Owing to historical conditions, he was still so envel-
oped by traditional faith, particularly the faith in eternal
moral law, that he did not even attempt to employ the
only scientific method, namely, that of consciously con-
necting the mind with sense-perceptions, for the study



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yo PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAYS

of metaphysical riddles. What Kant failed to accom-
plish was carried further by Dietzgen, thanks to the
higher social stage on which he stood. Dietzgen's " The
Nature of Human Brain Work " is devoted to the analy-
sis of the scientific method of thought. In this little
work he ascertains that the inductive or empirical method
; of thought is the one peculiar to the force of thought,
i that we cannot in reality think in any other way, but.
j merely imagine we are doing so, because meditation is
; nothing else but associative elaboration, by means of mem-
', ory, of the mental material obtained originally from ob-
jective sense-perceptions. But apart from many allu-
sions, Dietzgen did not go very far beyond the stand-
point of historical materialism in applying his method in
this work, that is to say, he did not explicitly pass from
the social to the cosmic interrelations. This is done,
however, in his " Excursions " and in his " Outcome of
Philosophy." Here he develops the dialectics of Marx
and Engels, which is a theory of development through
'antagonisms to a higher stage, by perfecting it and point-
ing out that the universe is the last and highest organic
unit, which combines monistically all other syntheses.
