p Since consciousness is inseparable from highly organised matter and is its product, then is it not a variety of matter and identical to it? That, precisely, is what vulgar materialists maintain.  [59•*  Speculating on the indivisibility of consciousness and matter, they also consider them identical and assert, in particular, that the relation of thought to the brain is approximately the same as that of gall to the liver, and that the brain allegedly secretes thought.

p Being fully consistent with the achievements of natural sciences dialectical materialism rejects the vulgar-materialist understanding of consciousness. Although consciousness is connected with definite material physiological processes, it cannot be reduced to these processes. Thought is inseparable from matter, from the brain, but it must not be identified with matter. Lenin held that to regard thought as material means to make a wrong step towards confusing materialism with idealism.

p Thought is not a thing, it cannot be seen or photographed. Thought is the image of objects and phenomena existing in the world. It is an ideal and not a material image. It is not a simple photograph of reality, not a lifeless copy of it. Marx wrote about thought that “the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought”.  [59•**  Reality, acting on man, always passes through the prism of the laws governing thought, such as analysis and synthesis, generalisation, etc.... What sets man apart from animals is his ability to think, i.e., 60 to actively reflect reality, to influence it, to set himself certain aims and work for their achievement.

p Dialectical materialism rejects the vulgar-materialist understanding of consciousness. It regards as a profound mistake the assertion that consciousness or thought is an attribute of all matter. The great Dutch philosopher Spinoza, for example, held that consciousness is as much a necessary attribute (property) of all nature as extension, corporeality.

p This view is wrong, because it ignores the qualitative differences between inorganic and organic matter (thinking matter in particular). Lenin held that sensation in a clearly manifest form is inherent only in higher, organic forms of matter, whereas all matter possesses only the property of reflection, i.e., the ability to react in a definite way to external influences. To a certain extent this property is akin to sensation, but is not identical with it and therefore consciousness cannot be regarded as a property of all matter.

p Speculating on the ideal nature of consciousness, idealists maintain that it exists on its own, independent of matter. Their line of reasoning runs as follows: if thought is ideal, is not a thing and therefore cannot be found in the human brain, it is consequently not connected with matter or the brain, and exists independently. It is allegedly not only independent of matter, but even “creates” it. Idealists refuse to see behind thought its prototype, the things and objects of the objective world.

p Attempts to divorce thought from the brain are also absolutely untenable. Lenin aptly called a philosophy which endeavours to do so and asserts that thought exists without the brain a “brainless” philosophy. Natural science, Lenin wrote, firmly upholds that consciousness does not exist independently of the body, that it is secondary, a function of the brain, a reflection of the outside world.

At the same time Lenin maintained that there was no absolute antithesis between consciousness and matter, that it is absolute only within the framework of the fundamental question of philosophy, i.e., of the question what is primary, matter or consciousness. Outside the limits of the fundamental question of philosophy this antithesis is relative. In the first place this is manifested in the fact that consciousness is a property of highly organised matter, 61 arises and develops under the influence of material factors, and, in the second place, in the fact that, having arisen on the basis of matter, consciousness acquires a degree of independence and actively influences the development of the material world.