However, it will be necessary to ensure that the natural tensions or those arising in the normal course of social existence are not arbitrarily accumulated or forced or -- the opposite perversion -- satisfied by the lightest stimulation, and thus prevented from developing a want which is capable of gratification.
In this as in other cases the maintenance of the natural rhythm is the precondition of all harmonious and agreeable movement. Nor should anyone set before himself the insoluble problem of trying to prolong the stimuli of any situation beyond the period allotted them by nature or by the circumstances"1
The simpleton who takes as his rule for the "testing of life" these solemn oracles of philistine pedantry subtilising over the shallowest platitudes will certainly not have to complain of "gaps entirely devoid of interest".
It will take him all his time to prepare his pleasures and get them in the right order, so that he will not have a moment left to enjoy them.
We should try out life, full life. There are only two things which Herr Dühring prohibits us:
first "the uncleanliness of indulging in tobacco", and secondly drinks and foods which "have properties that rouse disgust or are in general obnoxious to the more refined feelings" {261}.
In his course of political economy, however, Herr Dühring writes such a dithyramb on the distilling of spirits that it is impossible that he should include spirituous liquor in this category; we are therefore forced to conclude that his prohibition covers only wine and beer. He has only to prohibit meat, too, and then he will have raised the philosophy of reality to the same height as that on which the late Gustav Struve moved with such great success -- the height of pure childishness.
For the rest, Herr Dühring might be slightly more liberal in regard to spirituous liquors. A man who, by his own admission still cannot find the bridge from the static to the dynamic {D. Ph. 80} has surely every reason to be indulgent in judging some poor devil who has for once dipped too deep in his glass and as a result also seeks in vain the bridge from the dynamic to the static.
XII.
DIALECTICS.
QUANTITY AND QUALITY "T he first and most important principle of the basic logical properties of being refers to the exclusion of contradiction. Contradiction is a category which can only appertain to a combination of thoughts, but not to reality. There are no contradictions in things, or, to put it another way, contradiction accepted as reality is itself the apex of absurdity {D. Ph. 30} ... The antagonism of forces measured against each other and moving in opposite directions is in fact the basic form of all actions m the life of the world and its creatures. But this opposition of the directions taken by the forces of elements and individuals does not in the slightest degree coincide with the idea of absurd contradictions {31} ... We can be content here with having cleared the fogs which generally rise from the supposed mysteries of logic by presenting a clear picture of the actual absurdity of contradictions in reality and with having shown the uselessness of the incense which has been burnt here and there m honour of the dialectics of contradiction -- the very clumsily carved wooden doll which is substituted for the antagonistic world schematism" {32}
This is practically all we are told about dialectics in the Cursus der Philosophie. In his Kritische Geschichte , on the other hand, the dialectics of contradiction, and with it particularly Hegel, is treated quite differently.
"Contradiction, according to the Hegelian logic, or rather Logos doctrine, is objectively present not in thought, which by its nature can only be conceived as subjective and conscious, but in things and processes themselves and can be met with in so to speak corporeal form, so that absurdity does not remain an impossible combination of thought but becomes an actual force.
The reality of the absurd is the first article of faith in the Hegelian unity of the logical and the illogical.... The more contradictory a thing the truer it is, or in other words, the more absurd the more credible it is. This maxim, which is not even newly invented but is borrowed from the theology of the Revelation and from mysticism, is the naked expression of the so-called dialectical principle" {D. K. G. 479-80}.
The thought-content of the two passages cited can be summed up in the statement that contradiction=absurdity, and therefore cannot occur in the real world.
People who in other respects show a fair degree of common sense may regard this statement as having the same self-evident validity as the statement that a straight line cannot be a curve and a curve cannot be straight.
But, regardless of all protests made by common sense, the differential calculus under certain circumstances nevertheless equates straight lines and curves, and thus obtains results which common sense, insisting on the absurdity of straight lines being identical with curves, can never attain.
And in view of the important role which the so-called dialectics of contradiction has played in philosophy from the time of the ancient Greeks up to the present, even a stronger opponent than Herr Dühring should have felt obliged to attack it with other arguments besides one assertion and a good many abusive epithets.
