changed them or sought to maintain them unchanged; and that which they did or left undone they described with words, and gave reasons and purposes for deed and omission. All this they did even as I myself; hence I thought not but that my fellow-creatures were beings such as myself, and that I was a being such as they.”[1]
Starting from this first natural idea of the universe, Avenarius arrived at the fundamental presupposition, which he has placed at the beginning of his Kritik der reinen Erfahrung, and which runs as follows: “Every human individual originally accepts over against him an environment with manifold parts, other human individuals making manifold statements, and what-is-stated in some way dependent upon the environment” (Kritik d. r. E., vol. i., p. vii.).
The presupposition of every science is an assumption that cannot be proved. But just because it cannot be proved, it must, if it is to serve as the presupposition of a scientific system, be privileged as an irrefragable axiom; hence it must not only be as simple and natural as possible, must not only be theoretically correct in itself, it must also agree, both in itself and in the consequences to be deduced from it, with practical life. In one word, it must be not only logically tenable but also biologically tenable and necessary. However differently our views of the universe may shape themselves in detail, they must be based upon this presupposition as their common and most frequently recurring element. And just because it includes only this common element, it will have a universality which differs only from universal validity because, when Psychologies or Philosophies have changed and troubled their view of the universe, individuals no longer recognise the presupposition which is actually a necessary element of their original view of the universe. But in its fundamental presupposition Empiriocriticism is not concerned with that which has developed itself for particular individuals as what to them is logically tenable, but only with such elements as are most often recurrent in all points of view, and ultimately prove to be alone biologically tenable.
Does the presupposition with which Avenarius heads his work satisfy these conditions? Yes! It is the common element most often recurring in all views of the universe; all are originally based upon it, it belongs to no one specially, it is undogmatic, theoretically tenable and in harmony with practical life.
- ↑ Der menschliche Weltbegriff, by Richard Avenarius, p. 4. Leipzig: O. R. Reisland, 1891.
