68

p The propositions made above that mediating representations play an important role in the transition from sensory reflection of reality to its rational reflection, and that the subjective faculty of creating such representations must have an objective determinant cause, face us with the task of making a more detailed examination of the radical difference in the interaction of animals and of men with their environment. The difference is that, while an ’organism—- nature’ relationship is characteristic of the former, a ’man— humanised nature—nature’ one is characteristic of the latter. We shall now concentrate on analysing the features of these latter relationships.

p It will readily be noted that the middle link in this relation is, on the one hand, the product of the labour of man himself (embodying precisely the human aspect) while on the other hand, it retains its natural basis, in spite of man’s processing of it, in the sense that it interacts with objects of nature as a natural object.

p Among the whole variety of things comprising the ‘second’ nature by which men have ’fenced themselves off’ from virgin nature, means of production have a very important place, especially tools, as the main link mediating man’s relation with nature. It is therefore expedient to distinguish the following relation ‘man—tool—nature’ from the general formula characterising man’s relation with nature, and to examine it specially. Two key moments are clearly distinguishable: (1) man’s action on the tool; (2) the effect of the tool on the natural environment.

69

p The fundamental qualitative difference of this indirect, mediated relation of man and his environment from the animal’s direct link with its medium is that man, by his actions, makes the tool, i.e. nature altered by himself, work for him. The results of the action of a tool on objects of nature differ radically from the results of man’s direct action on the tool. The difference is that the end results of man’s action on objects of nature mediated by means of a tool contain a substantial ‘addition’ to the results of his own efforts; and this ‘addition’ consists, as it were, in an increase, transformation, and speeding up of his physiological functions through the action of the artificial organs that he has created. The property of tools that interests us is therefore that of serving as a kind of additional factor to human efforts.

p Men bring forces latent in tools into action which begin a self-movement relatively independent of them. However the primitive stone axe of antiquity differs from the modern machine tool, they have this in common, that both are natural objects transformed by man and put into his service, But a simple comparison of a stone axe and a machine tool already shows how far man has advanced on the road of mastering objective laws so as to make them work for him.

p A tool, while possessing signs of a relative ‘self-action’ (within more or less narrow limits), is a definite, connected whole that has a certain autonomy in relation both to man and to non-humanised, virgin nature. It can consequently be regarded as a kind of system (taking the concept of a system developed in science as a certain entity of many elements united by certain interactions).^^1^^

p Since all three members of the relationship ’man—tool— nature’ that we are considering are linked together by an interaction and constitute a certain unity, this relation as a whole can itself be regarded as a kind of system, but one of a higher order than the system ‘organism—nature’. That is already clear from the example of the relation that existed at the dawn of humanity (elementary from the modern standpoint) of ’hunter—throwing spear—animal’. The interaction of the elements of this broader system can be expressed by the formula

p in which S is the man who puts the tool into action, M is the tool operating on the natural environment, and N is that 70 part of nature that is effected by the tool (and called the object of labour).^^2^^ The arrows indicate the direction of the effect of the elements of the system on one another. Function -*M is effected by man’s physiological efforts expended on bringing the tool into action. Function -+N completes the action of the tool (as a whole or through some of its elements) on the object of labour.

p The active, ‘actuating’ part of the whole system ’man— tool—object of labour’, it will be seen, is man himself. It is he who puts the whole three-member system into action. Without the application of his physical efforts, which fulfil the function of operating with tools, the system S -> M -> -*• N could not even arise; and when these efforts cease to be made, it sooner or later ceases to exist as a system, having lost its integrity and the interconnection of its parts.

p On the other hand, man’s application of his own efforts to a tool may cease as soon as they have fulfilled their role of actuating factor leading to movement of the tool. At that moment, which represents the end result of his direct action on the tool, a process of relatively independent movement of the tool begins, i.e. its ‘self-action’. A spear, for instance, thrown by a man, flies without intervention of the thrower as soon as il leaves his hand. The distance and direction of its flight depends on the initial speed and direction imparted to it by the thrower, the resistance of the air, and other objective conditions. The tool’s independent motion has its end, determined by the context of its resources of ’self- movement’ that have been brought into action. The result of its interaction with the object of labour is the obtaining of a product of labour that serves to satisfy man’s needs. The interaction of the elements of the three-member system is thus, on the one side, continuous (as an on-going process), but on the other discontinuous (as a result of this process).

p The interconnection of the continuous and discontinuous in this interaction is manifested in the result’s being the end (a break in the continuity) of the preceding process and, at the same time, the beginning of the next. Man’s action on the tool ceases, in fact, as soon as it has led to prolongation of the process through actuation of the tool’s ’ selfmovement’. Things then happen ’of themselves’, as it were, according to the laws of objective causal connections so long as the conditions are preserved in which those links continue to operate. At that stage, if there is intervention by man, it is of quite a (qualitatively) different character; 71 his efforts are now concentrated on maintaining conditions for continuance of the mediator’s self-movement, rather than on actuating it, so long as this interference does not exceed the limits of his physical possibilities in each concrete case. " Here we may cite primitive man’s use of fire as a mediator between himself and the environment. (Its mastery was an enormous stride in his taming of the forces of nature.) Rapid friction of wooden objects on one another calls for the application of physical effort so that the heat thereby emitted will be sufficient to ignite dry grass. But when that result has been achieved, the action of the person who has made fire changes qualitatively. It now consists in maintaining the process of combustion by adding dry twigs, and then bigger pieces of wood to the ignited fire. Having caused a chain reaction of combustion (started by mediator M), man brings into action forces of nature itself latent in the mediator, which leads to results that he could not have achieved directly. He cannot melt metal by the heat of his own body, but he can kindle fire from sparks he has struck, and smelt metal by it.

p The result obtained through the action of a mediator on the object of labour is the end of the process S -* M -*• N, insofar as this result is objectified in something capable of satisfying man’s needs. But the process of the exchange of matter and energy between the human organism and nature (being an eternal, natural condition of existence) cannot be ended with once-only consumption of the product made. Consumption must, of vital necessity, be renewed, which inevitably leads to the beginning of a new cycle of the production of the object of consumption. This circulation can be represented in very simplified form by the following scheme:

p M

p / \

p Its constant renewal is an integral part of the production and reproduction of human life; it is characterised by continuity and is a manifestation of movement and change. The result, on the contrary, appears as an interruption, completion, consummation; it is a section of the process, ’a single frame of a moving picture film’, as it were.

p Let us designate the result of man’s action on a tool by the symbol R_a, and the result of the effect of the tool on the object of labour by R_b.

p n

72

p It will readily be noted that there is a radical difference between the relation of the results in the chain r_lt r₂, . . . r_n considered in the previous chapter, characteristic of the direct link between animals and the environment, on the one hand, and the relations of the results R_a and R_b. The difference is that,, whereas the results are linked together in the first case simply by the inner active integrity of the living organism itself, they are associated in the second case through the action of an external object, objectified in relation to the organism, i.e. a tool. The link between the results of an animal’s effect on the environment does not, therefore, have any ‘addition’ to its own efforts, while the result of the effect of a tool on the object of labour contains a substantial ‘addition’ that cannot be reduced simply to man’s physical efforts.

p A very primitive pointed object in the hands of a savage during a hunt, or in repelling an attack, enabled him to achieve successes that would have been unattainable through operations performed by his ’bare hands’, even if the physical effort exerted by the primitive hunter had been sufficient for it in either case. A sharp weapon would increase the hunter’s strength tenfold. Where does such an ‘increase’ of strength come from?

p That question could now be answered by any schoolboy who knows, for example, the physical law of the differences in the results of the action of one and the same force on an object in accordance with the area of its application, a law that permits a person on skis to slide over deep snow, while he would sink into it if he were on stilts, though his weight is unchanged.^^3^^ The effect of this objective law is due to the fact that a sharp, pointed object can pierce a victim, which could not be done by the blow of an unarmed hand.

p The appearance of an ‘addition’ to the savage’s own efforts when he employed such an object as mediator between himself and the environment consequently stemmed from the fact that he put the operation of an objective law of nature to his use. He had not the slightest idea, of course, of the action of that objective law, or of any other. The practical application of external means of adaptation that preceded tools (which may conventionally be called instruments of pre-labour) did not stem from knowledge of objective laws, but was dictated by the rigorous conditions of the struggle for existence. On the other hand, man’s ancestors, employing very primitive tools as a mediator between themselves and 73 nature, were already employing the separate results of the operation of those laws in their life activity.

p The question arises whether the ‘addition’ to the physical efforts proper of man’s ancestors through the use of instruments of pre-labour is linked with the ‘addition’ that distinguishes the rational level of the reflection of reality from the sensory. That supposition merits attention, since moments can be discovered on the path of the emergence of this addition that throw still more light on the mechanism of the origin of consciousness as a causally conditioned process with an objective basis.

p The difference between the results of actions by ’bare hands’ and those with the aid of instruments of pre-labour could obviously not help find reflection in the psyche of prehominids that were forced to resort more and more to regular use of instruments (tools), since this difference was of vital importance and was perceived already at the level of sensory reflection as a certain superficial sequence of events. At the same time grasping of the features of this difference went beyond the bounds of its possible reflection at the sensory level. The whole course of evolution led to a time when of necessity there was a qualitative transformation of the sensory level of reflection of reality to a new, higher level. The initial ‘material’ for that transformation was prepared by the whole course of preceding natural evolution.

p The fact that the transition to constant use of external means of adaptation that preceded tools helped man’s ancestors to see new objective links between objects of the external world is one of the most important and broadly accepted theses of the materialist explanation of the evolution of man from apes. This thesis (ignored by holders of subjective conceptions of the genesis of consciousness) makes it possible to explain the objective determination of the transition from sensory reflection of reality to its reflection in the logic of concepts. But the answer how, precisely, the qualitative change in the reflection of the external world in hominids’ psyche caused by the appearance of these new, objective connections came about, does not follow automatically from acceptance of this thesis.

p The transition to a higher level of reflection must have been accompanied with changes in the material substratum of reflection and the development of new functional links in the organism’s neurophysiological structure, because 74 consciousness is a function of a material body, the human brain. That question interests us, however, mainly from another aspect, namely from the angle of the change in the forms of psychic reflection of reality, and of discovery of the logical mechanism of the transition from the sensory to the rational. The logical difficulty in answering this question is that it is a matter of disclosing the logic of the origin of logic itself.

p Since a subject has no other sources of information about events than sense data or sensibilia, and reason operates with general concepts or universals that are not directly reducible to sensibilia, the transition from sensibilia to universals must have been associated with the existence of some intermediate link that played the role of logical equivalent in the transition. Kant’s clearly formulated question about the need to introduce a mediating representation, similar on the one side to intellect, and on the other to sense data, had a solid foundation but it did not, as we said earlier, get a satisfactory answer from Kant (or his successors), because the nature of the representation was treated subjectively and lost in a labyrinth of idealistic, transcendental schemata. Although a faculty of creating concepts and operating with them according to certain rules is inherent in the subject rather than the object, nevertheless the origin of this faculty itself must be substantiated as the result of a natural, historical process. Without that condition it is impossible to get a truly scientific answer to this problem.

p According to Lenin’s theory of reflection, a representation or notion is a subjective image of the objective world. The same supposition applies to the mediating representation; a necessary condition of its origin must seemingly have been the appearance in objective reality of an object that could get reflected in the head of man’s ancestors precisely as a mediating representation. To do that the object itself must have had a mediating character.

p The subjective image has an objective content not dependent on the subject. The mediator-object that found reflection in a mediating representation must therefore have been an object existing objectively as an object of the environment independent of the subject. But since a notion is a subjective image of an objective object, this mediating object must have belonged to the subject and have included an element of subjectivity. Its mediating character must consequently have consisted in its performing the role of mediator between 75 the subject and the object, and its containing something in common from both sides.

p The transition of man’s ancestors to regular use of external objects of adaptation (which we have conventionally called instruments of pre-labour), caused by vital necessity, also signified the development of such a mediating object. The dual, contradictory character of this object, its ‘kinship’ with both the subject and the object, consists in a tool’s being, as it were, an extension of the organism’s bodily organs, yet operating on another external object precisely as a natural object on an object of nature.

p The use of a mediator-tool must, furthermore, have led to the development of results that were fixed at the level of direct sense perception, on the one side, as a certain sequence of events, while, on the other side, this sense perception itself must have had a content of something that went beyond the possibilities of direct sense perception, fixing on arising need for a transition to reflection of inner objective connections not accessible to direct perception.

p Constant use of instruments of pre-labour led to the appearance of just such results. In fact, the difference between the results of the actions of the ’bare hand’ and those with the help, for example, of a sharp instrument was so obvious that it could not help being noted at the level of direct sensory reflection. Nevertheless man’s ancestors, using a sharp object as a mediator could have examined and felt it many times, felt pain from pricking their own bodies by its point, but no sensory associations could have formulated the physical law in their brains through whose operation the point could pierce a victim’s body with incomparably greater success than the unarmed hand. For the savage the instrument was literally a ’black box’, the essence of whose action he could not explain, but whose manifestation he felt in his experience as a substantial addition to his own efforts.

p The time had come for a qualitative leap in the development of psychic reflection of reality. Between the fixing in S (the memory of man) of result R_a (the effect of man’s ancestor S on instrument M) and result R_b (the effect of instrument M on natural environment N) there arose a new psychic link in the brain of man, who was becoming differentiated from the animal kingdom. This link differed qualitatively from reflection of the relations r_l, r₂, . . . r_n characteristic of the living organism’s direct relationship with its environment. This newly arising link reflected the fact that 76 resuit R_b, of vital importance for the living organism, was the consequence of the action of some force external to it, embodied within the object-instrument, a force that at the same time was brought into play by the organism’s own actions that led to result R_a. In other words, a link was already grasped between different results R_a and Rb, not as a superficial sequence of events but in the form of a notion of the instrument’s capacity to give an addition to the organism’s own physical efforts, thanks to the existence of some internal, mysterious force in the instrument hidden from the eyes.

p A guess arose initially in the brain of prehominids that they had called forth and brought into play, by their own efforts, inner forces of objects of external nature in order to get results vitally necessary to them. Figuratively speaking, this guess still did not signify the dawning of the sun of reason, but it was a first flash of lightning illuminating the dark night of the preconscious with the light of thought. Supposedly, this guess signified the rise, in the field of the material, neurophysiological substratum, of a new level of connections between brain centres, in which results R_a and R_b had already been fixed as interconnected according to the scheme of direct sensory reflection, i.e. through their emotional ‘appreciation’ by the organism. The new level of neurophysiological link corresponded, moreover, to an interconnection of these results, objectified as regards the organism, and perceived through the ‘independent’ mediating activity of the external mediator-instrument. From that moment the moulding of man as a rational creature, and his transition from the sensory to the rational stage of knowledge, began. The first human concept, differing qualitatively from sense perception, consisted in grasping the fact that some force latent within things lay behind their external, sense-perceivable appearance. The concept thus penetrated into things, which ceased from that moment to be simply ‘things-in-themselves’ for man.

p In that way, it was not the similarity in memory of similar results of sensory experience, but on the contrary the establishing of an inner connection between the different results stemming from the use of an instrument, that underlay the transition from sensibilia to concepts.

p Primitive man, without knowing the true nature of this newly discovered interconnection, attributed a faculty of Self-action to the instrument on a level with his own 77 capacity to perform actions. The various actions of other men, and of encountered animals, constantly perceived at the level of direct sensory reflection, could not generate such an association without the development of an external object that could be brought into action precisely along the lines of S -»- M ->• N, i.e. by man’s ancestor’s own actions.

p As we have already remarked, the mechanism of the formation of associations consisted, with a direct relationship between the living organism and the natural environment, in correlation of the reflection of objects of the environment with the organism’s emotional ‘appreciation’, rather than in a direct correlation of the reflected objects with one another. Now, however, with relations with the environment mediated by tools, the mechanism of association, while including the previously attained level, was no longer reducible to it. With the development of tools man’s own action was extended, as it were, into the action of the tool (because it was set in motion precisely by his action), but at the same time the mediator-tool was not a living extension of the human body, and remained an object of the environment. Man’s feeling of self-movement, therefore, was transferred on the one hand to the motion of the tool, and on the other hand was fixed as the tool’s capacity for selfaction, since the gap between its actuation and its action on the object of labour was obvious. Such a transfer of man’s actions to the action of the tool led to this, that whereas the activity of the living organism had previously been reflected solely as a sensory, internally experienced fact relating to the organism, it was now reflected as well as a fact of experience relating to the internal properties of an object of the environment. The tool was now regarded as a feeling, animate object capable of independent action. But, having ’breathed life’ into objects of the external world, man’s ancestors also ‘exalted’ themselves, and took the important step of distinguishing themselves from the natural environment as a special force. Man’s ancestors’ guess about the source of the ‘addition’ to their actions, hidden in the mediator-tool, received a naive, animistic form: the dead, inanimate, tool was now treated as a living body.

p In spite of the naivete of the first animistic views, they exhibited a reflection of the world at a new, previously unattainable level of ideal reflection. For all its primitiveness, the animistic picture of the world already contained a kernel 78 of truth, which consisted in a guess about the existence of objective relations in nature, of the existence of inner sources of self-movement in the external world. The great revolutionary significance of that discovery was not in the least reduced by the fact that the savage did not yet, and could not, know the true cause of the self-movement, any more than by the fact that, when using a tool in his activity, and in practice putting the objective laws of nature to his service, he did not have the slightest conception of them.

p It took whole epochs of development of mankind’s practical and cognitive activity before any of the objective natural connections were explained, and the dialectical materialist law of the unity and struggle of opposites was formulated as the source of the self-motion of matter. But the first step toward that had already been taken then, when modern man’s ancestors guessed the existence of some inner, inherent, active force hidden behind the external appearance of objects of the environment. That guess took the primitive, naive form of ascribing a spirit to these objects; this act also contained the hidden ‘secret’ of the ‘addition’, which subjectively laid the basis of the qualitative difference between conceptual thought and the aggregate of direct sense data.

p We must very definitely stress that, although the emergence of this ‘addition’ also contained an abstract possibility of subjective mystification of objective processes, there was in fact nothing mystical in its origin. Its emergence has its scientific explanation precisely as an objectively determined process. For, before man’s subjective faculty to form concepts containing an ‘addition’ to the aggregate of sensibilia developed, an ‘addition’ to the results of the direct exertions of his ancestors had already arisen in objective reality itself, caused by forced transition to constant use of instruments of pre-labour.

p The origin of the guess about the source of the transformation of result R_a into R_b through the mediation of an external instrument signified the origin of a mediating representation. This notion included the sensory image of the instrument on the one hand, as a ‘copy’ of an objectively existing object with a definite form, weight, hardness, etc. (e.g. a sharp stone), and on the other hand as an external object that could, under compulsion of the subject, contain an independent action inherent in it (e.g. infliction of a mortal wound).

79

p The savage’s notion of a dead instrument (tool) as ati animate object did not, of course, correspond in any way to the truth. The sharp instrument concerned was not only not animate, and could not become so, but also did not augment the physical force applied to it by the savage. It only transformed that force, increasing the effectiveness of its application in proportion to the reduction in the area of thrust. Nevertheless there was an objectively true content in this notion, which consisted in reflection of the fact of a real transformation of force by means of an instrument. This second aspect of the mediating representation became a very primitive means of uniting in the savage’s head the results of his action on the instrument and the results of the instrument’s effect on an object of the environment.

p The origin of the mediating representation, conditioned by the objective process of the transition to activity mediated by tools, meant that a new psychic faculty arose in the acting subject, namely a subjective capacity to create mediating representations. This representation thus emerged as one of an objectively existing intermediary that linked various sensually observed events into a whole through the subjective endowing of this mediator with real or imaginary properties of activity that went beyond direct sense perception.

p This faculty can be called imagination. The ‘original’ faculty of imagination, which had its sources at the time of the rise of mediating representations, also became differentiated during the knowing subject’s social and historical development in accordance with the role that it began to perform in acts of the creative thought process, and has been given various labels: productive imagination, intellectual intuition, fantasy, artistic invention, creative illumination, etc.

p Since the development of a mediating representation meant the fixing of a connection between at least two different phenomena in primitive man’s head, the connection fixed as a psychic phenomenon contained the possibility, in undeveloped, embryonic form, of the origin of the first cellule of logical thought, viz., the beginning of that ’schematism of our understanding’, the secret of whose rise idealists declare to be inaccessible to scientific knowledge. It will be readily concluded from the foregoing that the beginning of the formation of rational reflection of reality was the fixing in the psyche of a connection that can be simplified as follows, 80 using our symbols:

p ’If R_a, then R_b (through mediator M)^^1^^,

p where jR₀ is the result of man’s action on the tool, M the tool, and R_b the result of the tool’s effect on the object of labour.⁴ In our view this scheme can be regarded as the initial ’ cellule’ of logical thought.

p The origin of the first idea through imaginary attribution of properties of inner activity to a tool should not, obviously, be interpreted as the appearance in primitive man’s head of concepts of the type of ’this is a tree’, ’kill a leopard’, etc. If man’s ancestor, whose head was first penetrated by a thought, already possessed a developed faculty of articulate speech, he would rather have fixed the birth of thought in a quite complex expression, like ’Just look at that! This object we have thrown has killed the leopard!’ The primitive men being differentiated from the animal kingdom did not, of course, possess the faculty of expressing an idea in such complicated form. But it was not necessary, since the idea first arising, which contained our three-member relation in ’ rolled-up’ form, was still an inarticulate thing, and could therefore be expressed by using relatively simple gestures and sound signals of some sort to draw attention.

p Just as with the living organism’s direct connection with its environment, perception and sensation coincided at first, and only later were separate sensations and perceptions singled out from this unity so, with man’s connection with the environment mediated by a tool, the first idea was something integrated and inarticulate. Only in the course of further evolution were separate concepts, judgments, and inferences singled out from this unity, and all the forms of thought arose, governed by certain rules. But in contrast to the source of the original integral unity of perception and sensation, which consisted in the wholeness of the living organism itself, the original integral character or wholeness of the idea ascended to the formation of a representation of a mediating producer external to the organism that linked the events into a certain unity.

p The qualitative transition from the sensory to the rational level of reflection is thus associated with the origin of a mediating representation. But, before this representation could emerge as the mediating link between the sensory and the rational, the tool had emerged as a real and not an imaginary mediator between the organism and the environment.

81

p During our subsequent exposition we shall have to return again to a more detailed examination of the interpretation of the qualitative change in direct sensory reflection caused by transference of primitive man’s vital activity to the ‘activity’ of the tools he used, changes that transformed the whole sphere of sensibility, including instincts, emotions, perceptions, sense of needs, etc., over the course of a lengthy development. Here we would draw attention simply to the most common consequences of this ‘transference’ from the angle of the rise in primitive man’s head of those ’ universals’ which, in contrast to ‘sensa’ (sense data), opened a door to the inaccessible world of the mental identification and differentiation of things and their properties and relations.

p The transference of man’s own life activity that differentiated him from the animal kingdom to the instrument of pre-labour he employed stemmed from the fact that his life activity was objectified in the instrument’s action. But this objectivising meant that primitive man (in contrast to animals) got the opportunity to see his life activity as ’his other’, embodied in the action of external objects. One may say that man’s self-knowledge began with his recognition of himself in the patterns or regularities of the environment that he had discovered in the course of joint activity. Man’s altitude to external nature began to be governed by the scheme ’subject— subjectified object—object’.

p In the first mediating representation that reflected the transition to the use of tools, there was already the embryo of the universal, the general concept of the identity and difference of man and nature. The mediating representation that attributed a property of internal activity to objects, concealed behind their outward appearance, made it possible to establish a link ’/ and not-/’ (though still in the naive form of attributing a spirit) as two sides possessing some quality in common (precisely a capacity for self-movement and active efforts according to certain rules), and so being, in that sense, identical. But the link thus established was at the same time one between two different aspects opposed to one another. Primitive man, being himself a natural force, was compelled to struggle against the forces of the environment, defending his ‘right’ to exist.

p The transition to use of tools opened up quite new opportunities in that struggle, putting forces of nature at man’s disposal that gave a significant ‘increment’ to his own forces. 82 It was that transition which led to the origin of man himself as a rational being. At the same time, however, a boundless prospect was opened up before primitive man’s senses and thought, in contrast to animals’ direct sense reflection of reality, of the action of such powerful, incomprehensible forces hidden behind the outward appearance of things, that his own forces seemed insignificant beside the natural forces opposing him. The low level of development of the productive forces in primitive society still made man almost wholly dependent on the elemental forces of nature.

p Notes to Chapter 3

p  ^^1^^ See Filosofskaya entsiklopediya, Vol. 5 (Moscow, 1970), p. 18.

p ^a The concept of object of labour is used here in the same sense as in political economy, with the reservation, however, that since man’s indirect relation with nature is regarded from the most general aspect, there is no need to introduce the concept of raw material as that part of the object of labour which is an already partially processed object of virgin nature.

p  ^^3^^ The dependence between the physical quantity of the force acting (by pressure) perpendicularly to a unit of surface area and the area of that part of the surface on which it operates (the area of thrust) is expressed in simplified form

p F

p by the formula P = -=-, where P is the pressure, F—its

p iJ

p force, and S the area of thrust. It will be seen that the result of the effect of one and the same force may differ, depending on whether the area of thrust is larger or smaller,

 ^^4^^ For simplicity of exposition we shall not introduce new designations to characterise ideal reflection of events in contrast to the events themselves as an objective given quantity, except to put the appropriate symbols in quotation marks when it is a matter precisely of the ideal reflection of the given events in men’s heads.