serving as a shield
for idealist systems, and is now serving Avenarius and Co. in
eclectically passing to and fro between the idealist position
and the materialist position. The various “definitions” of this concept are only expressions
of those two fundamental lines in philosophy which were so
strikingly revealed by Engels.

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Notes:
[1] THIS FOOTNOTE has been moved into BODY OF DOCUMENT.

[2]
Revue de philosophic (Review of Philosophy) —a
French idealist journal founded by E. Peillaubt, which was
published in Paris from 1900 to 1939.