p The idealists and neo-Kantians reproach the materialists with “reducing” psychical phenomena to material phenomena. F. A. Lange says that "materialism is constantly faced with the insurmountable obstacle of explaining how conscious sensation can arise from material motion".  [593•*  Lange as a historian of materialism should, however, have known that the materialists have never promised to answer this question. They assert only—to use Huxley’s above-mentioned and extremely apt expression—that apart from substance possessing extension there is no other thinking substance and that, like motion, consciousness is a function of matter. This materialist idea was already expressed—true, extremely naively—in the teaching of Diogenes of Apollonia, who maintained that the primary matter—air, according to his teaching—was endowed with consciousness and "knew much”. La Mettrie, who is looked on as a "most crude materialist”, declined to explain whence came the capacity of matter to have sensation. He accepted this capacity as a fact, he believed it was as mucli an attribute of matter as its capacity for motion. La Mettrie’s 594 views on this subject were very close to Spinoza’s, which is not surprising, since he was influenced by Descartes in elaborating his theory; but, like Spinoza, he rejected the dualism of the great Frenchman. In his work UHomme-plante, he says that of all living creatures, man is the one which has the most soul and the plant is the one which has the least. But he gives us to understand at the very same time that the “soul” of the plant does not at all resemble the soul of man. "The beautiful soul, which concerns itself with no objects, no desires, has no passions, no vices, no virtues, and above all, no needs, would not be burdened even with the care of providing food for its body!" By this he meant that to the various forms of material organisation correspond various degrees of “animation”.  [594•* 

p In my controversy with Bernstein,^^282^^ I gave documentary proof that the most brilliant representative of another trend in eighteenth-century French materialism,Diderot, held the point of view of "modern Spinozists" (his own expression), who "proceed from the basic principle that matter is capable of sensation”, and are convinced that only matter “exists” and that its existence is an adequate explanation of all phenomena.  [594•**  To avoid unnecessary repetition, I shall add just this: the materialist Moleschott, who at one time was also very well known in Russia, tried to incorporate the same view in his own works, giving it, by the way, the characteristic title of material-spiritual view (stoffgeistige Anschauung).  [594•*** 

p With the present universal domination of idealism, it is quite natural that the history of philosophy should be expounded from the idealist standpoint. As a consequence, Spinoza has long since been listed among the idealists; so that some reader will probably be very surprised that I understand Spinozism in the materialist sense. But this is the only correct way to understand it.

p Already in 1843 Feuerbach expressed the quite justified conviction that Spinoza’s teaching was an "expression of the materialist trend of the recent epoch”. Of course, Spinoza too did not escape the influence of his time. As Feuerbach remarked, his 595 materialism was clad in theological costume.  [595•*  The important point was, however, that he eliminated the dualism of spirit and nature. If Spinoza does refer to nature as God, one of the attributes of his God is extension. Therein lies the cardinal distinction between Spinozism and idealism.  [595•** 

p The dualism of spirit and nature is also eliminated in idealism. Absolute idealism preached the identity of subject and object in the womb of the absolute.But this identity was achieved by declaring that the existence of the object was nothing more than its existence in the “self-contemplation” (or self-thought) of the absolute spirit. Here too, in the final analysis, to be meant "to be in perception" (esse est percipi). It was on this basis that the idealists could speak of the identity of subject and object.

p Materialists assert, not the identity of subject and object, but their unity. “I” am not only a subject, but also an object: each given “I” is a subject for itself and an object for another. That, "which for me, or subjectively, is a purely spiritual, immaterial, insensible act, in itself, or objectively, is a material, sensible act" (Feuerbach).

If this is the case, we have no right to speak of the unknowability of the object.