The World as an Illusion

Lange is convinced that all scientific endeavors that do not adhere to the statements of the senses and the logical mind that links these statements must remain fruitless. However, his reflections on the origin of knowledge make it clear to him that the senses and the mind together provide us with nothing more than a result of our own organization. For him, the world is basically a fiction of the senses and the mind. This opinion leads him to no longer question the truth of ideas. Lange does not recognize a truth that enlightens us about the nature of the world. Now, precisely because he does not need to concede any truth to the insights of the senses and the intellect, he believes that he can also clear the way for the ideas and ideals that the human mind forms beyond what the senses and intellect give it. He unquestioningly considers everything that goes beyond sensory observation and intellectual knowledge to be fiction. Whatever an idealistic philosopher has conceived about the nature of facts is fiction. The turn that Lange has given to materialism necessarily raises the question: Why should these higher ideas not be valid, since the senses themselves create fiction? How does one type of fiction differ from another? For those who think this way, there must be a completely different reason for accepting an idea than for those who believe they must accept it because it is true. And Lange finds this reason in the fact that an idea has value for life. What matters is not that an idea is true, but that it is valuable to human beings. Only one thing must be clearly recognized: that I see a rose as red, that I link the effect with the cause, is something I have in common with all sentient and thinking creatures. My senses and my mind cannot create extra values. But if I go beyond what the senses and the mind compose, then I am no longer bound to the organization of the entire human species. Schiller, Hegel, Hinz, and Kunz see a flower in the same way; what Schiller composes about the flower, what Hegel thinks about it, Hinz and Kunz do not compose and think in the same way. But just as Hinz and Kunz are mistaken when they consider their idea of the flower to be an entity outside themselves, so Schiller and Hegel would be mistaken if they regarded their ideas as anything other than compositions that correspond to their intellectual needs. What the senses and the mind compose belongs to the entire human race; no one can deviate from the other. What goes beyond sensory and intellectual poetry is a matter for the individual. But Lange nevertheless attributes value to this poetry of the individual for the entire human race if the individual who “produces it is richly and normally gifted and typical in his way of thinking, called to be a leader by his intellectual power.” In this way, Lange believes he can secure the value of the ideal world by turning the so-called real world into poetry. Everywhere we look, he sees only poetry, from the lowest level of sensory perception, where “the individual still appears completely bound to the basic characteristics of the species, up to the creative power of poetry.” "The functions of the senses and the connecting intellect, which create reality for us, can be called lowly in detail compared to the high flight of the spirit in free creative art. But taken as a whole and in their context, they cannot be subordinated to any other mental activity. As little as our reality is a reality according to the desires of our hearts, it is nevertheless the firm foundation of our entire spiritual existence. The individual grows out of the soil of the species, and general and necessary knowledge forms the only secure foundation for the elevation of the individual to an aesthetic conception of the world." (“History of Materialism,” 1887, p. 824f.)