Page 161 - The Truth of the Life of This World

and whose original we can never reach. In an extremely dogmatic manner,
materialists resist this evident reality which destroys their philosophy, and
bring forward baseless counterclaims to refute it.
George Politzer, for example, an ardent Marxist and one of the twenti-

eth century's biggest advocates of the materialist philosophy, gave the "bus
example" as the greatest evidence proving that he could reach the original
of matter. According to Politzer, even idealist philosophers run away when
they see a bus about to run them over, and this proves that they do con-
front the actuality of matter. 22
Samuel Johnson, another famous materialist, was told that one can
never reach essential matter, and tried to "prove" that he could make con-
tact with the essence of stones by giving one of them a kick. 23
A similar example is given by Friedrich Engels, the mentor of Politzer and
along with Marx, the founder of dialectic materialism. He wrote that "if the
cakes we eat were mere perceptions, they would not stop our hunger." 24
There are similar examples in the books of famous materialists such as
Marx, Engels, Lenin, and others along with impetuous sentences such as,
"You understand the existence of matter when you are slapped in the face."
The disordered comprehension that engenders such examples arises
from materialists' interpreting the explanation "We cannot reach the origi-
nal of matter" as involving the sense of sight only. They think that per-
ception is limited to sight, and that touching can get us directly to the
essence of matter. A bus knocking a man down makes people say, "Look,
it hit him! Therefore, he confronted the original." They don't understand
that all the perceptions experienced during a crash - hard metal, the force
of collision, pain - are in fact formed in the brain.

The Example of Dreams

The fact is, whichever of the five senses we take as a starting point, we
can't ever actually reach the original of the external world that exists outside.
A significant evidence of this is the way we imagine the existence of things
that in fact do not exist in our dreams. In dreams, we can experience very
realistic events. We can fall down the stairs and break a leg, have a serious

The Truth of the Life of This World 159