Page 303 - SELECTED WORKS OF MAO TSE-TUNG Volume I.indd

ON PRACTICE 297

he must bring his ideas into correspondence with the laws of the
objective external world; if they do not correspond, he will fail in
his practice. After he fails, he draws his lessons, corrects his ideas
to make them correspond to the laws of the external world, and can
thus turn failure into success; this is what is meant by “failure is the
mother of success” and “a fall into the pit, a gain in your wit”. The
dialectical-materialist theory of knowledge places practice in the pri-
mary position, holding that human knowledge can in no way be
separated from practice and repudiating all the erroneous theories
which deny the importance of practice or separate knowledge from
practice. Thus Lenin said, “Practice is higher than (theoretical) knowl-
edge, for it has not only the dignity of universality, but also of im-
1
mediate actuality.” The Marxist philosophy of dialectical materialism
has two outstanding characteristics. One is its class nature: it openly
avows that dialectical materialism is in the service of the proletariat.
The other is its practicality: it emphasizes the dependence of theory
on practice, emphasizes that theory is based on practice and in turn
serves practice. The truth of any knowledge or theory is determined
not by subjective feelings, but by objective results in social practice.
Only social practice can be the criterion of truth. The standpoint
of practice is the primary and basic standpoint in the dialectical-
materialist theory of knowledge. 2
But how then does human knowledge arise from practice and in
turn serve practice? This will become clear if we look at the process
of development of knowledge.
In the process of practice, man at first sees only the phenomenal
side, the separate aspects, the external relations of things. For instance,
some people from outside come to Yenan on a tour of observation.
In the first day or two, they see its topography, streets and houses;
they meet many people, attend banquets, evening parties and mass
meetings, hear talk of various kinds and read various documents,
all these being the phenomena, the separate aspects and the external
relations of things. This is called the perceptual stage of cognition,
namely, the stage of sense perceptions and impressions. That is, these
particular things in Yenan act on the sense organs of the members
of the observation group, evoke sense perceptions and give rise in
their brains to many impressions together with a rough sketch of the
external relations among these impressions: this is the first stage of
cognition. At this stage, man cannot as yet form concepts, which are
deeper, or draw logical conclusions.