MATERIALIST MONISM 



and cosmic consciousness, realizes its mission in 

 society, on earth, and in the universe, and con- 

 sciously prepares the means for the accomplish- 

 ment of this mission. That is the tremendous 

 difference between the proletarian and all other 

 social revolutions, that it understands the course 

 of social and cosmic evolution and adapts its 

 action to this understanding, while all other so- 

 cial revolutions were carried through without this 

 understanding. With the proletarian revolution, 

 the highest organ of consciousness evolved by the 

 universal process of transformation takes the first 

 steps for a premeditated and scientific control of 

 the entire process. 



The function of the human understanding is 

 henceforth not so much to maintain itself in its 

 present organization, but rather to control those 

 processes which will promote the negation of its 

 present organization and its evolution into a 

 higher one. It is not to strive for reactionary 

 immortality in its present form, not to preserve 

 its identity of to-day beyond the point where it 

 interferes with its identity of to-morrow, but 

 merely to insure its normal evolution into to- 

 morrow's identity. This alone is the way toward 

 immortality, and the individual cannot hope to 



