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Title: A Beginner's History of Philosophy, Vol 2 - Modern Philosophy
Author: Cushman, Herbert Ernest
Language: English
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A BEGINNER’S HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
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Illustration: IMMANUEL KANT
(The Puttrich’sche Portrait of Kant was printed in the
_Kant-Studien_ in 1906 and is said by Professor Vaihinger to
be one of the best likenesses of the Königsberg philosopher.
The name of the artist was Puttrich, and the original painting
goes back before 1798. It is interesting to note that this
portrait of Kant was used by the sculptor, Rauch, as his model
for the statue of Kant upon the memorial monument of Frederick
the Great.)
A BEGINNER’S HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
BY
HERBERT ERNEST CUSHMAN, LL.D., PH.D.
_Sometime Professor of Philosophy in Tufts College
Lecturer of Philosophy in Harvard College
Lecturer of Philosophy in Dartmouth College_
VOL. II
MODERN PHILOSOPHY
Illustration: (‡ Colophon)
BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY HERBERT ERNEST CUSHMAN
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
PREFACE
The pedagogical purpose of this history of philosophy is stated in
the Preface to the first volume. It may be desirable in this place to
restate what that purpose is.
This book is intended as a text-book for sketch-courses in the history
of philosophy. It is written for the student rather than for the
teacher. It is a history of philosophy upon the background of geography
and of literary and political history. Since the book is intended for
the student, it makes the teacher all the more necessary; for it puts
into the hands of the student an outline of the history of philosophy
and into the hands of the teacher the class-room time for inspiring
the student with his own interpretations. In making use of geographical
maps, contemporary literature, and political history, this book is
merely employing for pedagogical reasons the stock of information
with which the student is furnished, when he begins the history of
philosophy. The summaries, tables, and other generalizations are
employed, as in text-books in other subjects, as helps to the memory.
Therefore the book has the single purpose of arranging and organizing
the material of the history of philosophy for the beginner.
The student will be impressed with the short time-length of the modern
period compared with the tremendously long stretches of the periods
of antiquity. The modern period is only four hundred and fifty years
in length, if we take the date 1453 as its beginning. Compared to the
twenty-two hundred years of ancient and mediæval life, the period of
modern life seems very short. Furthermore the student who has followed
the philosophy of antiquity must have observed how often philosophy
arose out of ethnic situations in which whole civilizations were
involved. He will find that modern philosophy in this respect stands in
contrast with the philosophy of ancient times. With the decentralizing
of modern Europe, philosophy has also become decentralized. This
does not mean that philosophical movements have included fewer people
in their sweep, but that the movements have had shorter life, the
transitions have been quicker, and the epochs have been briefer.
Modern civilization is subjective; and its philosophy is thereby more
technical, and more difficult to understand and to interpret than the
philosophy of antiquity.
There are many helpful books in English on the history of modern
philosophy, and the student should have them at hand. I call attention
especially to Rand, _Modern Classical Philosophers_, for its judicious
selection from the original sources; to Royce, _Spirit of Modern
Philosophy_, chapters iii to x; to Eucken, _The Problem of Human
Life_, pp. 303 to 518; and to the Summaries in Windelband, _History
of Philosophy_, Parts IV to VII. Besides these there are valuable
histories of modern philosophy by Falckenberg, Höffding (2 vols.),
Weber, Ueberweg (vol. ii), Calkins, Dewing, and Rogers.
To friends who have read parts of the manuscript, I desire to
acknowledge my indebtedness for many wise criticisms and suggestions;
especially to Professor W. A. Neilson, Professor R. B. Perry, Dr. B.
A. G. Fuller, and Dr. J. H. Woods of Harvard University; to Professor
Mary W. Calkins of Wellesley College; to Professor W. P. Montague of
Columbia University; and to Professor S. P. Capen of Clark College.
TUFTS COLLEGE, December, 1910.
CONTENTS
VOLUME II. MODERN PHILOSOPHY
(1453 TO THE PRESENT TIME)
CHAPTER I. THE CHARACTERISTICS AND DIVISIONS OF THE MODERN
PERIOD 1
THE DIFFICULTY IN THE STUDY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY 1
THE PERIODS OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY 2
THE CAUSES OF THE DECAY OF THE CIVILIZATION OF THE MIDDLE
AGES 4
(a) _The Internal Causes_ 4
(1) The Intellectual Methods were Self-Destructive 4
(2) The Standard of Truth became a Double Standard 5
(3) The Development of Mysticism 5
(4) The Doctrine of Nominalism 5
(b) _The External Causes_ 6
CHAPTER II. THE RENAISSANCE (1453–1690) 8
THE GENERAL CHARACTER OF THE RENAISSANCE 8
(a) _The New Man of the Renaissance_ 8
(b) _The New Universe of the Renaissance_ 9
(1) The Transformation of the Physical Universe 9
(2) The Restoration of the World of Antiquity 10
THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE RENAISSANCE IN HISTORY 11
MAP SHOWING THE DECENTRALIZATION OF EUROPE 13
THE TWO PERIODS OF THE RENAISSANCE: THE HUMANISTIC
(1453–1600); THE NATURAL SCIENCE (1600–1690) 15
(a) _The Similarities of the Two Periods_ 16
(b) _The Differences of the Two Periods_ 16
(1) The Countries which participate in the
Renaissance differ in the Two Periods 16
(2) The Intellectual Standards differ in the Two
Periods 17
(3) The Scientific Methods in the Two Periods were
Different 18
(4) The Attitude of the Church toward Science differs
in the Two Periods 19
A BRIEF CONTRAST OF THE TWO PERIODS――A SUMMARY OF THE
DISCUSSION ABOVE 21
CHAPTER III. THE HUMANISTIC PERIOD OF THE RENAISSANCE
(1453–1600) 22
THE LONG LIST OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE HUMANISTIC PERIOD 22
NICOLAS OF CUSA (1401–1464) 24
PARACELSUS (1493–1541) 25
GIORDANO BRUNO (1548–1600) 27
MAP SHOWING THE BIRTHPLACES OF THE CHIEF PHILOSOPHERS OF
THE RENAISSANCE 30
CHAPTER IV. THE NATURAL SCIENCE PERIOD OF THE RENAISSANCE
(1600–1690) 31
THE PHILOSOPHERS OF THE NATURAL SCIENCE PERIOD 31
THE MATHEMATICAL ASTRONOMERS 32
GALILEO GALILEI (1564–1641) 36
THE LIFE OF FRANCIS BACON, BARON VERULAM (1561–1626) 39
THE POSITION OF BACON IN PHILOSOPHY 39
THE AIM OF BACON 42
THE METHOD OF BACON 43
(a) _Bacon’s Criticism of the Past_ 44
(b) _Bacon’s Positive Construction_ 45
THE ENGLISH NATURAL SCIENCE MOVEMENT 46
THOMAS HOBBES AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 47
THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF HOBBES (1588–1679) 49
1. As a Classical Scholar (1588–1628) 49
2. As Mathematician (1628–1638) 49
3. As Philosopher (1638–1651) 50
4. As Controversialist (1651–1668) 50
5. As Classical Scholar (1668–1679) 50
THE INFLUENCES UPON THE THOUGHT OF HOBBES 50
1. His Premature Birth 50
2. His Father 51
3. The New Mathematical Science 52
THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE IN THE TEACHING OF HOBBES 52
THE METHOD OF HOBBES 54
THE KINDS OF BODIES 55
HOBBES’S APPLICATION OF THE MATHEMATICAL THEORY TO
PSYCHOLOGY 56
HOBBES’S APPLICATION OF THE MATHEMATICAL THEORY TO
POLITICS 58
THE RENAISSANCE IN ENGLAND AFTER HOBBES 61
CHAPTER V. THE RATIONALISM OF THE NATURAL SCIENCE PERIOD
OF THE RENAISSANCE 62
THE NATURE OF RATIONALISM 62
THE MENTAL CONFLICT IN DESCARTES 65
THE LIFE AND PHILOSOPHICAL WRITINGS OF DESCARTES
(1596–1650) 66
1. As Child and Student (1596–1613) 66
2. As Traveler (1613–1628) 66
3. As Writer (1629–1650) 67
4. In Stockholm (1649–1650) 67
THE TWO CONFLICTING INFLUENCES UPON THE THOUGHT OF
DESCARTES 67
THE METHOD OF DESCARTES 69
INDUCTION――PROVISIONAL DOUBT――THE ULTIMATE CERTAINTY OF
CONSCIOUSNESS 70
DEDUCTION――THE IMPLICATIONS OF CONSCIOUSNESS 72
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD 73
THE REALITY OF MATTER 75
GOD AND THE WORLD 77
THE RELATION OF GOD TO MATTER 77
THE RELATION OF GOD TO MINDS 78
THE RELATION OF MIND AND BODY 78
THE INFLUENCE OF DESCARTES 80
THE RELATION OF THE OCCASIONALISTS AND SPINOZA TO
DESCARTES 81
PORTRAIT OF SPINOZA 84
THE HISTORICAL PLACE OF SPINOZA 84
THE INFLUENCES UPON SPINOZA 86
1. His Jewish Training 86
2. His Impulse from the New Science――Descartes’
Influence 86
3. His Acquaintance with the Collegiants 87
THE LIFE AND PHILOSOPHICAL WRITINGS OF SPINOZA
(1632–1677) 88
1. In Israel (1632–1656) 89
2. In Retirement (1656–1663) 89
3. In the Public Eye (1663–1677) 90
THE METHOD OF SPINOZA 90
THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE OF SPINOZA’S PHILOSOPHY 91
THREE CENTRAL PROBLEMS IN SPINOZA’S TEACHING 93
THE PANTHEISM OF SPINOZA――THE ALL-INCLUSIVENESS OF GOD 94
THE MYSTICISM OF SPINOZA 98
SPINOZA’S DOCTRINE OF SALVATION 102
SUMMARY OF SPINOZA’S TEACHING 106
LEIBNITZ AS THE FINISHER OF THE RENAISSANCE AND THE
FORERUNNER OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT 107
THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF LEIBNITZ (1646–1716) 108
1. Leipsic and University Life (1646–1666) 111
2. Mainz and Diplomacy (1666–1672) 111
3. Paris and Science (1672–1676) 111
4. Hanover and Philosophy (1676–1716) 112
THE THREE INFLUENCES UPON THE THOUGHT OF LEIBNITZ 112
(1) His Early Classical Studies 112
(2) The New Science and his own Discoveries 113
(3) Political Pressure for Religious Reconciliation 114
THE METHOD OF LEIBNITZ 115
THE IMMEDIATE PROBLEM FOR LEIBNITZ 118
THE RESULT OF LEIBNITZ’S EXAMINATION OF THE PRINCIPLES
OF SCIENCE――A PLURALITY OF METAPHYSICAL SUBSTANCES 119
1. Leibnitz first scrutinized the Scientific
Conception of Motion 119
2. Leibnitz next examined the Scientific Conception of
the Atom 120
3. Leibnitz then identified Force with the Metaphysical
Atom 121
THE DOUBLE NATURE OF THE MONADS 122
THE TWO FORMS OF LEIBNITZ’S CONCEPTION OF THE UNITY OF
SUBSTANCES 125
THE INTRINSIC UNITY OF THE MONADS――THE PHILOSOPHICAL
UNITY 125
THE SUPERIMPOSED UNITY OF THE MONADS――THE THEOLOGICAL
UNITY 129
CHAPTER VI. THE ENLIGHTENMENT (1690–1781) 132
THE EMERGENCE OF THE “NEW MAN”――INDIVIDUALISM 132
THE PRACTICAL PRESUPPOSITION OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT――THE
INDEPENDENCE OF THE INDIVIDUAL 134
THE METAPHYSICAL PRESUPPOSITION OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT 135
THE PROBLEMS OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT 135
(a) _Utilitarian Problems_ 136
(b) _Questions of Criticism_ 138
A COMPARISON OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT IN ENGLAND, FRANCE,
AND GERMANY 140
THE MANY GROUPS OF PHILOSOPHERS OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT 140
MAP SHOWING THE BIRTHPLACES OF SOME OF THE INFLUENTIAL
THINKERS OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT 144
CHAPTER VII. JOHN LOCKE 145
THE ENLIGHTENMENT IN GREAT BRITAIN 145
JOHN LOCKE, LIFE AND WRITINGS (1632–1704) 147
1. Student Life (1632–1666) 147
2. As Politician (1666–1683) 148
3. As Philosophical Author (1683–1691) 149
4. As Controversialist (1691–1704) 149
THE SOURCES OF LOCKE’S THOUGHT 150
1. His Puritan Ancestry 150
2. His Training in Tolerance 150
3. The Scientific Influence 151
4. The Political Influence 152
SUMMARY 153
THE PURPOSE OF LOCKE 153
TWO SIDES OF LOCKE’S PHILOSOPHY 155
(a) _The Negative Side――Locke and Scholasticism_ 156
(b) _The Positive Side――The New Psychology and
Epistemology_ 157
LOCKE’S PSYCHOLOGY 158
LOCKE’S THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE 160
LOCKE’S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY 162
THE INFLUENCE OF LOCKE 163
THE ENGLISH DEISTS 164
THE ENGLISH MORALISTS 166
CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF THE ENGLISH MORALISTS 168
CHAPTER VIII. BERKELEY AND HUME 169
THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF GEORGE BERKELEY (1685–1753) 169
1. His Early Training (1685–1707) 169
2. As Author (1707–1721) 170
3. As Priest and Missionary (1721–1753) 171
THE INFLUENCES UPON THE THOUGHT OF BERKELEY 172
THE PURPOSE OF BERKELEY 173
BERKELEY’S GENERAL RELATION TO LOCKE AND HUME 174
BERKELEY’S POINTS OF AGREEMENT WITH LOCKE 175
THE NEGATIVE SIDE OF BERKELEY’S PHILOSOPHY 176
1. As shown in General in his Analysis of Abstract
Ideas 177
2. As shown in Particular in his Analysis of Matter 177
THE POSITIVE SIDE OF BERKELEY’S PHILOSOPHY 179
1. Esse est Percipi 179
2. The Existence of Mind is assumed by Berkeley 180
3. Spiritual Substances are Sufficient to explain all
Ideas 181
THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF DAVID HUME (1711–1776) 183
1. Period of Training (1711–1734) 184
2. Period of Philosopher (1734–1752) 185
3. Period of Politician (1752–1776) 185
INFLUENCES UPON THE THOUGHT OF HUME 186
DOGMATISM, PHENOMENALISM, AND SKEPTICISM 187
THE ORIGIN OF IDEAS 189
THE ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS 191
THE ASSOCIATION OF CONTIGUITY 193
THE ASSOCIATION OF RESEMBLANCE 194
1. Mathematics 194
2. The Conception of Substance: Hume’s Attack on
Theology 195
THE ASSOCIATION OF CAUSATION: HUME’S ATTACK ON SCIENCE 196
THE EXTENT AND LIMITS OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE 199
HUME’S THEORY OF RELIGION AND ETHICS 200
THE SCOTTISH SCHOOL 201
CHAPTER IX. THE ENLIGHTENMENT IN FRANCE AND GERMANY 203
THE SITUATION IN FRANCE IN THE ENLIGHTENMENT 203
THE ENGLISH INFLUENCE IN FRANCE 206
THE TWO PERIODS OF THE FRENCH ENLIGHTENMENT 207
THE INTELLECTUAL ENLIGHTENMENT (1729–1762)――VOLTAIRE,
MONTESQUIEU, AND THE ENCYCLOPÆDISTS 208
VOLTAIRE (1694–1778) 209
THE ENCYCLOPÆDISTS 211
THE SOCIAL ENLIGHTENMENT (1762–1789) 213
ROUSSEAU (1712–1778) 213
THE GERMAN ENLIGHTENMENT (1740–1781) 216
THE INTRODUCTORY PERIOD (1648–1740). ABSOLUTISM 217
1. The Rise of Prussia 218
2. The Early German Literature 219
3. The Pietistic Movement 219
4. The Transformation of Leibnitz’s Rationalism 220
SUMMARY OF THE LITERARY ENLIGHTENMENT OF GERMANY
(1740–1781) 223
THE POLITICAL ENLIGHTENMENT OF GERMANY――FREDERICK THE
GREAT 224
THE COURSE OF THE GERMAN ENLIGHTENMENT 226
LESSING 228
CHAPTER X. KANT 230
THE CONVERGENCE OF PHILOSOPHICAL INFLUENCES IN GERMANY 230
THE THREE CHARACTERISTICS OF GERMAN PHILOSOPHY 231
THE TWO PERIODS OF GERMAN PHILOSOPHY 232
THE INFLUENCES UPON KANT 233
1. Pietism 233
2. The Leibnitz-Wolffian Philosophy 233
3. The Physics of Newton 234
4. The Humanitarianism of Rousseau 234
5. The Skepticism of Hume 235
THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF KANT (1724–1804) 235
THE PROBLEM OF KANT 238
THE METHOD OF KANT 239
THE THREEFOLD WORLD OF KANT――SUBJECTIVE STATES,
THINGS-IN-THEMSELVES, AND PHENOMENA 240
THE WORLD OF KNOWLEDGE 243
THE PLACE OF SYNTHESIS IN KNOWLEDGE 245
THE JUDGMENTS INDISPENSABLE TO HUMAN KNOWLEDGE 248
THE PROOF OF THE VALIDITY OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE 252
1. In what does the Validity of Sense-♦Perception
consist? 253
2. In what does the Validity of the Understanding
consist? 255
HAS THE REASON BY ITSELF ANY VALIDITY? 260
THE IDEA OF THE SOUL 262
THE IDEA OF THE UNIVERSE 264
THE IDEA OF GOD 265
CONCLUSION 268
THE PROBLEM OF THE CRITIQUE OF PRACTICAL REASON: THE
ETHICS OF KANT 269
THE MORAL LAW AND THE TWO QUESTIONS CONCERNING IT 271
1. The First Question concerning the Moral Law 272
2. The Second Question concerning the Moral Law 273
THE MORAL POSTULATES 275
1. The Postulate of Freedom 276
2. The Postulate of the Immortality of the Soul 276
3. The Postulate of the Existence of God 276
CHAPTER XI. THE GERMAN IDEALISTS 278
IDEALISM AFTER KANT 278
FICHTE, SCHELLING, AND HEGEL 279
MAP SHOWING THE UNIVERSITY TOWNS AND OTHER IMPORTANT
PLACES CONNECTED WITH THE GERMAN IDEALISTS 280
THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF FICHTE (1762–1814) 282
1. His Education (1762–1790) 283
2. Discipleship of Kant (1790–1794) 283
3. His Life at Jena (1794–1799) 284
4. His Life at Berlin (1799–1814) 284
THE INFLUENCES UPON FICHTE’S TEACHING 285
WHY WE PHILOSOPHIZE 286
THE MORAL AWAKENING 287
THE CENTRAL PRINCIPLE IN FICHTE’S PHILOSOPHY 288
THE MORAL WORLD 290
GOD AND MAN 292
WHAT A MORAL REALITY INVOLVES 293
1. It involves the Consciousness of Something Else 293
2. It involves a Contradiction 294
ROMANTICISM 295
GOETHE AS A ROMANTICIST 297
ROMANTICISM IN PHILOSOPHY 299
THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF SCHELLING (1775–1854) 300
1. Earlier Period (1775–1797) 302
2. The Philosophy of Nature (1797–1800) 302
3. The Transcendental Philosophy (1800–1801) 302
4. The Philosophy of Identity (1801–1804) 303
5. The Philosophy of Freedom and God (1804–1809) 303
6. The Philosophy of Mythology and Revelation
(1809–1854) 303
A BRIEF COMPARISON OF FICHTE AND SCHELLING AS
PHILOSOPHERS 303
SCHELLING’S PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE 305
SCHELLING’S TRANSCENDENTAL PHILOSOPHY 307
THE SYSTEM OF IDENTITY 310
SCHELLING’S RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY 311
HEGEL AND THE CULMINATION OF IDEALISM 312
WHY HEGEL REMAINS TO-DAY THE REPRESENTATIVE OF KANT 314
THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF HEGEL (1770–1831) 315
1. Formative Period (1770–1796) 317
2. Formulation of his Philosophy (1796–1806) 317
3. Development of his Philosophy (1806–1831) 317
REALISM, MYSTICISM, AND IDEALISM 318
THE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF HEGEL’S IDEALISM 321
THE COSMIC UNITY 322
THE COSMIC LAW 326
HEGEL’S APPLICATION OF HIS THEORY 328
CHAPTER XII. THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE THING-IN-ITSELF 330
HERBART AND SCHOPENHAUER 330
JOHANN FRIEDRICH HERBART 332
THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF HERBART (1776–1841) 333
THE CONTRADICTIONS OF EXPERIENCE 334
THE ARGUMENT FOR REALISM 334
THE MANY REALS AND NATURE PHENOMENA 337
THE SOUL AND MENTAL PHENOMENA 338
ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER AND HIS PHILOSOPHICAL RELATIONS 340
THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF SCHOPENHAUER (1788–1860) 342
1. Period of Education (1788–1813) 343
2. Period of Literary Production (1813–1831) 343
3. Period of Retirement (1831–1860) 343
THE INFLUENCES UPON SCHOPENHAUER’S THOUGHT 343
THE WORLD AS WILL AND THE WORLD AS IDEA 345
THE WILL AS IRRATIONAL REALITY 347
THE MISERY OF THE WORLD AS IDEA――PESSIMISM 348
THE WAY OF DELIVERANCE 349
CHAPTER XIII. THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 352
THE RETURN TO REALISM 352
THE CHARACTER OF THE REALISM OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 353
MODERN PHILOSOPHY AND GERMAN IDEALISM 355
THE PHILOSOPHICAL PROBLEMS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 356
1. The Problem of the Functioning of the Soul 357
2. The Problem of the Conception of History 360
INDEX 365
ILLUSTRATIONS
IMMANUEL KANT _Frontispiece_
MAP SHOWING THE DECENTRALIZATION OF EUROPE 13
MAP SHOWING THE BIRTHPLACES OF THE CHIEF PHILOSOPHERS OF
THE RENAISSANCE 30
BARUCH DE SPINOZA 84
MAP SHOWING THE BIRTHPLACES OF SOME OF THE INFLUENTIAL
THINKERS OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT 144
MAP SHOWING THE UNIVERSITY TOWNS AND OTHER IMPORTANT
PLACES CONNECTED WITH THE GERMAN IDEALISTS 280
A BEGINNER’S HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY
VOLUME II
MODERN PHILOSOPHY (1453 TO THE PRESENT TIME)
CHAPTER I
THE CHARACTERISTICS AND DIVISIONS OF THE MODERN PERIOD
=The Difficulty in the Study of Modern Philosophy.= Beside the great
spans of ancient and mediæval civilizations, the 450 years of the
modern period seem brief. The road is indeed relatively short from
mediæval times to the century in which we live, and yet it proves
difficult to the student who travels it for the first time. Even for
the modern mind the study of modern philosophy is inherently more
difficult than that of the ancient and mediæval. The preceding periods
present new points of view, but these, once attained, lead along
comparatively easy ways. The chief difficulty of the preceding periods
is overcome when their peculiar view of things is gained; but the
student of modern philosophy is confronted with difficulties all along
the way. In the first place, modern philosophy is very complex because
it is a conflict of various aspirations. It has neither the objectivity
of ancient thought nor the logical consistency of mediæval thought.
It arises from subjective motives, whose shadings are difficult to
trace. The task is rendered harder by the fact that intimations of the
problems in the history of modern philosophy are on the whole present
in the beginner’s mind; and yet at the same time his mind possesses,
besides these, many mediæval notions as well. For the student to pass
successfully through the entire length of modern thought from Cusanus
to Spencer means, therefore, two things for him: (1) he must gain an
insight into the depth and significance of his own half-formed ideas;
(2) he must transcend or give up entirely his mediæval notions. If
therefore philosophy represents the epoch that produces it,――either as
the central principle or as the marginal and ulterior development of
that epoch,――the modern can come to an understanding of the history of
modern philosophy only by coming to an understanding of himself and his
own inner reflections.
This will explain why the short period of modern thought is
traditionally divided into comparatively many periods. These
subordinate periods ring out the changes through which the modern man
feels that he himself has blindly passed in his inner life. Modern
philosophy is no more local and temporary than the ancient; it is no
less a part of a social movement; but the modern man is more alive to
the differentiations of modern thought than he is to those of antiquity.
=The Periods of Modern Philosophy.= The divisions of the history of
modern philosophy are as follows:――
1. The Renaissance (1453–1690)――from the end of the Middle
Ages to the publication of Locke’s _Essay on the Human
Understanding_.
2. The Enlightenment (1690–1781)――to the publication of Kant’s
_Critique of Pure Reason_.
3. German Philosophy (1781–1831)――to the death of Hegel.
4. The Nineteenth Century Philosophy (1820–the present time).
The Renaissance, the first period, covers more than half of the length
of modern times. It is sometimes called the springtime of modern
history, although it is longer than all the other seasons together.
It is to be noted that two epoch-making books form the dividing lines
between the first three periods. The transition from the Renaissance
to the Enlightenment is signalized by Locke’s great _Essay on the Human
Understanding_, which expressed for one hundred years the political
and philosophical opinions of western Europe. The transition from the
Enlightenment to German Philosophy was in its turn signalized by the
appearance of Kant’s _Critique of Pure Reason_, and this book may be
said to have been fundamental to human thinking ever since. There is
one point further to be noticed in these divisions, and that is the
overlapping of the last two periods. German philosophy ends practically
with the death of Hegel in 1831, and the modern Evolution movement
began at least ten years before, about 1820. No great philosophical
treatise marks the division here, for the Evolution movement had its
beginnings in German philosophy and in the discoveries and practical
inventions of natural science. Evolution, however, became a reaction
upon the last phases of German philosophy, and then formed a distinct
movement. The book that formulated the Evolution movement most fully
appeared several years after the theory was under way. This was
Darwin’s _Origin of Species_, published in 1859. Locke’s _Essay_ and
Kant’s _Critique_ are therefore the most influential philosophical
interpretations of the history of modern times since its early
beginnings in the Renaissance.
=The Causes of the Decay of the Civilization of the Middle Ages.= The
social structure of the mediæval time weakened and broke apart, in the
first place because of certain inherent defects in its organism; in
the second place because of some remarkable discoveries, inventions,
and historical changes. We may call these (1) _the internal causes_ and
(2) _the external causes_ of the fall of the civilization of the Middle
Ages.
(a) _The Internal Causes_ were inherent weaknesses in mediæval
intellectual life, and alone would have been sufficient to bring
mediæval society to an end.
(1) _The intellectual methods_ of the Middle Ages were self-destructive
methods. We may take scholasticism as the best expression of the
intellectual life of the Middle Ages, and scholasticism even in its
ripest period used the _method of deductive logic_. Scholasticism did
not employ induction from observation and experiment, but proceeded on
the principle that the more universal logically a conception is, the
more real it is. (See vol. i, p. 355.) On this principle scholasticism
set as its only task to penetrate and clarify dogma. Its theism was
a _logical_ theism. Even Thomas Aquinas, the great classic schoolman,
used formal logic (dialectics) as the method of obtaining the truth.
After him in the latter part of the Middle Ages, logic instead of being
a method became an end. It was studied for its own sake. This naturally
degenerated into word-splitting and quibbling, into the commenting
upon the texts of this master and that, into arid verbal discussions.
The religious orders frittered away their time on verbal questions of
trifling importance. The lifetime of such intellectual employment is
always a limited one.
(2) _The standard of the truth_ of things in the Middle Ages became
a double standard, and was therefore self-destructive. Ostensibly
there was only one standard,――infallible dogma. Really there were two
standards,――reason and dogma. The employment of logical methods implied
the human reason as a valid standard. Logic is the method of human
reasoning. To use logic to clarify dogma, to employ the philosophy
of Aristotle to supplement the Bible, to defend faith by argument,
amounted in effect to supporting revelation by reason. It was the same
as defending the infallible and revealed by the fallible and secular.
It was the erecting of a double standard. It called the infallible into
question. It was the offering of excuses for what is supposedly beyond
suspicion. The scholastic made faith the object of thought, and thereby
encouraged the spirit of free inquiry.
(3) _The development of Mysticism_ in the Middle Ages was a powerful
factor that led to its dissolution. There is, of course, an element
of mysticism in the doctrine of the church from St. Augustine
onwards, and in the Early Period of the Middle Ages mysticism had
no independence. But mysticism is essentially the direct communion
with God on the part of the individual. The intermediary offices of
the church are contradictory to the spirit of mysticism. It is not
surprising, therefore, to find in the last period of scholasticism
numerous independent mystics as representatives of the tendency of
individualistic religion, which was to result in the Protestantism of
the Renaissance.
(4) _The doctrine of Nominalism_ was the fourth important element to be
mentioned that led to the dissolution of the civilization of the Middle
Ages. This was easily suppressed by the church authorities in the early
mediæval centuries, when it was a purely logical doctrine and had no
empirical scientific basis. In the later years, however, nominalism
gained great strength with the acquisition of knowledge of the nature
world. Nominalism turned man’s attention away from the affairs of
the spirit. It incited him to modify the realism of dogma. It pointed
out the importance of practical experience. It emphasized individual
opinion, neglected tradition, and placed its hope in the possibilities
of science rather than in the spiritual actualities of religion.
(b) _The External Causes_ consisted of certain important events that
brought the Middle Ages to a close and introduced the Renaissance.
These events caused great social changes by demolishing the
geographical and astronomical conceptions of mediæval time which had
become a part of church tradition.
First to be mentioned are the inventions which belong to the Middle
Ages, but which came into common use not before the beginning of the
Renaissance. These played an important part in the total change of
the society which followed. They were the magnetic needle, gunpowder,
which was influential in destroying the feudal system, and printing,
which would have failed in its effect had not at the same time
the manufacture of paper been improved. Moreover at the end of the
fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century occurred the
following events:――
1453. Constantinople fell and its Greek scholars migrated to Italy.
1492. Columbus discovered America, an achievement which was made
possible by the use of the magnetic needle.
1498. Vasco da Gama discovered the all-sea route to India and thereby
changed the course of the world’s commerce.
1518. The Protestant Reformation was begun by Luther.
1530. Copernicus wrote his _De revolutionibus orbium_, in which he
maintained that the earth moved around the sun.
CHAPTER II
THE RENAISSANCE[1] (1453–1690)
=The General Character of the Renaissance.= The causes that led to the
decline of the society of the Middle Ages were of course the same that
ushered in the period of the Renaissance,――the first, the longest, and
the most hopeful period of modern times. The general characterization
of this period may be expressed in a single phrase,――_a New Man in a
New Universe_. This, however, needs explanation.
(a) The _New Man_ of the Renaissance was distinctly a man with a
country. The fusion of the German and Roman peoples in the Dark Ages
before Charlemagne (800) was now completed. The fusion did not result
in a ♦homogeneous whole, but in groups which formed the nations of
Europe. The time when this grouping was practically finished is a
difficult problem, into which we will not inquire. In a real sense it
never was nor will be ended. We know that the nations began to form
about the year 1000, and when we examine the history of the Renaissance
we find Italians, Germans, French, Dutch, and English with distinctive
national characteristics. We find the Renaissance first centralized
among the Italians and Germans, and then later among the English, the
people of the Low Countries, and the French. The Italian is a new Roman
and the German a new Teuton. The undefined nationalities of the Middle
Ages now become clear-cut. Philosophy also becomes now more or less of
a national concern.
(b) A _New Universe_ is now opened to the “New Man” of the Renaissance.
Not only in mental equipment, but in scope for his activity, does
the European of the Renaissance differ from the mediæval man. The
world is actually a new world――new in its geographical outlines and
its astronomical relations; new in its intellectual stores from the
past. The physical world that supported his body and the intellectual
world that refreshed his mind were newly discovered by the man of the
Renaissance. We must examine these two new worlds more in detail.
1. The physical universe had undergone a wonderful transformation
for man. Our nineteenth century has often been looked upon as a
period of extraordinary discoveries; but no discoveries have ever
so revolutionized the human mind as those enumerated above as “the
external causes of the fall of the society of the Middle Ages.” Think
how new that old world must have seemed to the common people who
had supposed it to be flat, as well as to the scientists who had
hypothetically supposed it to be solid――how new it must have seemed
when they found that it had been actually circumnavigated! How the
horizon of men’s minds must have widened when new continents were
discovered by sailors and new celestial worlds were found by the
telescope of the astronomers! Discovery led to experiment, and the
whole new physical world was transformed by the new physical science of
Galileo into a mechanical order. It was a wonderful new material world
that was discovered and scientifically reorganized at the beginning
of the Renaissance. Whereas the common man in mediæval time had found
little joy in living, the common man now looked upon the world as a
magnificent opportunity. Whereas the mediæval man had turned from the
disorders of this wicked world to contemplation of the blessedness of
heaven, the man of the Renaissance came forth from the cloister and
engaged in trade and adventure. The earth and the things therein had
suddenly become objects of emotional interest.
2. Not only was a new geographical and physical world discovered at
this time, but also the intellectual world of antiquity was restored.
For more than a thousand years in western Europe the literature of
the Greeks and Romans had been a thing of shreds and patches, and even
then read only in Latin translations. Now the European had come into
possession of a large part of it and was reading it in the original. He
was aroused to the wonderful intellectual life of the Age of Pericles.
The interest in ancient literature, which had been started by Dante,
Petrarch, and Boccaccio in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries,
became an absorbing and controlling force at this time. The real
interest began with the stimulus received by the coming of the Greek
scholars to Italy from the East: first the ecclesiastical embassy
in 1438, and afterward in 1453 the large number of refugees from
Constantinople at the time of its capture by the Turks. Upon these
refugees the patronage of the great Italian nobles――chiefly perhaps
in Florence――was lavishly bestowed. The Platonic Academy was founded.
Learned expounders of the new learning arose,――Pletho, the two Picos,
Fincinus, Reuchlin. Of all the philosophies of antiquity Platonism
was favored, and it was interpreted in a mystical manner. Aristotle
and Christianity were looked upon as mere interpretations of Plato.
Nevertheless the Renaissance scholars were interested in all the new
literary material from the East. They studied the Jewish Cabala and
its mystic numbers. They revived Skepticism, Eclecticism, Stoicism, and
Epicureanism. Aristotle was represented by two antagonistic schools;
and Taurellus opposed both and appealed to the scholarly world to
return to Christianity.
=The Significance of the Renaissance in History.= We have above
characterized the Renaissance as a time in which a “new man” found
himself living in a “new universe.” But the old world of mediæval
science, culture, and conventional manners had by no means been
entirely outgrown and discarded. Periods of history do not “leave their
low-vaulted past” as easily as a man may throw away his coat. Mediæval
science and theology still remained, not only as a background but
also as an aggressive social factor everywhere. Mediæval scholasticism
was something with which the Renaissance had always to reckon.
Scholasticism modified, frequently restricted, and even directed
the thought of the Renaissance. Consequently when we form our final
estimate of the place of the Renaissance in the modern movement, we
must not overlook the conservative force of the mediæval institutions
existing during the period. The “new man” lived in a “new universe”;
and _his problem was how to explain the relation of that “new
universe” to himself so that his explanation would not antagonize
the time-honored traditions of the church_. This was the constructive
problem that gave the Renaissance its place in history.
The first impression, however, of the Renaissance upon the reader is
that it stands for no constructive problem whatever. The changes that
usher in the Renaissance seem to speak of an epoch that is entirely
negative, destructive, and revolutionary. The period seems from one
side to be a declaration against time-honored traditions. The “new man”
had risen superior to dogma and to Aristotle. Intellectual fermentation
had set in, and never had so many attempts at innovation been so
strenuously sought. The love for novelty filled the human mind, and the
imagination ran riot. The movement toward modern individualism appeared
in the decentralization that at this time was everywhere taking place.
Latin, for example, ceased to be the one language for educated men,
and the modern languages came into use. Rome ceased to be the only
religious centre, and Wittenberg, London, and Geneva became centres.
There was no longer one church, but many sects. Scientific centres
became numerous. Many of the universities had arisen independently,
and now Oxford, Vienna, Heidelberg, Prague, and numerous universities
in Italy and Germany afforded opportunities for study equal to those
of Paris. To the man who looks upon the Classic Period of Scholasticism
in the Middle Ages as the golden age of united faith,――to that man the
Renaissance will appear only as the beginning of the disintegration and
revolution that he sees in modern times.
Illustration: MAP SHOWING THE DECENTRALIZATION OF EUROPE
IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
(Note that Rome, Wittenberg, London, and Geneva are the
religious centres; that Paris, Oxford, Heidelberg, and Prague
are the educational centres; and that Europe is divided into
many nations)
But a deeper insight into the Renaissance shows that its revolutionary,
negative, and spectacular aspect is not its whole significance. No
doubt a strong, universal, and well-centralized government and a unity
of faith are social ideals. The reverence in which the name of Rome
was held long after the empire had been destroyed, and the reluctance
with which the first Protestants separated themselves from the Catholic
church, show that the loss of such a unity is a real loss. But the
church of the Middle Ages was not the carrier of all the treasure
of the past, nor could the church with its own inherent limitations
stand as representative of modern times. The new problem which the
Renaissance faced might be destructive of much of the traditional
past, but it contained many new elements. The “new man” found himself
in a “new universe.” He was obliged to undertake the solution of a
far deeper problem than antiquity had ever attempted. He must orient
himself in a larger world than the past had ever imagined. He must do
this in the very presence of mediæval institutions, which had not lost
their spiritual nor their temporal power. The constructive problem
before the man of the Renaissance was therefore an exceedingly complex
one. How should he explain his relation to the “new universe” in a
way that would not antagonize tradition? It was a new problem, a real
problem in which the traditional factor was always persistently present.
There were two _motifs_ which give to the problem of the Renaissance
its constructive character. These were _naturalism_ and _subjectivism_.
_In the first place, the Renaissance is the period when the naturalism
of the Greeks was recovered._ By naturalism is meant the love for
earthly life. Of this the mediæval church and the mediæval time had
little or nothing. The church had been born out of the revulsion from
the earthly, and it rose on the aspiration for the supernatural. The
Renaissance was, on the contrary, born out of a passionate joy in
nature, which joy was intensified by the unexpected possession of the
literature of the past and by the discovery of new lands beyond the
seas. Man felt now the happiness and dignity of earthly living and
the worth of the body as well as the soul. _In the next place, the
Renaissance is marked by the rise of subjectivism._ At the beginning of
our book we have already given the meaning of subjectivism (see vol. i,
p. 2), and we have characterized modern civilization as subjective
in distinction from the ancient as objective and the Middle Ages as
traditional. We have also found, as we have gone on, the beginnings
of subjectivism in the Sophists, Stoics, and Christians. But in the
Renaissance for the first time does the individual as a rational self
gain the central position. This is subjectivism: the individual is
not only the interpreter of the universe, but also its mental creator.
Of the subjective _motif_ in modern times the Renaissance marks the
inauguration, and German Idealism the culmination. While the world of
the ancients was cosmo-centric and the mediæval world was theo-centric,
the world of the modern man is ego-centric. The love of life, and
the love of life because the individual feels his own capacity for
life――this is the situation presented to the man of the Renaissance.
Thus in the restoration of naturalism and in the construction of
subjectivism did the Renaissance stand for positive upbuilding, in
spite of the fact that in all this the period was constrained by the
powerful tradition of the church.
=The Two Periods of the Renaissance: The Humanistic= (1453–1600);
=The Natural Science= (1600–1690). The Renaissance is divided into two
periods at the year 1600. The reason for taking this date as a division
line will soon appear. The period before 1600 we call the Humanistic,
or the period of the Humanities; the period after this date the Natural
Science Period.
(a) The Similarities of the Two Periods. These two periods are alike
in having the same motives. Both feel the same urgent need (1) for
new knowledge, (2) for a new standard by which to measure their
new knowledge, (3) for a new method of gaining knowledge. From the
beginning to the end of the Renaissance the “new man” was feeling
his way about, was trying to orient and readjust himself in his “new
universe.” He was seeking new acquisitions to his rich stores of
knowledge, to systematize his knowledge by some correct method, and
to set up some standard by which his knowledge might be tested.
(b) The Differences of the Two Periods. There are, however, some marked
differences in the carrying out of these motives by each period, and to
these we must give our attention.
(1) _The Countries which participate in the Renaissance differ in the
Two Periods_. In the Humanistic Period Italy and Germany were chiefly
concerned. There are two reasons for this. In the first place, these
countries had been engaged in commerce with the Orient, had become
prosperous and more or less acquainted with the culture of the Orient.
In the second place, Italy had been the refuge of the Greek scholars;
when the colony of Greek refugees in Florence had died out in 1520,
northerners like Erasmus, Agricola, Reuchlin, the Stephani, and Budæus
had luckily already made themselves masters of the Greek language and
literature, and had carried their learning into Germany.
In the Natural Science Period the Renaissance had practically become
dead both in Germany and in Italy. The reason for this is not far to
seek. In Italy, in 1563, the Council of Trent had fixed the dogma of
the church and had made it impossible for the church to assimilate
anything more from antiquity. The so-called Counter-Reformation set
in, and Italy became dumb under the persecutions of the Inquisition.
Furthermore, the discovery of the sea-route to the East had turned
commerce away from Italy. When we look to Germany, we find a similar
situation. The Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648) had devastated the land
and had made intellectual life wholly impossible.
On the other hand, England, France, and the Low Countries represent
the Natural Science Period in the Renaissance. By the War of Liberation
(1568–1648) Holland became the European country where the greatest
freedom of thought was granted, and it proved itself an asylum for
thinkers and scholars. France, through the influence of the University
of Paris, was the centre of mathematical research. In England the
brilliant Elizabethan era had already begun.
(2) _The Intellectual Standards differ in the Two Periods._ The
Humanistic Period has been well characterized as the time of “the
struggle of traditions.” Naturally enough, with the revival of Greek
learning the thinkers of the first period of the Renaissance would
try to solve the new problems by the standards which they found in
antiquity. What did Aristotle, Plato, the Epicureans say in matters of
science? What standards did they yield for solving the new problems of
the “new universe”? The traditions of antiquity were therefore revived;
and the contention was, Which should be taken as a standard? Among
all the ancient systems neo-Platonism became the most prominent. It
dominated the Humanistic Period because its æsthetic character and its
mystical explanations appealed to the susceptible mind of that time.
Nevertheless, the sway of neo-Platonism was not absolute. The “struggle
of traditions” continued throughout the period, as appears in the
schisms of the church and in the literary and philosophical contentions.
The Natural Science Period, in its hope of finding a standard to
explain the problems of the “new universe,” discovered a new standard
within the “new universe” itself. No tradition of antiquity had proved
itself adequate to the situation. Nothing could be found in Plato
and Aristotle to give a theoretic standard for the new discoveries
and inventions. Nature disclosed its own standard within itself. The
Natural Science Period said _nature facts must be explained by nature
facts_. But the question will naturally be asked, Why did the thinkers
of this period, when the theories of antiquity were found to be
inadequate, turn to nature rather than elsewhere for an explanation
of nature? The answer to this is found in the great successes of the
physical astronomers, who had started their investigations at the
beginning of the Humanistic Period, and had reached the zenith of their
glory at the beginning of the Natural Science Period. The discoveries
of Galileo were especially important.
(3) _The Scientific Methods in the Two Periods were Different._ The
method usually employed in the Humanistic Period was magic. This first
period tried to explain nature facts of the “new universe” by referring
them to agencies in the spiritual world. In their neo-Platonic
nature-worship the scholars of this period imagined that the control
of nature was to be obtained by a fanciful linking of the parts of
nature to the spirits supposed to be in nature. The Bible is the
product of the spiritual world, so why is not the “new nature-world”
inspired from the same source? God is the first cause of all things;
He is in all things and each finite thing mirrors Him. All things have
souls. To gain control over nature, some all-controlling formula must
be found which will reveal the secret of the control of spirits over
nature; and to master the spirits that control nature is to control
nature herself. Hence arose, as the methods of this first period, magic,
trance-mediumship, necromancy, alchemy, conjurations, and astrology.
Antiquity could offer (and especially is this true of Platonism) only
spiritual causes for nature facts,――hence the search in this time for
the philosopher’s stone. There was never a blinder groping after a
method.
The scientific method used in the Natural Science Period was the
mathematical. The world of experience was found to coincide with the
number system, and therefore mathematics was used as the symbol to
determine the form of nature events. Induction and deduction were used
in different combinations. The period has been characterized as the
time of “the strife of methods.” Induction and deduction became in fact
the new methods of finding the truth about the “new world.” Whatever is
clear and distinct, like the axioms, must be taken as true. All other
knowledge must be deduced from these axiomatic certainties. In contrast
with the magical methods of the Humanistic Period, which point beyond
nature for an explanation of nature, here in the Natural Science Period
mathematics need not lead the explanation farther than nature herself.
(4) _The Attitude of the Church toward Science differs in the Two
Periods._ In the Humanistic Period the attitude of the church toward
the new learning was not yet defined. This was because the bearing
of the new learning upon dogma was not yet understood. On the one
hand, on matters upon which the church had clearly declared itself,
it was easily seen what could and what could not be believed. But,
on the other hand, the significance of much of the wealth of the
newly acquired learning could not at first be fully determined. The
enthusiasm for science was so widespread, and the new discoveries were
so many, that the church was unable to know what was consistent with
dogma and what was not. At the outset the church was inclined to treat
the new science with contemptuous toleration. Nevertheless, in spite of
the new intellectual intoxication there was no real freedom of thought.
The position of science was merely precarious, uncertain, and undefined.
In the Natural Science Period this uncertainty was dispelled because
dogma came into violent conflict with science. It was soon found
that questions in physics involved metaphysics, and that the new
science touched the church doctrines at every point. In 1563 the
church authorities at the Council of Trent settled dogma for all time.
Great conflicts arose between the church and the secularizing spirit.
The scientist became wary. He tried to avoid any intrusion upon the
field of theology, and he insisted that his own field existed quite
independent of theological dogma. But practically it was impossible
for science not to take heretical positions, and this was especially
true of the Rationalistic School, which tried to construct a new
scholasticism. Safe independence of thought was not gained until the
next period (the Enlightenment), and this was brought to pass by
political changes.
=A Brief Contrast of the Two Periods――A Summary of the Discussion
above.=
_The Humanistic Period._
(1) The Time――1453–1600.
(2) The Countries Concerned――Italy and Germany.
(3) The Intellectual Standards――Neo-Platonism and other theories
of antiquity.
(4) The Method――magic.
(5) The Relation of Science to the Church――precarious and
uncertain.
_The Natural Science Period._
(1) The Time――1600–1690.
(2) The Countries Concerned――England, France, and the Low
Countries.
(3) The Intellectual Standard――the mechanism of nature facts.
(4) The Method――induction and mathematical deduction in various
combinations.
(5) The Relation of Science to the Church――so definitely stated
as to be placed in conflict with dogma.
CHAPTER III
THE HUMANISTIC PERIOD OF THE RENAISSANCE (1453–1600)
=The Long List of Representatives of the Humanistic Period.= There was
a revival of _scholasticism_,――Paulus Barbus Socinas (d. 1494), Cajetan
(d. 1534), Ferrariensis (d. 1528), Melchior Cano (d. 1560), Dominicus
de Soto (d. 1560), Dominicus Banez (d. 1604), John of St. Thomas
(d. 1644), Vasquez (d. 1604), Toletus (d. 1596), Fonseca (d. 1599),
Suarez (d. 1617), John the Englishman (d. 1483), Johannes Magistri
(d. 1482), Antonius Trombetta (d. 1518), Maurice the Irishman (d. 1513).
Among the _Humanists_ were Pletho, Bessarion (d. 1472), Lorenzo Valla
(d. 1457), Marsilio Ficino (d. 1499), Giovanni Pico della Mirandola
(d. 1494), Francesco Pico della Mirandola (d. 1533), Theodore of Gaza
(d. 1478), Agricola (d. 1485), George of Trebizond (d. 1484), Justus
Lipsius (d. 1606), Schoppe (b. 1562), Paracelsus (d. 1541), Reuchlin
(d. 1522), Fludd (d. 1637), Montaigne (d. 1592), Charron (d. 1603),
Sanchez (d. 1632), Pomponatius (d. 1530), Achillini (d. 1518), Nifo
(d. 1546), Petrus Ramus (d. 1572), Scaliger (d. 1558). The _Italian
nature philosophers_ were Cardano (d. 1576), Telesio (d. 1588),
Patrizzi (d. 1597), Bruno (d. 1600), Campanella (d. 1639). The notable
_scientists_ were Cusanus (d. 1464), Copernicus (d. 1543), Tycho Brahe
(d. 1601), Kepler (d. 1631). _The Protestant Mystics_ were Luther
(d. 1546), Zwingli (d. 1531), Franck (d. 1545), Weigel (d. 1588),
Boehme (d. 1624). The _political philosophers_ were Macchiavelli
(d. 1527), Thomas More (d. 1535), Jean Bodin (d. 1597), Gentilis
(d. 1611), Althusius (d. 1638), Hugo Grotius (d. 1645).
As examples of the first epoch of the Renaissance[2] we have selected
Cusanus (1401–1464), Paracelsus (1493–1541), and Bruno (1548–1600).
These three men will represent fairly well the wide interests of this
epoch, and more especially its neo-Platonic spirit and its methods.
The reader will see from their dates that the lives of these three
philosophers nearly cover the Humanistic Period. Cusanus lived during
the last half century of the Middle Ages and the first decade of
the Humanistic Period; Paracelsus’s life covers the middle of the
Humanistic Period; Bruno lived during the last part of the period,
and his death (1600) coincides with the last year of the period.
All three were neo-Platonists. They had been so impressed with
the nature-world that had opened before them that they were mystic
nature-worshipers――pantheists, to whom neo-Platonism became the truest
philosophical standard. All three were scientists in different degrees.
Yet Cusanus, the cardinal of the church, and Bruno, the speculative
philosopher, contributed more to science than Paracelsus, who aspired
to medical science. This seeming inconsistency in their lives is
not difficult to explain. Paracelsus merely reflects the science
of the time; while Cusanus and Bruno anticipate the Natural Science
Period――the one by his empirical discoveries, the other by his mystic
speculations which were almost prophecies.
=Nicolas of Cusa= (1401–1464). Modern German scholars place Nicolas of
Cusa (Nicolas Cusanus) with Bacon and Descartes, as the leaders of the
modern philosophical movement. Nicolas lived two hundred years before
Descartes and one hundred years before Bacon. The German estimate
of him shows at least that he was modern in his thought, although he
belongs in time to the Middle Ages for the most part. He lived when
the Middle Ages were passing over into the Renaissance. His principal
work, the _Idiota_, was published in 1450, when the Renaissance was on
the threshold. He was certainly a forerunner of modern times. He was a
German, a cardinal, and is now reverenced by liberal Catholics as one
of their deepest thinkers.
Cusanus was a scientist of no small merit. He died before the great
discoveries were made; but he anticipated Copernicus in his belief that
the earth rotated on its axis; he anticipated Bruno in conceiving space
to be boundless and time unending; he proposed a reform in the calendar;
he was the first to have a map of Germany engraved. He condemned
the prevalent superstitions of the church and the use of magic in
explaining nature events. Thus he anticipated the science of the time
of Bacon, Hobbes, and Descartes, and transcended his own period.
In other respects Cusanus belongs in this period with Bruno and
Paracelsus. He did not seek to discover a new method; but he turned
back to the revived traditional Greek systems for an explanation
of the “new world.” He found in the mystic numbers of Plato and the
Pythagoreans the principle of all scientific investigation. The world
of nature phenomena must be accounted for by the spiritual world.
Cusanus uses almost the identical language of Bruno, when he says
that the world is the mirror of God and that man is an epitome of the
universe. In the neo-Platonic spirit of the Humanists, he regarded the
world as a soul-possessing and articulate Oneness. Although a scientist,
he conceived science to be only a conjecture, which in its unreality
reveals the inner interconnections of the real world――the world of the
spirit.
=Paracelsus= (1493–1541). Paracelsus did not transcend his time as did
Cusanus. He merely expressed it. He was the exponent of its science as
Bruno was the representative of its poetic speculation. Paracelsus was
a much-traveled Swiss, who tried to reform the practice of medicine
by a kind of magical chemistry. The poet Browning makes his adventures
the basis of a poem. As a physician Paracelsus could employ the magic
arts without much danger of the charge of heresy, for the practice
of the magic art was theoretically justified by the neo-Platonism of
the time. The Faust of Goethe is at first a Paracelsus. The universal
spirit behind nature presents itself in an infinite number of spiritual
individuals. Nature facts are to be understood and mastered by
understanding the activities of these spiritual forces. In this way
medicine became a brewing of tinctures, magical drinks, and secret
remedies. It was an alchemy which grew to the proportions of a science.
The alchemists of the time expected to discover a panacea against
disease, which would give them the highest power. This is the meaning
of the “philosopher’s stone,” which was to heal all diseases, transmute
everything into gold, and bring all spirits into the power of its
possessor. Paracelsus thus turned back to Greek hylozoism for the truth
about physiology and the cure of disease; and he met with some degree
of personal success, for his physics had many adherents both in theory
and in practice.[3]
In the neo-Platonic manner Paracelsus conceived the world as
fundamentally a developing vital principle (Vulcanus). Man is this
cosmic force individualized (Archæus). The laws that operate in the
world are the same as in man, except that in man they are hidden.
The study of nature’s laws, as they lie open, will reveal how those
same laws operate in a human being. Now the vital principle in nature
manifests itself in three realms: the terrestrial, the astral or
celestial, and the spiritual or divine. The Archæus or vital principle
in man must have the same realms of activity. There is man’s body,
which gets its strength from the terrestrial realm of nature; man’s
mind, which is nourished by the stars; man’s soul, that feeds on faith
in Christ. Perfect health, therefore, consists in the sympathetic
interaction of these three realms in man. A complete medicine consists
of physics, astronomy, and theology.
But Paracelsus was a chemist, and the terrestrial nature of man was his
peculiar interest. The theologian may prescribe for the human soul, and
it is the duty of the astronomer to care for the human intellect; but
the practical physician must understand the human body. Here is the
Archæus imprisoned in the gross terrestrial body! It is in continual
warfare with that body. What is the nature of that body which is so
hostile to the human vital principle? Here Paracelsus introduces his
strange chemical analysis which characterizes him as a Renaissance
physician. Nature has three essences of which all bodies are composed:
(1) mercury, that makes bodies liquid; (2) sulphur, that makes them
combustible; (3) salt, that makes them rigid. These essences are
compounded in such a way that from them the four elements――earth, air,
water, and fire――are derived. Each one of these elements is controlled
by elemental spirits. The earth is controlled by gnomes, the water
by undines, the air by sylphs, and the fire by salamanders. Thus the
chemical analysis of Paracelsus discovers four sets of spirits with
which the physician is obliged to deal. Gnomes, sylphs, undines, and
salamanders are in warfare with the human vital principle for control.
When the Archæus is in any way checked by these, there is disease; when
the Archæus has them under control, the man has health. The medicines
that the physician administers are determined by their effectiveness
in helping the Archæus in its battle against the hostile spirits. This
makes medicine a field for the magician in the control of spirits.
=Giordano Bruno= (1548–1600). The neo-Platonic spirit of the Humanistic
Period reached its most complete development in the æsthetic philosophy
of Giordano Bruno. He sang the world-joy of the æsthetic Renaissance.
Italy ordained him priest, exiled him as heretic, and then burned
him at the stake as recalcitrant. Italy has produced very few great
speculators since his day. The Council of Trent met when he was fifteen
years old; already the counter-Reformation had begun in Italy, and
Italy was soon to become an intellectually arid waste. The influence of
Bruno appears in Spinoza and perhaps in Leibnitz. His one contribution
to modern science was in his inspired conception that because God is
infinite, the world is infinite in space and time. The philosophers who
influenced his thought were Pythagoras, Plato, Plotinus, and Lucretius.
The fundamental thought of the Humanistic Period was expressed by
Bruno in his imaginative conception of the divine beauty of the living
All. Poet as well as philosopher, he was consumed by a love for nature
as a beautiful religious object. He revolted from all asceticism and
scholasticism. The “new world” in which he found himself was to him the
emblem of God. The thought of that chief of neo-Platonists, Plotinus,
of the beauty of the universe had never been so sympathetically
regarded as by the Renaissance; in the hands of Bruno this beauty
became the manifestation of the divine Idea. Philosophy, æsthetics, and
religion were identical to him. To express his thought he employed the
usual neo-Platonic symbol of the all-forming and all-animating light.
Bruno was no patient student of natural phenomena as such, but a lover
of the great illumination of nature facts by the great soul behind
them. He was not interested in any single group of phenomena, as was
Paracelsus; but he loved them all as a religion. Not only externally
but internally is the universe an eternal harmony. When one gazes upon
it with the enthusiasm of a poet, its apparent defects will vanish in
the harmony of the whole. Man needs no special theology, for the world
is perfect because it is the life of God. Bruno is a universalistic
optimist and a mystic poet. Before this cosmic harmony man should never
utter complaint, but should bow in reverence. True science is religion
and morality.
Since Bruno conceived no theodicy (proof of the goodness and justice of
God) to be necessary, he did not define in exact terms his conception
of God. Nevertheless, to escape the charge of atheism, he distinguished
between the universe and the world. For him God = the universe =
nature = matter = the principle immanent in the world. The “world,”
on the other hand, = the sum-total of nature phenomena. The “world”
is the body of God, and God is the soul of the “world.” God is _natura
naturans_; the world is _natura naturata_[4]. Just as the sum of the
parts of man’s body does not equal the man himself, so to identify God
with the totality of objects of nature is atheism in the true sense. It
is to make God a finite being, although very big. In opposition to this,
Bruno conceives God as the one substance manifesting himself through
all things. This is to magnify God and to make him really omnipresent.
Nevertheless, Bruno is involved in all the inconsistencies of the
Mystic. In a neo-Platonic fashion he frequently speaks of God as if
he were a plural number of atoms. God is not only the world unity,
but in every particle of the world is He writ small. The elements of
the world are monads, and each is the mirror of the All. The Absolute
is the primal unity; and yet in the paradoxical fashion in which
the neo-Platonist is so successful, Bruno says that all creation is
unfolded out of God and is included in him. The speculative poet is
so in love with the world that he does not stop to make consistent the
distinctions which he has drawn. The _natura naturans_ and the _natura
naturata_, the unity and plurality of the world, are the two aspects of
the reality in his own life――and that reality is God.
Illustration: MAP SHOWING THE BIRTHPLACES OF THE CHIEF
PHILOSOPHERS OF THE RENAISSANCE
(The names of the philosophers are given in brackets beneath
the towns in which they were born)
CHAPTER IV
THE NATURAL SCIENCE PERIOD OF THE RENAISSANCE (1600–1690)[5]
=The Philosophers of the Natural Science Period.=
1. Galileo, 1564–1641, and the group of scientists.
2. Bacon, 1561–1626.
3. Hobbes, 1588–1679.
4. The Rationalists.
Descartes, 1596–1650.
Spinoza, 1632–1677.
Leibnitz, 1646–1716.
Countries other than Italy and Germany come upon the philosophic stage
during the eighty-nine years of the period of teeming natural science.
England is represented by Bacon and Hobbes, France by Descartes,
Holland by the Jew, Spinoza, and, at the end of the period, Germany
by Leibnitz. Still Italy yields the most influential thinker of
them all,――Galileo, who is the most prominent of a long series
of astronomers coming from many countries. The most completely
representative is Descartes, who was the founder of the Rationalistic
school; for he was not only interested in mathematics itself, but
in the application of mathematics to metaphysical questions. Neither
as influential as Galileo, nor as comprehensive as Descartes, the
Englishmen, Bacon and Hobbes, were nevertheless important as the
forerunners of the English empirical school. Spinoza is more of a
“world’s philosopher” than any of the others, and he joins in his
doctrine the scholasticism of the Middle Ages and the mathematics
of the Renaissance; while Leibnitz occupies the position between the
Enlightenment and the Renaissance.
=The Mathematical Astronomers.= After enthusiastically canvassing
the traditional theories of antiquity, the Humanists had been unable
to find one which would explain and organize the newly accumulated
materials of their “new world.” But working in more or less narrow
circles, natural science had already made a beginning in the midst
of the Humanists. Beginning with Copernicus, an interest in physics
and astronomy had been aroused, but in these early days it was more
speculative than empirical. The speculations of the astronomers had
but little influence upon their own time. However, when the ancient
theories proved inadequate to explain the facts of the “new world,”
and especially when the empirical researches of Galileo confirmed the
speculations of his predecessors, the Renaissance turned away from
antiquity to nature herself for an explanation. This was about the year
1600, the year of the beginning of the Natural Science period.
The most prominent of these astronomers were――
Copernicus, 1473–1543, a Pole.
Bruno, 1548–1600, an Italian.
Tycho Brahe, 1546–1601, a Dane.
Kepler, 1571–1630, a German.
Galileo, 1564–1641, an Italian.
Huyghens, 1629–1695, a Hollander.
Newton, 1642–1722, an Englishman.
While the greatest of these scientists is Newton, who belongs to
the next period, the most influential is Galileo. Modern _methods
in science_ began with Galileo. Of the four predecessors of Galileo
three――Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, and Bruno――are in spirit Humanists;
for their final explanation of nature is the world of spirits. Kepler
belongs to both the Humanistic and Natural Science periods; for at
first he constructed his natural science by an amalgamation of the
doctrine of spirits and the Copernican theory; but in the latter
part of his life he adopted completely the mechanical view of nature.
The above scientists may be divided for convenience into two groups:
(1) the speculative scientists before Galileo; (2) Galileo and the
following empirical investigators.
For fourteen centuries the ancient Ptolemaic astronomy had been
regarded by the learned as beyond question. Although complex and
unwieldy, it explained all phenomena satisfactorily enough as they
appeared to the senses; and it brought phenomena into a system. (The
Ptolemaic system has been fully described in vol. i, pp. 322 ff.) To
recapitulate it: the world-all was conceived as a hollow sphere with
the earth as the centre and the fixed stars in the periphery, while the
planets were supposed to move in epicycles. The universe was divided
into the heavenly and terrestrial realms, which were occupied by
various spirits. God resided outside this hollow sphere and held it,
as it were, in his lap.
The history of the changes leading up to our modern astronomical
conception makes a vivid chapter. How Copernicus contributed the idea
of placing the sun at the centre of things, Kepler the idea of the
orbits of the planets as ellipses, Bruno the idea of the boundlessness
of space and time, and how Galileo, corroborating these theories by
empirical investigations, was put under the ban of the church――all this
shows what heroism must have been required to tear down a time-honored
and firmly intrenched traditional conception. Probably the speculative
astronomers were not conscious that they were undermining the whole
astronomical structure, and probably their sole motive was to simplify
the Ptolemaic conception, not to destroy it. For Copernicus accepted
the Ptolemaic system, except that he put the sun instead of the
earth at the centre, and thereby simplified it by making many of the
epicycles unnecessary; and Kepler simplified it further by supplanting
the epicycles with ellipses. However, the result was inevitably an
entirely new conception of the universe, and with it a new conception
of the relation among particular material things. It was in this way
that new scientific methods arose.
The universe now comes to be regarded as a mechanism, and what was
formerly looked upon as the influence of spirits or as Providential
guidance becomes an impersonal law of causal necessity. In the heavens
above and the earth beneath there are no longer vital forces and
supernatural influences. _The universe becomes a homogeneous whole
throughout_, in which there is no difference between the fall of
an apple and the revolution of the planets, no distinction between
terrestrial and celestial spheres. The Christian heaven is nowhere
in it; the Mediæval spirits are banished from it. The Greek gods have
been pushed out, and the Christian God has been made to stand aside.
The demand that the new conception of the universe be verified in
concrete experiments, if it were to replace the old Ptolemaic system,
the revival of the study of Archimedes, the rivalry in trade and
inventions among the Italian towns, were three causes for the demand
for greater exactness. Investigation, experiment, and invention
came into vogue. Magic, alchemy, astrology, and conjurations were no
longer accepted as serious methods. In the Middle Ages deduction had
been purely the logical employment of the syllogism in theological
discussions, while induction, so far as it was used at all, had been
the reference of nature phenomena to spiritual forces. Now deduction
and induction[6] come to be used for other purposes, and mathematics
is necessarily conjoined with both. The new Natural Science period
is essentially a “strife of methods”; it is the period when the true
plan of scientific procedure is being determined. It is here that the
importance and influence of Galileo is seen upon modern science and
philosophy.
The influence of mathematics in modern times grew up from these
astronomical beginnings among the Humanists; and the Natural Science
period with its contention as to methods was the immediate result.
Bacon, for example, regarded final causes as one of the “idols.” Hobbes
maintained that physics has only to do with efficient causes; Descartes
held that it is audacious in man to think of reading the purposes of
God in nature; while Spinoza thought it absurd to attribute divine
purpose to nature. By degrees everything in nature came to be regarded
as a mechanism, and there was no distinction between the animate and
the inanimate. The discovery of the mechanical circulation of the blood
by Harvey, in 1626, became a vigorous impulse toward the mechanical
study of animal life. Descartes regarded animals as complex automata
and on this line he published essays on dioptrics, musical law, and
the fœtus. Hobbes applied mechanical law to psychological phenomena.
The study of reflex action was carried on with great vigor in the Low
Countries and France. The mechanical theory was rendered complete in
this early time by the exclusion of the soul from the explanation of
the body of man, just as God had been pushed into the background of the
universe.
=Galileo Galilei= (1564–1641).[7] The dates of the life of Galileo
show him to have been a younger contemporary of Bruno, and, like Bruno,
to have been a victim of the ecclesiastical reaction that was sweeping
away all scientific freedom in Italy. But while Bruno belonged both
chronologically and in spirit to the first period of the Renaissance,
Galileo is the true beginner of the second period. Bruno was a
philosopher of nature, while Galileo was a true scientist. _Galileo
gave to all future thought a wisely formulated method of dealing with
the new materials of the nature world._ His laws of projectiles,
falling bodies, and the pendulum created a new theory of motion. He set
the hypothesis of Copernicus upon an experimental basis and made the
future work of Newton possible. He was professor at the Universities of
Padua and Pisa, and he was mathematician and philosopher at the court
of Tuscany. That he perjured himself and thereby saved his life from
the Inquisition, there is no doubt; but instead of death he had an
old age of great bitterness. He gave open adherence to the Copernican
system in 1610, when he constructed a telescope and discovered the
satellites of Jupiter; and after this there followed discovery after
discovery, like the spots on the sun and the phases of Venus, which
latter discovery confirmed the Copernican hypothesis. He invented
the hydrostatic balance, the proportional compass, the thermoscope,
microscope, and telescope. His two most noteworthy writings are
_The Dialogue concerning the Two Most Important World-Systems_, and
_Investigations into Two New Sciences_.
_As to method_, Galileo objected to formal logic, that it is not a
means of discovering new truth, although valuable as a corrective
of thought. New truth is discovered when we frame an hypothesis from
certain experiences, and then infer the truth of other cases from
that hypothesis. The hypothesis is first formed by induction from
a few characteristic cases; the inference to other cases is made
by deduction. He therefore linked induction and deduction closely
together, and conceived them as necessarily complementary in scientific
investigation. Either induction or deduction alone is absurd and
impossible. By induction alone we should be obliged to examine all
cases, an impossible undertaking. By deduction alone we should be
in the same straits as the Scholastics, and never discover new laws.
We must begin with our perceptual experiences and make an induction
from them; then we must bring mathematics into use in constructing
the hypothesis from which to deduce (calculate) new cases. This is the
true, modern method and reveals the great genius of Galileo.
A mathematical law never exactly coincides with any particular concrete
relations. A mathematical law is an hypothesis or ideal construction.
What value, then, has a mathematical law for science? The orbits of
planets[8] are described as ellipses, but no actual planet moves in
a perfect ellipse. The ellipse is an hypothetical, mathematical orbit
for a planet which has no disturbing influences upon it. We get at such
a law by the method of concomitant variations;[9] and the value of it
consists in the simplification and system that it gives the facts. For
example, knowing that a planet would move in an ellipse if it suffered
no perturbations, and then knowing the influences upon any particular
planet, we can calculate its orbit. Mathematical law, although ideal,
is the common rule under which all nature phenomena can be brought.
However, only by measurements founded on the tests of observation
and experiment can we know how far the claims of such deduction are
supported. Measure everything measurable, and calculate the measurement
of those things not directly measurable.
Nature, therefore, must be called upon to explain her own phenomena.
Since the laws of nature are found by investigating nature phenomena
as we experience them, the laws must be a part of nature and can be
found nowhere else. To explain nature phenomena by referring them to
spiritual influence is no real explanation. To say that God moves the
planets is to involve the subject in mystery. Here is where Galileo
shows that he does not belong to the Scholastics or the Mystics or the
Humanists. He searched for some constant element, and not for a “vital
force” behind nature phenomena. He declared this constant element
to be motion――measurable motion. He is the author of the theory that
mechanics is the mathematical theory of motion. Science was therefore
taken by him out of the paralyzing grip of the theologian.
=The Life of Francis Bacon, Baron Verulam= (1561–1626). Francis
Bacon was a native of London and received his university education at
Cambridge. He was in the English diplomatic service at an early age,
but he later returned to London and took up the legal profession. At
the age of thirty-two he entered Parliament and became immediately
distinguished as a debater. At forty-three he became legal adviser of
the crown, and when he was fifty-six he was made Lord Chancellor. After
a brilliant career in public office he was accused and convicted of
bribery and corruption, deposed from office, and heavily fined. His
most notable writings are his _Essays_, two parts of his uncompleted
_Instauratio Magna_, viz., _De Dignitate et Augmentis Scientiarum_ and
_Novum Organum_, and his _New Atlantis_, a Utopian fragment.
=The Position of Bacon in Philosophy.= Tradition has frequently placed
Bacon as the founder of modern philosophy. This estimate is due to a
remark by Diderot, which was repeated by many French writers. The
estimate, however, rests on a misapprehension of Bacon’s influence.
Bacon was more of a Humanist than a technical philosopher, and in his
constructive philosophy he seems not only to have had no influence upon
his contemporaries, but also to have been uninfluenced by them. He was
unconscious of the influence of Kepler and Galileo and their mighty
scientific constructions. Bacon’s _Novum Organum_, which embodies his
scientific methods, had no influence upon his own time, nor was it
read in the seventeenth century. Its influence was first felt in the
eighteenth century. However, all this must be qualified in one respect.
Bacon’s _New Atlantis_ did have an immediate influence. The ideal of
a college of science, which Bacon presented in his _New Atlantis_, was
not only the cause of the work of Diderot in his _Encyclopedia_ in the
eighteenth century, but what is more important, it had effect in his
own time. It led to the founding of the Royal Society, thirty-six years
after Bacon’s death, and later to the founding of similar academies
abroad. While the reader may be confused by the conflicting estimates
of Bacon, the words of his own countryman, Sir David Brewster, may be
accepted as embodying the truth: “Had Bacon never lived, the student
of nature would have found in the works and writings of Galileo not
only the principles of inductive philosophy, but also its practical
application to the noblest efforts of invention and discovery.” So
far from being the founder of modern science, Bacon developed only one
side of it, the inductive side, and that without success. He identified
deduction with the Aristotelian syllogism, and he was therefore unaware
of the importance of the use of mathematics in the method of deduction.
He did not seem to have the slightest idea that mathematics was going
to be the scientific method; consequently science has gone much further
than Bacon dreamed it would go. Bacon’s importance in the Renaissance
does not consist in his contribution to the content of philosophy or to
his successful formulation of the scientific method.
Wherein then lies the value of Bacon’s work as a philosopher?[10]
Bacon was the first in England to collect the fruits of the Renaissance
and give them a secular character. Taking them out of the hands of
the theologian, he, a lawyer, “gave them a legal existence by the most
eloquent plea that has ever been made for them.” It was a time when
philosophy and science were passing out of the hands of the theologian;
and Bacon, feeling that science, including philosophy, should be
secularized, drew a sharp line between the work of science and that
of theology. Out of his great contempt for antiquity, Bacon voiced for
England the contemporary reaction against the old scholastic methods.
_He set up the ideal_ and gave directions for following it. He issued
the call to go from abstractions back to things. A man of worldly
wisdom and pungency, his nature was buoyant in its belief in the coming
age. He had confidence amounting to an optimism that final principles
would be found to explain all the particulars of the “new world.”
He was a prophet who outlined his prophecy. He felt that not only
nature but all the activities of man would be reduced to some simple
principles. He shared and expressed the confidence of his time that
wonderful things were to be revealed; that nothing is impossible to
man, provided man hits upon the right key to nature’s secrets. Just as
every age, that feels itself upon the threshold of a new epoch, writes
Utopias,[11] so Bacon wrote the _New Atlantis_, the Utopian fragment,
for his age. This is the literary expression of his optimism about
the future of a distinctively secular science. The world of the
_New Atlantis_ is the world of new machines. Bacon’s most ambitious
scientific contribution to the same end is his _Instauratio Magna_.
Of this only two parts were completed: _De Dignitate et Augmentis
Scientiarum_ and _Novum Organum_. Bacon is best known in philosophy by
the second part, which was thus named to contrast it with the “old”
_Organum_ of Aristotle.
The high influence that Bacon gained later among philosophers may
therefore be accounted for by the association of his eminent position
and wonderful personality with his bold expression of this congenial
utilitarianism. Even in that rich Elizabethan age of English literature,
he was prominent as a writer and politician. He had occupied high
political positions under James I; but his peculiar personality would
in itself have attracted attention, for his genius was such that any
of the products of that age――even the plays of Shakespeare――have seemed
possible to him. Pope describes him as “the wisest, brightest, meanest
of mankind.” Macaulay says in his essay, _Bacon_, that there were many
things that he loved more than virtue and many that he feared more than
guilt. His career shows that he loved himself, wealth, and learning.
His unusual love for learning may be safely taken as his excuse for
his unscrupulous lust for wealth. His great versatility prevented his
success in any one direction, but he had the power of expressing the
feeling of his impressive age and of becoming its personal
representative.
=The Aim of Bacon.= Bacon sought to secularize philosophy by making
it the same as science. It was the age when Nature was conceived to
be identical with the world of the natural sciences. Bacon stood in
this age as the formulator of the scientific usefulness of philosophy.
Philosophy is to ameliorate social conditions and enrich human life
by bringing nature under control. Ancient and mediæval times had not
been occupied with the improvement of human society, but Bacon was
inspired with the feeling of the modern statesman for such improvement.
The true test of philosophy, according to Bacon, is what it will do.
That philosophy is worth while which will effectively remove the
weighing conditions upon human society, so that there are no longer two
classes,――those that sacrifice and those that satisfy their ambitions.
This dominant utilitarian motive in Bacon sets him in opposition to
pure theoretical and contemplative knowledge, and makes him the father
of utilitarianism and positivism[12] in England.[13] Knowledge is
the only kind of permanent power, and man can master the world when
he gives up verbal discussions and belief in magic. Man must gain a
positive insight into nature. Science and philosophy must be separated
from theology, and philosophy must be reduced to science. Thus while
aiming to give a tangible form to the scholastic doctrine of the
“twofold truth,” Bacon through his utilitarianism missed the goal
reached by Galileo and Descartes.
=The Method of Bacon.= Bacon says that the method of the scientist
should not be like that of the spider that spins a web out of himself,
nor like that of the ant which merely collects material, but like
that of the bee which collects, assimilates, and transforms. Bacon’s
original inspiration had been his respect for method, and this grew
more pronounced. Philosophy, _i. e._ science, is method. With Bacon
we see the beginning of philosophy cut loose from personality and
over-valued because it had mechanical accuracy. Nevertheless, the
method of Bacon was very comprehensive. It included on the one hand a
critical survey of the past, and on the other an anticipatory programme
for the science of the future. Let us now turn to these two aspects of
his method.
(a) _Bacon’s criticism of the past_ was a trenchant criticism of
prevailing philosophy, and amounted to a break with the past. Bacon
felt that what passed for science in his day was but a pretence. In
the presence of the facts of life traditional science was but empty
words. The early thinkers are not the ancients. We are the ancients,
for we embody in ourselves all the preceding centuries. Thus does Bacon
swing from the mediæval blind acceptance of the past to an equally
blind rejection of the past. But why did the ancient thinkers err?
Not because they were not men of talent, nor because they lacked in
intellectual opportunity; but because their method of procedure led
them astray. The early thinkers followed wrong paths, and their results,
which we now possess, are vain.
What must be our attitude in the presence of this traditional
philosophy? We must dispossess ourselves of the prejudices that have
misled the past, for they form the obstacles to our true knowledge of
the world. The roots of the errors that have infected philosophy are
“fantastic, contentious, and delicate learning.” We must not, indeed,
trust to our every-day perceptions; for although science is based
on our perceptions, our every-day perceptions are corrupted by our
uncritical habits of thought. Thus there have arisen perversions and
falsifications, of which we must first of all be rid. Bacon calls these
Idols.[14] Idols are false images, that intervene between us and the
truth and are mistaken for reality. Bacon makes four general classes
of Idols:――
(1) The Idols of the Tribe, or the presuppositions common to the human
race.
(2) The Idols of the Cave,[15] or individual prejudices due to natural
individual disposition, situation in life, etc.
(3) The Idols of the Forum, or the traditional meanings of words,
by which we substitute the word for the idea. These are the worst
illusions.
(4) The Idols of the Theatre,[16] the theories or philosophic dogma,
which command discipleship from groups of men and have not been
subjected to our own criticism.
Bacon’s classification of our prejudices as Idols is a critical attempt
to separate, in what passes for knowledge, the subjective, which has
become traditional, from the real. Logic, religion, and poetry have
had a bad effect on science, as is especially shown in the theatrical
character of philosophy.
(b) Having dispossessed ourselves of our prejudices or Idols, we are
ready to proceed to a positive construction of a scientific method of
work. By what, in general, ought science to be guided? By induction and
experience. Bacon suggests the following steps for the science of the
future:――
(1) There must be an exhaustive collection of particular instances.
(2) There must then be an analysis and comparison of these instances,
for to Bacon induction was not a mere enumeration of single instances.
Negative instances, and instances of difference of degree, must be
taken into account. Hasty generalizations must be avoided, and we must
ascend gradually from the particular to the general.
(3) The simple “form” of the phenomenon must be discovered. Of the four
causes of Aristotle, Bacon emphasizes the “formal.” By “form” Bacon
means the nature that is always present when the phenomenon is present,
absent when the phenomenon is absent, and increases or decreases with
the phenomenon. The “form” is the abiding essence of the phenomenon.
=The English Natural Science Movement.= The natural science movement
in England thus received at the start the impression of the sober
Anglo-Saxon mind. Through its entire history English philosophy
differed from that of the Continent. Here at the outset the Englishman
is skeptical, not only of scholastic deductions from dogma, but
also of deductions of all kinds.[17] He prefers the slow road of
patient empirical discovery. Even pure contemplative knowledge and
the deductions of mathematics have little charm for him. To be sure,
induction even in the hands of an Englishman demands by its nature the
establishment of a general principle, but Bacon would have refused to
use such a deduction to establish a new truth in the way that Galileo
used his mathematical hypotheses. According to Bacon, an hypothesis is
true only so far as it has already received the indispensable sanction
of experience.
=Thomas Hobbes[18] and his Contemporaries.= During a certain period
Bacon had under him a secretary by the name of Thomas Hobbes. Here
was an obscure man turning to philosophy because of his interest in
politics; whose point of attachment to philosophy was the mechanical
theory of nature, so universally accepted by the scientists of
that time. No contemporary of Hobbes――neither Bacon, Descartes, nor
Galileo――had so systematic a philosophy. No other man succeeded better
in expressing all that was in his mind. Hobbes was one of a large group
of political theorists of the Renaissance. When the mediæval idea of
the universal Christian state, such as was embodied in Augustine’s
_City of God_, was no longer held, many of the Humanists tried to
construct theoretical systems of political government that would meet
the demands of the time. Macchiavelli, Thomas More, Bodin, Althusius,
and Grotius[19] belong to this group. Hobbes is best known in modern
times as a writer on this aspect of morals and politics; but politics
is only a part of his general mechanical system of the universe. He
is the forerunner of modern materialism, and his peculiar theory of
society is only an exemplification of this theory.
In passing from Bacon to Hobbes we come to a very different type of man.
Bacon had risen to fame by his own genius, in spite of the hostility
of his powerful relatives; Hobbes was a hard-headed man, with a narrow
outlook, but with undoubted talents, which were fostered all his life
under the patronage of the Devonshire family. Bacon was a practical
politician; Hobbes was a doctrinaire and theoretical political writer.
Of the voluminous literary remains of Bacon his philosophy forms but a
small part; Hobbes had a general philosophical system, with which his
classical and theological studies have connection.
In the succeeding chapter we shall review the philosophy of the
rationalist, Descartes, who was a contemporary of Hobbes. We shall
find that Descartes and Hobbes are alike in this: that both employed
Galileo’s mathematical theory as authoritative. They differed, however,
in the way in which they used Galileo’s theory. Descartes reduced
mathematics to the rational, and conceived it to be the instrument
of the reason; Hobbes reduced the rational to the mathematical, and
conceived the reason as a form of mechanics. The starting-point of
Descartes was the subjective, and he was held at a standstill until
the relation of thought and mechanics was solved by him. The point
of view of Hobbes was objective, and since all was mechanical, he
discussed only incidentally the relation between thought and mechanical
existence. Hobbes conceived the world in the terms of only one series,
the mechanical. Descartes’ main motive was to preserve the rational;
and, consequently, the world to him consisted of a double or dualistic
series of terms. We therefore place Descartes, with Spinoza and
Leibnitz, in a group called Rationalists. Hobbes was a materialist,
and his greatness consisted in going the full length of materialism: he
went beyond all the scientists of his time by extending the mechanical
theory to the mental life.
=The Life and Writings of Hobbes= (1588–1679). The life of Hobbes falls
into five natural periods. In his first and last periods he was the
classical scholar. During his middle period of about thirteen years
he was the philosopher. Furthermore, at one time he was absorbed in
mathematics and at another in controversy. His period as mathematician
was begun not until he was forty years old, and was preparatory to his
creative philosophical period, which was begun when he was about fifty.
1. _As a Classical Scholar_ (including his early years)
(1588–1628)――the first forty years of his life. At Oxford (1603–1608);
first journey abroad (1608–1612); beginning of his relations with the
Devonshire family and also of his acquaintance with the “new science”;
time of leisurely study (1612–1628) and acquaintance with Bacon,
Herbert of Cherbury, and Ben Jonson; translation of _Thucydides_ (1628).
2. _As Mathematician_ (1628–1638). Second journey abroad (1629–1631)
for eighteen months as tutor to the son of Sir Gervase Clifton; reads
_Euclid_ while abroad; third journey abroad (1634–1637), when he meets
Galileo; begins to develop the conception of motion and sensation;
by 1638 he is counted among the notable philosophers and he meets the
Parisian scientists, Mersenne and Gassendi.
3. _As Philosopher_ (1638–1651). Plans his philosophy under title of
_Elements of Philosophy_: _De Corpore_, _De Homine_, and _De Cive_,
which is interrupted by the English Revolution; _Elements of Law_
(“little treatise”) written in 1640, read by a few in manuscript,
published without his consent in 1650 in two parts: _Human Nature_
and _De Corpore Politico_; flees to Paris (1640) and enters again the
scientific circle at Paris; criticises Descartes’ _Meditations_; _De
Cive_ published (1642), which is _De Corpore Politico_ enlarged; acts
for a time as tutor to Charles II in Paris; engages upon his general
philosophical theory (1642–1645); _Liberty and Necessity_, written
(1646), published (1654); _Leviathan_ published (1651).
4. As Controversialist (1651–1668). Flees back to London (1651); _De
Corpore_, published (1655); _Behemoth_, written (1668), proscribed and
not published until after his death; controversies with Bramhall, Ward,
Wallis, and Boyle; _De Homine_, published (1658).
5. As Classical Scholar (1668–1679). Translation of _Iliad_ and
_Odyssey_ (1675).
In Molesworth’s edition (1839–1845), Hobbes’ Latin works occupy
five volumes, the English eleven. The _Elements of Philosophy_――the
_De Corpore_, _De Homine_, and _De Cive_――were not published in the
sequence in which they were planned, but, on account of political
exigencies, in the above order.
=The Influences upon the Thought of Hobbes.= 1. The premature birth of
Hobbes had no inconsiderable influence upon his life. When his mother
was carrying him, she had suffered a great fright, at the announcement
of the approach of the Spanish Armada. Was it in consequence of this
that Hobbes’s life was a series of panics and controversies? He was
extremely conservative in politics. He saw the new changes without
sympathy with either party, and he had no political ideals――only
fear. The time in which he lived reinforced this natural conservatism.
When he was translating _Thucydides_, Buckingham was assassinated
and the Petition of Rights was presented. Henry IV of France had been
assassinated not many years before, and the Puritan element had become
a disturbing factor in England. His study and his alliance with the
Devonshire family confirmed him in his conservative position. All signs
of the time pointed toward decentralization of government, toward war
and rebellion. In fear he was “the first that fled” to France at the
beginning of the troubles of Charles I; in fear he fled back to London
eleven years later, lest the Roman Catholics, whom his _Leviathan_ had
offended, should murder him. Hobbes was again in great panic over the
London fire and looked upon it as a divine penalty, on account of the
impurity of the English court. Hobbes was always in fright lest he
might not have peace.
2. The father of Hobbes was one of the unworthy clergymen of the
English Established Church in the reign of Elizabeth. He was a
dissolute man, and after many escapades he abandoned his family.
In consequence of this Hobbes always had an antipathy toward the
offices of the church and toward theology. Although he claimed to be a
communicant, his allegiance was only nominal, as his theory will show.
3. Hobbes was very much influenced by the new mathematical science. His
years at Oxford left little impression upon him, and he was but little
interested in the scholasticism which was taught there. Yet his twenty
years on the Continent brought him into the midst of the scientific
circles of Italy and France. He was well along into maturity when
he felt this influence. On his second journey, he read _Euclid_ for
the first time. He was then forty-three. On his third journey, he met
Galileo and the French scientists, Mersenne and Gassendi, and it was
then that he began his reflections concerning motion and sensation.
The writings of Kepler, Descartes, and Galileo influenced him mightily.
Although he acted as Bacon’s secretary after the latter’s fall, Bacon’s
influence upon him was little and has been overestimated. The mental
powers of Bacon and his secretary were different, and Bacon knew
nothing of the mathematical method. Hobbes shows to some degree the
empirical tendency of his nationality, and he believed that knowledge
must spring from experience. Further than this, the method that Bacon
pursued does not appear in him. _The mission of Hobbes was to construct
a mechanical view of the world._
Of the three influences upon Hobbes, his inherited timidity is seen in
his conservative political theory; the influence of his father is seen
in his theory of religion; the influence of the “new” mathematical
science is seen in his whole philosophy, especially in his psychology.
=The Fundamental Principle in the Teaching of Hobbes.= The assumption
from which Hobbes deduced his entire philosophy was the mechanical
conception of the physical world,――the characteristic philosophical
assumption of his age. Hobbes’s contemporaries, both the natural
scientists and the philosophers, had, however, on the whole, restricted
the conception of mechanism to the physical world. Hobbes differed from
them all in universalizing the conception. He extended its application
from the physical over upon the mental realm, and thereby reduced
the mental world to physics. He stated this mechanical principle in
two parts: _all that exists is body_; _all that occurs is motion_.
Hobbes applies this assumption to the physical world and it gives
him materialism;[20] he applies it to knowledge and it gives him
sensationalism;[21] he applies it to the will and it gives him
determinism;[22] he applies it to morals and politics and it gives him
naturalism.[23] Body is nature; body is everything. Body is the first
term leading through man up to the State. With Hobbes, as with others
of his time, the political field was the whole ground to be penetrated.
The fundamental principle, by which Hobbes thought the whole field was
to be explained, is body in motion. The mental world became drawn into
the physical, and thereby his mechanical conception became the more
natural.
There was one realm which Hobbes left untouched by his principle:
the realm of the spirit, _i. e._ God, souls, angels. The science of
bodies cannot deal with the supernatural, for the supernatural does not
consist of bodies in motion. Matter and mind are homogeneous; matter
and spirit are not. The contrast in Hobbes is not between matter and
mind, the material and the psychical, but between matter and spirit,
the material and the supra-material.
=The Method of Hobbes.= Hobbes made the method of Galileo his own.
He believed that all knowledge is rooted in mathematics. There is one
true method of treating all subjects: the mathematical calculation of
them as motions of bodies. Knowledge consists in using words as the
signs of experience and in reckoning with them. Scientific thought is
the combination of signs. It is the rationalizing of our experiences.
Science has a truth in itself and stands as a rationally organized
world, quite different from the world of experience which it has
organized. The world of bodies in causally related motions is such
an organized world, the most systematized and most simply constructed
world that science can devise. But how does the scientist proceed? He
begins with a phenomenon, which is a body in motion, and finds out the
causes of the phenomenon, which causes are nothing more nor less than
the elements of the phenomenon in question. Then the scientist proceeds
from the causes to other phenomenal effects. These new effects are
like the original phenomenon and its causes,――bodies in motion. Thus
the world of the scientist is a world of causes and effects, for “the
natural reason of man is busily flying up and down among the creatures,
and bringing back a true report of their order, causes, and effects.”
Thus we find Hobbes to be a nominalist (see vol. i, p. 358) who,
nevertheless, used the deductive method――rather a strange combination.
Like all his English successors, he employed induction and deduction,
but the two processes never became fused.[24] Moreover for induction
he has no method.
The order in which the writings of Hobbes appeared seems to have been
the sport of outward events, for they were not written according to his
original plan. On his return from his third journey to the Continent
(1638), Hobbes, then fifty years old, had adopted the mechanical theory
and had planned his philosophy. His comprehensive work was to be called
the _Elements of Philosophy_, and was to be divided into three parts:
_De Corpore_, treating physical bodies; _De Homine_, treating man as a
psychological individual; _De Cive_, treating man as the citizen of a
State. Hobbes’s philosophy was therefore to be a universal philosophy,
and he intended to bring his works out in logical order――first, the
science of physics, then of human nature, and last of society. However,
the growing disturbances in the political world at that time moved him
to publish several treatises on politics first, and his physics and
psychology more than fifteen years later.
=The Kinds of Bodies.= There are two kinds of bodies, natural and
artificial. Natural bodies are those belonging to the physical world.
The artificial bodies are the institutions of society, of which the
most important is the State. Man belongs to both classes of bodies――he
has a physical nature and he is a member of the State. Man is the
connecting link between natural and artificial bodies. Philosophy
is therefore divided into three parts: _physics_, which treats of
purely natural bodies; _psychology_, which treats of man in his rôle
as a natural individual; _politics_, which treats of man in social
congregations with his fellows. Looking at the situation from the
other end, political bodies are decomposable into men, men are in
turn decomposable into physical bodies. Political bodies are dependent
on the psychical nature of men, and the psychical nature of men is
dependent on the nature of physical bodies, _i. e._ on bodies and their
motions. Thus all bodies, natural and artificial, must be explained in
terms of motion, if they are explained scientifically. Physical bodies
are the first term leading up through man to the last term in the
series, which is the State.
=Hobbes’s Application of the Mathematical Theory to Psychology.=
Although the prime interest of Hobbes lay in the political life of
man, he nevertheless made an original contribution to psychology.
He snatched the science of mental phenomena from the hands of the
scholastic theologian and made it for the first time an independent
science. Psychology had been based upon the assumptions of the
theologian; for these Hobbes substituted the assumptions of the
mathematician. Consciousness became in his hands not a soul, but the
motion of bodies. It is described by him as “the movement of certain
parts of the organic body.” The states of consciousness, such as
sensations, perceptions, etc., are brain movements or the refined
movements of atoms in the nervous system. Memory and imagination
are “decaying sensations”; thought is the sum of several sensations;
experience is the totality of sensations bound together by the rigid
laws of association. Hobbes was the father of what is known as the
Associational Psychology, or the theory that consciousness is composed
of mental atoms under fixed laws of association.
But although Hobbes took psychology out of the hands of the theologian
and made it a mechanical science, he did not identify it with physics.
It is still psychology. The mental states are the physical motion of
bodies, but they are not external motions, nor are they the copies of
the external motions of bodies. Mental states are brain movements; they
are the _result_ of external motions. They come about in this way. A
moving body in the outer world makes an impression on the sense organ,
and this motion is transmitted by the nerves to the heart and brain.
A reaction is effected in the brain, and this is a mental state. The
brain transformations, and not the movement of the external object,
is that of which we are conscious. The mental state is an “apparition”
of the actual fact in the external world; it is an effect in a causal
series. Our perception of light is, for example, a modification of the
cerebral substance, and not of the external body itself. We deceive
ourselves when we think that the sensations of light, sound, heat are
outside us. These qualities of things are modifications of ourselves.
There is nothing external to us, except the motions of bodies which
are the causes of these modifications. The external world is no doubt
real, but we have no knowledge of it――no knowledge of aught save the
motions of bodies within ourselves. _This is the point of view of
all subsequent English philosophy: the substance of things is quite
different from our knowledge of them. The substance of things is real;
but is not the object of our knowledge. The object of our knowledge is
a modification of ourselves._
The independence of knowledge with reference to theology on the one
side, and to physical reality on the other, is well illustrated in
Hobbes’s discussion of language. Speech consists of words, which are
only the counters of things. Words are markers by which men may know a
thing as “seamen mark a rock.” Science consists in their manipulation.
Science combines them by addition and subtraction into judgments and
syllogisms, and thereby constructs a body of demonstrated principles.
Words are only counters, and he is a fool who mistakes the counter for
the coin of reality. Words only represent reality, and the law of their
use is mathematics. Truth and falsity are terms that are concerned with
the correct or incorrect manipulation of these verbal counters and not
with real things.
=Hobbes’s Application of the Mathematical Theory to Politics.= In the
same way that material bodies in motion give rise to mental states, and
mental states as bodies in motion give rise to the human consciousness,
so men as individuals are the source of the artificial body,――the State.
In every individual man the impulse to self-preservation is innate,
and is, in fact, his absolute and universal characteristic. Just as
the law of the mechanical association of ideas is the fundamental
principle of the human mind, so the mechanical law of self-preservation
is the principle of man’s ethical and political life. All our
political institutions are the result of the striving of men for
self-preservation. In his natural state――when, as Hobbes conceived,
man lived without social organization――man had no other standard
for conduct than his own self-interest; in the artificial political
state, which man has constructed, self-interest is still his motive.
Egoism is the sole working principle of human beings both before and
after they live in societies; but the political state is the most
ingenious contrivance which egoism has hit upon for its own profit.
Hobbes conceived that the original state of man, which under the name
of “state of nature” was a common problem in the Renaissance, was
a condition in which every man was making war against every other
man. (Compare Locke and Rousseau.) But such a condition of things
was obviously self-destructive. Consequently man arbitrarily and
artificially formed the political State to avoid this self-destructive,
internecine warfare. Under the circumstances it was the most effective
way in which man could gain his personal ends, for the political State
was the only possible means to peace. In the “state of nature” the
right of every man to everything was the equivalent of the right of
every man to nothing. So men made a compact with one another under
which each relinquished a portion of his rights in order that each
might have a portion of them secure. But what gives security to this
compact? The sovereign to which the powers of the many have thus been
delegated. What is the sovereign? It is the soul of the State, the
general will,――represented by a single person in a monarchy, by
an assembly in a republic. This sovereign, in whom the contract is
vested, is absolute; for the sovereign was not a party to the original
contract, since he did not then exist. The contract was made among the
individuals, at that time in a “state of nature.” So long as the State
preserves its power among the people, the people must render their
obedience to the State,――to the sovereign in whom the contract was
vested. The might of the political State makes right. Whatever the
State commands is right; whatever is forbidden is wrong. There was no
right and wrong in the “state of nature,” only the possible and the
impossible. An act is a crime when it breaks the contract, and thus
the ground of morality is political legislation. Even the religion of
the people is determined by the State. Any political State is better
than a revolution. Here was philosophical justification of Charles I.
A reversion to war is a reversion to the “state of nature.”
When Hobbes was in France as a refugee he wrote the _Leviathan_,
which contained this doctrine of political society. He presented a
vellum-bound copy to Charles II, hoping to gain favor with that prince.
However, the _Leviathan_, unfortunately for Hobbes’s purpose, contained
two paragraphs that antagonized the royalists and the Catholics. One
was, that when a commonwealth is unable to protect its citizens in
peace, that commonwealth is dissolved and a new sovereign commonwealth
is formed. The second was, that while the sovereign state shall
decide what the religion of its people shall be, no religion is
infallible――neither Anglican, Catholic, nor Puritan. The religion that
the sovereign makes legal is only a temporary one; the true religion
will come not until the Last Judgment. The church is subordinate to
the State, like everything else, and it does not matter much what the
State religion shall be, provided there be peace. Religion is only a
superstition resting on a defective knowledge of nature, and it is of
little consequence what particular religion the State makes binding.
It hardly need be said that the _Leviathan_ pleased neither Charles II
nor the Catholics. The sequel of its publication was that Hobbes fled
back to England from fear of assassination.
=The Renaissance in England after Hobbes.= The philosophies of Bacon
and Hobbes do not exhaust, but merely represent the philosophy of
England during the Renaissance. Empiricism[25] had to wait for Locke in
the next period before it became dominant. After Hobbes Scholasticism
was narrowly confined to limited circles and appeared under the form of
Skepticism or of Platonism, neo-Platonism, or Mysticism. The reaction
toward Platonism was centred in a group of ethical scholars, called
the Cambridge School. It included Culverwell, Cudworth, Henry More,
and Cumberland. This Platonic movement was short-lived. The scientific
spirit, represented in the Renaissance by Bacon and Hobbes, dominated
the next period,――the Enlightenment,――and we shall find it spreading
its influence over France and Germany in the form that Locke gave to it.
But the history of the philosophy of the Renaissance is not yet
completed. Contemporary with Bacon and Hobbes, there was a movement
on the Continent which was more characteristic of the Renaissance, and
indeed more important to it than the movement in England. This was the
school of Rationalists, to which we now turn.
CHAPTER V
THE RATIONALISM OF THE NATURAL SCIENCE PERIOD OF THE RENAISSANCE
=The Nature of Rationalism.= Although the new science grew apace,
it was not altogether a safe vocation. Natural science involves
metaphysical questions at every point. The scientist at this time,
therefore, found himself often in delicate relations with the jealous
church guardians. A scientific explanation of the universe might
antagonize the church dogma concerning God, creation, and the final
outcome of the world. The church doctrine concerning the soul, too,
its nature and its immortality, its relation to the body, might
be antagonized by physiological and psychological discussions. In
such dilemmas as these the natural scientist was not successful in
pretending to isolate himself entirely from theology and in assuming
an attitude of aloofness to it. Galileo might declare that, whatever
the results of his investigations in physics might be, they had nothing
to do with the Bible; but he sorrowfully found that the Inquisition
thought otherwise. Copernicus found that his astronomical theories
came into conflict with church dogma, and he was tormented by his
bishop. Kepler spent his later years in a deadly struggle with both
Protestantism and Catholicism. Bacon and Hobbes lived in a country
where their personal safety was fairly secure, nevertheless Bacon
disguised his position by using large words and Hobbes was untroubled
because he accepted the religion of his sovereign.
If the position of those was difficult who tried to keep themselves
strictly within the limits of science, how much more fraught with
personal danger was the position of those who openly constructed a
new metaphysics? It would mean that a challenge was issued to the old
Scholasticism by the same human reason that had already challenged
and overthrown the old science. The group of men who did this were
the Rationalists. The Rationalists were interested in science, but
they were more interested in the metaphysical problems that science
aroused. The human reason had been successful in the reconstruction
of physics by the use of mathematics. Why should it not also be able
to reconstruct metaphysics and set it, too, upon a mathematical basis?
The leaders of this school were Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, and the
Occasionalists,――Malebranche and Geulincx. The Rationalists advanced
a new conception not only of nature, but of God; new theories not only
of the human body, but of the soul. Their task was the dangerous one of
bravely invading the hitherto impregnable realms of the spirit.
The task of the Rationalists was rendered the more difficult because,
for the first time in the history of European thought, the inner and
outer worlds had been completely sundered. For the first time do we
meet with a clear-cut and positive dualism. The history of the growth
of this dualism had been a long one, and to it the Greek Sophist,
the Stoic, and the Christian had each contributed his share. However,
Galileo and his fellow scientists in this period of the Renaissance
had so reconstructed the old “world of nature” that it had become
irreconcilable to the “world of grace.” These scientists believed that
nature must be made to explain itself; its events must be conceived as
necessitated; its processes as having the inevitableness of a machine.
From the revolutions of the planets to the circulation of the blood,
the movements of nature can be measured. The law of nature, that
is conceived to underlie all this science, is mechanical causation.
The researches of the scientists of the Renaissance had yielded a
rich world of brute, inevitable, and scientific facts, and these
stood in absolute fundamental contrast to the world of spiritual
facts which were embodied in the church dogma. Apparently the problem
of reconciling the “world of nature” and the “world of grace” had
been solved by St. Thomas Aquinas in mediæval times. Now, however,
the “world of nature” had been so reconstructed that the question
was re-opened. How is the new “world of nature” to be brought into
harmonious relation with that old, persistent, and settled dogma of the
church? How can the newly conceived mechanism of nature be harmonized
with the realm of free conscious spirits, without giving up the
conception of God as a rational being, and also without depriving the
soul of its power of initiation? The new science had therefore made it
especially difficult on the one hand to reconcile a mechanical universe
with an omnipotent God, and on the other to reconcile the mechanical
human body with the free soul.
The struggle of the Renaissance with the Middle Ages is therefore
concentrated in the development of the doctrine of this Rationalist
School. It is studied here even better than by reading the two periods
side by side. In Rationalism the Scholasticism of the Middle Ages and
the Science of the Renaissance meet. Rationalism was a new science, but
it was a new theology as well. It was a new scholastic philosophy; for,
while the Rationalists thought that they were giving the death blow to
mediæval philosophy, they were instead only replacing it with another
scholasticism. In their attempt, by means of the mechanical theory,
to get an absolute system of knowledge upon which thought can rest,
the Rationalists were acting in the spirit of the schoolmen. In fact,
no schoolman ever showed more vigor or more dogmatic confidence in
his philosophy. To the mathematical eye of the Rationalist there
was absolutely nothing mysterious in the physical universe or in the
spiritual realm. All things in heaven and earth could be made clear.
The declaration of the Rationalists was the call of freedom, but it
was as hazardous as it was ambitious; and the church with its assured
revelations always stood opposed to the realization of freedom. So we
shall find Descartes spending his whole life trying to trim his sails
that he may not offend the Inquisition; Spinoza saving himself from
both the Jews and the Christians by living in obscurity and publishing
nothing; Leibnitz constructing philosophy with the avowed purpose of
reconciling science and religion.
=The Mental Conflict in Descartes.= The strife between the spirit
of the Middle Ages and that of the Renaissance appears in Descartes
more strikingly than in any other thinker of this time. He shows,
on the one hand, all the conservatism of a churchman of mediæval time
in his respect for institutional authority; on the other hand, his
intellectual activity places him among the leading scientists of the
Renaissance. In no other thinker does the conflict between the Old
and the New appear so unsettling; in none does the antagonism between
the scholastic world of spiritual things and the mechanical world of
science appear so irreconcilable. He suffered a life-long mental strife,
for within himself mediævalism and science were engaged in an unending
dramatic struggle. The philosophy of Descartes was a compromise between
his traditions and his scientific genius; and his philosophy never
overcame his conflicting motives. The admirers of Descartes have
called him the father of modern thought, and this is partly true. The
father of the modern scientific method was Galileo. Descartes, on the
other hand, pointed out the incontestable principle from which modern
thought has proceeded; he won his place in the history of philosophy
by attempting to harmonize the old scholasticism with the new science
under this single principle.
=The Life and Philosophical Writings of Descartes= (1596–1650).[26]
(1) _As Child and Student_ (1596–1613).
At home until he was eight years old (1596– 1604).
At the Jesuit school at La Flèche until he was seventeen (1604–1613).
(2) _As Traveler_ (1613–1628). Descartes studies “the book of the
world.”
At Paris (1613–1617), in retirement and study.
In Holland (1617–1619), nominally attached to the army of Maurice.
First Journey (1619–1621), going through Bavaria, Austria, north to
the shores of the Baltic and back to Holland. The greater part of these
two years were spent in Bohemia, enrolled in the army of the Emperor.
He was on this journey when his mental crisis occurred,――at Neuberg,
in Austria, in 1619. It was then that he discovered either analytical
geometry or the fundamental principle of his philosophy.
In Paris again, 1623.
Second Journey (1623–1625), to Switzerland and Italy, making a
pilgrimage to the shrine of Loretto.
(3) _As Writer_ (1629–1650).
In Holland (1629–1649). For the sake of absolute seclusion from
inquisitive visitors, Descartes changed his residence in Holland
twenty-four times and lived in thirteen places. All his correspondence
passed through Mersenne. During these twenty years he made three
journeys to France. Thus this period of absolute retirement became his
period of literary production, chiefly between the years 1635 and 1644.
He wrote his
_Method_ (1635–1637).
_Meditations_ (1629–1641).
_Le Monde_ (1630–1632), published posthumously.
_Principles_ (1641–1644).
_Passions_ (1646–1649).
(4) _In Stockholm, Sweden_ (1649–1650). The romantic side of the life
of Descartes appears in his book on the _Passions_, which he wrote for
the Princess Elizabeth, and also in his acceptance of the invitation
of the Queen of Sweden to reside at her court and become her tutor. He
died there from the rigors of the climate after a residence of one year.
=The Two Conflicting Influences upon the Thought of Descartes.= On
the one hand, all the ties of inheritance, family influence, and
early education allied Descartes with the spirit of the Middle Ages.
A delicate constitution made him shrink from public controversy and
the public eye. He even made a half apology for his pursuit of science
by saying that he was seeking to reform his own life, and that it was
absurd for an individual to attempt to reform a state. His family on
both sides belonged to the landed gentry, and he was therefore bound
by caste to the support of institutional authority. He was educated
in the Jesuit school of La Flèche, and this most conservative of
ecclesiastical influences restrained him from following the logical
conclusions of his own thought. He was therefore both physically timid
and intellectually aloof. In 1632 he was about to publish _Le Monde_,
which was a scientific description of the origin and nature of the
universe, and agrees in part with the Copernican theory. It was a
treatise which would naturally conflict with the teaching of the
church. He learned of the trial of Galileo at Rome, and he never dared
to publish the book.
The rival spirit speaking in Descartes was the new scientific spirit
of the Renaissance. He had a genius for mathematics even when he was at
school at La Flèche. On his going to Paris he became the centre of the
most notable scientific circle in France――a circle composed of such men
as the Abbé Claude Picot, the physician Villebressieux, the optician
Ferrier, the mathematician Mersenne, and many other scientists and
theologians. But he became dissatisfied and made some long journeys in
order to study “the book of the world.” His discovery of his method and
his philosophical principle was the result. In mathematics he was the
discoverer of analytical geometry and was the first to represent powers
by exponents; in physics he stated the principle of the refraction of
light in trigonometrical form; he explained the rainbow; he weighed
the air. The same industrious application of the new scientific methods
that yielded great results in science, also resulted in his development
of his philosophy. Love for original discovery made Descartes
disdainful of all scientific authorities and even contemptuous of his
notable contemporaries, Galileo and Harvey. He mentions by name Plato,
Aristotle, Epicurus, Campanella, Telesio, and Bruno, but he claimed
that he learned nothing from any one except Kepler. He felt himself to
be above criticism, and in his self-arrogating dogmatism he is the type
of the modern practical individualist. He defined truth as candor to
one’s self, and both in his practical life and in his theoretical ideal
there is an entire absence of utilitarianism.
=The Method of Descartes.= Both science and scholasticism show
themselves in the method of Descartes. He attempted to construct
a philosophical method entirely in the scientific spirit of the
Renaissance, but in the application of it he showed his scholastic
training. Surfeited with inadequate and traditional methods he felt
the need of some single principle by which all knowledge might be
systematized, and he was sure that mathematics would furnish the
key. Rational science was to Descartes only mathematics. Truth is
to be found not in metaphysics, nor in empirical science. Descartes’
philosophical aim was to establish a universal mathematics. Descartes
was not entirely faithful to Galileo’s mathematical principle in his
employment of it, and his influence in metaphysics was thereby all the
greater; for in the development of his method he found assistance in
the traditional scholastic methods. Descartes was original in insisting
upon finding the existence of an absolute and undeniable principle
before any progress could be made. Such an absolute principle can be
obtained only by an _inductive sifting of all ideas_. From this all
further truths must be obtained by _deduction_. Every true philosophy
must therefore be an induction or analysis of ideas, and secondly,
a deduction or synthesis. _The great contribution of Descartes was
therefore this: to the inductive method of Bacon and the deductive
method of Galileo, he added an absolute principle which must be taken
as the basis of both induction and deduction._[27]
=Induction――Provisional Doubt――The Ultimate Certainty of Consciousness.=
The philosophical proclamation of Descartes was characteristically
French, for he demanded the same return to an uncorrupted nature for
the understanding that Rousseau many years later demanded for the heart.
The first step of Descartes was also French in its demand for absolute
clearness, which from his youth had shown him to be so passionately
fond of mathematics. The way to such clearness is through provisional
doubt. Let us purify the understanding by delivering it of the rubbish
of traditional opinions, taken upon the say-so of others. By this
negative induction of received knowledge, let us see if there is
anything positive and certain. In Descartes’s _Meditations_, in “a
dramatic dialogue with himself,” he portrays his own intellectual
struggle to gain uncontaminated truth. He makes an induction of all
kinds of knowledge and challenges each as it appears. Nothing is to
be accepted as true until it has proved itself true. All facts are
subjected to rigid scrutiny. Descartes doubts the testimony of the
senses, the existence of the material world, the existence of God. But
this induction is provisional, even if it is radical. While none of the
usually accepted truths are found by him to be undeniable and absolute,
yet Descartes has an ulterior purpose in challenging them. Greek
skepticism had no further end than doubt, while at the other extreme
Anselm and the orthodox scholastics had refused to doubt at all. The
method of Descartes is contrasted both with that of Anselm and with
that of the Skeptics, for he doubts in order that he may know. _Dubito
ut intelligam._ Doubt is necessary, but only as a means to an end; and
that end is knowledge. Descartes proclaimed for the modern individual
the privilege and the duty of rationalizing his own beliefs.
In such an inductive sifting of traditional beliefs, are there any
that can be called knowledge? Is there one whose reliability cannot
be successfully doubted? Not a single one, except the thinking process
itself. I am certain that I am conscious. Even when in my universal
doubt I say that nothing is certain, I am at least certain that I
doubt. I am, therefore, contradicting my universal skepticism. To doubt
is to think; in doubting, consciousness is asserting its existence.
Skepticism is self-contradictory. An induction of our ideas reveals
at least this one absolutely certain principle: I, as thinking,
am. _Cogito ergo sum._ My own existence is an intuitive truth that
accompanies every state of mind. This is the best known portion of
Descartes’s philosophy, and perhaps it is in part to the Latin formula
of it that it owes its widespread acceptance. It is criticised as
trifling, even if it be true; and as reasoning in a circle. Yet
it must be remembered that Descartes does not intend the _ergo sum_
(“therefore I am”) to be a conclusion of a syllogism of which _Cogito_
(“I think”) is the minor premise. This formula is not an inference, but
an intuition, which is revealed by induction as the certain background
of all knowledge.
Three things are to be learned from this fundamental principle, said
Descartes: (1) The first is that man has gained a criterion of truth.
The characteristic of this principle that makes it reliable and certain
is its clearness and distinctness. _Clearness and distinctness of ideas
is the proof of their truth._ All true ideas will therefore have the
mathematical and intuitive certainty that the idea of the existence
of the self has. (2) The second lesson from this fundamental principle
is that the existence of the soul is more certain than that of the
body. The soul is more important and independent than the body. This
is the subjective point of view of modern times. The modern man views
the world as the representation or the creation of his thinking soul.
(3) The third lesson from this principle concerns the nature of the
soul. How long do you exist? As long as you think. (_Sum cogitans._)
True existence is rational thinking, and God alone has it. Feelings and
passions are obscure ideas.
=Deduction――The Implications of Consciousness.= For Descartes reality
lies within the Self; and the next question before him is how to get
out of the Self. Knowledge that is confined to the Self and its states
is called, technically, solipsism. Such knowledge amounts to little;
indeed, it is not knowledge at all. Certainty of self-existence is the
minimum amount of knowledge――merely the starting point of knowledge.
Descartes proposes to escape from this solipsism by the use of logic.
His method from this point on is ostensibly deductive, although he
introduces by the side door other ideas than the idea of Self to make
his proof complete. Descartes maintains that any idea will be as true
as the consciousness that accompanies it, just as a proposition in
geometry partakes of the truth of the axioms from which it is derived.
Now my consciousness contains many ideas; some of them seem to be
the product of my imagination; some seem to be adventitious; some are
innate. It is upon the innate ideas that Descartes depends to get him
out of his solipsism, for they are not created by the Self and they
have the qualities of truth――a conscious clearness and distinctness.
Among these innate ideas is the idea of God as a perfect being.
=The Existence of God.[28]= As a deduction from consciousness, the idea
of God would prove to be a very useful one to Descartes, provided it
had reality. For it is evident that consciousness can testify only to
the existence of itself and its own states. How do I know the reality
of anything else? Am I confined within the circle of my own thinking?
Is all that I can say of this or that, “It is real to me”? Are all
things only the phantasmagoria of my own brain, testifying only to the
existence of myself? Descartes thought that the idea of God relieved
him of this solipsism. If he could demonstrate God’s existence,
he would then be able to demonstrate the existence of the material
universe. The problem was so highly important to Descartes that he
threw it into several different arguments. The complications with which
these arguments are filled must be passed over here, and the arguments
stated in their simplest forms.
(a) Two are ontological arguments, that is, arguments from the
character of the conception of God’s nature.
(1) _A Simple Deduction._ If I have in my consciousness any idea as
clear and distinct as my idea of Myself, it must have existence like
Myself. My idea of God has just that clearness and distinctness; and
therefore God exists.
(2) _The Geometrical Argument_, so called by Descartes. Some ideas have
properties so immutable that, when we think the ideas, we necessarily
think their properties. Such is the idea of a triangle; when I think
of a triangle, I must think of it as having its three angles equal to
two right angles. Such is also my idea of God; I must think of him as
perfect and existing. He would not be God, _i. e._ a perfect Being, if
He did not exist.
The reader will recognize this as a re-statement of the argument by
St. Anselm. As such it raised a tempest of controversy in Descartes’
time, and was attacked from all sides.
(b) Two are causal arguments, that is, based on the assumption of the
equality of cause and effect. Only one of these arguments will be cited
here. This is known as
_The Cartesian Argument._ I have an idea of a perfect Being. This idea
must have an adequate cause. Therefore God must exist, for only He, and
no imperfect being, can be the adequate cause of my idea of perfection.
The ontological arguments given by Descartes are evidently deductions
from the certainty of self-consciousness. The question which we
immediately raise concerning them is, Are they true? As to the causal
arguments, Descartes is breaking away from his original assumption,
viz., that self-consciousness is the only certainty, and is introducing
another assumption, viz., the certainty of the law of cause. The
question, then, that the thoughtful student asks, is, Does Descartes
really escape from his solipsism?
=The Reality of Matter.= It will be seen that Descartes is trying
to deduce from the certainty of the idea of self-consciousness the
certainty of other ideas, as propositions are deduced in geometry from
axioms. The existence of God is an implication of human consciousness.
Now Descartes points out that the existence of matter is implied in the
existence of God. Descartes is interested in material science, and it
is important for him to prove the reality of matter. Here again his
scholastic training comes into play. Since God has all the attributes
of a perfect being, He must be veracious. If there were no God, but
only a deceiving Devil, the external world might be only a fiction,
created to deceive us. But God exists, and we can trust that He would
not continually deceive men about the existence of nature. An atheist
could have no science, but to Descartes,
“God’s in His heaven――
All’s right with the world.”
Of course, man is constantly in error about the character of physical
things, but these errors arise from his misinterpretation of them.
Nature in some form lies before man, or else God in His truthfulness
does not exist. The essence of matter is extension (see below), and
whatever my interpretation of it, something extended lies before me
to be interpreted.
This is the skeleton upon which Descartes constructs his theory. Even
this cursory examination of it shows the obvious attempt to explain
“the world of grace” by the method of mathematics, and it is quite
consistent with the spirit of the Renaissance. The existence of God
and the existence of matter are deduced in turn from the axiom of all
thought, the Self; while matter is further described as the extended or
the measurable. Thus Descartes has tried to construct a bridge between
the scholastic concepts and the science of the Renaissance. The three
realities, the Self, God, and matter, which Descartes often speaks of
as intuitively certain, have obviously a differing cogency. The reality
of consciousness is the ground from which the other two are derived.
In asserting its primacy, he is voicing the spirit of the Renaissance
even more clearly than did Galileo and Bacon. For Descartes in this
has gone back of the objective facts to a single subjective principle;
whereas the deductive principles of Galileo were objective. In this
respect Descartes is the founder of the subjective method of modern
thought, and in identifying the Self as the reason he became the
founder of rationalism. In any case he established a background for
epistemology, or the theory of knowledge. But in his derivation of
the other two realities――God and matter――he shows how persistent was
the scholastic current in his thought. Although he declared them to
be intuitively known, they evidently are not so in the same sense
that self-consciousness is; and he felt obliged to support them by
traditional scholastic arguments.
=God and the World.= Leaving these fundamental principles of
Descartes, we now come to a consideration of a few of the details of
his philosophy. Descartes’ world is a dualism in which conscious being
stands in contrast with space objects. God is related to the world of
mind on the one hand and to the world of matter on the other. The order
in which Descartes came upon the three substances――the Self, God, and
matter――is, however, not the order of their reality. In reality God is
the _primary substance_, for He depends only upon Himself. Matter and
the Self are _relative or created substances_, for they depend upon
God. Matter and mind have different modes of appearing: the modes of
matter are form, size, position, and motion. The modes of mind are
ideas, judgments, and will. Thus mind is so essentially different from
matter, as can be seen in their respective modes, that God stands in a
different relation to each.
=The Relation of God to Matter.= Descartes here investigates the realm
in which he has the deepest interest; but he makes a concession at
the very beginning. He divests things of their qualities and finds the
essence of matter to be extension. Qualities are not resident in things,
but are the result of our sensations. Sense-perception is knowledge of
qualities, and therefore obscure knowledge; while clear or intellectual
knowledge is of quantities. But there is one quality common to
matter,――extension. Space, extension, and matter are the same. There
is no space that is empty, no matter that is not extended. An extended
or material body has, however, in itself no principle of motion. It
cannot move itself. It must be moved by an external cause, and the
whole universe must be a mechanism whose movements have their first
cause in God. Matter in its modes of motion and rest has God as its
first cause or unmoved mover; and under matter is included everything
extended,――inanimate objects, the lower animals, and the bodies of men.
To this world of matter God stands in the relation of an inventor to
his machine.
=The Relation of God to Minds.= The essential nature of minds
is thought. Mind is therefore different from matter because it is
unextended and free. The two relative substances have nothing in common
except that they are related to God. The relation of God to minds
is, however, very different from His relation to matter. God is not
the unmoved mover of minds, but He is the perfect and infinite mind
to which our finite minds turn as their ideal. God thinks and wills
perfectly what we think and will imperfectly. He is not the mechanical
but the teleological cause of minds, their _ens perfectissimum_, the
goal of all mental aspiration.
=The Relation of Mind and Body.= In proportion as Descartes clearly
defined mind and body, and referred each back to its own principle,
the impossibility of connecting the two became apparent. Descartes
intended that his theory should, above everything else, clear
philosophy of all obscurities. So he divided the world into two
relative substances,――mind and matter,――each operating in its own
realm, each exclusive of the other. The intention of Descartes is to
be a consistent dualist. But there was one point where, with one eye on
the church, he had to qualify for ethical considerations his scientific
principle of matter. That is the point where the human body acts upon
the soul and the soul acts upon the body.
There was little trouble for Descartes in conceiving the movements
of inanimate bodies, plants, and all the lower animals as purely
mechanical and automatic, with their first cause in God. From his own
investigations he felt obliged to regard many of the human functions
as automatic also. But his ethical and theological interests compelled
him to think of man as exalted above the rest of creation. Theology has
always been in a sense aristocratic, and has drawn a line between man
and other things. Man alone has a soul in his body. The soul of man
is immortal and free, and must therefore have control over the body;
nevertheless the soul of man must be conscious of the impressions
that come through the body. Here the science of the Renaissance and
the scholasticism of the Middle Ages refuse to be reconciled in the
philosophy of Descartes. When it became a question between Descartes’
scientific theory of matter operating itself mechanically and the
church doctrine of a spiritual will operating the matter of the human
body, the scientific theory had to yield. How does Descartes yield
gracefully to the theological requirements and bring together the two
unlike worlds of matter and mind in the human personality?
Descartes’ explanation of the relation of human mind and body reminds
us of the mythical explanations of Paracelsus. The soul is united to
all parts of the body, but its point of contact with the body is the
pineal gland, and this contact is made possible through the animal
spirits (_spiritus animales_) or the fire atoms in the blood, a revived
Greek conception. The pineal gland is a ganglion in the centre of the
brain, which biologists tell us is a defunct eye, but which Descartes
conceived to be the seat of the soul. Descartes maintained that
the animal spirits, having been distilled by the heart, ascend by
mechanical laws from the heart to the brain, and then descend to the
nerves and muscles. When they pass through the pineal gland, they come
in contact with the soul. The soul exercises influence on the body by
slightly moving the gland and diverting the animal spirits. In this way
the emotions and sensations are to be explained. The movement of the
pineal gland by the animal spirits causes sensations in the soul; the
movement of the gland by the soul changes the movement of the animal
spirits, and is an exhibition of free action. But this does not add to
or subtract from the energy. It merely changes the direction of energy.
=The Influence of Descartes.= Although the philosophy of Descartes
was forbidden in the University of Oxford, was proscribed by the
Calvinists in Holland, and his works were placed upon the Index by the
Catholics, it created a profound impression on the theology, science,
and literature of the seventeenth century. It spread over Europe in a
somewhat similar way to the Darwinian evolution theory in modern times.
Its success was immense, many standard men rallied to its support,
and everything before Descartes was considered to be antiquated. Among
philosophers his doctrine had an internal development in a natural
way along the lines of the problems which he had left unsolved. A
philosophical development, the source of which can be traced directly
back to Descartes, went on until Kant published his _Critique_ in
1781. This has later been called the School of Rationalism in Germany,
France, and Holland. The most important members of this school――the
Occasionalists, Spinoza, Leibnitz, and Wolff――we shall consider in
their place. Descartes had an important immediate following in the
group, who go by the name of Occasionalists; but his most important
successor, who can hardly be called his disciple, was Spinoza.
Descartes’ method had a peculiar fate. His followers misunderstood
it, exactly reversed it, and obtained very fruitful results. Descartes
himself had hoped to see induction employed in most metaphysical
problems. He regarded deduction as of use only in proceeding from
one self-evident fact to another. But the following Rationalists used
the deductive method entirely and tried to systematize ethics after
the manner of Euclid. They deduced their systems from some assumed
principle. This tendency was first seen in the Port Royal logic, and
was completed by Spinoza.
=The Relation of the Occasionalists and Spinoza to Descartes.= The
development of the doctrines of the Occasionalists and Spinoza from
Descartes was an attempt to make clear the conception of _substance_.
Since substance was the most important scholastic category, it is easy
to see why Spinoza’s teaching became thoroughly scholastic. Descartes
had used the term “substance” in a very loose way to apply to God
as infinite, and to minds and bodies as finite. He speaks of God as
the only substance, and yet of consciousness and bodies as created
substances. Such ambiguity must be overcome, if a philosophy which
prided itself on making everything “clear and distinct” was to stand.
Descartes had fallen short of justifying his attempt to put metaphysics
completely upon a mathematical basis, although this had been his
original problem. The obscurity of the spiritual world still remained,
because Descartes had left the concept of the spiritual substance
undefined. The world of the spirit was still an unknown country. The
spiritual substance had not been made clear and distinct, and there
still remained the ontological problem of the relation between mind
and matter, and the psychological problem of the relation between the
individual soul and its body.
Descartes had, however, defined clearly the concept of the substance
of matter――the substance with which the natural scientist works. He had
accomplished this, to be sure, by destroying the essential distinctions
between material things. A “thing” is essentially a substance in
which many qualities inhere, _e. g._ a piece of sugar having whiteness,
sweetness, etc. Material substances were alike in that all were
essentially extension. All else besides extension in any particular
finite thing was a modification of extension. A lump of sugar was
essentially the same as a lump of salt in that both were extension; the
saltness, sweetness, etc., were secondary. Now this makes the nature
of bodies very clear; and Descartes proposed to reduce the substance
of the states of mind to the same clearness, but he did not do it.
He was interested in natural science and he developed his rationalism
only with reference to matter. Bodies are parts of space or corpuscles,
which are mathematically infinitely divisible, but perceptually are not
further divisible. As far as he went, Descartes was clear enough.
The Occasionalists and Spinoza represent the second stage in the
development of Rationalism. Both tried by making clear the meaning of
spiritual substance to define the relationship of God to the material
world. Both tried to state the problem in other words, to overcome the
dualism between mind and matter, and to reconstruct the old “world of
grace” so that it would be consistent with the new world of science.
The Occasionalists, whose chief exponents were Malebranche and Geulincx,
we shall dismiss with only a few words, while considerable attention
must be given to the teaching of Spinoza. Malebranche tried to do
for the mental world what Descartes had done for the world of matter.
Since no knowledge is possible except in God, he claimed that the
modes of finite minds――our ideas, judgments, imaginations――are alike
in essence in being modifications of the universal reason of God.
God is so far the “place of minds” as space is the place of bodies.
All our ideas participate in God’s reason, and all our volitions
are the modifications of the will of the Divine, just as bodies are
modifications of extension. What then is the relation, asked Geulincx,
between bodily movement and the states of consciousness? Why does my
arm move when I wish to move it? By the mediatory power of God. The
thought in my mind is the “occasional cause” of the movement of my
arm, while God is the true cause of the movement. The movement of the
human body is therefore, like the movement of all matter, a continuous
miracle caused by an ever watchful Deity, who keeps body and mind
in harmony. Spinoza completed his pantheism before Malebranche had
prepared the way. He formulated a complete doctrine of substance,
conceiving material bodies to be essentially the same in being modes of
extension, and mental phenomena to be essentially alike in being modes
of thought. But more important was his further teaching that on that
account the two series have no relation to each other. That is to say,
Spinoza reduced the whole difficulty to clearness and distinctness
by reducing the three substances of Descartes to one. For this reason
Spinoza was a more complete Rationalist than Descartes; and he was
assisted in this construction of a mathematical Rationalism by two
facts: he held himself strictly to the deductive method, and he
was free from social and ecclesiastical ties. Spinoza is the truest
utterance of his time in its effort to make all things clear; and this
is not contradicted by the fact that he had little influence in shaping
contemporary thought.
Illustration: BARUCH DE SPINOZA
(Pollock (_Spinoza, His Life and Philosophy_, p. xxvi) says
that only three of the portraits of Spinoza may reasonably be
considered authentic. One is a miniature of the philosopher
in the Summer Palace at the Hague; the second is a painting in
the Town Museum at the Hague; the third is the one given here,
which is an engraving found in copies of the original edition
of Spinoza’s Posthumous Works (1677). This portrait seems to be
somewhat idealized, but of the three it is the most artistic and
lifelike.)
=The Historical Place of Spinoza.=[29] Spinoza did not get full
standing nor was he widely read, until Lessing, one hundred years
later, resurrected his teaching and Goethe adopted it. He produced
what the Renaissance was striving for, but what the Renaissance
could not yet grasp,――the complete logical formulation of its deepest
thought. Spinoza produced the only great conception of the world during
this period, and it excited the hostility of contemporary Catholics,
Protestants, and free-thinkers alike. The product of his thinking
was a new systematic scholasticism, which, if the time had been ready
for it, would have entirely superseded the mediæval. He succeeded in
placing metaphysics upon a scientific and mathematical basis, for his
philosophy was not only logical in its content but mathematical in its
form. Spinoza’s philosophy is the Renaissance expression of mediæval
scholasticism,――the expression of that rationalism that underlies
both the thought of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. It is as if
Thomas Aquinas had been transported into the Renaissance, and finding
that science would not support and explain dogma, had conformed dogma
systematically to the new science. Mathematically science was the new
dogma. Spinoza is the last word of mediævalism, although his language
is the science of the Renaissance. The utterance of Spinoza sounds
strange because, while his thought is mediæval, his expression and form
are scientific.
Spinozism had a revival in the eighteenth century.[30] It formed the
background of the philosophy of Herder and that of the author of the
_♦Wolfenbüttel Fragments_. The connection of Lessing and Spinoza was
a matter of active controversy at that time. Spinoza was the great
influence upon Goethe. In the nineteenth century in England Coleridge
reproduced from Spinoza’s _Ethics_ the doctrine of an all-pervading
love and reason.
Spinoza strove before everything else for a unitary system, and yet
it is interesting to see how much he has been honored from different
quarters. Artists, religious devotees, poets, idealists, materialists,
and scientists have found in him their truest expression. This is
not only because each has found something different, but because his
philosophy had actually a many-sided character. His teaching had the
advantage of being thoroughly radical. Bad systems of philosophy are
impossible, because they are contradictory. While no one knows that any
system corresponds to fact, still it is possible that a radical system
may have such correspondence. Spinoza’s system is comprehensive, and
therefore has struck sympathetic chords in differing thinkers.
=The Influences upon Spinoza.= =1. His Jewish Training.= Spinoza
was born a Jew and remained a member of the Synagogue until he was
excommunicated at the age of twenty-four. Although he was the original
genius who transcends his limitations, his young mind was moulded after
the Jewish type. He received the strictly religious training of the
Jewish boy in the Jewish academy at Amsterdam, where he learned a trade
in connection with his studies. He studied the Talmud, mediæval Jewish
philosophy, especially the writings of Maimonides (twelfth century),
and the Cabalistic literature. In a Jewish curriculum the classical
languages had no place; and mathematics, except arithmetic, was
generally overlooked. His early instruction emphasized above everything
else the unity and the supremely transcendent, theistic character of
God.
However, his separation from the Synagogue at this early age could
not but modify his theology. It made him a free Jew. He was no
longer under the restraints of Jewish traditions. While he never
abandoned his belief in God as a unity, he gave up his belief in the
transcendent theistic God of the Hebrew prophets; and he differed from
the contemporary Jewish Cabalistic teaching of emanations from God. He
seems to have so modified the orthodox Hebrew conception of God that
it rather resembles that of the mediæval mystic Christian. Perhaps the
influence of Bruno upon his thought may account for its final shape.
=2. His Impulse from the New Science――Descartes’ Influence.= The “free
thinking” for which Spinoza was excommunicated by the Synagogue was
obtained first from his instruction in the school of Van der Ende,
a physician of daring naturalistic tendencies. This was when he was
eighteen. Spinoza had already learned Italian and French; Spanish,
Portuguese, Dutch, and Hebrew were his native tongues; Van der Ende
taught him German and Latin, and introduced him to the science of the
time. It was then that he read Descartes, whose philosophy he made the
basis of his own. Spinoza was not an inventive genius like Descartes
and Leibnitz, but he was more rigidly systematic than either. He was
by nature a thinker who was obliged to carry his thought through to
its logical conclusions. He had already, at this early age of eighteen,
begun to make independent theological excursions. Consequently the
mathematical methods of Descartes furnished him a method, and Van
der Ende gave him the encouragement for carrying out his independent
thinking unrelentingly to its logical end. To state his modified Jewish
conception of God in mathematical terms became his task, and his
success in thus stating it, with Descartes as a starting point, made
him the most complete representative of Rationalism.
=3. His Acquaintance with the Collegiants.= After his expulsion from
his kindred, he lived for seven years with a sect of Baptist Quakers
called Collegiants. This was a dissenting religious body without
priests or set forms of worship. The members were simple, pious
people, who regarded moral living as superior to creed; and Spinoza’s
life in their midst must have determined to some degree the lines
of his thought. To a man of Spinoza’s simplicity of mind and kindly
disposition, the Collegiants would prove to be not only congenial
companions in his hours of distress, but they would confirm his own
love for the ethical as an ideal. Spinoza says that the motive of his
philosophy is a practical one; that he is seeking that which would
“enable me to enjoy continuous and supreme and unending happiness.” He
is seeking a theory of life that would aid in allaying the unrest of
his time; and he is the only philosopher who has called his metaphysics
_Ethics_. The humaneness of his doctrine, the practical purpose of his
writings, and the ethical ideal that informed his whole life had at
least their reinforcement, and perhaps their origin, in his contact
with the Collegiants during this critical period. His life with this
sect influenced him in his refusal to accept the chair of philosophy at
the University of Heidelberg, and to remain content to be the obscure
grinder of optical lenses.
=The Life and Philosophical Writings of Spinoza=[31] (1632–1677).
The history of philosophy presents in the person of Spinoza a lovable,
interesting, and striking character, as well as the author of one of
the profoundest of philosophical systems. His life was one of social
isolation and retirement rather than of solitude. The Jews to whom
he belonged lived a kind of double exile――they were exiled from their
home in Spain, and they lived by themselves apart from the people
of Amsterdam. When Spinoza was excommunicated by his brethren, he
suffered, therefore, a threefold exile. Moreover, Spinoza was not only
excommunicated by his people, but he was hated by the contemporary
Catholics, Protestants, and the prevailing Cartesian school. Even the
free-thinker, Hume, spoke of him as “the infamous Spinoza,” and another
philosopher described his philosophy as “the hideous hypothesis of
Spinoza.” But his isolation was far from solitude, and he had many
eminent and faithful friends and a notable correspondence. Of his short
life of forty-five years, he spent twenty-four, or more than half, as
a member of the Jewish synagogue. During the next seven years he found
refuge among the Collegiants. In the last fourteen years of his life he
became widely known, mainly through the _Theological-Political Tract_,
published in 1670, the only one of his writings which he himself
published. This brought him the call to the University of Heidelberg,
which he declined. His life may be conveniently divided into three
periods, as follows:――
1. _In Israel_ (1632–1656). Spinoza was educated at the Jewish academy
at Amsterdam, where he studied theology and learned a trade, according
to the Jewish custom. This trade was the grinding of optical lenses;
that is, he became an optician, and this required some knowledge of
mathematics and physics. During these years he got instruction from
Van der Ende in science and Latin. He also read Descartes and learned
many languages. He wrote a compendium of a Hebrew Grammar, of which
the date is doubtful. In 1656 he was excommunicated by the synagogue.
The charges brought against him were that: (1) he denied that the Old
Testament taught the doctrine of immortality; (2) he affirmed that
angels may be only phantoms or ideas in men’s minds; (3) he affirmed
that God may have a body.
2. _In Retirement_ (1656–1663). Spinoza spent this time with the
Collegiants, and this was his most fruitful intellectual period.
He brought his ontology, ethics, politics, and physics into a
unified system; and he formulated his theory of determinism and his
mathematical method. In 1658–1661 he was writing his so-called _Short
Treatise_, “concerning God, man and his well-being.” This was the first
draft of his _Ethics_. In 1656–1662 he was writing his _Improvement of
the Understanding_. In 1662–1663 he wrote a summary of the principles
of Descartes.
3. _In the Public Eye_ (1663–1677). During this period Spinoza
lived at or near the Hague, where he had many visitors and a large
correspondence.[32] He was an intimate friend of the brothers DeWitte,
who made so large a part of the political history of the country.
In 1662–1665 he was writing his _Ethics_, his monumental work. In
1663–1670 he wrote and published the _Theological-Political Treatise_,
the only work published during his life. Although received with horror,
it was widely read. It aimed to show that the _Bible_ is history. In
1673 he declined the call to the University of Heidelberg. Just before
his death, in 1677, he wrote the fragment of the _Political Treatise_.
=The Method of Spinoza.= The method which Spinoza employed in writing
his _Ethics_ must not be regarded by the reader as a fantastic dress
that he capriciously chose. It had for Spinoza a real and not merely
an external significance. On taking up the book, one finds philosophy
treated exactly as Euclid treated his geometry. Beginning with a
number of definitions and axioms, there are deduced, step by step,
propositions with appended scholia and corollaries. To Spinoza this was
not pressing philosophy into an artificial and rigid form, but was only
the natural mode of philosophical expression. For, in the first place,
if the new method of science had proved itself successful in treating
physical phenomena, why should not the same method have the same
success with problems of the world of the spirit――and in this way
bring the two worlds into harmony? By deduction one could then arrive
at absolute certainty and unassailable proof of the solutions of
metaphysical problems that had long vexed the Middle Ages. With the
perfect geometrical method all problems in heaven and earth could be
solved. In the second place, the religious conviction of Spinoza that
all things come from God required the deductive method to explain them.
The order in which we should study phenomena should correspond to the
real order in which they stand to God. God is the ground or reason of
things, and all are derived from Him as consequents. The deduction of
the relation of finite things to God will correspond to the real
relation in which God stands to them.
=The Fundamental Principle in Spinoza’s Philosophy.= The philosophy
of Spinoza seems to be Cartesian in every respect except one; and
that one difference was like the leaven in the lump――it transformed
his philosophy into a radically different one from that of Descartes.
Spinoza’s point of departure was the philosophy of Descartes, all
his presuppositions are the fundamental principles of Descartes, and
the structure of his system seems to be that of Descartes. He has the
same respect for the power of the reason to know all truth, the same
faith in the omnipotence of the mathematical method, the same general
conception of substance, the same idea of the qualitative difference
between the worlds of thought and extension, the same belief in the
mechanical structure of the world of nature. He made these his own
and accentuated them. But he added to these a new and transforming
principle: he conceived that the substance, God, is not merely one
object of knowledge, but _He is the only object of knowledge_. He is
the only substance, and finite things are only modifications of Him.
Finite things are alike at bottom, and to know them truly is to know
God.
This new principle transforms all the Cartesian elements in Spinoza’s
teaching. It changes the Cartesian theism into a pantheism; it
supplants Descartes’ theological orthodoxy with a naturalism and
Descartes’ doctrine of freedom with a determinism; and it turns the
cultured aloofness of Descartes into a benevolent mysticism. This
new principle becomes “the head of the corner.” The oneness and
universality of God is the single proposition from which Spinoza
deduced his whole philosophy. God is the ultimate ground whose
existence must be real, because it is conceived. The intrinsic
scholasticism of the philosophy of Spinoza appears in his definition
of substance, for it is only a condensed statement of St. Anselm’s
argument for the existence of God. Spinoza says, “By substance I mean
that which is in itself and conceived through itself alone.” There
are, therefore, two kinds of things: the thing that has existence in
itself and the things that have existence in something else. God stands
alone in the first class; all other things make up the second class.
Spinoza’s world is divided into two parts: God and the modes of God.
God is self-explanatory and self-existent, while everything else is
explained through Him. The only object of knowledge and the single
presupposition of existence is God. In a phrase that has become classic,
Novalis described Spinoza as a “God-intoxicated man.”
=Three Central Problems in Spinoza’s Teaching.= We have already noted
that Spinoza was the chief exponent of “clearness and distinctness”
in this epoch when all mysteries were to be revealed. He sought to
articulate a metaphysics that would spread out the plan of the world
like a demonstration in geometry. His definition of substance is
perfectly intelligible; he accepted the mathematical analysis of
the material world into a world of extension, and that of the world
of conscious states into one of thought――all this for the sake of
simplification and clearness. How simple such a philosophy at the first
blush appears――the world is God and his modifications. As a matter of
fact it is one of the many examples of the irony of history that the
philosophy of Spinoza is one of the most difficult to interpret. Its
difficulties do not arise from its having a novel point of view, for on
the contrary it is one that appeals strongly to the popular imagination.
Its difficulties arise from its very simplicity, for, after all, human
life is so rich and varied that a simple formula will hardly express
it. From beginning to end Spinoza’s thought has a vagueness for which
the beginner in vain strives to find the cause. The cause lies in the
seemingly simple principle that God is all that really exists, and yet
the world consists of God and other things.
From Spinoza’s effort to simplify matters emerged three central
problems: (1) The problem of the all-inclusiveness of God――the problem
of pantheism; (2) The problem of the unity of God――the problem of
mysticism; (3) The problem of the salvation of man――an ethical problem.
We shall now consider these problems in order.
=The Pantheism of Spinoza――The All-Inclusiveness of God.= That
Spinoza’s philosophy is a pantheism appears at the outset in his
conception of substance; for the substance is all that really is.
Descartes had conceived of three substances,――God as the absolute
substance, and mind and matter as the two relative substances. But to
Spinoza there can be only one substance; for if there were two or more,
no one would be substance, since each would be conceived through the
others. If we think at all, we must think of substance as all-inclusive.
One might suppose that this preliminary statement would be all that
Spinoza could say about life: all that really is, is substance; other
things do not exist. But that would be a misinterpretation of Spinoza.
He does not mean that finite things are mere nothings. They exist as
unrealities; they exist as negations of the substance. If you prick
into the finite world, it does not collapse, like a balloon. It still
exists as an unreality.
No person ever had the idea of infinity so profoundly as did Spinoza.
His idea of infinity is not merely that of the infinity of time
and space, which indeed affords a tremendous variety of possible
constructions, since space and time are each infinite. To Spinoza the
infinity of the substance is much more than these possible combinations
of time and space, for corresponding to the time and space series
is a series of mental states. Every event has a reason. Every one
of the infinity of events in the world of extension is paralleled
by some state of thought. But this is by no means the whole story
about Spinoza’s conception of infinity. Besides the infinite world of
time and space and the infinite world of corresponding thought, the
substance to Spinoza possesses an infinity of other attributes, each
of which is infinite. Spinoza piles up infinities upon infinities, and
thus conceives the substance as an infinity in an overwhelming sense.
Only two of the infinite modes appear to our limited human discernment:
the infinity of the mode of extension, and the infinity of the mode of
thought.
Spinoza begins at once to tell us about the forms in which the
all-inclusive God appears to us. First, the substance has two
attributes, thought and extension. An attribute is “that which the
intellect perceives as constituting the essence of the substance.” Each
attribute in its turn manifests itself in modes: thought appears in the
modes of intellect and will, extension in the modes of rest and motion.
Substance = God.
┌────────┴────────┐
Attributes = Thought Extension.
┌────┴────┐ ┌───┴───┐
Modes = Intellect Will Motion Rest.
This bare skeleton of our rich and varied world appears very much
the same as that which one might find beneath Descartes’ philosophy.
However, Spinoza’s conception of substance transforms it into a
framework of a very different kind of philosophy. Since God is the
inclusive reality of it all, we have here a pantheism instead of a
dualism. The antithesis which in Descartes’ philosophy was between
extension and thought, now in Spinoza’s teaching is between God and
other things.
What is the place of the attributes and modes in the all-embracing
and real substance? As to the attributes, Spinoza maintained that we,
as finite beings, do not know God in His character as substance, but
that He always appears to us through His attributes of thought and
extension. There are only these two attributes that the human mind
can know, although God as an infinite being must possess an infinite
number of such attributes. In our human world all things are either
thought-things or extension-things. Each of these two attributes is
infinite after its kind. Each fully expresses an aspect of God without
depreciating the value of the other. Each is fully adequate, just as a
table may be both white and hard without either quality infringing upon
the other. The attributes are the substance made more concrete. The
modes are in turn modifications of the attributes and more concrete
expressions of them and of the substance. Each mode is infinite after
its kind. Since God exists only in reality, He would not supposably
see from His point of view the world laid out in attributes and modes;
for these are only human ways of interpreting Him. While the critics
agree that the modes are human interpretations of the attributes and
therefore unreal, they disagree about the relation of the attributes
to God. Some maintain that the attributes are merely human ways of
seeing the substance, analogously to the modes――as if we saw God now as
thought and now as extension; others maintain that God is nothing other
than the sum of the attributes; of extension, thought, and the unknown,
infinite, other attributes. The difficulty lays bare the nerve of the
problem of pantheism, and probably Spinoza was not clear in his own
mind about the relation of the attributes to the substance.
Spinoza speaks more definitely upon this same problem of the relation
of the modes to God. Is God the sum-total of all existent things, or is
He the principle behind them? Spinoza says that God is both. God is the
cause of the world, not cause in the way that the term is commonly used
nor in the sense that Descartes used it. God is not to existent things
the first cause or the unmoved mover of matter, or the teleological
cause of thought, as in Descartes. He is cause in the sense that a
triangle is the cause of its own three sides. He is the rational ground
(_ratio essendi_) or the logical reason for the being of things. In
this sense God may be regarded as the cause _both_ in the sense that
He is the sum-total of existent things or modes (_natura naturata_),
and in the sense that He is the immanent and energizing principle of
existent things (_natura naturans_). These conceptions as well as their
phrases Spinoza probably got from Bruno.
The world is, therefore, related to God in that it follows directly
from the nature of God; God is related to the world in that He is
the logical ground of the world. Is God the creator of the world? No,
He is the world. Is God a person? Is He a self-conscious being like
ourselves,――an individual? No. The thought-aspect of God includes
our thought, but it is the very different infinite thought; the
extension-aspect of God includes our body, but it is the very different
infinite body. God has soul and body and an infinite number of
other aspects. _God is_――an unchanging, self-dependent being, whose
modifications are necessarily determined in their relation to Him and
to one another. Spinoza conceived the character of God exactly from
the nature of geometry. Just as all geometrical conclusions follow from
the nature of space and exist in determined and fixed relations to one
another, so everything finite follows from the nature of the Infinite,
and each finite thing is in a rigid chain of finite things of its own
kind――a chain without beginning or end. The necessity of the divine
nature appears in all, not as a series of emanations from God, but in
a series, each member of which is determined equally by Him.
=The Mysticism of Spinoza.= _From the point of view of man_, mysticism
in speculative or religious thought has reference to the immediate
apprehension of God. Mysticism frequently accompanies pantheism,
and _from the point of view of God_ refers to the oneness of His
all-inclusive nature. Spinoza’s pantheism is also a mysticism which
involves the immediate apprehension of the divine by the human;
it involves the oneness of God and man. More often than otherwise
mysticism is animated by a religious motive, and Spinoza’s philosophy
is profoundly religious. We have already seen similar mysticism in the
Orphic-Pythagorean sect which formed so great a peril to Greek culture
in the sixth century B. C., in the neo-Pythagoreans and neo-Platonists
at the beginning of this era, in many of the churchmen of the Middle
Ages, especially Scotus Erigena and Meister Eckhart. Bruno and many
of the Humanists were mystics, and if we should wish to go outside our
field, we should find mysticism to be the prevailing attitude of mind
of the great Oriental peoples. Mysticism frequently is accompanied by
belief in occult spiritual appearances, but that is not necessarily the
case; nor was it the case with Spinoza. Spinoza’s mysticism was purely
intellectual. Although a religious philosophy with an immediate ethical
bearing upon conduct, it was a scientific relationalism that could not
tolerate the miraculous and the abnormal psychological phenomena (such
as clairvoyance, hallucinations, etc.). Spinoza is, on the contrary,
distinguished as a mystic because he interpreted the universe in
entirely non-human terms. His great service to mysticism lies in
divesting the reality of life of every human attribution and laying
bare a mathematical skeleton. The desire of the period to find a
greater unity in life was responded to by him in a mathematical
mysticism. To him the universe is not only divided into parts, not
only is there no opposition between God and the world, but life is so
completely a rational thing that no exceptional phenomena can occur.
He believed that any description of God or of nature in anthropomorphic
terms disunites life. Spinoza dehumanized the universe, conceiving
matter to consist of elements, and conceiving spirit to consist of
simple ideas. He resolved the personality of man into parts for the
sake of the unity of the universe, and he obtained scientific clearness
at the expense of humanity. Thus, instead of being able to say with
Descartes, “I think and therefore I am,” Spinoza could say, and wished
only to say, “God thinks” (_Deus cogitat_).
Like the usual speculative mystic, Spinoza described his God in the
terms of formal deductive logic. God is the most real being, _ens
realissimum_. What is the most real being to a mystic? Would reality
contain any finite quality such as the world around us contains? Can
you say that God has this particular faculty, or is endowed with that
concrete attribute? Does God enjoy, love, hate; does He create and
destroy? But how can God be the real unity of the world unless He
contains in Himself everything in the finite world? We approach here
the threshold of _the problem of the concrete universal_, which has
engaged the attention of so much of modern philosophy. A concrete
universal is all-inclusive of finite existence, but at the same time is
a self-consistent unity. In contrast with the concrete universal is the
abstract universal, which is a unity, but outside of which all finite
existence falls. While it was undoubtedly the concrete universal that
Spinoza sought, his method could lead to nothing more concrete than
the abstract universals of Plato and the Schoolmen. The world of finite
things is included by Spinoza’s God in the same way that blocks are
included by a string which has been tied around them.
Spinoza’s God is the most abstract entity which it is possible to
conceive. All finite things fall outside Him. No quality can be
predicated of Him, for to define Him is to limit Him. After the manner
of the “negative theology” (see vol. i, p. 283), Spinoza refused to
ascribe any quality to God. He does not feel, think, or will as we do,
nor can extension be ascribed to Him in the sense of finite spaces.
We can say only that He is not this and not this. Spinoza’s conception
of God is reached by dropping off all determinate qualities, until the
most general and most abstract term is gained. The barrenness of this
logical conception, its absolute emptiness and abstractness, makes all
description of it impossible. God is a bloodless entity, an absolute
logical necessity and the most abstract universal. Outside of Him falls
all that we call life. If this is God’s character, is He everything
or nothing? If the process of abstraction rises so far above every
limitation to an _ens realissimum et generalissimum_,――to the most
real and most general entity,――if all content falls away from God,
what does such an empty form amount to? The paradox in Spinoza’s
philosophy appears here as in the case of all mysticism――for the mystic
revels in paradoxes. This empty generality is all that really is.
God is everything, and Spinoza points out empirical proof of this by
insisting that the transitory life of man has its only meaning in such
a substance. God is not this particular thing nor again that finite
determination, but He is all these. He is the timeless reality of
the temporal world, the infinity of finite things, the necessity of
contingent nature. When therefore Spinoza speaks of God as having an
intellectual love for Himself, and when he says that the attributes
of thought and extension constitute the essence of the substance, he
is not giving finite characteristics to God. He is struggling with
language to express the inherent paradox of his philosophy.
Moreover, the delineation of the finite world with God as a background,
as it appears from the point of view of a human being, is an inadequate
presentation of Spinoza’s profound conception of God. For the substance
is not merely a neutral point nor the central point of the universe.
The substance is all. All things have neither their explanation nor
their existence in themselves. God alone has an existence that explains
itself, and He is the reality and essence of all finite things. God
is immanent in the world. Just as the sides of a triangle get their
meaning from the triangle itself, so the significance of the attributes
and modes of the substance lies in the substance.
The unity of Spinoza’s God is further suggested by the relation of the
attributes of thought and extension, however separate they must appear
in their quality and causal dependence. Both are aspects of the same
substance, in the one case in the form of extension, and in the other
in the form of thought. In the all-inclusive nature of God, presumably
each moment has an infinite number of correlative moments corresponding
to the infinite number of the attributes of God. Since to human beings
only two of these worlds lie in sight, only two corresponding modes
appear, but always two. This correspondence of the physical and
psychical throughout nature is called in later times _panpsychism_;
in the relation of the body and mind of a human being it is called
_psycho-physical parallelism_. This correspondence helped Spinoza
to solve the apparent dualism of the two worlds. While ideas are
determined only by ideas, and motions by motions, both series point
below to the divine substance which is the significance of both. They
are like the top and bottom sides of a piece of paper, neither side
constituting the piece of paper, but both being necessary to it. The
substance is immanent in thought as well as in extension. Both thought
and extension are aspects of God. The relation of thought and extension
through the Deity discloses the monistic character of Spinoza’s
philosophy and seems to prove that he cannot be a materialist, although
some critics have said that he is. The same reality is seen, now as
consciousness and now as extension.
=Spinoza’s Doctrine of Salvation.= Spinoza divided his _Ethics_ into
five parts. The first is a treatment of the nature of God; the second,
of the nature and origin of the mind; the third, of the emotions;
the fourth, of human bondage; the fifth, of human freedom. This
most important writing of Spinoza, the only treatise on metaphysics
which has been called Ethics, is a practical philosophy of life and
redemption. The divisions of it, as they appear above, show that the
philosophy of life is looked at from two points of view: with reference
to the nature of God, and with reference to the nature of man. We
have above discussed the first point,――Spinoza’s conception of God,
whom he regards as pantheistic and mystic. But Spinoza’s conception of
the nature of the human being in relation to such a God is the other
pole of this subject. The problem of life from the human point of
view involves primarily the question of human freedom. Human freedom
and human bondage are conditions that depend upon the human as well
as the divine nature. By Spinoza’s eliminating the human element
from the nature of God, man himself has been reduced by Spinoza to an
insignificant detail in a machine-like universe. Yet for man in his
littleness Spinoza hews out a way to God in His greatness by his mystic
reconstruction of the universe. Existence in Spinoza’s pantheistic
mysticism is, after all, a sphere of wonderful grandeur for man,――more
wonderful and of wider utility than the existence which man is
ordinarily supposed to possess. Since God is the reality of everything,
man is deified; even the loss of man’s essential humanity is the
apotheosis of man.
Human salvation and freedom consist in being like God; bondage consists
in being unlike Him, in mistaking the unreality of life for His reality.
We are endowed with the ability of forming an adequate idea of God
by means of our reason, but we are also endowed with the faculties of
sensation, emotion, and imagination. The latter faculties make man a
passive creature, for they bring him into dependence upon the things
that act upon him and into bondage to them. We are passive when our
activities are limited by such limited objects. While a passion seems
to be the most active and turbulent of our faculties, if we look at
it more closely, we find that instead of being active ourselves during
a passion, we are being acted upon by an external object. Only as we
are purely rational,――only through the reason,――are we purely active.
It is then that we are like God, free like Him, and then do we rise
from insignificance to greatness. Then we transcend our false ideas of
freedom and become necessary beings, for in God freedom is necessity.
To be free from the passions and the finite things of the world we must
understand their nature; for to understand a thing is to be delivered
from it. An illusion is not an illusion when we know it to be such. To
see that all the passions, sensations, imaginations, and all the other
modes of thought are human limitations, is to dwell within the reason.
Spinoza’s freedom is not, as will be seen, freedom in the ordinary
psychological meaning of the term, but is the metaphysical freedom
of being identical with the deity and determined by no finite thing.
Freedom is rational knowledge. Nevertheless, freedom is ethical
also, for it consists in overcoming the passions by reason. Freedom,
therefore, has two sides: an escape from the emotions and an escape
from obscure ideas――the goal in both cases being the life of reason.
To attain freedom is to see the world as God sees it, which is the same
as the reason sees it. This is to see each finite thing as eternal.
Any concrete thing may be regarded by the human being as a finite and
isolated thing out of all relation to other objects; or the same thing
may be regarded as a detail of infinity. Looked at by itself, a thing
is seen partially and falsely, for no finite thing has its explanation
in itself. It is, however, seen truly when it is regarded, to use
Spinoza’s own celebrated phrase, “under a certain form of eternity”
(_sub specie aeternitatis_). This conception of eternity is one of the
most admirable in Spinoza’s teaching. When man rises through the reason
to the consciousness of the eternity of the truth of a thing, the thing
itself is transformed, and the man himself has gained salvation. Any
circle that I may draw is imperfect, every leaf upon the forest trees
is defective, all moral activities are wanting, if regarded in their
time-limitations. But below all the imperfections of the universe is
its absolute mathematical perfectness. There is nothing so abortive
and evil that it does not have its aspect of eternity. Side by side
with Spinoza’s conception of infinity is his conception of eternity.
Infinity is everlastingness, eternity is quality of being. Eternity
has no reference to time. One minute may be eternal. The infinity of
the substance is one aspect; the eternity of the substance is another.
That eternity gained through the reason is salvation and immortality.
God is reason, and by the act of the reason do we become one with Him.
Our knowledge is, therefore, the measure of our morality. Knowledge
and morality are the same; and whatever increases our understanding is
morally good; whatever diminishes our understanding is morally wrong.
Nevertheless, from the point of view of the philosopher, there is
nothing in the world that is morally good or bad,――nothing which merits
his hatred, love, fear, contempt, or pity,――since all that occurs
is necessary. The philosopher’s knowledge of the determinism of the
world lifts him above the usually conceived world of finite things to
this mystic world, reconstructed by his intellectual love of nature
or God. Love for God will give to everything its proper value. It
is the highest form of human activity. Love for God is an absolutely
disinterested feeling, and is not therefore like human love, which
is the passing from a less state to a greater. Love for God is peace,
resignation, and contentment, for it is oneness with God. In fact,
the love of man for God is the love of God for man; it is the love
of God for Himself, since man cannot love God without becoming God.
Thus man intellectually recognizes his oneness with God, and rejoices.
Immortality is absorption in the eternal and necessary substance of the
world. It is a common misconception that immortality is duration after
death; immortality consists in looking at things under the aspect of
eternity. The finite man perishes, but man’s real self, which is God,
survives.
=Summary of Spinoza’s Teaching.= The rationalism of Spinoza is the
final word of scholastic realism. It is a mathematical scholasticism
in which the attempt is to make clear by the method of deduction all
metaphysical problems. That the philosophical teaching of Spinoza is
inspiring and ennobling, no one will gainsay. That his philosophy is
not clear, is also true. In the beginning of his discussion, spirit is
subordinated to nature; at the end, nature is subordinated to spirit.
The result is that under the hands of Spinoza God has become a pure
abstraction and without content, the world is an illusion, dualism is
superseded by a monistic parallelism, individual activity gives way and
becomes a pantheistic determinism. Yet amid all this a reconstructed
world arises in which man is recompensed for all his losses by his
participation in _infinity_ and _eternity_.
=Leibnitz[33] as the Finisher of the Renaissance and the Forerunner
of the Enlightenment.= Leibnitz is the last of the remarkable group
of Rationalists of the Renaissance, who so fully represent the spirit
of its Natural Science epoch. But Leibnitz also carries us into
the next period of modern philosophy――the Enlightenment. He is the
transition philosopher. If the reader will examine the dates of his
life, he will observe that Leibnitz lived until twenty-five years
after the Enlightenment was ushered in by Locke’s _Essay on the Human
Understanding_ (1690). But as Leibnitz had already formed his own
philosophy by the year 1686, even so versatile a mind as his could
not then renounce the Rationalistic point of view for a new one. Some
of his writings, such as his _Correspondence with Clark and Bayle_,
his _Theodicy_, and his _New Essays_, show that he participated in the
new movement of the next period. Yet the majority of his philosophical
writings show him to be a Rationalist. Although he may be called
the “father of the Enlightenment,” the body of his thought belongs
to the Renaissance. His main motive was that which animated all
Rationalists――of stating theology in scientific terms. The immediate
occasion for his doing this was the political necessity of peace among
the religious bodies of Germany.
The effort of Leibnitz to restore the individual to his central place
in the universe was a _secondary motive_. It nevertheless makes him
the forerunner of the Enlightenment. Of the Rationalists, Leibnitz
speaks for the future, just as Spinoza for the past. Leibnitz unites
the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, just as Spinoza joins the
Renaissance and the Middle Ages. Spinoza is the Rationalist who
utters the final word of scholastic realism, while Leibnitz presages
the coming individualism. Spinoza’s philosophy is science buried in
traditionalism; Leibnitz’s is science breaking through traditionalism.
Spinoza harks back to universals and particulars, substance and forms;
Leibnitz points forward to vortex rings, energy, and dynamics. From
Leibnitz’s original purpose to rationalize theology, and to succeed
where Descartes and Spinoza had failed, there emerges a new motive. He
no longer lays the emphasis entirely upon the universal, but he shifts
it in part to the particular. The pantheism of Spinoza had systematized
the individual out of its reality. Leibnitz’s conception of the
individual as dynamic and his conception of the importance of the
infinitesimal redeem the individual and bring Leibnitz into more modern
times. To classify Leibnitz as a Rationalist is, therefore, not to
describe him fully.
=The Life and Writings of Leibnitz= (1646–1716). Compared with
Descartes and Spinoza, Leibnitz had a life that was long in time and
rich in experience. Descartes died at 54 and Spinoza at 45, while
Leibnitz lived to be 70. In striking contrast with Spinoza’s career,
there was no time in the life of Leibnitz after his graduation from the
university that he was not in public service. He held the offices that
would naturally go to the hanger-on of princes――some of them grandiose
ones. While theoretically the interests of the three Rationalists were
the same, Leibnitz differed from his predecessors in that his study
of philosophical problems always grew out of some practical problem
or political occasion. Leibnitz was not an academic thinker, and his
“writings were called forth to estimate some recent book, to outline
the system for the use of a friend, to meet some special difficulty,
or to answer some definite criticism.” Philosophy was only one
of the interests of Leibnitz. He was jurist, historian, diplomat,
mathematician, physical scientist, theologian, and philologist.
Leibnitz was as much at home with the theories of Plato and Aristotle
of ancient time, with those of St. Thomas and Duns Scotus of mediæval
time, as with the science of Descartes and Galileo. He was precocious,
had a prodigious memory and a reactive mind. In the wealth of his
information and the productiveness of his genius, he stands with
Aristotle as unequaled. Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibnitz belonged to
the inner circle of scholars of the time, but Leibnitz was also in
personal touch with political affairs and in intimate acquaintance with
many of the important rulers. He was in the service of the Elector of
Mainz and later of George I of England when George was only Elector of
Hanover. He was distinguished by Peter the Great of Russia and Ernst
August, Emperor of Germany. He corresponded with Eugene of Savoy and he
was ambassador to Louis XIV of France. Sophie Charlotte of Hanover, who
married the King of Prussia, was especially interested in him, and he
wrote for her his _Theodicy_. The three great Rationalists came from
different strata of society. Descartes was a nobleman’s son, and he
voluntarily relinquished the life that Leibnitz was ambitious to enjoy.
Spinoza came from the lower class. Leibnitz was the son of a college
professor and belonged to the upper middle class. The ambitions of
Leibnitz reached for large ends, as often happens among educated people
in the middle walks of life. Among other things, he tried to reconcile
the Catholics and Protestants, and he tried to universalize language by
getting universal characters for all languages.
The literary production of Leibnitz was enormous, consisting of
some lengthy works, but mainly of correspondence (at one time with
a thousand persons) and of dissertations to learned journals and
societies. No one book contains his philosophy――the _Monadology_ coming
the nearest to doing so. His most considerable work is his _Theodicy_.
He himself published in book form only two works: his university
dissertation on _Individuation_ and the _Theodicy_.[34]
In spite of his many successes, the life of Leibnitz was not happy.
From death or other causes his noble patrons changed, until he was
left without a patron. His life went from bad to worse, and his death
occurred almost unnoticed.
The seventy years of Leibnitz’s life fall into four periods. That
he passed through three of these periods by the time he was thirty
shows the voracity and versatility of his mental powers during their
formative and acquisitive state. It also reveals the unusual length
of his productive period,――from his thirtieth to his seventieth year.
Ten years after his productive period began, when he was forty, he had
completed his philosophical theory, so that the last thirty years of
his life were free for its elaboration and elucidation, and in part for
his departure from it. The details of Leibnitz’s life are as follows:――
1. _Leipsic and University Life_ (1646–1666).
Leibnitz was the son of a professor of the University of Leipsic. He
entered the University at the age of fifteen; received his bachelor’s
degree at seventeen, and his doctor’s degree at Altdorf at the age of
twenty. He was offered a professorship on account of his thesis, but
he declined. He published as his bachelor’s thesis, _The Principle of
Individuation_ (1663).
2. _Mainz and Diplomacy_ (1666–1672).
Meeting Baron John of Boineburg, who became his patron, Leibnitz went
with him to Mainz, and entered the service of the Elector of Mainz.
At this time Leibnitz wrote many pamphlets at the Elector’s request,
on the religious and political questions of the day. He wrote _A New
Physical Hypothesis_ in 1671.
3. _Paris and Science_ (1672–1676).
Leibnitz began this period with a diplomatic mission to the court of
Louis XIV in 1672; but during the year both Boineburg and the Elector
died, and Mainz was no longer his home nor diplomacy his interest.
He remained in Paris (and London) three years longer, and spent the
time in acquiring the “new science.” In Paris he met Arnauld the
Cartesian, Tschirnhausen the German mathematician, logician, and most
discriminating critic of Spinoza, and he studied with Huyghens the
Dutch mathematician. In London he met Boyle, the chemist, Oldenburg,
secretary of the Academy of Science, Collins, the mathematician, and he
corresponded with Newton. On his return to Hanover he called on Spinoza,
who showed him the manuscript of the _Ethics_.
4. _Hanover and Philosophy_ (1676–1716).
Leibnitz became court councilor and librarian to the Duke of Hanover
(Brunswick-Lüneburg). He was involved in a multitude of administrative,
historical, and political tasks, and he carried on an enormous
correspondence. Among other things he wrote the history of the reigning
family, which necessitated his going to Rome and Vienna. In 1684
he published his discovery of the differential calculus, over which
arose the celebrated controversy as to whether he or Newton made the
prior discovery. In 1686, in his fortieth year, he constructed his
philosophical system. However, he showed his affiliation to the coming
age by introducing into his system in 1697 the term “monad.” _Nearly
all his important works were produced in this period._ In 1700 he
founded the Academy of Sciences in Berlin. He was instrumental in the
founding of an academy at St. Petersburg, and he planned academies at
Dresden and Vienna.
=The Three Influences upon the Thought of Leibnitz.=
(1) _His Early Classical Studies._ The father of Leibnitz, who was a
professor of moral philosophy at Leipsic, died when his son was young.
Left much to himself, the boy spent his time in his father’s library.
At eight years he had acquired Latin; at twelve he had read Seneca,
Pliny, Quintilian, Herodotus, Xenophon, Cicero, Plato, the Roman
historians, the Greek and Latin fathers. He became so absorbed in
scholastic studies that his friends feared that he would not leave
them, “not knowing that my mind could not be satisfied with only one
kind of thing.” There can be no question that this scholastic training
gave him a first hand and sympathetic appreciation of scholastic
philosophy. The Aristotelian conception of cosmic purpose, which he got
at this time, never left him. Among the writers of the Natural Science
Period he alone returned to Aristotle. He made Aristotle’s teleological
cause an integral part of his doctrine. His motto finally became, in
his _Theodicy_, “Everything is best in this best of possible worlds.”
While for a time he turned from Aristotle to Descartes, in his final
construction of his theory he borrowed more from Aristotle.
(2) _The New Science and His Own Discoveries._ Leibnitz was more
fortunate than many of his contemporaries in that his university had
already included in its curriculum the study of mathematics. At the
age of fifteen he was devoting himself to mathematics at Jena, and he
said that the study of Kepler, Galileo, and Descartes made him feel
as though “transported into a different world.” Later in life he said
of himself, that at fifteen he had decided to give up the scholastic
theory of Forms for the mathematical explanation of the world. He
became acquainted with the theories of Hobbes and Gassendi in 1670,
when he was at Mainz. In 1672, at the age of twenty-six, when he was
in Paris, he made himself possessor of all that the celebrated circle
of Parisian scientists had to teach. He had gone to Paris a dualist;
he returned to his native land with the Aristotelian teleology side
by side in his mind with the Spinozistic conception of identity and
necessity, the Spinozistic method, and the mathematical theory of
the significance of infinitely small particles. The next ten years
(1676–1686) were spent in overcoming his own dualism by systematizing
these new theories acquired from so many sources. In 1680 he had
universalized the concept of force so as to apply it to both souls
and bodies. In 1684 he published his discovery of the differential
calculus, in which he has had to share honors with Newton. In 1685 he
asserted that the centres of force have individuality. He was led to
this conclusion on account of the discovery of small organisms by the
microscopes of Swammerdam and ♦Leeuwenhoek. In 1686 he successfully
organized his collected material into his final system, although it
was not until eleven years later (1697) that he called these centres
“monads.” Probably he got the term “monad” not from Bruno, but from the
mystic chemist, Van Helmont.
Not only the content, but the form of his philosophy was determined by
his mathematical studies. His philosophical diction is remarkably lucid.
Mathematics reinforced his early resolve “in words to attain clearness
and in matter usefulness.” His later discussions contain many terms
that he had borrowed directly from mathematics.
(3) _Political Pressure for Religious Reconciliation._ When Frederick
the Wise of Saxony in 1519 refused the crown of Emperor, Germany
was thrown into internal strife that in one hundred and thirty years
destroyed all its material wealth and depopulated the country. This
terminated in the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648) and the Peace of
Westphalia. Leibnitz was born two years before peace was declared. He
was the first German scientist in two hundred years. Both Catholics
and Protestants were weary of strife, and there was a general movement
toward religious reconciliation. Thus religious amity was the most
urgent public question.
Pietism had been one of the movements in Germany during the recovery
of the country from the Thirty Years’ War, and it represented the best
side of German civilization at that time. It was a reaction on the one
side against the mechanical theory of the scientists, and on the other
against the destructive strife of the old and new confessions. The
mother of Leibnitz was not only a Protestant, but also a Pietist, so
that the subject of religion early formed an important part of her
son’s training. When he entered the diplomatic service of the Elector
of Mainz the question of religious reconciliation took practical form
for him. No doubt his philosophy as a theory of reconciliation grew
out of such practical issues, as they were presented to him at Mainz.
Leibnitz had, therefore, a part in the religious reaction in Germany
in the last of the seventeenth century, which aimed to reconcile the
divergent interests of religion and science. He tried to effect this in
no external way, by patching together irreconcilable elements, but in
an internal way, by an examination of fundamental principles. With his
early training, his theological reading, and his wide public experience,
Leibnitz was fitted to take a prominent part in the movement for
reconciliation.
=The Method of Leibnitz.= Although the philosophers who immediately
followed Spinoza did not dare to accept his philosophical conclusions,
they adopted his method. They united it with the syllogistic processes
of formal logic for the deduction of all knowledge. This method became
very prevalent, as is seen in the practices of the German Cartesians
and in the preparation of academic text-books. Examples of this are
Jung, Weigel, who was Leibnitz’s teacher, and Puffendorf, who tried
to deduce by the geometrical method the entire system of natural right
from a single principle of human need. In the next century Wolff used
this method in writing his Latin text-books.
When this aspect of Spinoza’s teaching was gaining a foothold in
Germany, Leibnitz came into sympathy with it through his teacher,
Weigel, and at first was one of its most ardent supporters. In jest he
showed by this geometrical, syllogistic method in sixty propositions
that the Count Palatine of Neuberg _must_ be elected King of the Poles.
In seriousness he believed that all philosophical controversies would
cease when philosophy should be stated like a mathematical calculation.
Hobbes’s theory of words as counters to be used in conceptual reckoning,
the universal formulas of the Art of Lull and the pains which Bruno had
taken for its improvement, the Cartesian belief that the geometrical
method would prove to be an art of invention――all these were influences
upon Leibnitz, that committed him to the method of Spinoza and made him
pursue that method energetically. Leibnitz was part of the widespread
movement of the time to form a _Lingua Adamica_――a universal language,
which should discover fundamental philosophical conceptions and the
logical operations of their combinations. In brief, Leibnitz hoped to
form a philosophical calculus.
What, asked Leibnitz, are the highest truths which in their
combination yield all knowledge? What are the truths, so immediately
and intuitively certain, that they force themselves upon the mind
as self-evident and thereby form the ground for the deduction of all
knowledge? They are of two classes: (1) The universal truths of the
reason, and (2) The facts of experience. The truths of the reason are
forever true; the facts of experience have a truth for that single
instance. But both are true in themselves and not from deduction from
anything else. They are “first truths,” for a thing is true if it
can be deduced from the reason or tested as an experienced fact. The
two kinds of truth are the rational or _a priori_, and the empirical
or _a posteriori_. The difference between the starting point of the
Rationalism of Leibnitz and the Enlightenment of Locke appears here.
Locke said, “There is nothing in the mind that does not come from the
senses.” “Except the mind itself and its operations,” added Leibnitz in
comment.
But there is a difference between these two kinds of truth. The
truths of the reason are clear and distinct; the truths of experience
are clear but not distinct. Leibnitz is, be it observed, making
a distinction between the two terms of the pet phrase of the
Rationalists――“clear and distinct ideas.” He means that rational truth
is so transparent that it is impossible to conceive its opposite; that
empirical truth is only clear, and its opposite is thinkable. It is
impossible to think that the three angles of a triangle equal anything
but two right angles, but it is possible to think that its side, which
is now two inches, may be four inches. Thus emerge the two logical
principles upon which Leibnitz founded his philosophy: rational truths
depend upon the _Principle of Contradiction_; empirical truths depend
upon the _Principle of Sufficient Reason_. At first Leibnitz conceived
that this distinction between truths did not apply to God, but only to
man. Man must rejoice in the few rational truths in his possession and
be content with merely establishing the actuality of his experiences.
The divine reason can, however, see the impossibility of the opposite
both in rational and in empirical truth. Later on Leibnitz conceived
the distinction between the two kinds of truth to be absolute. That is,
in the nature of things the two truths differ. The rational truth has
no opposite, but is a _necessary_ truth; the empirical truth has an
opposite, and is a _contingent_ truth.
Leibnitz thus shows the fundamental principles upon which knowledge
is based, but what does he say about the logical method of their
combination? Nothing. No one would ever suspect from Leibnitz’s
philosophical remains that he had planned a system of philosophy
according to the method of Spinoza. The many pamphlets of Leibnitz on
many scattered subjects show how far short he fell of his ideal of a
universal philosophical calculus. He was too versatile, his interests
were too diversified, to carry through so slow and plodding a task.
He merely stated the principles upon which a systematic symbolic
philosophy might rest, without developing these principles in a logical
way. Like Bacon, Leibnitz conceived a method that was more of a hope
than an accomplishment.
=The Immediate Problem for Leibnitz.= Perhaps Leibnitz was called
away from this purely theoretical problem of method by the practical
problem of reconciling science and religion, which problem in his
day had become particularly acute. For science had made rapid strides
since the days of Descartes, had drawn very far away from religion,
and Leibnitz’s attempt to reconcile science and religion was much
more difficult than that of the preceding Rationalists. Leibnitz had
accepted the most radical results of science, but he saw that science
had yielded only a mechanical view of the world. Politics demanded in
the exigencies of that hour some principle of unity. He sought to find
some philosophical principle for the _living, religious character_
of the universe, and a principle that at the same time would preserve
the results of science. He therefore sought to leave the conception of
mechanical nature intact and go behind it for a teleological principle.
He examined the mechanical principles of the science of his day and
found them embedded in a deeper metaphysical principle.
=The Result of Leibnitz’s Examination of the Principles of
Science[35]――A Plurality of Metaphysical Substances.= What was the
developed scientific principle of Leibnitz’s time? And what was the
result of his analysis of it? The principle was the mathematical
principle of Galileo in more complex form, for there had been added
to it since Galileo’s day the concept of the atom. That is to say,
the fundamental scientific principle was that nature consists of the
measurable movements of atoms. From his analysis of this, Leibnitz
obtained as follows his conception of a plural number of substances,
which he called monads.
1. Leibnitz first scrutinized the scientific conception of motion.
His analysis of motion into infinitely small impulses by the method
employed by Galileo, Huyghens, and Newton had already led him to one
important discovery――the differential calculus. Now he scrutinizes it
further and discovers that the fundamental ground of motion is _force_.
While Leibnitz was in entire agreement with other scientists in their
effort to reduce all phenomena to motion, he insisted that motion
was not by any means the fundamental thing. He calls the Cartesian
conception of motion the antechamber of true philosophy. There is no
absolute motion nor absolute rest. Motion and rest are relative to
each other. Descartes’ theory that there is conservation of motion
is incorrect. Motion and rest are the phenomenal changes of force.
Force alone is constant and conserved. Physics points beneath itself
to metaphysics; motion points to force. Force is what is fundamental
in nature. Force is “that which in the present state of things brings
about a change in the future.” Therefore force as the substance of
nature is super-spatial and immaterial, and therefore the basis of
the new physics ought to be dynamic metaphysical substance.
2. Leibnitz next examined the scientific conception of the atom.
Gassendi, one of that celebrated group of Parisian scientists, had
been the author of the introduction of Greek atomism into modern
thought. It had been generally accepted by scientists and combined with
the mathematical hypothesis of Galileo. Leibnitz had known Gassendi
in Paris, and he took the hard, inelastic atoms of Gassendi under
examination. He agreed that the atomist was perfectly correct in saying
that material bodies consist of simple parts or atoms. But Leibnitz
insisted that the atomist erred in thinking such simple parts to be
physical. However simple the parts might physically appear to be,
they were not really simple. However small a bit of matter may be, it
may be divided again, and the dividing process may go on to infinity.
The atom is the extended, and the extended cannot be simple or real.
Substance must be unextended, and the materialists were wrong in
attributing substance to the extended. Is there anything simple that
has a qualitative character? Is there anything real below the physical
atoms? Yes, the metaphysical atoms. The indivisible, immaterial unit
lies beneath the physical atom, and in order to reach it we must
pass beneath the physical into the metaphysical. This immaterial
or metaphysical atom is called by Leibnitz the _monad_; and thus is
Leibnitz’s theory called _monadology_.
There are three kinds of points, or units, or “simples.” There is the
mathematical point, which is simple enough, but it is only imaginary.
There is the physical point, or atom, which is real but not simple.
There is, lastly, the metaphysical point, or monad, which is both real
and simple. The metaphysical point is the only true point. To call the
material atoms real, only shows “the feebleness of the imagination,
which is glad to rest, and is, therefore, in haste to make an end of
division and analysis.”
3. Leibnitz then identified force, as the substance of motion, with the
metaphysical atom, as the substance of the material atom. The result
was the monad, as he conceived it. The monads are the principles of
active working. They are the super-spatial and immaterial principles
in which the mechanical principles of the universe have their roots and
meaning. Nature is not dead; it is not merely extended. It is alive,
resistant, and reproductive. If, as Spinoza taught, there were only one
substance, nature would be non-resistant and passive. But as a matter
of fact there are many substances acting for themselves, many bodies
resisting other bodies. They are the centres of separate activity, and
there are as many forces as there are things. There is no body without
movement, no movement without force. Thus does Leibnitz reintroduce
vitalism in a maturer form than is seen in neo-Platonism. Life becomes
the principle of nature. Purpose is placed at the centre of things.
=The Double Nature of the Monads.= The student will find that the
philosophy of Leibnitz is spoken of as a pluralism, but the student
will also find that Leibnitz devoted nearly all his strength to prove
that the world is after all a unity. Leibnitz analyzed the world into
a plural number of parts, and the question then with him was, how to
put these parts together again in an organic unity. This accomplishment
would depend a good deal upon his conception of the nature of the parts.
The monads have a double character. Leibnitz conceived the monad (1) as
a force centre and (2) as an immaterial soul. This makes an equivalence
of psychical and physical attributes which reminds us of the Stoics’
“fiery reason” of God. The word “force,” as Leibnitz uses it, squints
both toward physics and toward psychology. But such ambiguity about the
monads, the cornerstones in Leibnitz’s philosophy, assists Leibnitz’s
reconciliation at the start. Here, in a miniature, the physical and
spiritual lie in unity. The monad is conceived as a _soul-atom_.
Leibnitz came to philosophy with a mind saturated with the mathematical
ideas of the continuous, the infinitesimal, and the possible. He
thought of the monads as potentialities or possibilities. He looked
upon the world as essentially a developing world. Behind the facts
that seem to us inflexible, lies the great world of generating force.
Explanation of the actual can be made only in view of what the actual
may be and has been. Let us enlarge the scope of man by so widening his
conception of the actual that it will include the possible. Leibnitz
also spoke of the monads as infinitesimal. He thereby lifted the
conception of the infinitesimal from the realm of mathematics into
that of metaphysics, just as Hobbes universalized the conception of
mechanics by lifting it to metaphysics. Leibnitz, therefore, did not
regard the limits of perception as the limits of nature: the reality
of a nature object must be too small to be the object of perception. In
the same way he made use of his mathematical conception of continuity.
Leibnitz’s conception of nature-continuity is one of his contributions
to philosophy. Within itself the world of nature consists of a
continuous gradation from the lower to the higher forms; and also the
world of nature is continuous with the world of the spirit. There are
no leaps in the series from matter to God. Seeming differences in kind
are only differences in degree; for example, evil is only the absence
of good; matter is only an obscure idea of spirit.
But this Leibnitzian atomism consists of soul-atoms. These monads,
these force-centres are souls, and the mathematical qualities have a
place in Leibnitz’s description of the psychical powers of the monad.
The monad is a soul, for soul is the only substance in the universe
that may pass through many changes and it, itself, not change. The self
is the only subject of which many predicates may be asserted, while
it, itself, may not be the predicate of any other subject. The idea
of myself underlies all my mental states. The monad is an entelechy,
or an entity having its purpose within itself. All its attributes are
contained within itself, and it is, therefore, by nature, sufficient
unto itself. It is an individual which passes from one state to another,
moved by its “constitutional appetition.”
Among the psychical powers none is more important in Leibnitz’s
description of the monad than its power of representation.
Representation is the general function of the monad――from the lowest
to the highest monad. This means that each monad is the world force,
yet in a particular form,――a world substance, but in some peculiar
aspect. Every monad is a microcosm. Each represents the world so
far as it is conscious of its own activity. But it is evident that
all things in the universe are not conscious, and therefore all
soul-monads are not conscious. In souls there are, therefore, more
than conscious thoughts――there are thoughts that are unconscious.
Among the Rationalists Leibnitz is the first to give significance to
the so-called unconscious states that form so important a place in
modern psychology. (But see Plotinus.) As a wave is composed of small
particles of water, so the mind is made up of a myriad of unconscious
states. The conscious state is the general effect of the whole. A
soul-monad contains in itself at all times representations of the whole
world, some obscure, some clear. This power of universal representation
makes the monad a microcosm. What we call knowledge of the external
world is our representation of it within ourselves. This representation
is possible to us because we reproduce it in miniature. Since the monad
directly perceives only itself and its own states, it follows that
the more clearly and distinctly it is conscious of its own activities,
the more adequately does it represent the cosmos. The converse is also
true――that the more a monad represents the cosmos, the more truly does
it represent itself.
In his development of his description of the monad, Leibnitz hits upon
two catch-phrases, one of which presents his doctrine of the physical
isolation of the monad, the other presents the doctrine of its ideal
psychical unity. These phrases are: “the monads are windowless” and
“the monads mirror the universe.” By “windowless” Leibnitz means that
each monad is “like a separate world, self-sufficient, independent
of every other creature.” “Having no windows by which anything can
enter or depart,” the monad can perceive only its own states. Whatever
happens to it comes from itself alone as a purely internal principle.
The monad’s development is self-development and not the result of
external changes. Nevertheless the monad is a “mirror of the universe.”
In this psychical qualification of the nature of the monad, its
physical isolation vanishes and the way is open for a unity of monads,
which would have otherwise seemed to be physically hopelessly sundered.
How is it possible for each of the numberless monads, all so different,
to “mirror the universe”? The answer is found in their psychical power
of representation.
=The Two Forms of Leibnitz’s Conception of the Unity of the
Substances.= The principle of unity among the monads is called by
Leibnitz a _preëstablished harmony_. He presented this principle
of harmony in two ways. In part the harmony comes out of their
constitution, as he conceived it to be. In part Leibnitz artificially
superimposed it upon the monads for theological reasons. In either case
it is preëstablished.
=The Intrinsic Unity of the Monads――The Philosophical Unity.= There
is a family resemblance among the monads. The lowest reproduces the
universe in obscure and elementary representations. Minerals and
plants are sleeping monads with entirely unconscious ideas. Animals
are dreaming monads. Man is a waking monad. The highest monad is God,
who reproduces the universe in clear and distinct ideas. Between God
and matter there is a series of monads, graded as to the clearness
of their ideas. All contain the universe by representation. All are
bound together according to the principle of continuity; plants are
lower animals and animals are less perfect men. Man is a monad whose
conscious activity has risen to the height of self-consciousness, with
the cognate power of reason. There is no inert matter; no soul-less
bodies nor body-less souls. The smallest portion of dust is the
habiliment of animalculæ. Nothing is dead, and nature is a gradation
of monads in differing degrees of activity.
Metaphysically the monads are isolated, yet in nature as we see them,
they live in groups, and compose the things which we call plants,
animals, and men. An organic thing is a combination of monads with a
central ruling monad. This central monad is the soul of the group; the
subordinate ones form the body of the organism. The influence of the
soul or ruling monad upon the body-monads is purely ideal. They all
strive for the same end, which the soul represents more clearly. The
group acts spontaneously and together, not from any outside influence.
An inanimate object differs from such a living organism, inasmuch as
it is a group of monads without a soul or a ruling, central monad;
and therefore such a monad is both soul and body. There is therefore
no dualism between soul and body in any creatures, for body is only
obscure or unconscious activity. The body consists of monads having a
confused sense of their activity.
This continuity and unity within the world, as Leibnitz sees it, is
only the logical development of the unity with which he originally
endowed his monads. Although he starts the monads as “windowless,” he
also says that “they mirror the universe.” They are so conceived as
to be originally physically separated, but psychologically and ideally
united. “Their natural harmony resides in an ideal of perfect activity,
while in actual existence they are independent.” The ideal which unites
them is God, the last term in the graded series of the monads. He is
the monad of monads, because He is perfect, conscious activity. Just
as the various groups of monads are ruled by a central soul-monad, so
the world of these groups is an hierarchy, which derives its unitary
and harmonious character from this dominating monad. The world may
be likened to a pyramid with God at the apex. The world is like a
machine which differs from other machines, in that its parts are little
machines. Although the parts seem to operate separately, they are under
the dominating control of God. God is their intrinsic unity and the
universe is a preëstablished harmony.
A comparison with Spinoza’s conception of the world of nature brings
out Leibnitz’s meaning effectively. Both philosophers conceive nature
phenomena to be under the law of mechanical causation. To Spinoza,
however, all phenomena are qualitatively alike; there are no grades or
distinctions of value between them. All are modes of substance and all
illusions in the sight of God. To Spinoza phenomena are homogeneous.
Leibnitz’s estimate of the world of nature is quite different, and for
him nature has a far richer endowment. The phenomena of nature are not
homogeneous. Their difference does not consist in their content, but
in the degree in which they represent the universe. The law of nature
is a unifying principle that gives unitary individuality to the members
under the law. The individuality of the terms of the nature-series
is implied in the very nature of the law of necessity, and on the
other hand, the individual terms, for their part, transform the law of
necessity into a principle of unity that is higher than bare necessity.
In a necessitated series, Leibnitz points out, each term is determined
by the preceding, and in turn each term determines the events that
follow. Thus, while nature phenomena are a series and a necessitated
series, it is a series whose existence depends upon each event having
not only its place, but its unique place. No other event can fill that
place, and the conditions that give the event its place constitute its
individuality. Every finite event has, so to speak, its formula, and
this gives individuality to each term of the series, which appeared
to Spinoza only as a homogeneous, mathematical, and characterless
mode. Life is meaningful to Leibnitz, because each member of the
necessitated series of events has its unique part to play. The changes
of life are to Spinoza void of meaning, because he conceives them
to be undifferentiated. The law of mechanical necessity became under
Leibnitz’s hands a principle of harmony, a teleological principle. Even
in the necessitated mathematical series, such as Spinoza conceived the
world to be, Leibnitz believed that necessity implies individuality and
individuality implies purpose.
How vital, therefore, does life now appear, with its mechanical members
transformed into living units! Universal striving or force fills nature,
and the surging of individual forces gives a new meaning to the unity
of the whole. The mechanical series――the physiological changes of our
bodies and the efficient causes in nature――are only the expression
of the inner teleological development. Leibnitz points out several
pregnant principles that are aspects of this preëstablished but
intrinsic harmony. In the first place, nature has no breaks and abhors
a vacuum; and the series is a continuous one,――_the law of continuity_.
Member follows member in continuous and graded order. Their qualitative
differences are differences of quality of activity. Rest and motion,
good and evil, are differences of degree. In the second place, there
is nothing superfluous; no two things in nature are alike. If they
were alike, they would be identical――_the law of the identity of
indiscernibles_. Although there is no absolute antithesis or contrast
between things, there is no absolute likeness. Every monad must be
differentiated from every other intrinsically, _i. e._ according to
its perfected activity. Therefore, in the third place, every member
has an excuse for being――_the law of sufficient reason_. Every member
has its part to perform and no other can act as an understudy for it.
However insignificant any member may appear to be, it is as unique as
its bigger neighbor.
=The Superimposed Unity of the Monads――The Theological Unity.= The
intrinsic unity of the monads is derived naturally from the monads
themselves, but it is an unattained ideal for which they strive. When
Leibnitz turns his philosophy into a theodicy, or justification of the
nature of God, this unity of the world takes on a different form and
assumes a theological importance. The unity is no longer an intrinsic
unity, with no actual but only ideal existence depending upon the
highest monad in the series, but is an actual personality who exists
apart from the world. The world is his eternal purpose. Probably this
conception was always in the background of Leibnitz’s thought, but it
cannot be deduced from his philosophy. It is a conception afterwards
superimposed upon his philosophy. Leibnitz now conceives God not as an
ideal goal, but as a perfect and actual person, whose reason impelled
Him to construct the best possible world. The world in which we live
is the world He chose. It is perfectly conceivable that the world could
be different. Why, among all the possible worlds, did God choose to
construct this world? There is no reason in logic, but in fact. There
was no necessity for its construction. The fact is the excellence of
the world. Spinoza said that all possible worlds exist. Leibnitz said
this best possible world exists. Look about you; is it not so?
The best possible world is a world of free agents, whose acts are
rewarded or punished according to their deserts. If we discover what
seems to be inexplicable evil, we must regard it as an incident in the
harmony of the whole. The world would be less good without evil. There
is no more evil than there ought to be. The world which God conceived
to be the best possible――this world――is a world of lights and shades.
Evil comes from the free agency of man, and God is not responsible
for it. It is better to have evil and free agency than no evil and no
free agency. Evil after all is not positive, and is only due to the
indistinct ideas of man. It is the absence of good, as cold is the
absence of heat.
Thus a preëstablished harmony was constructed by Leibnitz that does
not come out of his original philosophical premises. Leibnitz used his
celebrated figure of the two clocks to illustrate the harmony of the
monads. Two clocks keep the same time, not because they influence one
another (interaction), nor because the maker moves the hands of one
(Occasionalism), but because they have been thus constructed by an
intelligent Creator. Thus the harmony of the world implies a personal
God. Leibnitz’s philosophical Rationalism here passed into theology,
and his metaphysics became an ethics. Leibnitz began with a monadology,
and by means of the conception of harmony passed to an optimism.
CHAPTER VI
THE ENLIGHTENMENT (1690–1781)[36]
=The Emergence of the “New Man,”――Individualism.= In passing to this
period we should recall the two objects of interest that distinguish
modern from mediæval thought: the “new man” of modern Europe; and
the “new universe”――new in its geographical outlines and in its
intellectual materials. We have already found that the two hundred and
more years of the Renaissance, the first period of modern thought, was
absorbed in exploiting the second of these objects――the “new universe.”
In fact the “new man” had been so interested in the “new universe” that
he had not thought of studying himself. He had systematized the great
wealth of his acquisitions and had constructed great systems of science
and metaphysics.
This second period of modern thought――the Enlightenment――begins
when the “new man” turns away from his intellectual struggles with
his environment and attempts to understand his own nature. Thus the
more important of the two objects emerges last; and this turn to
self-reflection constitutes the century of the Enlightenment. The
Renaissance had been subjective and spectacular; the Enlightenment was
subjective and tragic. The mental activity of the Renaissance had been
vital, spontaneous, and unconscious, like the awakening from sleep;
that of the Enlightenment was self-conscious and attitudinizing.
The man of the Renaissance had been in love with nature; the man
of the Enlightenment was in love with himself. Like the Greek
Sophistic Illumination, which is its parallel in ancient history, the
Enlightenment turned away from cosmological and metaphysical problems.
On the other hand, the philosophy of the Enlightenment penetrated
all departments of life and found expression in practical questions.
Erdmann has well expressed the meaning of these nine decades of the
Enlightenment as “an effort to raise man, so far as he is a rational
individual, into a position of supremacy over everything.” It was
during this period, which we are now about to enter, that Herder
brought into currency in Germany the word “humanity.” In England the
same sentiment was uttered by Pope in 1732 in his _Essay on Man_:――
“Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of mankind is man.”
The Enlightenment marks, therefore, the rise of modern individualism;
and the concerns of the individual become the important object of
consideration. The novelty of the great discoveries and inventions of
the Renaissance had lost its lustre. The “new universe” had become old
and familiar, but through his accomplishments the “new man” had begun
to feel the strength of his liberated powers. For had not the wonderful
world of the Renaissance been his own accomplishment? Had not all its
notable constructions been the creations of his powers? The “struggle
of traditions” to revive antiquity and to incorporate the “new
universe” upon an old basis; the “strife of methods” to reorganize the
“new world” upon a new basis――revealed this great fact: that man has
“world wisdom.” Man in his supremacy occupies the entire foreground,
and interest in the “new universe” fades away. The “new universe” is
now seen in the light of one’s personal interests. Man is supreme,
and to his word there can be no exception. There is constant reference
during this time to the “light of reason”――to a bright inner,
rational illumination in contrast to the vagaries of mysticism and the
obscurities of dogmatism. The worship of genius arises and with it a
contempt for the unenlightened. “Thus would I speak, were I Christ,”
said Bahrdt. No wonder that Goethe described the Enlightenment as an
age of self-conceit!
=The Practical Presupposition of the Enlightenment――The Independence of
the Individual.= The “new man” emerged from the Renaissance as the most
important object of consideration, and during the Enlightenment there
was never the slightest question about his independence. The individual
became the original datum of this period into which we are now entering;
he was considered to be the only thing that is self-intelligible;
he was the starting-point from which all social relationships were
to be explained. Among the many problems that arose, the independent
existence of the individual remained unquestioned. It was the period
of “liberty, equality, and fraternity.” The problems were about the
relations of the individual; never about the individual himself,
for concerning the individual no problem could arise. The individual
rejoicing in the exuberance of his own powers, the “monad enjoying
himself,” dominated everything. The monadology of the Renaissance
became an atomism in the Enlightenment. The individual was the
practical assumption of the period.
=The Metaphysical Presupposition of the Enlightenment.= There was a
metaphysical background to this practical assumption of the individual.
This was the Cartesian dualism of mind and matter. Although the
eighteenth century despaired of a successful metaphysical construction
of the “new universe,” and although its attention was riveted on an
analysis of human relationships, it must not be supposed that the
period was without its metaphysical bias. Such is not the nature
of human history; and if an epoch refuses to discuss metaphysical
questions, it is because it assumes some metaphysics as true. The
assumption of the independent individual implies the independent
existence of matter. The Enlightenment assumed the Cartesian theory as
correct. While many were the polemics against metaphysical speculation,
the Cartesian dualism was nevertheless in control. Here within is the
independent existence of mind; and it would naturally follow that there
without is the equally independent existence of matter. The conception
might fade into a ghost-like dualism, as in Berkeley and Hume, but
the dualism never entirely vanished. This has since been known as
the philosophy of “common sense,” and is to-day the easy attitude of
those not interested in metaphysical discussions. “Common sense” means
the opinion of the majority as to truth. Most people to-day, as then,
accept without question some sort of dualism, usually the dualism of
mind and body.
=The Problems of the Enlightenment.= The area of inquiry was thus very
much restricted during this period. Nature lies beyond our ken. God is
still more incomprehensible. From the study of nature and God, let us
turn to a study of the problems of the inner life. Yet while the field
of study was restricted, the problems within it were multitudinous,
and there was an astonishing breadth and universality, a tenacity
of everything, a disdainfulness of nothing. Within its own field the
Enlightenment sought to systematize and to stand by any idea in spite
of all opposition. The imagination took bold flights and, from the
standpoint of the inner individual life, tried to transform its world.
Overloaded with ballast, it tried to reconcile the irreconcilable and
to overlook the brute facts of existence. The problems arise from an
age that is self-opinionated, self-tormenting, and subjective.
The problems of this age may be divided into two classes,――utilitarian
and critical,――both having reference to the individual man in his
relations. These include the problems of psychology, epistemology,
sociology, economics, politics, etc. There was, for example, the
problem of our knowledge of the external world, of the validity of
innate ideas as the basis of knowledge, of the rational basis of
religion. Thought was very alert at this time, as is always the case
in times of great individualism, and thought could move with great
rapidity over the wide range of such subjects.
(a) =Utilitarian Problems.= The Enlightenment was curious about
the interests, the happiness, and the many powers of the individual.
Empirical psychologists and brilliant ethical scholars appeared. How
much can man know, and what are the limits and extent of his knowledge?
The Rationalists of the Renaissance had accepted without question the
mediæval teaching that a group of our ideas is innate and therefore
God-given. The Middle Ages had been built up on revealed knowledge.
But to the thinkers of the Enlightenment the most important ideas――yea,
the only ideas of service to us――are those derived from experience. We
should be happier if we confined ourselves to the facts of every-day
life, and did not try to deal with things beyond experience. Let us
give metaphysical theories to the Churchman. Empirical psychology
thus took the place of metaphysics, and became known as philosophy.
It was the favorite science of the time, and the basis of ethics
and epistemology. Philosophy thus came out of the school, and
became a public utility. It was based, to be sure, upon theological
preconceptions, but it was to be put to the service of man. It was to
be an instrument of discovery as well as a means of grace. With this
psychological incentive great schools of moralists arose, especially in
England: studying morality as based on the intellect, on the feelings,
on authority, on the association of ideas.
Empirical psychology led to self-inspection, and this is the age
when self-inspection was universal. It is the age of the founding of
“societies for the observation of man.” It is the age of sentimental
diary writing. Rousseau wrote his autobiography in France, and it
was followed by a flood of autobiographies in Germany. Even memoirs
of such scoundrels as Laukhardt were written and read as matters of
public interest. Religion, too, took the form of personal experiences
and individual conversions; and the church was more interested in the
experiences of the saved than in the dogma of salvation. The Methodist
movement arose in England and spread over the continent and to America.
Individual opinions were more important than conventions; friendships
than marriage; societies than corporations. The historical was lost
to view because the personal and particular occupied the foreground.
Gibbon said, “All ideas were equally true in the eyes of the people,
equally false in the eyes of the philosophers, equally useful in the
eyes of the magistrates.”
(b) =Questions of Criticism.= In the second place, the Enlightenment
is a period of criticism and stands in contrast with the constructive
Rationalism of the Renaissance. From Locke’s invective against innate
ideas to Hume’s skepticism of the law of cause, from Voltaire’s
examination of the foundations of religion to Rousseau’s polemic
against society, the age was one of the criticism of authority.
The psychologists, moralists, deists, and sociologists were
revolutionists――all striking directly or indirectly at absolute
political sovereignty, against the theoretical dogmatism and the
ceremonious morality in which the Renaissance was complacent. The
revolution began in the realm of the intellect and spread to political
society. It was natural that the beginnings should be made in the
apparently harmless theoretical examination of the grounds of knowledge
and the principles of morality; but the outcome was a general sweep
of historical criticism, in which authority and science, the church,
the state, and education came under censure. The spirit of man was
impatient. Man became indifferent to “learning.” In contrast with
the Renaissance, this was a time when books were little read, proper
names infrequently appeared in writings, authorities were little cited.
Let man study himself if he would learn about history and understand
the world. Man stands above the scholar, the Christian, the German.
He is independent of tradition, and should substitute the useful for
the historical. Cosmopolitanism takes the place of patriotism. The
Enlightenment is practical and yet imaginative. Its criticism aims to
strip man of all his artificialities and to find his natural state. Its
emphasis is negative and destructive.
The revolt of the Enlightenment against the past appeared in remarkable
changes in the political map of Europe. Mediæval Europe was breaking
to pieces. The Renaissance had been a period of social absolutism in
which the despotic powers of Macchiavelli and Richelieu were typical
of its political life. In this period new-comers forced their way
into politics and the Enlightenment was marked by the rise of Russia,
Prussia, and the American colonies. France and Austria, representing
the past, were arrayed against England and Prussia, representing the
future of Europe. The conflict between them was that of the old idea
of military despotism, non-commerce, and non-toleration against the new
spirit of individual freedom. From the Peace of Westphalia (1648) to
the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763) occurred many conflicts which presaged
the breaking down of the old boundaries. The old régime received its
death-blow at the hands of Frederick the Great in the Seven Years’ War;
and a half-century later (1806) the Holy Roman Empire came to an end.
In all countries there were vigorous political movements in support of
the rights of the individual. In England the House of Commons began to
rise to power and the colonies in America to assert their independence.
In France the Bourbon family was fast losing its grip, to be completely
overthrown in the French Revolution (1789). The current was entirely
in the same direction in Germany. This was the time of Adam Smith and
the rise of economic theories. It is a matter of no little significance
that this period from the point of view of philosophy begins with
Locke’s psychological _Essay_ and ends with Kant’s _Critique_; and from
the point of view of politics it begins with the Revolution of 1688
in England, and ends with a revolution in France and another in the
American colonies.
=A Comparison of the Enlightenment in England, France, and Germany.=
The individualism of the Enlightenment expressed itself as a
rationalism in Germany, as a sensationalism and deism in France, and as
a deism and an empiricism in England. Nevertheless all its phases may
be found in each one of these countries. The outcome of the movement
in the three countries is, however, very different. In England the
Enlightenment passed into a philosophical reaction in the so-called
Scottish School; in France, it resulted in a political revolution; in
Germany, it merged with a great literary movement and resulted in a
creative idealism.
=The Many Groups of Philosophers of the Enlightenment.= A comparison of
the lists of philosophers of this with those of other periods reveals
an extraordinary number of names. The Renaissance, for example, shows
about half as many names of consequence, although it is about twice
as long. The Enlightenment teems with philosophers, for its secular
life was permeated with the reflective spirit. The philosophers are
also often notable men, whose names are familiar to the modern reader.
Nevertheless the number of constructive philosophers was exceedingly
few. Only Locke, Berkeley, and Hume can be found whose importance
equals that of Bacon, Hobbes, Galileo, Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibnitz.
In personal talents and importance to their age the others seem to go
in groups or to be part of the secular spirit. On the whole the history
of the Enlightenment is that of social movements, and the philosophers
seem to be the exponents of such movements.
Some of these important groups are as follows:――
In England.
1. _Associationalist Psychologists_: Peter Brown (d. 1735), Hartley
(1704–1757), Search (1705–1774), Priestley (1733–1804), Tooke
(1736–1812), Erasmus Darwin (1731–1802), Thomas Brown (1778–1820).
2. _Moral Philosophers_: Shaftesbury (1671–1713); morality based on
intellect, Samuel Clarke (1675–1729); Wollaston (1659–1724); morality
based on feeling, Hutcheson (1694–1747); Home (1696–1782); Burke
(1730–1797); Ferguson (1724–1816); Adam Smith (1723–1790); morality
based on authority, Butler (1692–1752); Paley (1743–1805); ethics
based on associational psychology, Bentham (1748–1832); in an isolated
ethical position, Mandeville (1670–1733); the Platonist, Price
(1723–1791).
3. _The Deists_: Toland (1670–1722), Collins (1676–1729), Tindal
(1656–1733), Chubb (1679–1747), Morgan (d. 1743), Bolingbroke
(1678–1751).
4. _The Scottish School of Philosophy_: Thomas Reid (1710–1796), Oswald
(d. 1793), Beattie (d. 1805), Dugald Stewart (1753–1828).
In France.
1. _Skeptics_: Bayle (1647–1706), Voltaire (1694–1778), Maupertuis
(1698–1759), d’Alembert (1717–1783), Buffon (1707–1788), Robinet
(1735–1820).
2. _The Sensualists_: La Mettrie (1709–1751), Bonnet (1720–1793),
Condillac (1715–1780), Cabanis (1757–1808).
3. _The Encyclopædists_: Diderot (1713–1784), Voltaire, d’Alembert,
Rousseau (1712–1778), Turgot, Jaucourt, Duclos, Grimm (1723–1807),
Holbach (1723–1789), Helvetius (1715–1771).
4. _The Political Economists and Constitutionalists_: Montesquieu
(1689–1755), Quesnay, Turgot, Morelly, Mably.
5. _The Sentimentalist_: Rousseau (1712–1778), the most notable figure
of France during the Enlightenment.
6. _Philosophical Revolutionists_: St. Lambert (1716–1803), Volney
(1757–1820), Condorcet (1743–1794), Garat (1749–1833).
In Germany.
1. _Thomasius_ (1655–1728), the first of the Enlightenment.
2. _The Wolffians_: Wolff (1679–1754), Bilfinger, Knutzen (d. 1751),
Gottsched (1700–1766), Baumgarten (1714–1762).
3. _The Geometrical Method and its Opponents_: Hansch, Ploucquet,
Crousaz, Rüdiger (1671–1731), Crusius (1712–1775), Budde, Brucker,
Tiedemann, Lossius, Platner.
4. _The Psychologists and Related Philosophers_: Kruger, Hentsch, Weiss,
Irwing, Moritz (1757–1793), Basedow (1723–1790), Pestalozzi, and Sulzer.
5. _The Independent Philosophers_: Lambert (1728–1777), Tetens
(1736–1805).
6. _The Deists_: Schmidt, Semler (1725–1791), Reimarus (1699–1768),
Edelmann.
7. _The Pietists_: Spener (1635–1705), Francke (1663–1727), Arnold,
Dippel.
8. _The Popular Philosophers_: Mendelssohn (1729–1786), Nicolai
(1733–1811), Basedow, Abbt, Engel, Feder, Meiners, Garve.
9. _The Writer on Philosophical Religion_: Lessing (1729–1781).
10. _The Writer on Faith Philosophy_: Herder (1744–1803).
The philosophers of greatest importance in this period are given below.
To help the reader keep in mind contemporary philosophical influences
other names are given with them in a parallel table.
Bacon
1561
│ Hobbes
│ 1588
│ │ Descartes
│ │ 1596
1626 │ │
│ │ Spinoza Locke
│ ┼ 1632 1632
│ │ │ Newton │
│ │ │ 1642 ┼
│ │ │ │ Leibnitz │
│ 1650 │ │ 1646 │
│ 1677 │ │ │
1679 ┼ │ │ Wolff
│ │ │ 1679 Berkeley
│ │ │ │ Voltaire 1685
│ │ │ │ 1694 │
│ │ 1704 │ │ │
│ │ │ │ │ Hume
│ │ │ │ │ 1711 Rousseau
│ 1716 │ │ │ │ 1712
│ │ │ │ │ │ Lessing
1727 │ │ │ │ │ 1729
│ │ 1753 │ │ │
1754 │ │ │ │
│ 1776 │ │
1778 1778 │
1781
Illustration:
MAP SHOWING THE BIRTHPLACES OF SOME OF THE INFLUENTIAL
THINKERS OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT (1690–1781)
(Note that the names of the philosophers are given in
brackets beneath the names of the towns and cities)
CHAPTER VII
JOHN LOCKE
=The Enlightenment in Great Britain.= The history of the philosophy of
Great Britain includes the teachings of Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and the
Scottish School. With the exception of the teachings of the reactionary
Scottish School, all the important philosophical teachings appear
in the first half of the eighteenth century. We need to understand,
first, the philosophical position of Locke, who was the father of the
Enlightenment. We shall then see how his doctrine developed in three
different directions: (1) as Deism,――a rational Christianity, (2) as
an associational psychology in ethics, (3) as a theory of knowledge in
the philosophies of Berkeley and Hume.
Our discussion of the philosophy of Bacon and Hobbes has been followed
by that of Rationalism. It would, however, be a mistake for the reader
to infer, as we are about to take up the study of Locke, that a long
period of time intervened between Hobbes and Locke. A chronological
comparison of their lives shows that they were contemporaries for
forty-seven years. Both lived through the reign of Charles I, during
the Commonwealth and the Restoration. Hobbes died eleven years before
Locke published his only philosophical essay. We must remember, too,
that the English empirical philosophers of the Enlightenment were not
insulated from the Rationalists of the Continent. On the contrary,
there was a lively interchange of ideas. Descartes influenced Hobbes
and Hobbes influenced Spinoza. The influence of Descartes upon
Locke was not inconsiderable, and Leibnitz felt the influence of
Locke. Berkeley and Leibnitz arrived at idealistic conclusions from
independent points of view. Bacon alone seems to stand apart both from
his contemporaries and from his immediate followers.
The English Enlightenment was the natural development of the English
Renaissance. Locke was the successor of Bacon and Hobbes. On the other
hand, the English Enlightenment is similar to what went on in France
and Germany. The first half of the English Enlightenment――from 1690 to
1750――was absorbed in philosophical discussions; during the second half,
the period abandoned philosophy, and was engaged entirely in politics.
The classes that won in the Revolution of 1688 had little trouble in
maintaining their place of power. The peaceful coming of William and
Mary gave well-ordered conditions for intellectual development and for
a powerful literary movement. The Jacobites were crushed, and there
ensued a period of political peace. In the latter half of the century,
however, another set of topics came to the front. After 1750 politics
superseded philosophy; and whereas the keenest English minds had been
employed upon the theoretical “study of mankind” in literature and
philosophy, they now became engaged in practical political questions.
Political parties developed. The Court was arrayed against the families
of the Revolution, the American trouble, and the Wilkite agitations
were looming large. England was sucked into the political maelstrom
that was involving all Europe. Instead of deistic controversies with
the theological orthodoxy, dangerous political questions were appearing.
Instead of Hume’s _Essay_ and Butler’s _Analogy_ we have Burke’s
speeches, Adam Smith’s _Wealth of Nations_, Junius’s _Letters_, and
political pamphlets. In the first half of the period Bolingbroke had
left politics for philosophy; in the second half Priestley left his
laboratory for politics. The great change in English intellectual
interests is shown in Hume himself. In 1752 he turned from philosophy,
because there was so little interest in the subject, to the writing
of his history of England. Theology was paralyzed; deism was no longer
ridiculed; orthodoxy slumbered in its victory. The only philosophic
tones came from France, where Voltaire, the Encyclopædists, and
Rousseau were carrying out a movement that had its origin in England;
and, on the other hand, from Scotland and its reactionary school. But
the political movement always remained political in England, because
its institutions were not inflexible and because the English people are
by nature constitutional. In England there has never been a revolution,
in the true sense, but England’s progress has always been controlled by
tradition. Even the revolution in the English colonies in America was
caused by an abridgment of constitutional rights, and not by political
theory, although the formal Declaration of Independence was framed
under the influence of French philosophers.
=John Locke, Life and Writings= (1632–1704).[37] The life of Locke
falls into four periods.
1. _Student Life_ (1632–1666). Locke passed his first fourteen years
at home, which were the troublesome years of the Civil War. The next
six years were spent at the Westminster School in London. The last
fourteen years of this period were spent, first as student and then
as lecturer in Oxford. He took his Oxford degrees in 1660, the year
of the Restoration and the year in which the British Royal Society was
founded at Oxford. His dislike for the classics, which was begun at the
Westminster School, was confirmed by his Oxford studies. Consequently,
during the years of his perfunctory lecturing at Oxford (1660–1666),
his main interest was in physics. He was engaged in chemical,
meteorological, and especially medical observations. He was also
engaged in an amateur medical practice, in partnership with an old
physician.
The first turning point in his life came in 1666, when he was called
to attend the first Lord Shaftesbury, who had fallen ill at Oxford.
This accidental meeting was the beginning of a lasting friendship with
the Shaftesbury family, sustained by their common love for political,
religious, and intellectual liberty. The first Lord Shaftesbury was
the most notable statesman in the reign of Charles II; the third Lord
Shaftesbury was the greatest of English ethical scholars. Locke was the
trusted friend and beneficiary of the first Lord Shaftesbury, the tutor
of the second, and influenced, more than any one else, the ethical
productions of the third. Locke wrote some notes in this period on
the Roman Commonwealth, an essay on toleration, and made records of
physical observations.
2. _As Politician_ (1666–1683). During these seventeen years Locke’s
outward fortunes were intimately connected with the political career
of Shaftesbury. He held public office. He was made a member of the
Royal Society in 1668. The winter of 1670–1671 was important for
his intellectual fortunes and marks another turning point in his
life. It was then that he started the inquiry that led to his famous
_Essay_.[38] The _Essay_ was in the process of development during the
next nineteen years. He passed four years in retirement and in study in
France (1675–1679). He also at this time first conceived his _Essays on
Government_. Shaftesbury fled to Holland in November, 1682, and Locke a
few months later followed him.
3. _As Philosophical Author_ (1683–1691). The year 1689 divides this
period into two important parts. The first part (1683–1689) is not
only the period of his exile in Holland, but it is the time in which
he is composing and completing his three most important literary
works,――_Essay on the Human Understanding_, the two _Treatises on
Government_, the three _Epistles on Tolerance_. During the second
part (1689–1691) he published these, which was the time immediately
following his return to England. Newton’s _Principia_ was published
in 1687, and Locke’s _Essay_ in 1690――the one the foundation of modern
physical science, the other the beginning of modern psychology. The
appearance of these two works together with the Revolution in 1688
makes this point of time an important one in the history of the world.
4. _As Controversialist_ (1691–1704). Locke then began to write upon
almost every conceivable subject,――the coining of silver money, the
raising of the value of money, the culture of olives, etc. He was also
very busy in defending his philosophy against attacks. For him, until
1700 the period was one of controversy. At that time he retired from
all activity, and after four years of failing health died in 1704. His
period of production was confined to the eleven years between 1689 and
1700.
=The Sources of Locke’s Thought.= 1. _His Puritan Ancestry._ The
ancestry of Locke is little known, and not much that appears in his
personality can be explained by it. Both his father and mother were
Puritans, and he seems to have inherited the severe piety, prudent,
self-reliant industry, and love of liberty, that were common in English
Puritan families of the middle class in the seventeenth century. During
the first fourteen years he was schooled by his parents.
2. _His Training in Tolerance._ If Locke inherited in the least
degree any temper of intolerance from his Puritan ancestry it entirely
disappeared with his experiences before and during his life at the
University of Oxford. In 1646, at the Westminster School, his mind
revolted at the cruel intolerance on both sides in the events just
succeeding the Civil War. He also rebelled at the stern scholastic
training which he received. These negative influences were supplemented
by positive incentives to freedom and toleration during his university
life. John Owen was the liberal Vice-Chancellor of Oxford at that time,
and the university granted freedom of thought to all Protestants. Locke
felt Owen’s influence throughout his whole life. The fact that Locke’s
intimate friend at Oxford was Professor Pococke, the most outspoken
Royalist in the university, shows that whatever Puritanism there
was in Locke’s nature had been ameliorated. Tolerance and liberty of
opinion became now the key-note in the life of John Locke. “A gentle
disposition, great love for his friends, an honest seeking after truth,
and a firm faith in the importance of personal and political freedom
are the traits most remarkable in Locke as we know him from his books
and letters.” His toleration was not of the same sort as that of
his contemporary Leibnitz. Leibnitz sought to reconcile discordant
elements by combining them into a new dogmatic theory; Locke neglected
disagreements, sought no perfect harmony, but pointed out a _via media_
that any individual might take. Leibnitz set forth a metaphysical
system; Locke gave a practical method. He had great directness, and was
a man of honesty of thought. Not being a partisan he had no side to
defend; and he was not a partisan because philosophy was not his trade.
Philosophy was to Locke the accomplishment of a gentleman who was
interested in the puzzles of life. His diction is for ordinary people;
it is simple and expressed in short Anglo-Saxon words. He shows no
logic of thought; and while any sentence is admirable, the paragraph
and the page are dull. His _Essay_ is a chaos of plain truths, only
here and there illuminated by imagination. He shows no poetic power,
and the world in which he lived never fired his imagination. He studied
the human mind as he would read the thermometer. To our fathers his
_Essay_ was a philosophical Bible. To us the _Essay_ stands, not like
a completely planned building, but like an enlarged cottage, very
habitable, but making no single impression.
3. _The Scientific Influence._ As a fellow-countryman of Ockam and
the two Bacons, Locke shows the same anti-mystical and positivist
tendencies. He was a thorough Englishman in taste and temperament. When
the “new philosophy” was finding its way into the Oxford circle, he
was one of the first to welcome it. It came to the University through
books; the lecturers were still true to Aristotle. Descartes, Hobbes,
and Bacon were widely read, as was also Gassendi’s exposition of
Epicurus. Locke himself writes concerning the influence of Descartes
upon him. He gave up all thought of becoming a clergyman; and his
personal friendship for Bayle, a famous chemist, and for Sydenham, a no
less famous physician, interested him in the empirical method as they
applied it to chemistry and therapeutics. He owed his philosophical
awakening to Descartes and the Port Royal logic. The lucidity of
Descartes came to him as an inspiration of intellectual liberty;
although he afterwards used the principles that Descartes had taught
him to controvert his teacher’s doctrine.
During the first period of Locke’s life (1632–1666) he was nothing more
than a student of medicine and a meteorological observer. He was the
retired scholar who led so placid a life that it portended nothing
noteworthy. He was a creditable scholar and teacher, but his life was
negative in character. He had passed through stirring times, and they
did not stir him.
4. _The Political Influence._ Locke’s interest in politics began when
he was thirty-four years old――when he met Lord Ashley at Oxford. For
fifteen years he shared the home and fortune of this most remarkable
man of affairs in the reign of Charles II. This Lord Ashley (Earl of
Shaftesbury) fled to Holland in 1682, and died there the next year.
After the death of his patron Locke left England for exile in Holland
until 1689, when he returned to England with William and Mary. In
Holland he found a brilliant company, exiled from all countries; and
he formed an intimate friendship with Limborch, the leader of liberal
theology in Holland. Some of the time he lived with a Quaker. Locke’s
friendship with Shaftesbury and his residence in Holland confirmed him
in his belief in political liberty. So when William entered England and
needed literary justification for the Revolution, he got it in Locke’s
two _Treatises on Government_. Locke thus became the philosophical
defender and intellectual representative of the Revolution that now
after fifty years had reached its culmination.
=Summary.= On the whole, the inherited Puritanism of Locke was
easily modified not only by his own moderate disposition, but also
by his scientific interests and by his large political experiences.
He naturally grew to be the apostle of the _via media_ between
traditionalism and empiricism. He published practically nothing before
he was sixty years old. After his return from exile his principal
works appeared in swift succession. Two accidents formed turning-points
in his life. His accidental meeting with Shaftesbury in 1666 turned
him to politics; and secondly, at an informal meeting of friends in
the winter of 1670–1671 the question about the nature of sensations was
accidentally raised, out of which grew his great _Essay_. His life was
primarily one of affairs and of large acquaintance with men and things.
To him life was the first thing, his interest in politics came second,
and his philosophy third. That his ideas should have been the basis of
extreme philosophical and political beliefs on the Continent is natural
enough when one remembers the perils of misinterpretation to the man
who preaches the doctrine of the _via media_.
=The Purpose of Locke.= In the historical perspective of two
centuries we to-day see Locke in his _Essay on the Human Understanding_
delivering the inaugural address of the eighteenth century. He is
making the first formal declaration of the intellectual rights of the
individual in a lengthy, dry, and erudite psychological dissertation.
Of course he never knew the historical importance of his own work.
It grew out of the need of the hour. He would have been astonished to
find himself the spokesman of the century of French Encyclopædists,
materialists, and revolutionists, of English deists, of German
Illuminati, of Hume, and of Voltaire. He had in mind to answer the
restrictions of the high churchman on the one hand, and the arrogant
claims of the atheists on the other, as to the power of the human
intellect. He states that his design is to “inquire into the original
certainty and extent of human knowledge.” In this declaration Locke
foreshadows Kant, but he falls short of the insight of Kant. For Locke
speaks for the spirit of the eighteenth and not the nineteenth century,
and (1) he must keep within the range of concrete facts; (2) he must
state only what can be stated clearly; and (3) he must be practical.
It was, however, in its larger meaning a declaration of human freedom.
Locke shows what limitations the human intellect has, what it can and
what it cannot know. When the Enlightenment got momentum, it forgot the
limitations to knowledge that the sober Locke had set down, and read in
his words only a declaration of license. The _Essay_ differs from any
previous modern philosophical writing. Man and not the universe is the
subject. For the first time we find an examination of the laws of mind,
and not of the laws of the universe.
But it is the _via media_ for which Locke stands, and not the
lawless excesses of the eighteenth century. The human reason is not
all-knowing――cannot solve all problems, is not endowed with divine
ideas; on the other hand, the human reason is not merely a string of
sensations. The human reason is just this: it is _human_. It stands
midway between divine intuition and animal sensation. Man is free, but
free under his own limitations. “If by this inquiry it may be of use to
prevail with the busy mind of man to be more cautious in meddling with
things beyond its comprehension――we should then not be so forward, out
of affection for universal knowledge, to perplex ourselves and others
with disputes about things, to which our understandings are not suited
and of which we have not any notions at all.” Human freedom stands
between the absolute freedom of God and the absolute necessity of
the animal. Human freedom lies within the limits and bounds of human
ideas――the _via media_; and analysis of those ideas will show what
those limits and bounds are. There can be no knowledge without ideas.
Some ideas may be erroneous and out of all relation to reality.
On the other hand, there may be ideas to which no experiences fit.
Intellectual freedom consists in having not isolated ideas, but ideas
in their relations, that is, in the form of judgments. Locke was
moved in making his analysis of ideas by a general moral purpose to
correct the faults and fallacies in mankind and in himself. “Man’s
faculties were given him to procure the happiness which this world
is capable of,” says Locke, and it might have been Bacon who had said
it. The search for the _via media_ is justified by its practical and
utilitarian ends. The _via media_ is the way of freedom.
=Two Sides of Locke’s Philosophy.= The search for the _via media_ is
an attempt to find “the limits and extent of human knowledge.” This
involved Locke in a discrimination as to what should be accepted and
what rejected of the past. It gives his philosophy a positive and a
negative aspect. In brief, on its negative side he makes a show of
rejecting the entire past by rejecting all innate ideas, but really he
inconsistently accepted from the past its conception of substance and
of individuality. On its positive side he builds up from experience a
theory of knowledge which he divides into intuitive, demonstrative, and
probable. That is to say, while Locke affirms that all our knowledge
must be derived from experience, it never occurs to him to doubt the
traditional Cartesian theory of the existence of God, man, and matter.
(a) =The Negative Side――Locke and Scholasticism.= Locke issued an
avowed defiance to scholasticism in the introduction of his _Essay_.
Of the four books into which the _Essay_ is divided, the first was
composed last and added as an introductory declaration of independence.
If it had been the only part ever written, the anarchism of the
eighteenth century would have been right in finding its justification
in the _Essay_. To a modern mind this first book looks harmless enough,
but in Locke’s time it had a deep sociological and political meaning.
It expresses his practical moral defiance of traditional mediævalism.
“There exist no innate ideas,” says Locke. Innate ideas mean to him
the tyranny of tradition――unexamined and unsubstantiated beliefs,
conceptions unverified by fact. They stand for church dogma imposed
upon the unthinking masses, the absolutism of monarchy and the divine
right of kings, the inherited superstitions about nature. Spinoza
had deduced his entire philosophy from the innate idea of substance;
Descartes had found at least three innate ideas; Leibnitz believed
all ideas innate. Locke pleads for the personal right to examine all
ideas. Locke’s critics have claimed that no philosopher ever maintained
the existence of innate ideas in the sense in which Locke attacked
them. Locke was aiming at something more vulnerable than innate ideas
themselves――he was attacking the mediæval habit of the individual who
takes a thing as true because the thing has the weight of traditional
authority.
(b) =The Positive Side――The New Psychology and Epistemology.= If
inherited ideas have no weight for Locke, he was bound to show the
kind of ideas upon which we can rely. The mind enters upon life with
no stock of ideas in trade; how do they arise? The logical outcome of
Locke’s disclaimer of scholastic psychology obliged him to construct
a new psychology and theory of knowledge. He must offer a psychology
as a constructive programme for the individualism of the Enlightenment.
In his second book Locke states the positive side of his doctrine
by saying that the mind is like a white paper without any original
markings; that it gets its markings from the impressions made upon it.
Thus to deny innate ideas and to affirm that all ideas are empirically
aroused, are the negative and positive sides of the same doctrine
of individualism. They are two ways of saying that the mind of the
individual is free to judge for itself of the truth or falseness of
its experiences.
In his denial of the existence of innate ideas, in his use of the
formula that “nothing is in the intellect that has not been first in
the sense,” or in his employment of the figure of the “white piece
of paper,” Locke does not intend to state anything further than that
the mind is free. He merely means that the individual starts without
trammels and prejudices. He does not mean that the mind is completely
passive and at the mercy of its environment, as his French followers
interpreted him. Locke is a sensationalist, but he does not belong to
that class who believe that our mental states are merely translated
sensations, and that the mind itself is merely passive. He believes
that the mind does not create its ideas, but that they are presented
to it. The mind has original powers upon which it can reflect. The mind
can operate with its ideas and make them into compounds. Thus one must
read Locke’s _Essay_ to the end to get his double point of view. In the
second and third books he frequently discusses the contents of the mind
as if the mind were passive, in the manner of modern psychologists. In
the fourth book he develops an epistemology on the assumption that the
mind is active and free.
=Locke’s Psychology.= The second and third books of the _Essay_ are
a discussion of the empirical sources of our ideas. One notes the
Cartesian dualism of mind and matter in the background. All ideas
have their source either externally in the impressions upon the bodily
senses, or internally in the operations of the mind itself. The sources
of ideas are either sensations or reflections, or, as Locke calls
them, “outer and inner perceptions.” Locke also calls them “simple
ideas,” being the units out of which the complex ideas are constructed.
We understand easily enough what Locke means by sensations, but
“reflections” is a word peculiar to him, which has not been taken up by
philosophy. He means by “reflections” a consciousness of the machinery
of the mind. We are, that is to say, conscious of our willing, loving,
remembering, etc. As to the order of their appearance in the mind,
the sensations are prior to the reflections and are the occasion
for the appearance of the reflections. The reflections are not the
process of transmitting the sensations, but they are the later and
mechanical transmutation of the sensations. It is important to note
that throughout Locke’s psychological analysis, he regards the mind as
passive, even with respect to the ideas of reflection. The reflections,
as faculties of the mind, are dependent on the sensations, and both
sensations and reflections make impressions upon a passive mind.
These “simple” ideas come into the crucible of the mind and form
“complex” ideas of various sorts. There are three general classes of
these complex ideas: substances, modes, and relations. The construction
of “complex ideas” out of “simple ideas” and the objects to which the
complex ideas refer receive a great variety of illustration at Locke’s
hands, but the details of his lengthy discussion need not detain us.
He is very painstaking; he shows hard common sense; but he is deficient
in logical classification and he often betrays much indecision. His
_Essay_ is of encyclopædic character in its derivation of all common
notions from “simple ideas.” The laws of association form the chemistry
by which he welds the “simple ideas” together.
Thus far Locke is empirical and consistent. However, the dualistic
background of the thought of his age makes him deviate from his
avowed empiricism. Besides the clear and simple ideas of sensation and
reflection Locke introduces the idea of the Self. What is the idea of
Self? It is not a sensation nor a reflection. It is not a complex idea,
derived from sensations and reflections. “It is an internal, infallible
perception that we are.” It is an accompaniment of the processes of
thought. It stands beside the ideas, which are empirically derived,
as an unexplained remainder. The result of Locke’s psychological
analysis is therefore that the inner world of the mind consists of the
combination of the simple ideas of sensation and reflection plus the
unexplained idea of the Self.
=Locke’s Theory of Knowledge.= Although Locke says that the purpose
of his _Essay_ is to show the limits and extent of human knowledge, he
does not reach this until the last book. The first three books form a
long introduction to the fourth book and his real theme. Here for the
first time he treats the mind as active; and here for the first time in
the history of thought the attempt is made to show what questions man
can answer with certainty, what with probability, and what are beyond
man’s knowledge.
All the difficulties in the assumptions of the Enlightenment come out
in Locke’s treatment of his main theme. Locke defines knowledge as the
“perception of the agreement or disagreement of our ideas,” and yet he
says that knowledge is real only as ideas agree with things. That is
to say, Locke had assumed (in Book II of the _Essay_) the existence of
the material substance of things of the outer world, just as he assumed
the existence of the spiritual Self-substance of the inner world. What
is the nature of the outer material substance? Locke hesitates, and
the best he can answer is, “It is the unknown support and cause of
the union of several distinct, simple ideas.” Substance, to Locke,
is a word for something unknown. But does the mind know nothing about
substance? What information do our ideas convey to us of substance? We
have this knowledge: we know the _primary_ or constant, unchangeable
qualities of substances, and the _secondary_ or variable qualities
of substances. The _primary_ qualities of bodies are the same as
their effects in us, such as the extension of bodies, their solidity,
movement and rest, duration and position in time. The _secondary_
“are nothing in the objects themselves but powers to produce various
sensations in us by their primary qualities.” Secondary qualities
are sounds, colors, etc. In this confused statement it would seem
that substance stands as merely the nominal support of the _primary_
qualities, and the _primary_ qualities are the cause of the _secondary_
qualities.
Thus the individual stands forth free in the development of his
ideas, but he is an individual circumscribed by his dualistic
world. He belongs to the world of an unexplained spiritual substance
on the one hand, and he is surrounded by a world of an unknown
material substance on the other. There are three kinds of knowledge:
intuitive, demonstrative, and probable. Locke says that the individual
is intuitively certain of his own ideas. The individual has also
demonstrative knowledge――he can reason logically and mathematically.
But Locke’s real problem does not lie with intuitive and demonstrative
knowledge. The question that concerned him was rather, What is the
character of our knowledge of the external world? The individual in
the Enlightenment lived in a spiritual independence of matter, yet
he had a feeling of uncertainty about his hold upon a world of matter
so different from himself. It was a world foreign to his spiritual
essence. With the deepening of the mind within itself and with its
growing independence, the equally independent material world grew more
difficult and distant. Locke feels this difficulty. How can man know
this external world? How can the individual, with all his freedom,
bring the external world under his control?
Besides the certainty of intuitive and demonstrative knowledge, there
is a third kind according to Locke. This is the probable knowledge
of the nature world. We are certain of our sensations, but we are
not certain of what our sensations report. The highest degree which
our knowledge of the external world can attain is probability, or an
inference from many sources. Such knowledge is mere opinion, which
supplements certain knowledge and operates in the large field of our
daily existence. The spiritual individual stands in a kind of twilight
region with the dull wall of the material world of probable existence
looming up before him, the outlines of which he can barely discern.
On either side of this twilight existence lies the broad daylight of
intuitive and demonstrative knowledge, and around it all the absolute
darkness of ignorance. Our knowledge is much less than our ignorance
because our knowledge is limited to our ideas and their combinations.
=Locke’s Practical Philosophy.= Locke pursued the _via media_ in his
discussion of the practical problems that were at that time of burning
importance in English society. He always kept in mind the spiritual
man who is circumscribed by his own limitations. Morally, religiously,
and politically the individual has to conform to the conditions in
which he lives. But morality, religion, and government cannot get their
authority from ideas inborn in the mind. All are the outgrowths of
experience. The moral law, for example, is a law of nature, although at
the same time it is a law of God. It arises from experience, and at the
same time it has its root in God. To obey it is to be happy, to disobey
it is to be unhappy. The revelation of religion, too, may transcend
experience, but it must not contradict experience. In both religion and
morality the individual must be the final judge, for he is the arbiter
of his own happiness. Individual happiness is of more value than all
else. Religious toleration is therefore one of the first principles
of government, and between the church and the state there should be
no conflict.
Locke’s political philosophy is along the same _via media_. In his
_Treatises on Government_ he seeks to make good the title of King
William to the British throne. He justifies the right of the individual
to revolt under certain conditions. Political government is not a
sacred innate idea, but has arisen out of experience as conducive
to the happiness of man. The individuals and the government make a
contract to serve each other. When either violates the contract, the
State is at an end. To the advocates of the divine rights of kings,
like Filmer, political law antedated “nature”; to Hobbes, law came
after “nature”; to Locke, law is “nature.” To Filmer “nature” was a
golden age; to Hobbes it was a shocking state to be got rid of; to
Locke “nature” is harmony. Thus according to Locke the individual has
through his experiences constructed his morality, his religion, and his
government because they are conducive to his happiness, and at the same
time they have their ground in the “nature” of things. The individual
stands free among them, the central figure in the world.
=The Influence of Locke.= The philosophy of Locke became the
fountain-head of the many divergent schools of thought of the
Enlightenment. His _Essay_ did not contain anything fundamentally new,
and its presentation has little originality; but it voiced the thought
of the eighteenth century so easily, and with such skillful avoidance
of pitfalls, that it made Locke the most widely read and the most
influential philosopher of his time. Four separate movements had
their source in him: (1) From his theory of knowledge, in which the
emphasis is laid upon the mind as active, came the empirical idealism
of Berkeley and Hume; (2) from his psychological analysis in the
second and third books of the _Essay_, in which the mind is regarded
as passive, came the sensationalism of the French; (3) from his theory
of religion came Deism; (4) from his associationalistic ethics came
the utilitarian ethical theories of the English moralists. The most
constructive followers of Locke were Berkeley and Hume. The others
may be called the lesser Lockian schools; for although they may
have exercised a much greater influence upon their own time, they
were nevertheless only partial interpreters of Locke. We shall deal
briefly with Deism and Ethics in England, next consider at length the
philosophies of Berkeley and Hume, and then present in a summary but
articulate way the development of the Enlightenment in France and
Germany.
=The English Deists.= We have seen how Rationalism, especially
in the case of Descartes, tried at the beginning to reconstruct
theology without breaking with established dogma. Gradually, however,
rationalism and revealed religion showed signs of divorce. Some of
the rationalists came to take the stand that if reason can understand
the nature of God, revelation is either incredible or superfluous.
The revealed religions differ. The god of the mediæval people is not
the same as the god of the heathen nor as the Jehovah of the Jews.
There are many religions and many sects in each religion. There must
be to them all a common basis, which is the true religion. This was
the creed of Deism or Natural Religion. Positive religions are only
the corruptions of natural religion, or the religion of reason. Deism
sought to separate religion from special revelations, which were looked
upon as the irrational elements of religion. Bacon and Descartes had
freed natural science from church dogma; Hobbes had freed psychology
from the same dogma; Grotius had freed the conception of law from dogma.
The Deists would free religion from dogma.
Deism was founded on three principles; (1) the origin and truth of
religion may be scientifically investigated; (2) the origin of religion
is the conscience; (3) positive religions are degenerate forms of
natural religion. The tendency of the Enlightenment was deistical,
and the movement was powerful in England, France, and Germany. Deism
was quite consistent with the central principle of this period――the
self-sufficiency of the individual.
In England the first deist was Herbert of Cherbury (1581–1648), with
his “five fundamental propositions of religion.” The body of English
deists, however, got their cue from Locke’s identification of the moral
law with the law of nature; but Locke himself was not a deist. The
literature of deism coincides for the most part with the English moral
philosophy of the period, but usually the group of English deists is
supposed to include only Toland, Chubb, Tindal, Collins, Morgan, and
Bolingbroke. These men lived in the first half of the Enlightenment.
They were much despised by the scholars of the time as being mere
dabblers in letters. “They were but a ragged regiment whose whole
ammunition of learning was a trifle when compared with the abundant
stores of a single light of orthodoxy; whilst in speculative ability
they were children by the side of their antagonists.”[39]
The English deists passed from view at the end of the first half
of the eighteenth century, crushed by the weight of the attack upon
them. The more powerful orthodoxy, with its greater talent, was itself
rationalistic, and could beat them on their own ground. The churchmen
showed that the objections against the God of revelation would be
equally effective against the deistic God of nature. The classic
argument along this line against the deists is Bishop Butler’s _Analogy
of Religion_. The battle was unequal, and the character of the books
published during the controversy reveals the inequality of the contest.
The deistic publications were small and shabby octavos, and were
published anonymously. The orthodox publications were solid octavos
and quartos in handsome bindings, with the credentials of powerful
signatures. Even if the orthodoxy had not employed the arm of the
law against the deists, the deists would have been broken by the
intellectual force against them.
=The English Moralists.= Just as the motive of the deists was to
free religion from the authority of theology, so the motive of the
celebrated group of English moralists of the Enlightenment was to
find a basis for morality outside of church dogma. Many of the English
moralists were also deists in belief. Their number is legion, as the
list given below will show. The greatest among them was Shaftesbury.
The school began with Hobbes and received momentum from the
associational psychology of Locke. All the members of this group sought
to find an ultimate basis for morality――some seeking it with Locke in
experience, others in innate ideas. Yet the starting-point with each of
these moralists seems to be Hobbes and his selfish ethics, for nearly
all ethical scholars have his ethics in mind, either to attack or to
defend. For many years Hobbes was regarded by ethical scholars either
as an evil spirit or as an inspired genius. In any case, his influence
was felt in ethical discussion for a long time.
Chronological Table of the English Moralists.
1500 1600 1700 1800
Hobbes 88 .. 79 .. .. .. .. .. ..
Cudworth .. 17 88 .. .. .. .. .. ..
Locke .. 32 .. 04 .. .. .. .. ..
Cumberland .. .. 32 .. 18 .. .. .. ..
Wollaston .. .. 59 24 .. .. .. .. ..
Mandeville .. .. 70 .. 33 .. .. .. ..
Shaftesbury .. .. 71 13 .. .. .. .. ..
Clarke .. .. 75 .. 29 .. .. .. ..
Berkeley .. .. 85 .. .. 53 .. .. ..
Pope .. .. 88 .. 44 .. .. .. ..
Butler .. .. 92 .. .. 52 .. .. ..
Hutcheson .. .. 94 .. 47 .. .. .. ..
Edwards .. .. .. 03 .. 58 .. .. ..
Hartley .. .. .. 05 .. 57 .. .. ..
Tucker .. .. .. 05 .. .. 74 .. ..
Reid .. .. .. 10 .. .. 96 .. ..
Hume .. .. .. 11 .. .. 76 .. ..
Smith .. .. .. 23 .. .. 90 .. ..
Price .. .. .. 23 .. .. 91 .. ..
Paley .. .. .. .. 43 .. .. 05 ..
Bentham .. .. .. .. 47 .. .. 32 ..
Stewart .. .. .. .. .. 53 .. 28 ..
Whewell .. .. .. .. .. .. 95 .. 66
Mill .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 06 73
CHAPTER VIII
BERKELEY AND HUME
=The Life and Writings of George Berkeley= (1685–1753). In Bishop
Berkeley we have the finest type of Irish mind. In his brilliant
mental powers and idealistic theory he reminds us of that wonderful
Irish scholar of the Middle Ages, John Scotus Erigena. Berkeley was
acutely critical, and yet he possessed a childlike religious faith. He
combined an insatiable longing for knowledge with an ardent missionary
zeal. “Berkeley was a born child of Plato, a lineal descendant of
a race whose origin is afar off and is divine.”[40] He was one of
those exceptional minds that begin to bring forth their intellectual
offspring when they are young. Berkeley began to publish at the age
of twenty-four, Hume at twenty-eight, Descartes at forty-one, Locke
at fifty-eight.
We shall divide the life of Berkeley into three periods.
1. _His Early Training_ (1685–1707). Nothing is known of Berkeley’s
early years, except that he was born in Kilkenny, Ireland. He was
educated at the Eton of Ireland, the Kilkenny school, where Swift had
been a pupil; and it is known that one of Berkeley’s schoolmates was
Thomas Prior. Berkeley entered Trinity College, Dublin, at fifteen, and
graduated at nineteen. Scholasticism was still influential at Trinity,
but new sciences, such as botany, chemistry, and anatomy, had been
added to the curriculum. There, too, the young Berkeley found that
Locke’s _Essay_ was much discussed, and that Newton, Boyle, Malebranche,
Descartes, and Leibnitz were widely read. From this early date Berkeley
began to keep a book of his own philosophical reflections, calling
it his _Commonplace Book_. From it and from his philosophy it would
appear that Locke and Malebranche were the most powerful philosophical
influences upon him.
2. _As Author_ (1707–1721).
Berkeley remained at Dublin as tutor and fellow five years after
his graduation. In 1709 he was ordained deacon in the English church.
He published two mathematical tracts in 1707, his _Theory of Vision_
in 1709, his _Principles of Human Knowledge_ in 1710. The _Theory
of Vision_ and the _Principles of Human Knowledge_ were practically
a statement of his philosophy. They have been compared thus: the
_Theory of Vision_ teaches that “all that we see is our sensation”; the
_Principles of Human Knowledge_ teaches that “all that exists is our
knowledge.” Berkeley then went to London, where he was admitted to the
court of Queen Anne and also to the circle that included Steele, Swift,
Addison, and Pope. Berkeley showed himself humble, wise, considerate,
and unselfish, and although he was shocked at the court life, he on
his side charmed every one whom he met. He wanted to make his idealism
better understood, and so he published it in the form of a dialogue
between a realist and an idealist. This publication was called _Three
Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous_ (1713). He then made two
journeys to the Continent――1713–1714 and 1716–1720――and spent much
of the time in Italy, where he absorbed its literature. The South Sea
swindle turned him to economics, and in 1721 he published an _Essay
toward Preventing the Ruin of Great Britain_.
3. _As Priest and Missionary_ (1721–1753).
Berkeley was appointed Dean of Derry in 1721 at a salary of £1100.
Although he threw himself into his work with his accustomed zeal, there
had already appeared in his mind the conception of an ideal society,
where church and state would be united. He was disgusted with the
worn-out European society, and wanted to remove the youth to a colony
where there would be no temptations. He raised a large sum of money for
this purpose, and obtained the promise of a grant from the government
of £20,000, gave up his deanery, and sailed for America. He intended to
settle in Bermuda and there to found an ideal State, which should also
be a centre for the conversion of the American Indians to Christianity.
The promised grant from the English government did not come, and
Berkeley got no farther than Newport, R. I., where he lived three
years. While at Newport he wrote _Alciphron, the Minute Philosopher_,
and published it in England in 1732. The records of Trinity Church
in Newport show that he preached there many Sundays. He gave several
books to Harvard and Yale Colleges. At Newport he was visited by Samuel
Johnson, an Episcopal missionary, who afterwards became president
of King’s College in New York. Johnson was converted to Berkeley’s
idealism, and through Johnson the doctrine was received by Jonathan
Edwards, his pupil.
From 1734 to 1752 Berkeley was Bishop of Cloyne. He was devoted
to missionary work among the poor, and many of his people being
afflicted with an epidemic of influenza, he treated them effectively
with tar-water――a remedy he had learned from the Indians. He published
_Siris_, an essay on the philosophical virtues of tar-water, in 1744.
In 1752 he went to Oxford to live, and in 1753 he died.
=The Influences upon the Thought of Berkeley.= Berkeley’s philosophy
shows little development after his first publications. With the
exception of _Siris_, which contains much Platonic idealism, the later
works of Berkeley are scarcely more than an elaboration of his early
thought in the _Theory of Vision_ and the _Principles of Human Nature_.
We should infer, therefore, that the only philosophical influences
upon Berkeley were the original springs at which he drank as a youth.
Moreover, he always speaks with the dogmatic certainty of one who has
drawn his material from but few sources. Never does he exhibit the
indecision of a man who is embarrassed by many points of view. The two
chief influences upon him were Locke and Malebranche. The influence of
Locke was partly of the nature of a reaction: Berkeley accepted Locke’s
psychological analysis, but reacted from Locke’s “common sense” dualism
as early as the time of his student life at Trinity. Malebranche, with
his theory of “occasional causes,” reinforced his opinion along the
line that his reaction took. But Berkeley’s own incisive genius had a
relatively greater influence in dictating the course of his philosophy
than is usually the case. His mind was precocious, fertile, and
continuously versatile. Furthermore, Berkeley’s simple religious nature
seems to have been an important factor in determining his intellectual
belief. His peculiar idealism could take root only in a mind inspired
by faith.
=The Purpose of Berkeley.= The life and teaching of Berkeley were
dedicated to the true interests of religion. He may be called the
religious Enlightener. He would not, like the deists, strip religion
bare of dogma, but he would unlimber dogma and rational philosophy so
that they would be of service to religion. _His purpose was to free
scholasticism on the one hand, and rationalism on the other, from
abstractions and obscure terms, and thereby bring about a union of
faith and knowledge._ Berkeley looked upon himself as a crusader who
would retake the Holy Land for the spiritual individual.
We have remarked that one of the presuppositions of this period of the
Enlightenment is the independence of the individual. The individual
around which Berkeley’s philosophy centres is the spiritual individual,
and is therefore unique even for this period. Such an individual is
superior to his environment because he belongs not to a material world,
but to a community of religious beings who can talk and walk with God.
The English Enlightenment passed from Locke to Berkeley. The inner life
came into complete ascendency and the spiritual individual emerged.
From the Lockian philosophy, with its many contradictory motives,
there appeared the audacious one-sided philosophy of Berkeley, with its
proclamation of the reign of spirituality. It stood in marked contrast
with the development of the Enlightenment in France――a development
of materialism and material atoms. The spectral although stubborn
boundaries of the unknowable material world, which Locke supposed to
shut around the powers of the human intellect, crumbled before the hand
of Berkeley.
The casual reader of the history of thought is, however, often
disconcerted at the appearance of such a philosophy as Berkeley’s in
this period of empiricism, and especially as the immediate follower
of Locke. The English school is called the empirical school, and
yet Berkeley is also called an idealist. But we must remember that
empiricism and idealism are not antithetical. Empiricism refers to the
source of our knowledge; it means that all our knowledge is primarily
derived from sense-perceptions. These sense-perceptions may be of two
kinds: they may be (1) psychological facts, or (2) material facts.
Berkeley was, like Locke and Hume, an empiricist of the first class;
and yet because he denied the independent existence of material facts,
he was also an idealist. He was an empirical idealist, just as the
French philosophers of the Enlightenment were empirical materialists.
The critic may find that Berkeley is not a consistent empiricist,
to be sure, but neither was Locke. Berkeley started out by affirming
the testimony of experience against scholastic ♦speculation and
abstraction; yet all along he assumed the scholastic conception of
mind. Nevertheless, this assumption of the individual makes Berkeley
a true child of the Enlightenment.[41]
=Berkeley’s General Relation to Locke and Hume.= The growth of this
English school from Locke to Hume is not difficult to understand or
to remember. It is not so much a page in the history of metaphysics
(the nature of reality) as in epistemology (the theory of knowledge).
Locke asks, What can we know? And he replies to his own question, that
we can know our “ideas.” At the same time he assumes the existence
of a spiritual substance on the one side, and a material substance
on the other. Neither of these is an idea, in the sense that it is an
object of knowledge. The advance of Berkeley from Locke and of Hume
from Berkeley was one of cancellation. Berkeley cancelled the material
substance, because the material substance is not an idea. Hume then
consistently enough asked, Why not for the same reason cancel the
spiritual substance? The spiritual substance is not an idea or object
of knowledge. We have no more right to assume it than the material
substance. The only things we know to exist are our ideas. The
development of the English school may be briefly put as follows:――
Locke, Spiritual substance――ideas――material substance.
Berkeley, Spiritual substance――ideas.
Hume, ideas.
Hume is Locke made logically consistent. Berkeley went only halfway.
Hume among these three was the only self-consistent empiricist. On
the assumption that all knowledge is derived from sense-perception
the history of the English empirical school was a history of the
restriction of knowledge.
=Berkeley’s Points of Agreement with Locke.= Berkeley starts from
Locke’s psychological analysis as the basis of his own theory. The
purely scientific aspect of the contents of mind as classified by Locke
does not call for particular criticism from him. Logical classification
does not seem to concern him very much, and while he accepts Locke’s
analysis, he often calls Locke’s classes by other names. He commits
himself to Locke’s psychological empiricism in the first sentence in
his _Principles_: “It is evident to any one who takes a survey of the
objects of knowledge, that they are either ideas actually imprinted on
the senses; or else such as are perceived by attending to the passions
and operations of the mind; or, lastly, ideas formed by the help
of memory and imagination――either compounding, dividing, or barely
representing those originally perceived in the aforesaid ways.” Our
knowledge, therefore, deals only with ideas. There are the simple ideas
of sensation and reflection, and ideas compounded from these.
Besides accepting the psychological analysis of Locke, Berkeley also
adopts without question the assumption common to Locke and all the
philosophers of the Enlightenment,――the assumption of the independence
of the individual soul. “But besides all the endless variety of ideas
or objects of knowledge, there is likewise something that knows or
perceives them――what I call mind, spirit, soul, or self. By which I
do not denote any one of my ideas, but a thing entirely distinct from
them, wherein they exist, or, which is the same thing, whereby they are
perceived.”
Berkeley, therefore, (1) agrees with Locke that all knowledge is
derived from sense-perception, _i. e._ he agrees with Locke’s empirical
psychology, and (2) he also agrees with one of Locke’s assumptions,
viz., that the spiritual substances exist.
=The Negative Side of Berkeley’s Philosophy.= We have now pointed out
Berkeley’s general relation to Locke and Hume, and more in particular
his agreements with Locke. We are now prepared to examine the teaching
of Berkeley by itself.
Berkeley was obliged to devote a good deal of time to the negative
side of his philosophy. Just as Locke could not construct an empirical
psychology until he had disclaimed all allegiance to innate ideas, so
Berkeley could not construct an idealism until he had brought to bear
in a polemical fashion all his forces against abstract ideas. Of his
two masterpieces he devotes the entire essay on the _Theory of Vision_
and a good part of his _Principles of Human Nature_ to this end.
1. In proof of this he advances his analysis of abstract ideas. He not
only denies that abstract ideas have a corresponding external reality,
but he even denies that abstract ideas exist in the mind itself. The
deception in abstract ideas arises from the use of words as general
terms. Words are always general; ideas are always particular. There
is never an idea that exactly corresponds to a word. Words are useful
not as a conveyance of ideas, but for inciting men to action and
arousing the passions. Whenever a word is used, what we think of is
the particular sense, idea, or group of sense objects that give rise to
it. For example, the word “yellow” cannot be employed by us except in
connection with the thought of some particular yellow thing. Berkeley
is a nominalist of the extremest type.
2. Again Berkeley seeks to show, by demolishing the distinction between
primary and secondary qualities, that matter as an abstract idea has
no existence. This distinction was as old as the Greek, Democritus, and
was accepted by Locke. We have already described it: of a thing like a
lump of sugar, the sense qualities of whiteness, roughness, sweetness,
etc., are secondary because they depend upon our sensations for their
existence; they are the ways in which our organisms are affected, and
not true copies of things; the mathematical qualities, form, size,
density, impenetrability, are primary because they exist independent
of our senses and are true copies of things. Hobbes had already
shown that such a distinction is erroneous, and Berkeley followed
him by maintaining that all qualities are secondary. The size and
impenetrability of a body depends as much on sense-perception as
its sweetness and color. At some length in his _Theory of Vision_
Berkeley takes up the question of the solidity, or third dimension,
of a material body, and shows that it is an inference depending on
sensations arising from the convergence of the two eyes and complicated
by the sensations of touch.
Berkeley professed to be pleading the cause of the man in the street
who wants a philosophy that is real “common sense.” He maintained that
the conception of matter is only a philosophical subtlety for those
philosophers who seek for something beyond perception. The man in
the street wishes to explain things as he finds them, and not to seek
mysterious abstractions which philosophers say in one breath that we
know, and in another that we cannot know.
Therefore, while Berkeley agreed with Locke’s assumption of the
existence of the spiritual substance, he departed from Locke in denying
the existence of a material substance. Berkeley accepted, therefore,
one of the two assumptions common to the Enlightenment, but he denied
the other. Now Berkeley was trying to prove a thesis. He was controlled
by the ideal of his ardent religious nature to free religion from
false philosophy. He felt that the foes of religion――atheism and
materialism――had employed effectively abstract ideas, which had been
one of the weapons of religion, against religion itself. Berkeley
concentrated his attack against the traditional scholastic conception
of abstract ideas in general and the abstract idea of matter in
particular. Abstract ideas have no existence; the idea of a material
substance is an abstract idea and therefore has no existence. Berkeley
was bound from the beginning of his religious crusade to explain away
the existence of material substance.
=The Positive Side of Berkeley’s Philosophy.=[42] In the construction
of his theory in a positive way Berkeley abridged the dualism of
“common sense,” and asserted that the abridged form was better. He
converted the dualism into a religious hypothesis, but it was a dualism
still,――a dualism of minds and their ideas. Berkeley then set to
work to show how much better his theory would explain the problems of
knowledge. “Berkeley sought to humanize science.” He set the spirit
free by relieving it of the falsities of the old dualistic assumption,
but the usefulness of his abridgment lay in its solution not of
metaphysical, but of epistemological problems.
1. Berkeley’s theory may be summed up in his own abbreviated
statement of it,――_Esse est percipi_ (to be is to be perceived). Or it
may be stated in that figurative and oft-quoted paragraph, “Some truths
there are so near and obvious to the mind that a man need only open
his eyes to see them. Such I take this important one to be, viz., that
all the choir of heaven and the furniture of the earth, in a word all
those bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world, have not
any subsistence without a mind――that their being is to be perceived or
known.” Or we may state Berkeley’s position in the terms of a modern
interpreter[43] of him: “All objects are mentally discerned; all
objects are mentally constituted.” Berkeley means that the existence
and character of all objects are within the confines of consciousness,
and there are no objects outside of consciousness. As sense-perceptions
they have reality; as memories they lose their warmth and distinctness;
but they are not objects at all when neither perceived nor remembered.
These objects are always colored by the sense-perception. They
are received through the consciousness, and constituted by the
consciousness. Minds and their ideas are all that exist.
2. Berkeley does not try to prove the existence of the mind or soul,
nor does he attempt to show that we perceive the soul. But in the
spirit of the Enlightenment he hardly questions its reality. He takes
its existence for granted, and like the philosophers of the period he
makes a direct appeal to consciousness. “I know I am conscious of my
own being.” Like Locke and Descartes he alleges the direct intuition of
the self. In the _Principles_ he speaks of “a notion of our own minds
or spirits.” Since the ideas are copies of other ideas, there can be
no idea of the soul; but the “notion is like the spirit that knows
it.” We have therefore direct knowledge or _notion_ of ourselves in
knowing our ideas; we have direct knowledge of something superior to
the ideas, an activity whose reality consists not in being perceived,
but in perceiving. Indeed, he made the assertion in his _Commonplace
Book_, which he began in college, that nothing properly does exist but
conscious persons. All other things are not so much existences as signs
of the existences of persons. One is absolutely certain of what one
means by “I.”
3. Spiritual substances are sufficient and adequate to explain all
ideas. There is no difficulty in explaining the images of our own minds,
for our minds control them. But what explains the existence of our
percepts over which we have no control? What substantial support have
they if we remove the “material hypothesis”? Suppose I grant that I
exist and have control of my imaginative ideas, and that other minds
exist and have control of their imaginative ideas, how then, I ask
Berkeley, am I to explain the great world of perceptions over which
neither I nor other men have control?
Berkeley’s general psychological position must be summarized
here in order to answer this important question. It is as follows:
(1) All things are nothing more than perceptions. (2) All ideas,
both perceptions and images, are passive, and must be caused by
something in itself active. (3) Souls are active and the cause of
ideas. The question then is, What soul is the cause of our perceptions?
Perceptions are ideas, are passive, but they are the ideas of whom?
Repudiate the material substance, and what is the cause of perceptions?
Perceptions are not originated by me; they cannot be self-originated,
because they are passive and not active; they cannot be originated by
a material substance, because it does not exist. Their origin must be
sought in the infinite spirit, or God. If you will examine the ideas
which constitute what we call nature objects, you will observe these
significant characteristics about them, to which attention has already
been called. They have, as we have said, a strength, liveliness,
distinctness, and orderliness that distinguish them from imaginations.
They are God speaking to us in His orderly way. Nature objects are
the language of God. The regularity and dependability of the world of
nature reveal the character of the Being whose language the world of
nature is. They reveal a Being who is intelligent, infinite, omnipotent,
and benevolent. The regularity of the changing seasons, the constancy
of the heavenly bodies to their orbits, the provision of the earth for
man――all the laws of nature are the language of an orderly Being.
Now we see the importance of Berkeley’s deviation from Locke in his
(Berkeley’s) conception of all ideas as passive. All ideas being
passive, there must be a cause of them. The only active causes are
spirits. I am the cause or perceiver of my own imaginations. I perceive
another’s movements and know that another person or spirit must be the
cause. When nature speaks in its invariable and purposive harmony, I
know that an infinite spirit is the cause. We are indeed living in a
society of spirits, who speak to one another in their own language.
The doctrine of Berkeley strikes beginners and people who
temperamentally cannot understand it, as absurd. The reduction of the
trees, sky, etc., to ideas is a theory that has brought down all kinds
of ridicule upon it. When Dr. Johnson heard of it, he is said to have
stamped his foot upon the ground, and thereby refuted it. Byron is
quoted as saying, “If there is no matter, and Berkeley has proved
it, it is no matter what he said.” Others have asked if we eat and
drink ideas and are clothed with ideas. But Berkeley never doubted the
existence of material objects, and the point of his theory is missed
if we think that he did. What he denied is the existence of an unknown
substance, matter, behind external objects. “The table I write on
exists, that is, I see and feel it; and if I were out of my study
I should say it existed, meaning thereby that if I were in my study
I might perceive it or that some other person does perceive it.”
Another question has been asked of Berkeley which goes deeper. If to be
is to be perceived, what existence has a tree in the forest that no one
has ever perceived. What existence have past events that are forgotten?
Berkeley has considered this objection and has answered it. When he
says that existence depends upon perception, he does not mean merely
my own perception. Berkeley is not what in philosophy is called a
solipsist (_solus_ and _ipse_), _i. e._ one who believes that nothing
exists but himself and his modifications. A thing may have existence
in the mind of some one else. If the thing has never been perceived
by any human being, it is perceived, if the thing exists, by the mind
of God. The modern scientist assumes the existence of matter in the
whole universe. Berkeley assumes the existence of a perceiving God.
One is the materialistic and the other the religious explanation of
the universe.
=The Life and Writings of David Hume[44]= (1711–1776). Hume’s life
bears some marks of external resemblance to Berkeley’s. After periods
of training that differed very greatly in point of discipline, but were
almost the same in point of time, both produced, at about the age of
twenty-five, their most important philosophical works. Both turned from
philosophy to other pursuits――Berkeley to missionary work at the age
of thirty-six, and Hume to politics at the age of forty-one. There
the resemblance between the two men ceases; for they were antipodal
by nature, and animated by different purposes. The enthusiastic nature
of Berkeley is in marked contrast with the unimpassioned nature of
the Scot. Hume was unimaginative to the last. He was unimpressed by
the legends of the border where he lived; he had no love for nature
and no appreciation of art. “While Hume’s intellect was imperial,
his sympathies were provincial.” Berkeley’s sympathies were imperial
and his intellect was in their service. Hume was a man of kindly
disposition and of moderate temper, yet he was vain, and interested
above everything else in his own reputation. No object seemed worth
while to him, unless it made for the improvement of his talents in
literature. The failure of the _Treatise_ was a blow from which he
never recovered. Always afterward he had an eye to popularity, and this
is important in making up our judgment about him. All his works after
the _Treatise_ were written to please his readers and for personal
success. Locke the Englishman, Berkeley the Irishman, and Hume the
Scotchman came from the same middle class of society, had university
training, were engaged in public service, and are to be classed in
the same empirical school of philosophy. But they were personally
very different kinds of men, and were types, although perhaps not
representatives, of their nationalities.
1. _Period of Training_ (1711–1734). Hume was born in Edinburgh
and lived there and at Ninewells on the border. He was a student at
Edinburgh University (1723–1726) and studied law the next year. He was
in business in Bristol in 1734. In all the occupations of this period
he was unhappy.
2. _Period of Philosopher_ (1734–1752). From 1734 to 1737 Hume was
in retirement in France, especially at La Flèche, where he wrote
his _Treatise on Human Nature_. He returned to Edinburgh in 1737 and
published his _Treatise_ (1739–1740). It was read by nobody and was
an absolute failure. So he rewrote Book I in 1748 and called it the
_Enquiry concerning Human Understanding_. Hume’s full statement of
his theory of knowledge is contained in the _Treatise_ and not in
the _Enquiry_. He rewrote Book III in 1751 and called it the _Enquiry
concerning Principles of Morals_, “of all my writings, incomparably the
best,” and in 1757 he published Book II as an _Essay on the Passions in
Four Dissertations_. He became acquainted with Adam Smith in 1740; he
published _Essays, Moral and Political_, in 1741–1742, and was a tutor
in 1745, because he needed money. In 1746–1748 he became secretary in
the English military embassy to Vienna. In 1751, the same year that he
was recasting the third book of the _Treatise_, he wrote his _Dialogues
concerning Natural Religion_, which was not published until 1779. His
autobiography was also published posthumously.
3. _Period of Politician_ (1752–1776). In 1752 Hume published his
_Political Discourses_, “the only work of mine that was successful on
its first publication.” In 1754–1761, while Librarian at Edinburgh, he
wrote and published his _History of England_. This work was the first
serious attempt since the Revolution to give an impartial account
of the earlier struggles against the Stuarts. Through it he at last
got great fame, and fortune followed in its wake. In 1757 came his
restatement of Book II of the _Treatise_. In 1763–1765 Hume was
secretary of the English Embassy at Paris, and he was made much of by
French society. The thought of the French Enlightenment had advanced
far enough to entertain him and his doctrines. Hume met Rousseau at
this time. Later Hume was visited by Rousseau in England and was badly
treated by the eccentric Frenchman. He says that Rousseau sins at the
foundation. Hume was appointed Under Secretary of State in 1766; he
returned to Edinburgh in 1769, and died in 1776.
=Influences upon the Thought of Hume.= The writings of Hume show
no erudition, and for that reason it is uncertain what were all the
sources from which he drew. He does not mention Descartes, for example,
although he wrote his _Treatise_ at La Flèche in the shadow of the
school where Descartes was educated. It is probable, however, that Hume
was influenced at least by the Greek philosophers of the Hellenic-Roman
Period, and by Locke. During the years after Hume’s student life at
the university, he pored over the writings of the Roman Stoics in the
library at Ninewells, and he felt the influence of Cicero, Seneca,
and Plutarch. Hume read extensively, and he reacted from his reading.
He became so dissatisfied with the past that he put it aside, in the
belief that the true philosophy had not yet been written. In this
reaction from the past he was influenced along the lines of Locke and
Berkeley. He admired the advance that Berkeley had made over Locke,
and naturally took a further step in the same direction. Hume was also
acquainted with the writings of Hobbes and with the history of the
English theories of morals.
In 1740 he became acquainted with Adam Smith, the political economist,
and Hume’s _Political Discourses_ (1752) anticipated Smith’s classic
_Wealth of Nations_. At this time (1752) he turned with all other
Englishmen from the discussion of philosophical to political topics.
There are many points of resemblance between Smith and Hume, especially
in their ethical doctrine.
=Dogmatism, Phenomenalism, and Skepticism.= Hume liked to speak of
himself as a skeptic, but philosophically speaking he was skeptical
only of the dogmatic Rationalism of the Renaissance, which had made
unlimited claims for the human reason. Hume maintained in the spirit
of the Enlightenment that the human mind deals with ideas and not with
reality. Human knowledge has therefore its limits. More consistently
than Locke or any one else in the Enlightenment, he tried to show the
limits and extent of human knowledge.
Pure skepticism is the denial that there is any such thing as truth;
pure dogmatism would be the deductive explanation of all problems from
a set of infallible principles. It would be hard to find an absolutely
true example of skepticism or dogmatism, for generally philosophical
theories are a mixture of dogmatism and skepticism. Pyrrho is often
given as an example of the pure skeptic, but Pyrrho, like all other
Greeks, never for a moment doubted the existence of an external,
material object (vol. i, chapter xii). Spinoza is a fairly good
example of a pure dogmatist, but he developed his _Ethics_ by
means of interpolated principles not in his original assumptions. A
thorough-going skeptic would have to be a modern――not a Greek――who
would deny that truth can be known and that things exist. This was
not Hume’s contention. He affirmed the validity (1) of mathematical
reasoning (2) and of matters of fact, and (3) the probability of
the natural sciences. Hume may correctly be called a phenomenalist,
a positivist, or an agnostic. So far as he maintained that there are
some things which the reason cannot know, he is an agnostic. In his
affirmation that we can know ideas and only ideas, he is a positivist.
In his affirmation that ideas are the only existences, he is a
phenomenalist. Are external objects the cause of sensations? Experience
is dumb. Have external objects an existence? Experience is dumb.
Are souls the substance of our thoughts? Experience is dumb. But
mathematics has truth, experience is beyond question, and the workings
of nature are probable.
We shall find Hume to be the keenest critical mind of this
critical period of the Enlightenment. He is profoundly serious
in his examination of the roots of the intellectual life. He is
past-master in the art of raising questions. He not only shows that
the fundamental theoretical problems are still unsolved, but he also
calls to account the hitherto untested assumptions of practical life.
But this is criticism, positivism, phenomenalism, or agnosticism, and
not skepticism. He speaks of his doctrine as like that of the Middle
Academy, in contrast with that of Pyrrho. He says that excessive
skepticism upsets activity, employment, and common occupations. The
conclusions of the intellect never agree with our natural instincts.
Every time positive skepticism appears, nature destroys it.
Hume’s conclusion as to the practical attitude of the positivist
toward life can best be stated in his own words (_Treatise_, Book I,
Conclusion): “Shall we then establish it for a general maxim, that no
refined or elaborate reasoning is ever to be received? If we embrace
this principle, we run into the most manifest absurdities. If we
reject it in favor of those reasonings, we subvert entirely the human
understanding. We have, therefore, no choice left, but between a
false reason and none at all. Most fortunately it happens that since
reason is incapable of dispelling these clouds, nature suffices to that
purpose, and cures me of this philosophical melancholy. I dine, I play
a game of backgammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends.――No:
If I must be a fool, as all who reason or believe anything certainly
are, my follies shall at least be natural and agreeable. In all the
incidents of life we ought still to preserve our skepticism. Where
reason is lively and mixes itself with some propensity it ought to be
assented to.”
=The Origin of Ideas.= Locke did not proceed to the construction of
his theory of knowledge until he had disclaimed at length his belief
in the existence of innate ideas. Berkeley went further and made his
polemic against the existence of all abstract ideas. Hume went still
further and denied that any ideas existed except those derived from
impressions. Locke’s attack upon innate ideas was an attack upon
unverified tradition; Berkeley’s attack upon abstract ideas was an
attack upon materialism; Hume made a general attack upon rationalism.
The psychology of Hume is thus made simple. It is a cancellation of the
factors incompatible with strict empiricism――the factors which he found
in Locke and Berkeley. Hume’s empirical psychology is simply this:
_every idea is the image or copy of an impression_.
What is an impression? Impressions are of two classes: (1) sensations
or outer impressions; (2) feelings or emotions or inner impressions.
Impressions are never mistaken, because they always have a very lively
and vivid character. What is an idea? It is the copy of an impression.
An idea should never be mistaken for an impression, because it is
fainter and more feeble than the impression of which it is the copy.
For example, the sensation of yellow is more vigorous than the thought
of yellow; the feeling of anger more vivid than the thought of anger.
Impressions are simple and elemental. Can we go back of them and find
their origin? We cannot. We receive impressions; echoes of impressions
linger as ideas; ideas may be compounded with other ideas. Hume deals
in his criticism mostly with the compounding or combining of ideas,
but this is the sum and substance of his psychological analysis of our
mental life. The following table will help us.
{ Sensations or outer
{ Impressions { impressions
{ (= original) { Feelings or inner
{ { impressions
Perceptions {
(= mental { { Memories or an exact
states) { { reproduction of an
{ { impression or of a
{ Ideas { combination of impressions
{ (= derived) { Imagination or a combination,
{ separation, and transposition
{ of impressions according to
{ the imagination’s own laws.
It should be noted, however, that the above classes are not coördinate
according to Hume. Impressions are prior to ideas, and of the
impressions the feelings or inner impressions are “posterior to the
sensations and derived from them.” Hume is a sensationalist, for the
most original of the impressions are sensations.
=The Association of Ideas.= Since nothing can enter the mind except
through the two portals of outer and inner impressions, every idea
in the mind is the copy of one or several impressions. How then can
there be any such thing as error? Error arises from the understanding
and imagination in their manipulation of the impressions――from
the faculties of the mind combining, separating, and transposing
the impressions and their memories. An idea resulting from such
transposition may and often is referred to an impression different
from the one of which it is the copy.
What does Hume mean by the faculties and powers of the mind? He does
not mean that the mind with its functions exists as a reality, since
all that exist are impressions and the copies of impressions or ideas.
Hume means by mental faculties and powers the various modes by which
ideas combine. Hume makes no distinction between memory, imagination,
judgment, conception, etc., except (1) as different groupings of ideas
and (2) as accompanied by different feelings. _The whole mental life
and the faculties of the mental life are nothing but an association of
ideas._ Isolated ideas are explained as copies of isolated impressions;
and from these ideas are derived groups of ideas which we call trains
of thought. Why do ideas group themselves together? The only answer
is that it is the nature of ideas. Hume frequently speaks of these
associative relations as “the manner of conceiving ideas.” He also
says that there is a “gentle force” or “determination” of the ideas
to relate themselves with other ideas. Given the impressions and their
relations, and Hume will explain the whole knowing process. Associative
relations take an important place in Hume’s theory, but some critics
say that they are interlopers; that he has introduced them by a back
door; that they are not mentioned in his psychological inventory.
But to Hume there is nothing mysterious about the association of ideas.
They are combined, transposed, augmented, and diminished according
to fixed rules under mechanical laws. Their relationship takes place
without freedom. Impressions occur in the way they happen to occur.
Ideas combine in the way they happen to combine. Relations between
ideas are accidental and external. There is only one quality of ideas
that does not depend on its accidental relation to other ideas. This is
the quality of non-contradiction. This is the necessary property of an
impression. An impression must be what it is, and cannot be conceived
as having properties contrary to its own nature. The quality of
identity in an impression is intrinsic and necessary.
According to Hume, there are three fundamental ways in which ideas
associate, called the three laws of association. (1) There is the _law
of resemblance_ or contrast, by which the occurrence of a thing calls
up a similar thing or its opposite. Mathematics is based upon this law
of the resemblance, the contrariety, and the quantitative relations of
ideas. (2) There is _the law of contiguity in time and space_, by which
things happening together in time and space are recalled together. Upon
this law are based the descriptive and experimental sciences. (3) There
is the _law of causation_, upon which religion and the metaphysics of
the world of nature are based. The question with Hume is, How is he
to explain all these laws of association as derived from impressions?
If they cannot be derived from impressions, then his theory that
all knowledge is derived from impressions goes to the wall. The
Rationalists and even his predecessors, Locke and Berkeley, had
conceived mathematical propositions and causation as underived and in
the nature of things. If Hume is to establish his doctrine of complete
sensational empiricism, here is his test.
These associations, and not isolated impressions, are the objects
of human interest, inquiry, and investigation. Hume makes a further
reduction of associations by his well-known classification of them
as either “relations of ideas” or “matters of fact.” Associations of
contiguity and associations of causation are “matters of fact,” while
associations of resemblance are “relations of ideas.” Furthermore, Hume
looks upon associations of contiguity as those of outer impressions,
associations of resemblance as those of inner impressions, while
associations of causation are not what they are alleged to be, but
are derived from some inner impressions.
{ { 1. Contiguity Outer Descriptive
{ Matters { association impressions Sciences
Objects of { of Fact {
Knowledge { { 2. Causation Inner Metaphysics
{ { association[45] impressions
{
{ Relations { 3. Resemblance Inner Mathematics
{ of Ideas { association impressions
=The Association of Contiguity.= This is the most elementary of the
three classes of association, and concerns the spatial and temporal
order in which impressions come to us. Two impressions come at the same
time or in succession, and when one of them is remembered, the other is
likely to be remembered also. We see a man and hear his name; when we
remember the man’s face, we may remember his name also. Hume maintains
that this association of succession or coexistence is given with the
impressions themselves. It is the order of the _outer impressions_.
We perceive the order of the outer impressions with the same certainty
that we perceive the contents of the impressions. _This is the only
certainty we have about “matters of fact,”_――a certainty of the exact
order of our immediate outer impressions. We know the order in which
our impressions do occur, but, as we shall see, when we argue from this
that our impressions must recur in the same order we are involved in a
fallacy. Any order may recur. The fact that the sun rises in the east
to-day does not make certain that it will rise in the east to-morrow.
It is only a matter of probability, however many times repeated. There
is no certain science of “matters of fact.”
=The Association of Resemblance.= This is a clear and distinct
association which is given with the impressions. When we have an
impression, we see intuitively its similarity or difference to other
impressions, and the degrees of likeness and unlikeness. The face of
one man reminds us of another man, or we contrast it with a brute’s
face. _This association concerns only inner impressions_, while the
association of contiguity concerns outer impressions. This has to do
with the “relation of ideas,” while the association of contiguity has
to do with “matters of fact.”
=1. Mathematics.= But there is this difference between the association
of resemblance and that of contiguity――upon resemblance is founded
a demonstrative science. This is mathematics――the sole demonstrative
science. The subject-matter of mathematics consists of the possible
relations between the contents of our ideas――the possible relations
between our inner impressions. These relations are intuitively known
by us, and out of them we get a science of complete certainty. We make
a comparison between the magnitudes in the contents of ideas, and we
analyze their regularity. This is mathematics, and it is a perfectly
legitimate science. Because it confines itself to the relations between
ideas, and has nothing to do with “matters of fact,” it can be a
demonstrative science. All mathematical knowledge is restricted to the
study and verification of ideas, and has therefore nothing to do with
the external world.
=2. The Conception of Substance: Hume’s Attack on Theology.= But the
association of resemblance has been made the basis of a common illusion.
It has been made to transcend its proper sphere of a relationship among
inner impressions; and resemblance between ideas has been taken by
people generally to mean metaphysical identity or substance. It has
been transformed from a relationship between ideas to a relationship
between “matters of fact.” Now substance is evidently not an
association given with the impressions, like their temporal and spatial
order in the association of contiguity, nor is it mere impression of
resemblance. Substance is the conception of an unknown, indescribable
something back of impressions. There is the conception of the material
substance or matter, and the spiritual substance or the soul. How did
such illusory conceptions arise? If Hume rejects them as matters of
real knowledge, he must nevertheless explain their psychological origin.
The illusory idea of substance originates from the similarity of the
frequent conjoining of certain impressions. The impressions――sweet,
rough, white, etc.――occur together so often that the imagination
creates the conception of the substance of sugar behind them. This
arises not from the first experience, but after the association
of impressions has been observed a large number of times. From the
frequent association of ideas arises the _feeling_ of their necessary
coexistence. Thus do we come to have the idea of a material substance.
Hume evidently follows Berkeley in his criticism of material substance.
But Berkeley went only halfway. Berkeley had found that bodies were
only conjunctions of sensations, and he had rejected as meaningless
the unknown substance behind them. He did not see that the same attack
could be made upon spiritual substances. Berkeley’s argument against
the substance of the cherry could be used against the Ego or the Soul.
Have I the impression of my Ego? Can I touch it or see it? The simple
test shows that I know nothing about it, and I cannot affirm whether
or not it exists. But if the conception of the Soul has no reality as
an object of knowledge, how can it be psychologically explained? How
does it arise in the mind? The idea of the Soul is due to the frequent
reappearance of the same trains of thought in my mind. Their similarity
gives rise to the feeling that a metaphysical identity, or Soul, exists
behind them.
=The Association of Causation: Hume’s Attack on Science.= Among
the many traditional conceptions upon which Hume turned his critical
examination, that of causation occupies the most of his attention.
He discusses it both in the _Treatise_ and in the _Enquiry_. He
is the first philosopher since Aristotle to give it comprehensive
treatment. He saw that all philosophical, theological, and indeed
scientific knowledge rests upon this conception of causation. It was
accepted without question by the Scholastics of the Middle Ages, the
Rationalists of the Renaissance, and the scientists of his own time.
If the conception is valid, Hume’s criticism goes for naught; for “by
means of that relation we can go beyond the evidence of our memory and
senses.” In that case what becomes of Hume’s psychological analysis
that all knowledge consists of impressions and ideas? And if Hume’s
psychology falls, all his criticism of the spiritual and the material
substance falls also. Upon the validity of the concept of cause depend
many of the scholastic arguments for the existence of God, whose
existence we can demonstrate although He is not an object of sense
impression. Imagination can then go on unrestricted; for God is
accepted not only as cause, but as first or uncaused cause. Descartes,
Leibnitz, and even Berkeley and Locke had accepted the causal argument
for the existence of God, although the latter two had pretended to
restrict knowledge to sense-perceptions and ideas. Again, the causal
concept has been the foundation for the belief in a functioning soul
behind the mental and physical activities of a human being; and on the
same causal concept man has argued from sensations to their material
substrate. All this is unwarranted and unrestricted knowledge because
it “goes beyond the memory and senses.” Not only theology, but science
itself has gone “beyond the memory and senses.” Hume dares to doubt
the certainty of the causal principle even in scientific knowledge. Is
there any necessary connection among events so that with certainty we
can predict the occurrence of one event if another is given? Is there
in nature and history any causal law so binding that every event is a
necessary result of what has gone before and a necessary cause of what
will come? The question of cause is, therefore, paramount with Hume.
If he is successful in impeaching cause as he has been in the case of
substance, scientific theory must fall with theological dogma.
In his review of the conceptions of time and space (association by
contiguity), Hume had found succession to be a quality of impressions
and to be given with them. But that is all that can be said――the
relation is one of time order, but not a relation that is necessary.
The outer impressions happen to occur thus and thus; they need not have
occurred thus, and may never occur in this order again. This temporal
order is not by any means a causal order. The idea of cause is that
of power transferred, but we have no impression of power. Impressions
come as sequences, not as consequences or as powers. Sequences of
impressions are the only “matters of fact”; consequences are not
“matters of fact.” They must, therefore, be only “relations between
ideas” and have no objective reality. From Hume’s point of view this
is sufficient to show that cause is not valid and real.
To deny that we have the concept of cause would, however, be nonsense.
We do have the concept, and how is its psychological origin to be
explained? How does the idea arise? It does not originate (1) as an _a
priori_ concept, _i. e._ by an analysis of ideas, nor (2) as an outer
impression, _i. e._ a sensation, nor (3) as memory, since memories
are images of impressions. The idea of cause originates from an inner
impression――a strong and lively feeling connected with the imagination.
But how does it happen that the feeling is so strong that it makes us
believe the idea, with which it is connected, is a reality? The feeling
does not arise from a single instance of conjunction of two impressions,
but from the conjunction of two ideas repeated many times. _The belief
in cause is a feeling originating in the constant conjunction of
impressions._ This explains why the ideas that fire will burn, that
poison will kill, that water will wet――are so lively. The conjunction
occurs many times, and an inner necessity or compulsion arises to
imagine the second impression after the first. Given the first idea, we
learn to expect the second. Repetition produces nothing new in objects,
but it produces in the mind a new feeling to pass from one idea to the
idea usually attending it. Necessity exists in the mind and not in the
objects.
=The Extent and Limits of Human Knowledge.= What remnants of
knowledge remain after Hume has applied his destructive criticism? His
critics would answer that, if Hume had been consistent, no knowledge
whatever would remain. Upon the basis of pure positivism, that all
knowledge is composed of impressions and their copies, knowledge is an
impossibility. But he introduced an additional element, “relations,”
that made knowledge possible because it afforded synthesis and allowed
distinctions.
Taking Hume’s doctrine as it stands, his results are these. There
are two classes of sciences, the formal and the empirical. The formal
includes logic and mathematics, and consists of knowledge of relations
between ideas. Such knowledge has certainty and validity. Empirical
sciences consist in knowledge of matters of fact. Such knowledge
never amounts to more than probability. There is no certainty or
demonstration in natural science. Its results call forth not conviction,
but belief. Beyond these subjects we have no knowledge whatever.
Metaphysics and theology are only fictions. Beyond impressions and
the copies of impressions we can make no assertions. The tendency of
thought to trench beyond its own territory is the cause of all our
metaphysical difficulties. It tries to do what it was not intended
to do, and the result is abstract ideas. Reason and the relation
of resemblance give us the erroneous idea of spiritual and material
substance; imagination and the relation of cause give the erroneous
idea of the fundamental principle of nature.
=Hume’s Theory of Religion and Ethics.= Hume is so true an empiricist
to the end that he is a remarkable exception among the philosophers
of the Enlightenment. He alone among philosophers shows the historical
sense in the application of his positivism to religion and morals. In
general the Enlightenment took no account of the past; in this Hume
differs from his contemporaries.
Hume was the destroyer of deism because he advanced historical evidence
against deism. Deism had three principles: that religion is the object
of scientific investigation; that religion had its origin in the reason;
and that “natural religion” is the oldest form. Hume agreed to the
first proposition, but he revealed his historical instinct by showing
that religion did not originate in the reason, but in the feelings; and
that not “natural religion,” but idolatry, etc., is the oldest form.
Furthermore, he stood almost alone among philosophers of the period in
building ethics upon the feelings rather than upon the intellect. The
ethical motives of man are pleasure and pain, and not an idea of the
reason. Hume’s historic sense led him to this conclusion.
Both morals and religion should be empirically investigated. As in
science, so in them the most cogent conclusions are only probable and
not intuitive. Our moral activities are under the same kind of law
of cause that exists in the world of nature-phenomena. The will is
determined by the feelings, and the reason is the slave of the passions.
Our moral judgment is based on the feeling of sympathy (Adam Smith).
It is practically probable that there is a purpose in the world and
therefore a God. But this cannot be established. On the same principle
of probability the world may have grown up mechanically or by chance.
Religion is naturally reasonable enough, but its doctrines cannot be
proved.
=The Scottish School.= This school represents in Great Britain the
reaction from the sensualism of the Enlightenment. The Scottish School
was the British reply to Hume, just as Kant was the German reply. They
were the late eighteenth century reactions in two countries to the
Enlightenment. The teaching of Kant was, however, also the beginning
of a new movement and a new period. The Scottish School has no such
importance.
Thomas Reid (1710–1796) was the founder. Reid admitted that Berkeley
and Hume drew legitimate conclusions from Locke’s general assumption
that the objects of thought are not things, but ideas. Therefore Reid
maintained that Locke’s position must be given up. Still empiricism
remains tenable and must be applied to the phenomena of mind. What are
the data of consciousness? Not individual ideas, as Locke said, but
complex ideas or judgments. The elements will be discovered later by
analysis of these complex states which are first given. The mind is not
a blank piece of paper upon which simple characters are first inscribed,
and then later the understanding introduced to form judgments and the
reflection to add belief in the existence of objects. Our knowledge
starts rather from judgments, which involve certain original truths or
“natural judgments.” Mankind possesses the faculty of “common sense,”
and this faculty makes these truths a common possession. Among the
principles that “common sense” includes are self-consciousness, the
reality of objects perceived, and the principle of cause.
The Scottish School called attention to the importance of
self-observation. The members of the school made their attack
upon sensualism from the point of empirical psychology. Philosophy
became in their hands the perfecting of psychology as a science of
inner observation. Thus they were in accord with the school of the
Enlightenment, although opposed to its sensualistic outcome. The
prominent members of the school were Reid, Dugald Stewart, Brown, and
Sir William Hamilton.
CHAPTER IX
THE ENLIGHTENMENT IN FRANCE AND GERMANY[46]
=The Situation in France in the Enlightenment.= The historian of the
French Enlightenment has to take account of the reign of two kings;
that of Louis XIV (1643–1715); and that of Louis XV (1715–1774).
Together they cover the long period of one hundred and thirty-one years.
The reign of Louis XV marks the actual development of the Enlightenment,
while that of Louis XIV contains the causes. The long reign of
seventy-two years of Louis XIV had been an absolute, arbitrary, and
personal government. It had been an age unsurpassed in literature
and eloquence, but also an age in which all those subjects that did
not redound to the glory of the church were suppressed. It had been
the age of Molière, Corneille, Racine, La Fontaine, and Fénelon;
an age when art was encouraged, but also an age in which political
and philosophical originality would not presume to breathe. Between
Descartes’ death in 1650 and the death of Louis XIV in 1715, one finds
a single philosopher, Pierre Bayle, and he had to leave France. The
Newtonian physics was not accepted in France until 1732――forty-five
years after its publication in England. Upon the death of Louis XIV the
artistic glories of his reign lost all their value for the nation. In
their place was set the problem of the material misery of the nation,
which had been caused by the long wars and the extravagance of paternal
government.
The reign of Louis XV seethes with the struggle of social forces. It is
a period in which the individual is striving to gain his rights under
the institutions that have so long repressed him. The development of
the French Enlightenment is identical with the struggle for political
liberty. In no other period of history――except perhaps the Age of
Pericles――is the history of philosophic thought so intimately connected
with political history. The fifty-nine years of the reign of Louis XV
are filled with exciting events which interest both the philosopher
and the historian. The French Enlightenment is the “reaction against
that protective and interfering spirit which reached its zenith
under Louis XIV.” With Louis XV the magnificence and the utility of
ecclesiastical and political absolutism could not be maintained. For
the hierarchy of the church was unable longer to keep up its claim of
independence and morality; and the State was rapidly exhausting its
power by exhausting its financial resources. Each event in the history
of France in the eighteenth century had therefore two aspects――each
led to the Revolution, and each was a step in the development of the
Enlightenment of the individual. The pioneers in the movement could
not have been conscious of the end to which their criticism would lead;
but to us looking back upon the century the result seems inevitable.
A comparison with the situation in England is interesting. While in
England the political and ecclesiastical institutions were so elastic
that they could without disintegrating absorb the movement of the
Enlightenment, and while they were so little bound to traditional
institutions that the growth in individualism would be constitutional,
the situation in France was exactly opposite. (1) In France the church
and the political institutions had become inelastic bodies under
Louis XIV. They had reached the limit of their development. So deeply
rooted in absolutism and special privileges were they that they were
not open to innovation or reform. During the reign of Louis XV the
only question was, which would be crushed――the new individualism or the
old institutions. No compromise was possible. The institutions, having
survived their usefulness, gave way. (2) In the next place the French
church and state had for many years been identified with oppression
and tyranny, while the English people had within a century gained
many needed reforms by beheading one king and forcing out another.
Consequently the English government of the eighteenth century was
identified with the liberty of the individual. In England political and
religious speculation followed and did not precede political reforms.
In France the opposite was true. To the mind of the French people the
church represented only superstition, and the state only profligacy
and tyranny. The more they seemed to support each other in one social
structure, the more rapid, virulent, and excessive would naturally be
the reaction against both when once individualism got a footing.
The result was that while in England the Enlightenment always remained
critical and negative, in France it became an obstinate and positive
dogmatism. Behind French criticism was developing a philosophical creed.
The French Enlightenment was a social cause and a self-sustaining idea.
The French philosophers of the eighteenth century, on the whole, were
not superior men intellectually, for they were inclined to make the
small look large and the large great. But although their perspective
was inaccurate, they had an enthusiastic faith in progress and humanity.
=The English Influence in France.= Louis XIV and his two predecessors
had made Paris the intellectual centre of Europe, and up to 1690 it had
no rival. The French language had taken its place beside the Latin as
the language of science. The circle of scientists existing just before
and at the beginning of Louis XIV’s reign had its equal nowhere in
Europe. We remember how Hobbes found Euclid in Paris, Locke spent four
years at or near Paris, Leibnitz gained there all his mathematical
erudition and training. During the seventeenth century Paris was the
centre of scholastic influence, and this is seen directly or indirectly
in the writings of all seventeenth century philosophers. The English
had taken their cue from the French; but on the other hand, it is
doubtful if as late as the death of Louis there were a half dozen
Frenchmen that knew the English language.
About the time of the publication of Locke’s _Essay_ the intellectual
centre of gravity began to move from Paris to London. The founding
of the Royal Society in Oxford in 1660 was the beginning of the
organization of British scientific influence. Newton’s physics (1687)
then began to supplant the Cartesian physics, and Locke’s psychological
doctrines the dogmatism of the Rationalists, among the thinkers of
western Europe. Newtonian physics and English empiricism became the
scientific watchwords of the eighteenth century; and although the
French were late in accepting them, it is said that at the end of
the Enlightenment there was no cultured Frenchman who could not read
English. We find that such notable Frenchmen as Voltaire, Montesquieu,
Buffon, Brissot, Helvetius, Gournay, Jussieu, Lafayette, Maupertuis,
Mirabeau, Roland, and Rousseau visited England during the period
from the death of Louis XIV to the Revolution. Poets, mathematicians,
historians, naturalists, philologists, philosophers, and essayists all
agreed to the necessity of studying the language and people on whom
their fathers had not deigned to waste thought except in contempt.
But perhaps the political motive was quite as strong as the scientific
in turning the French of the eighteenth century toward England. The
English government was the example of political liberty of that time.
The rising inquisitive thinkers of France had no alternative but to
turn to free England for spiritual support against their own decrepit
tyranny. The first French visitors were amazed at English prosperity,
even though the crown had decreased in power――amazed at the liberty
of the press and Parliament, amazed at the control of the revenues by
the representative body. England thus became the school for all the
thinkers of Europe, and through her literature taught the lesson of
political liberty first to France, and then to all Europe.
=The Two Periods of the French Enlightenment.= The eighteenth century
divides itself in France much the same as it does in England. There
are two periods: the first extending to the middle of the century, when
the Enlightenment of the individual is thought to lie in intellectual
cultivation; the second, when his salvation becomes social and
practical. The first period is dominated by Voltaire, and advanced by
Montesquieu and the Encyclopædists; the second is dominated by Rousseau,
and results in the Revolution.
The two periods have a common fundamental motive, although the means
used are radically different. Both represent a gradual progression
toward the elevation of the individual in his reaction against
the institutions of the seventeenth century. But the first was an
intellectual Enlightenment and all that this means, while the second
was emotional and social. The first was aristocratic, while the second
was democratic. Yet the whole movement was a gradual filtering of
the doctrine of individualism from the upper to the lower classes. It
naturally took the form, first, of intellectual culture, and then of
an appeal to spontaneity. The intellectual theories of the first period
were bound to find practical expression in the second. In the first
period the champions of the ancient monarchy were forced to defend
it on their opponents’ own ground――that of rationality. In the second
period, the monarchists had to change their battleground and make some
practical reforms. In the first, the attack was made principally on the
church, in the second on society. While the attack on the state began
early, it attained significance not until the middle of the century.
=The Intellectual Enlightenment (1729–1762). Voltaire, Montesquieu,
and the Encyclopædists.= The first representatives of the French
Enlightenment were Voltaire and Montesquieu. Voltaire went to England
in 1726, and Montesquieu in 1728, and they both returned to France
in 1729. Voltaire published his _Letters on the English_ in 1734 and
his _Elements of the Philosophy of Newton_ in 1738.[47] Montesquieu
had published a fierce invective against the political institutions
of France in 1721, a discussion of the decadence of the Romans in
1734, and his famous _Spirit of the Laws_ in 1748, selling twenty-two
editions in eighteen months. Voltaire introduced and espoused the
religious theory of Locke in deistic form, and Montesquieu expounded
Locke’s theory of government. Their writings were widely read by the
upper classes, and this theoretical revolutionary movement against all
existing institutions got momentum about 1735.
The aim of this movement was entirely aristocratic. The solution of the
existing predicament in France lay for them in the greater care of the
masses by an enlightened tyranny. The dualism of the classes was always
assumed. The few are to be cultured; for them reason is to take the
place of dogma. The masses are not amenable to reason, have no capacity
for education, and for them religion suffices. To free the individual
from terror of the supernatural, to release his morality from
Jesuitical dominance, to give him intellectual independence of state
and church――this was the working idea of the intellectual Enlightenment.
Thought should be free, and the conscience of the individual should
be untrammeled, because the reason is a sufficient guide. Being thus
rationalistic, the movement was aristocratic. A new aristocracy should
be substituted for the old――an aristocracy of the cultured instead of
the corrupt and ignorant, who were then the dominant French classes
in church and state. The illuminati should participate in the existing
political privileges.
=Voltaire= (1694–1778).[48] Voltaire was a deist when he went to
England, and he was therefore very much impressed by the prevalent
English deism. Among the English deists, Bolingbroke had the greatest
influence over him, and he was the “direct progenitor of Voltaire’s
religious opinions.” Bolingbroke’s light and supercilious infidelity
of the man of the world was suited to Voltaire. A universal genius,
Voltaire wrote on every subject; but “not one of his books but bears
marks of his sojourn in England.” He read with familiarity all the
English philosophers,――Hobbes, Berkeley, Cudworth, Locke; but always
returning to Locke. “Harassed, wearied, ashamed of having sought so
many truths and found so many chimeras, I returned like a prodigal
son to his father and threw myself into the arms of that modest man
who never pretends to know what he does not know; who in truth has no
enormous possessions, but whose substance is well assured.”
In his _Philosophical Letters_ Voltaire makes invidious comparisons
between Locke’s Empiricism and Descartes’ Rationalism, between English
Deism and French Catholicism, and between the English government
and the French government. Toward Christianity, as he saw it in his
own country, his hatred amounted to fanaticism. His strictures were
so scathing that Christians have looked upon him as an atheist. He
was, however, a deist, who believed that, while we can know God’s
existence, we cannot know his nature. He was fond of bringing all
dogma under criticism, and “while he denied nothing, he cast suspicion
upon everything.” He called himself the “ignorant philosopher.” To
him atheism was preferable to dogma and superstition. His passion for
invective against the French clergy was so great that his constructive
statements about God and immortality were cold and impersonal.
=The Encyclopædists.=[49] In modern times the French have been
unequaled in their encyclopædias and dictionaries. The famous
_Encyclopédie_ or _Dictionnaire Raisonné_ was what its name implies.
It was published in seventeen volumes during the years from 1751 to
1766, and had an addition of eleven volumes of plates (1766–1772).
Thirty thousand copies were printed in the first instance, and
in 1774 it was translated into four foreign languages. The moving
spirit and editor-in-chief was Diderot (1713–1784) and his chief
assistant d’Alembert. They were assisted by many notable French
writers like Voltaire, Rousseau, Grimm, von Holbach, etc., who wrote
separate articles. There was a host of unsolicited contributors.
Two years before the _Encyclopædia_, Buffon had begun to publish his
_Natural History_ in forty-three volumes, the last volume appearing
in 1789. The _Encyclopædia_ had two predecessors,――Bacon’s chapter
on _Experimental History_ and Chambers’s _Encyclopædia_. The articles
in the _Encyclopædia_ were presumably scientific explanations
alphabetically arranged, such as would appear in any work of the
sort. Frequently they were disguised attacks upon existing French
institutions. Often a detailed description, as on the subject “Taxes”
or “God,” would reveal existing French conditions. As Comte says,
“The _Encyclopædia_ furnished a rallying ground for the most divergent
efforts without any sacrifice of essential independence, and made a
mass of incoherent speculation appear like a coherent system.” The two
successive periods of the movement of the Enlightenment unite in the
_Encyclopædia_ against the common enemy of authority.
There are two things to be noticed in connection with the
_Encyclopædia_: the men who wrote it went much further toward
individualism and skepticism than did Voltaire; and the _Encyclopædia_
reached a wider circle and different classes than did the works of
Voltaire. Instead of the deism of Voltaire we find contributions
from skeptics, atheists, and materialists,――men who are becoming more
negative in their opinions as the century advances. The thorough-going
agnosticism of the Encyclopædist group reached a point where it ceased
to be a philosophy. Diderot had said that the first step in philosophy
is unbelief, and his associates went so far as to think that unbelief
is all of philosophy. Their extreme sensationalism, naturalism, and
materialism sometimes appeared in disguised form in the _Encyclopædia_,
but more often in independent writings. The _Encyclopædia_ became the
source of information for everybody. It spread information among all
classes and undermined their reverence for French institutions. The
result was that what had been sacred to the court and the laborer
because it was traditional, now became the object of scorn to all.
The most profound of the sensationalists of this time was Condillac
(1715–1780),[50] who does not, however, appear to be connected with
the _Encyclopædia_. He published his _Treatise on Sensations_ in 1754,
which reduced Locke’s psychological analysis to a pure sensationalism.
The well-known figurative statue endowed only with the sense of smell
was conceived by him. He introduced Locke’s psychology into France,
whence it was carried into Germany.
=The Social Enlightenment= (1762–1789). The second period of the
French Enlightenment begins with the publication of Rousseau’s _Contrat
Social_ in 1762 and culminates in the Revolution. The influence of
Rousseau dominates the second period as that of Voltaire dominated the
first. Voltaire had never aimed at a social revolution. His objective
point was to reinstate the understanding, to emancipate the individual
by self-culture and by freedom of thought. He was not historian enough
to see that he could not revolutionize intellectual France without
pulling down the social structure. He did not realize that in striking
at the tyranny of the church he was dealing a fatal blow at the
structure of French society. The literary fencing between Voltaire and
the adroit churchmen might have been amusing, had the issue not been
so serious. But although superficial and vain, Voltaire was downright
in earnest. At one time it seemed as if the intellectual Enlightenment
would work itself out in the church. But the causes of the revolt were
too deeply social, the malady against which Voltaire was aiming was too
vital; and besides, at that moment attention was being directed to the
character of the State itself.
=Rousseau= (1712–1778).[51] Rousseau began at the point where Voltaire
left off. He was under the influence of Voltaire at the first and
received from Voltaire his original productive impulse. But the
concrete right of individuals, and not their abstract intellectual
freedom, was what appealed to Rousseau. Strict moderation and literary
freedom were too negative, half-hearted, for a reformer of Rousseau’s
type. Public opinion was not to be found in Versailles, as Voltaire
thought, but in the streets of Paris. The Revolution then came to a
head, and we find the schools of Voltaire and Rousseau locking horns.
Voltaire’s theory of moderation was represented in the Constituent
Assembly and the upper and middle classes, while Rousseau’s radicalism
was introduced in the Convention and fully expounded in the sections of
the Commune of Paris which attacked the Convention. History shows how
impossible the aim of each school was, and how the contest had to be
fought over again in the nineteenth century.
Rousseau lived a wandering and adventurous life, full of hallucinations
and self-created trouble. He made many friends, only to quarrel with
them. He was half insane, and his career inspires both disgust and
admiration. His numerous works fill twenty-two volumes, the most
important ones being two prize essays published in 1750 and 1773, which
represent the negative side of his doctrine; _Héloïse_, 1761; _Emile_,
1762; _Le Contrat Social_, 1762; and his _Confessions_, which contain
his constructive thought.
Rousseau was at first a contributor to the _Encyclopædia_, but at
heart he cared nothing for the diffusion of knowledge and art. He did
not understand the comprehensive intellectual ambition of Diderot; he
resented the utilitarianism of Helvetius and the materialism of Holbach.
When he wrote his prize essay in 1750, he suddenly perceived how absurd
the intellectual Enlightenment was amid the distressing social state
of France. He turned against both the existing order and the would-be
intellectual reformers. The temporal order of things was to him awry.
Study, knowledge, and cultivation were to him only a gloss over the
deep-lying degradation. Society, as it is constructed, is artificial,
and all organization is a tyranny. God exists, and He is good. Man
was good until civilization and art invaded his simplicity, corrupted
his virtues, and transformed him into a suffering and a sinful being.
Rousseau’s call was that of anarchism. It was a condemnation of the
entire past. Sweep all the so-called civilization away, and level
inequalities. Go back to nature; and in the simplicity of that idyllic
state let children grow up undirected except by their own uncorrupted
instinct,――that “immortal and celestial voice.”
In an age tired of oppression and corruption Rousseau struck a
sympathetic chord which made the intellectual Enlightenment sound
false. His contemporaries did not inquire into the motives of the mean
lunatic. They did not then see that he was a doctrinaire holding up an
unpractical ideal in contrast with their present state. He alone in all
France was the one to appeal to man’s self-respect. He alone appealed
to the only motives that will result in action,――the human emotions.
His plea was for every Frenchman, and his words for the unfortunate
were given with such eloquence that the fortunate were compelled to
listen. They were a majestic language of wide compassion and sympathy.
He saw in the French monarchy the greatest misery for the greatest
number, and no one of its supporters appeared to the people so generous
and true as he. His influence not only upon his own time but upon
the nineteenth century was extraordinary, and some have said that he
is the greatest modern. At all events he sounded the keynote of our
own civilization, especially in art, literature, and education; for
he showed the fundamental correlation between Nature and the passions.
Rousseau taught a sentimental deism, in which sentiment is the
essential part.
The Revolution was the natural consummation of the Enlightenment in
France. The immediate issues out of which it grew were the practical
ones of finance, legislation, economics, and policy. The growth in the
physical sciences (beginning 1760), in the study of political science,
in the theory of government, as well as the financial distress of
the French government, the success of the American Revolution, the
advance of the French middle class to a position of power, the foolish
and half-hearted measures of the French statesmen――all these were
factors that at the end brought on the crisis. Yet the words of
Rousseau, falling on fruitful soil, were the real cause. In the years
immediately preceding the Revolution there was a world-wide agitation,
an enthusiasm for nature, an exaltation of man, and a contempt for the
age and for the society then existing. There was a vague presentiment
of impending change, which most people were prepared to welcome.
Thinkers were full of illusions. Even such despots as Frederick the
Great, Catherine of Russia, and Joseph of Austria affected a radicalism,
and Spain, Portugal, and Tuscany, as well as England, France, and
Germany, were moved with great humanitarian sentiments. The debate
was universal as to the condition of the human race. Rousseau was the
eloquent expression of this world-wide movement.
=The German Enlightenment= (1740–1781). As the Enlightenment in France,
so the Enlightenment in Germany had its introductory period. The
history of Germany from the end of the Thirty Years’ War (1648) to the
publication of Kant’s _Critique_ (1781), or 133 years, is divided into
two periods at the year 1740, when Frederick the Great was crowned.
The period from 1740 to 1781, or forty-one years, is the German
Enlightenment. The period from 1648 to 1740, or ninety-two years,
is introductory to the Enlightenment, and, as in France, a period
of absolutism.
=The Introductory Period= (1648–1740). =Absolutism.= The spirit of
absolutism, both politically and intellectually, dominated Germany from
the end of the Thirty Years’ War (1648) to the crowning of Frederick
the Great (1740). Absolutism dominated Germany and France a full one
hundred years. There are some differences between the two countries,
however. It began and ended in Germany about thirty-five years later
than in France. Again, in France it grew in splendor from the efforts
of Richelieu and Louis XIII (1610) to the great protective idea of
Louis XIV, who for seventy-two years ruled as absolute political and
intellectual dictator. In Germany, on the other hand, it was a spectre
hovering over a disintegrating and decaying nation once known as the
Holy Roman Empire, but since the Thirty Years’ War only a collection of
states under a nominal central government. The idea of absolutism
prevailed none the less, for within the several states each monarch was
dictator as to the religious, intellectual, and political opinions of
his subjects.
Politically and socially the Holy Roman Empire was in striking contrast
to the power and splendor of contemporaneous France. The Thirty Years’
War had left the empire absolutely desolate. The land was impoverished,
the nation disrupted, and the population reduced from seventeen
millions before the war to five millions after the war. The war had
been a generation long and it had degraded the nation. It had settled
nothing. It left the people poor and the princes absolute within their
respective states. The upper classes everywhere, except at Weimar, had
become profligate. The universities were reduced to a position below
what they were in the Renaissance. The prince of each state established
the religion for his state, so that practically no religious liberty
had been gained. Lutherans, Calvinists, and Catholics were exhausted,
but were still antagonistic. There was no moral activity among
the Orthodox; often they set their own immorality up to prove the
absolutism of their respective dogma. The war left Germany politically
prostrate and intellectually stagnant.
In the years that follow the Thirty Years’ War it is possible to
detect movements that are the beginnings of the Enlightenment. It is
an important point that Germany was resuscitated from sources that
lay within her own civilization. The French Enlightenment and the
intellectual freedom of modern France were due largely to the influence
of foreign ideas from England. The seeds of the German intellectual
revival were developed on her own soil. Those beginnings are (1) the
rise of Prussia; (2) the early German literature; (3) the Pietistic
movement; (4) the transformation of Leibnitz’s rationalism.
1. The rise of the little electorate of Brandenburg to the powerful
kingdom of Prussia in 1740 was the political basis of the Enlightenment
that followed. No state had suffered more during the Thirty Years’ War.
The entire population was reduced to less than a million, and Berlin,
the capital, had only three hundred citizens. The government was as
harshly absolute as elsewhere. The rights of the citizens were entirely
taken away by the three princes who ruled over Prussia between 1648 and
1740. But a powerful kingdom was built up, with a strong and patriotic
army. It extended its dominions and was a refuge for Protestants, who
fled to it in large numbers. It came to be feared by all the German
states, and in the latter part of this period it had to be reckoned
with in the councils of Europe. Itself an absolutism, it was the
vigorous political body that alone could destroy the traditional
absolutism of the Hapsburgs and the Holy Roman Empire. Puffendorf
declared that the old Empire with its feeble sovereignties was a
monster. It was a monster spectre――a stubborn political idea that
hovered over Europe. Frederick the Great’s mission in the next period
was to destroy it.
2. The meagre German literature of this early period was also an
important factor in the development of the Enlightenment. Poor, indeed,
it was. Never was German literary production so low. Before the war the
Germans had taken Greek as their model; after the war they copied the
language, manners, and methods of the French of Louis XIV. The early
literature was ruled in the same spirit of absolutism by Opitz until
1700, and after him by Gottsched, especially in the years from 1730
to 1740. It was for only a small fraction of the people, and was in
the interests of the depraved aristocrats of the courts. Such pedantic
absolutism was the basis of the reaction in the next period of the
literary Enlightenment, which proved the redemption of Germany.
3. The Pietistic movement was the third factor that went to make up
the German Enlightenment. It was a positive expression of religious
individualism, similar in its position to the Prussian state in its
independent growth in politics. It was a religious movement outside the
church. Its two leaders were Spener (1635–1705) and Francke (1663–1727).
The movement entered Germany from the Netherlands; and the members
were devout and holy men consecrated to good deeds. The Pietists were
not heroic figures like the early Lutherans, but they stood for what
Luther had in his early period taught. They opposed ecclesiastical
formalism, and they proclaimed the need of personal regeneration and
of the universal priesthood. They stood for religious freedom. They
made no onslaught upon the church, but they were content with saving
individuals. Pietism united at first with Rationalism――of which we
shall next speak――against orthodoxy, but when the two had won their
victory they quarreled. Although the Pietistic movement later became
itself conventional, it furnished the ground for the religious freedom
of the Enlightenment. During these hundred years of German religious
absolutism, the Pietists represent the moral activity among religious
bodies.
4. The chief source of the Enlightenment was the philosophy of
Leibnitz. In turning back to the life of this distinguished German the
reader will remember that he was the “first scientist in two hundred
years,” and that he was the Rationalist who presaged the Enlightenment.
Leibnitz was born in 1646, just two years before the war closed, and
he died in 1716, one year after the death of Louis XIV. He lived during
those unfruitful years after the war and before the Enlightenment;
and his philosophy stands out prominently from the low plane of
the intellectual activity of that time. In 1686 he completed the
construction of his philosophy by introducing the conception of the
individual as a dynamic centre.
Many German philosophers, about the time of Leibnitz, had later tried
to free philosophy from its technical difficulties and make it readable
for the people as the French Encyclopædia was for the French people.
Among these were Tschirnhausen (1651–1708), Mendelssohn (1729–1786),
and Tetens (1736–1805), but the German Enlightenment for many reasons
did not come about like the French in the popularizing of philosophy.
The philosophy of Leibnitz did reach the people directly, but the
people were stirred through the medium of literature rather than of
philosophy. Leibnitz’s philosophy became the dominant thought only
in the universities and academic circles, and remained so until the
publication of Kant’s _Critique_ in 1781. The Halle professor, Wolff
(1679–1754), developed and transformed it, not to its advantage, into
an absolutism, and under the name of the Leibnitz-Wolffian philosophy
it was the canon for the German schools. Once established in the
universities it remained unchanged there even by the invasion of
French thought that penetrated other German circles. Even Voltaire’s
residence at the court at Berlin (1750) had no influence upon the
Leibnitz-Wolffian philosophy of the Berlin Academy. The dogmatic
absolutism of this philosophy remained impregnable in academic circles
and was the last to be dislodged――and then only by a German. There was
little progress among these Rationalists, once their doctrine had been
cast, except in incorporating in an eclectic fashion the doctrine of
others.
Wolff systematized the unordered and desultory doctrines of Leibnitz
for the purpose of teaching them logically. This was in 1706, when by
the aid of Leibnitz he obtained the professorship of mathematics at
Halle. He met with instant success. The rationalism of his doctrine
is seen from the title of many of his works, which are _Reasonable
Thoughts on God_, _Reasonable Thoughts on the Powers of the Human
Understanding_, etc. He lectured at Halle until 1723, when he was
expelled by the theological influence. His return to Halle in 1740 was
coincident with the crowning of Frederick the Great and the beginning
of the German Enlightenment. We can note a few general aspects of his
teaching. He employed the German language in his lectures, following
Thomasius, who was the first to do it. Leibnitz had written in letters
and treatises for the few, and had used either Latin or French. Wolff
expanded Leibnitz’s doctrine, broadly and superficially, for a larger
public, in the German tongue. He systematized Leibnitz’s teaching,
and thereby could disseminate it. But in doing this he so toned down
Leibnitz’s leading ideas that they lost all their peculiar force.
For instance, he taught that only the human mind has the power of
representation; and again, that preëstablished harmony applies only
to the relation of the soul and body of the human monad. In general, he
so extended the Leibnitz principle of sufficient reason that it applied
to all departments, and was reduced to the principle of identity.
The world is a huge mechanism designed for divine ends. Rationality
is assumed to be everywhere, and knowledge of its existence is to be
obtained only by deduction from evident principles. The result was
that the philosophy of Leibnitz was reduced to a commonplace and empty
rationalism――a purely deductive affair. Wolff undertook to demonstrate
everything, and to make intelligible what is above reason. The
Wolffian philosophy was a reversion to mediæval scholasticism, since
it solved all problems by proof through the cogency of mathematical and
logical processes. Truth is a matter of definition and classification.
Thus Wolff produced a philosophy that was pedantic and formal,
clear but shallow. It was Leibnitzian with Leibnitz omitted; it was
a thorough-going dogmatism, because no problem was difficult to it; it
was a rationalism, because to it all truth is the deliverance of the
reason and none is derived from experience.
The Wolffian Rationalism became a factor in the German Enlightenment
on the one hand by combining with Pietism, and on the other through
its translation into the new German literature. In itself the Wolffian
Rationalism was a dogmatism that merely supplanted the dogmatic
scholasticism of Melanchthon and Luther. It lost its absolutism in its
combination with Pietism, and became a personal and individualistic
religion. It also lost its absolutism and became more like the
philosophy of Leibnitz through its translation into the literary
writings of Lessing and Herder; and thus was subordinated to an
incident in individual culture.
=Summary of the Literary Enlightenment of Germany= (1740–1781). The
German Enlightenment was thus made possible by the political growth
of Prussia, by the development of a meagre literature, by the rise of
Pietism, and by the Wolffian interpretation of Leibnitz’s philosophy.
All these were important features of the century following the Thirty
Years’ War. The year 1740 is the beginning of the German Enlightenment.
It marks the crowning of Frederick the Great, the decline of the
influence of Gottsched in literature, and Wolff’s return to Halle.
The arrival of Voltaire in Berlin (1750) is an important factor in
the rise of the German Enlightenment. The spirit of the Enlightenment
was at its height twenty years later (1760), contemporaneous with the
Seven Years’ War (1756–1763) and with the publication by Lessing in
1759 of his _Letters concerning the most Modern Literature_. In these
_Letters_ Lessing gave the death-blow to Gottschedism, and established
the Enlightenment on a firm basis. This was followed by the Storm and
Stress movement (1773–1787), which brought the Enlightenment proper to
an end.
1730–1750 Period of Experimentation――Gottsched, the Swiss, the
Anacreonticists, etc.
1740 The Enlightenment inaugurated――the crowning of Frederick the Great,
the decline of Gottschedism, the return of Wolff to Halle.
1750 The coming of Voltaire to Berlin.
1751–1780 Lessing and the Enlightenment.
1773–1787 Storm and Stress Period.――The Enlightenment proper at an
end.[52]
1787–1805 Classicism. (Schiller d. 1805).
1795–1850 (approximately) The Romantic Movement.
1850– The Realistic Movement.
=The Political Enlightenment of Germany――Frederick the Great.=
Political changes preceded and did not follow philosophical theories
in the German Enlightenment. Germany was therefore like England
and unlike France in this respect. The coming of Frederick to the
throne of the now powerful Prussia, the reforms that he inaugurated,
the religious toleration that he granted, his recall of Wolff to
Halle, his avowed support of intellectual things, and especially the
Seven Years’ War (1756–1763) were the political groundwork that made
possible the Enlightenment in Germany. Frederick himself is the great
figure in the German Enlightenment, just as Voltaire is in the French.
Frederick accomplished in concrete acts for political Europe what
Voltaire accomplished for ecclesiastical Europe. Voltaire destroyed
the ecclesiastical absolutism of the spiritual power, while Frederick
destroyed the absolutism so long connected with the name of the Holy
Roman Empire and the House of Hapsburg. Before he died, he had freed
the German states from the dominance of Austria, and had given to
the Empire its death-blow. In the Seven Years’ War he had given to
modern Europe an example of a new political ideal in an autocrat who
professed to be the servant of the State. His whole thought was upon
the advancement of his State. He set up the principle of the equality
of his subjects before the law, and the principle of religious and
philosophical liberty. In his external struggles with Austria and in
the internal construction of his kingdom Frederick is the protest of
the Enlightenment against the arbitrary despotism of political Europe.
The example of Frederick was an inspiration to all Germany. Kant calls
the eighteenth century the Age of Frederick the Great. Frederick had
made his subjects feel that they were Prussians, or, as Goethe puts it,
“Fritzche” (Fritz’s men); that the great foe of the German people was
the German Empire as personified by the Austrians and Saxons. When he
had conducted to a successful issue a deadly war of seven years single
handed against the combined force of more than half of Europe,――Austria,
Russia, and France, all representing political absolutism,――he inspired
patriotism not only in his own subjects, but in the people of many
other German states. Reforms were undertaken in Bavaria, Baden, Saxony,
Brunswick, etc., and by Catherine of Russia and Joseph of Austria.
Furthermore, Frederick himself was personally enlightened; he looked
upon himself as the greatest among those of enlightened intellects. He
had become denationalized by his early training. His father was fond
of what was German, his mother of what was English, and he himself
of what was French. He had studied Bayle, read French philosophy, and
become acquainted with the rationalism of Wolff and the empiricism of
Locke. He was at one time an atheist and materialist; but deism was his
natural attitude of mind, for he emphasized morality above speculation.
Conceiving himself, as the most enlightened, to be the great servant
of the State, he undertook the enlightenment of his people. All Prussia
must be enlightened by him, and therefore no restrictive institutions,
such as guilds and corporations, could be permitted. The best man
should rule, and he was the best man. Since the people are incapable of
looking after themselves, they must be compelled under his benevolent
autocracy to be enlightened, rational, and happy.
=The Course of the German Enlightenment.= Why did not the movement
become as in France a political revolution? There are three reasons
why it did not: (1) the reforms that the German princes adopted were
wise; (2) Germany was composed of segregated states in which concerted
action was difficult; (3) a new intellectual and æsthetic current was
begun by Lessing, of whom we shall speak. There is no doubt that the
Enlightenment in Germany pointed to the same result as in France. From
1760 to 1780 it looked as if Germany as well as France would witness
a tremendous social upheaval. From 1773 to 1787, Germany was stirred
by the Storm and Stress movement. Frederick himself had pointed to the
English parliamentary government as the “model for our days.” The most
of the German thinkers were at heart republicans,――Klopstock, Schiller,
Kant. Every man in Germany became a little Frederick, and tried to
enlighten those who were inferior to him. The movement extended to the
schoolroom. Secret societies were formed of kindred enlightened souls
to enlighten the world. The most important of these societies was the
Illuminati. The aim of these was to free men from national and civil
ties, from pedantry, intolerance, political and theological slavery.
The human heart is the basis of society, and the only worthy object of
study. The Illuminati included even princes among its members. It was
established in 1776 and prohibited in 1786. There was a distinctive
Storm and Stress literature. This was set in motion by Rousseau’s
_Héloïse_ and _Emile_, which were widely read in Germany. Writers
glorified the individual, called men back to primitive and uncorrupted
nature, denounced civilization, and for twenty years it almost seemed
as if the German Enlightenment had turned from the intellectual
achievements of Lessing, and would follow the sentimental appeal of
Rousseau. Herder was particularly prominent in this movement, also
Goethe and Schiller in their early writings.
Of the three factors that saved Germany from a political revolution,
perhaps the most potent was the new, fresh, literary ideas of Lessing.
If Frederick is the originator of the German Enlightenment, Lessing
is the savior of it. The Enlightenment in England stopped with the
phenomenalism of Hume, in France with the Revolution, but in Germany it
has in a sense continued even to the present day. The classic period of
Goethe and Schiller, the modern scientific achievements of the Germans,
have their perpetual source in Lessing. He not only gave the death-blow
to the pedantic absolutism of the intellectual past, but he set the
movement upon a permanent intellectual basis, upon which it has stood
against the assaults of sentimentalism for a hundred and fifty years.
=Lessing.= G. E. Lessing (1729–1781) was not only a sound scholar,
but a polished man of the social world. He was a writer of epigrams,
fables, and comedies, a dramatic and literary critic, a translator
and essayist, a student of philosophy and ecclesiastical history, and
a writer upon art. His _Nathan the Wise_ is, after Goethe’s _Faust_,
the greatest literary production of German thought. With him German
literature begins. He rejected the French models accepted by Gottsched;
he introduced Shakespeare to the Germans; and he surpassed all his
contemporaries in literary and artistic reform, social enlightenment,
and religious emancipation. Lessing and Winckelmann were the first to
spread a love for the past by a critical study of it. Lessing was not
a violent iconoclast like Voltaire, but a discriminating critic. He
said that if Leibnitz had wished for an interpreter, he would not
have chosen Wolff. The new literary writers, Lessing and Herder, in
their insistence upon subjectivity and intuition, rather than Wolff,
were the true interpreters of Leibnitz. Lessing differed from the
Enlightenment in his conception of the present in its continuity with
the past. Herder, too, was interested in development. Lessing pointed
to the perfect models in the past; Herder to the origins of things.
Both believed in an immanent God and the harmony of the universe.
At this time the problems in æsthetics came to light, and with them
the creation of “world literature,” which drew from all historical
thought――from antiquity, the Renaissance, and the Enlightenment. The
Pietists, the Wolffians, and the literary writers agreed in taking the
subjective point for their view of life. Thus Leibnitz appears through
Lessing as a motive power in the German Enlightenment. Lessing’s
doctrine of individuality so transcended that of the Storm and Stress
Period that he was not understood by it. His enlightened individual
suppresses his individuality. But his principles were so fundamental
that the Storm and Stress Period proved to be only an interruption,
and the German Enlightenment was perpetuated. He thus projected himself
beyond the eighteenth century by the instruments of that century.
CHAPTER X
KANT[53]
=The Convergence of Philosophical Influences in Germany.= The
intellectual thoroughfare from the past into our modern times does
not pass in the eighteenth century through England, nor yet through
France, but by way of Germany. Traditional France ended with the French
political revolution, while the English empirical movement proved its
own inconsistency in the phenomenalism of Hume. In Germany alone, at
the close of the eighteenth century, there was a renewed and brilliant
intellectual life. In its creative productions it has been compared by
the Germans to the Systematic Period of Greek thought (from the death
of Socrates to that of Aristotle). Both periods appeared when the
political fortunes of the respective countries were at their lowest ebb.
There were six large influences that converged upon this epoch, some of
which we have already noted as beginning even as far back as the period
introductory to the Enlightenment (1648–1740) (see pp. 217 ff.). Some
are later in their origin or come from a foreign source. Let us merely
enumerate them here.
(1) Pietism, the religious influence that began with Spener (1635)
and swept Germany in the eighteenth century; (2) The sentimentalism
of Rousseau; (3) The empirical psychology of Locke among the younger
Germans; (4) The Rationalism of the Leibnitz-Wolffian philosophy, which
was most powerful in academic circles; (5) The mathematical rigorism of
the nature-philosophy of Newton; (6) The new literary writers in their
insistence upon subjectivity and intuition.
=The Three Characteristics of German Philosophy.= German philosophy
will be seen to have three characteristics. (1) It is scholastic or
academic. It is the philosophy of the professors of universities.
At the same time it must be said to be the expression of the social
genius of the German people. Napoleon testified to this when he said,
“The English inhabit the sea, the French the land, the Germans the
air.” (2) This German philosophy is mystical. It is profound rather
than external. It is not founded upon external experience, but upon a
questioning of the inner and spiritual life. It is inward, religious,
and spiritual, like the philosophy of Plato. One of the most accurate
interpreters of Kant has pointed out the many similarities between
Kant and Plato (see Paulsen, _Immanuel Kant_). (3) German philosophy
was nevertheless cosmic, or a description of the world. These men
whom we are now to study were not ignorant of the world or of science.
Political life offered them no attractions. The soul of man was
regarded by them as too noble to be engrossed in external things.
As Madame De Staël said of the time, “There was nothing to do save
for him whose concern was with the universe.” Men, however, took the
inner point of view, and regarded all things with reference to it.
The Germans tried to humanize the universe. They looked upon nature as
working out unconsciously those processes which consciously took place
in man. The contemplation of beauty is not that of an external world,
but of the inmost nature of reality. Thus individuality and cosmic
reality are one and the same. Life has a joyful outlook, not because
our tasks are easy, but because our strength is equal to them; for is
not God in us?
=The Two Periods of German Philosophy.= German philosophy is divided
into two epochs: (1) the period of the formation of the critical theory
of knowledge by Kant; (2) the period of the metaphysical development
of Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Herbart, and Schopenhauer. Kant belongs
both to the Enlightenment and to German idealism. He is the point
of convergence of the intellectual forces that preceded him and the
point of departure of the idealists who followed him. For this reason
historians differ as to the period in which he is to be placed. In one
sense he is the transition from the Enlightenment, in another sense
he is the introduction of German idealism. But in reality he forms
an epoch between the two. Although the dualism, which was always the
background of the philosophy of the Enlightenment, formed too the
background of his thought, although he on the other hand looked upon
his _Critique of Pure Reason_ as only an introduction to a metaphysics,
which he never wrote, nevertheless he occupies a unique place in
drawing up for his time and for the future a new conceptual standard by
which the new problems might be criticised. The problem that Kant set
before himself was epistemological and not one of metaphysics.
After Kant there appeared a growth of metaphysics. The great
German idealistic systems appeared. At first the Kantian theory
was misunderstood, but at Jena, then the chief intellectual centre
in Germany, there was formed a little group of Kantians under the
leadership of Rheinhold. Jena is near Weimar (see map p. 280), which
was the main literary city of Germany, and the residence of Goethe.
The poetry of Weimar and the philosophy of Jena stimulated each
other. Schiller is a notable example of the influence of Kant upon the
literature of the time. In philosophy Kant was followed by the various
systems of Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Herbart, and Schopenhauer, which
built a metaphysical superstructure upon the Kantian foundation.
=The Influences upon Kant.= The development of Kant’s thought was
modified by influences from at least five different sources.
1. _Pietism._ This was the earliest influence upon his life, and
was due to his parents and to F. A. Schultze, the teacher of the
high school of Königsberg. It will be remembered that this ethical
Puritanism was a moral reaction against the formalism of the churches
in the period after the Thirty Years’ War. Kant never lost his
attachment for the Pietists; and his later rigoristic ethical theory,
as well as his own personal life, sprang from his early Pietistic
training. Schiller wrote to Goethe, “There is always something about
Kant, as about Luther, which reminds one of the monk, who has indeed
quitted his cloister, but who can never quite rid himself of its
traces.”
2. _The Leibnitz-Wolffian Philosophy._ This influence came during his
academic training in the University of Königsberg, which he entered
upon at the age of sixteen years. This was in 1740, the same year in
which Frederick was crowned and Wolff was recalled to Halle,――the time
when the Leibnitz-Wolffian philosophy was at the fullness of control
of Germany. It must not be forgotten that this philosophy remained
dominant in German academic circles until Kant’s own theory supplanted
it in the nineties. Kant was an avowed disciple of the Wolffian school
for the next twenty years (until 1760), and he never shook off the
Wolffian metaphysical dualism.
3. _The Physics of Newton._ To his university training Kant was
indebted also for his acquaintance with Newton. The antagonism between
the metaphysics of Wolff and the physics of Newton was, at least at the
beginning of Kant’s career, of decisive importance in his development.
One of Kant’s teachers at the university was Martin Knutzen, whose
lectures included philosophy, mathematics, and natural science. Through
personal intercourse with Knutzen, the young Kant was introduced to the
Wolffian philosophy, and also to the Newtonian mathematics and physics.
During his activity as a teacher Kant showed, even into his later
period, a predilection for natural science, especially for physical
geography and anthropology. The same year in which he entered upon his
career as teacher in the University of Königsberg (1755), he published
his celebrated _Theory of the Heavens_, in which he anticipated Laplace
by forty years in the formulation of the nebular hypothesis.
4. _The Humanitarianism of Rousseau._ Kant got from Rousseau a new
evaluation of man. Kant had the advantage of a prolonged youthful
development. He was well into his thirties when the movement,
begun by Lessing, became a social force in Germany. A new political
consciousness appeared among the German people, due to the influence
of Frederick the Great and to that of the Frenchmen, Voltaire and
Rousseau. Kant was thirty-eight (in 1762) when he read Rousseau’s
_Emile_. Kant had been brought up in the common teaching of the early
part of the Enlightenment to despise the ignorant masses of people.
Through Rousseau he received in words of authority the conception of
the inherent dignity of the individual man. Through this conception
science and speculation came to have a new value to Kant. They were
no longer ends in themselves, but the means for moral development.
The moral in its primacy over the intellectual came to be a permanent
feature in Kant’s doctrine. His early Pietism was confirmed, and
Rousseau replaced Newton in his regard.
5. _The Skepticism of Hume._ The influence of Hume’s skepticism
was felt by Kant just before his eleven years of silence, when he
became engaged in his construction of his critical problem. But
Hume influenced Kant in a negative way. The classic and oft-quoted
expression of Kant, that Hume awoke him from his “dogmatic slumber,”
refers to the dogmatism of the empirical school to which Hume belonged,
and not to that of the rationalistic school of Wolff. To Kant both
empiricism and rationalism were dogmatic; the one because it assumed
the validity of sensations, the other because it assumed the existence
of innate ideas. Thus Hume effected a reaction in Kant against Hume’s
own doctrine. But in thus reacting from Hume, Kant saw that the answer
was to be found not in the rationalism of Wolff, but in an ideal
conception of space and time. Hume’s influence was the last before Kant
firmly established his theory of knowledge in his _Critique of Pure
Reason_.
=The Life and Writings of Kant= (1724–1804). The external changes in
the life of Immanuel Kant were the fewest possible. He was born at
Königsberg in 1724; he went to the school of that city and then to its
university, and then acted in the capacity of tutor in families in the
province of Königsberg. He became privat-docent in the university at
the age of thirty-one, and professor of logic and metaphysics at the
age of forty-four. He was called to the University of Halle in 1778,
but he refused to leave Königsberg. In fact, Kant never went outside
the province, and but little outside the city. Nevertheless, in the
eighties he saw himself become the most important figure in Königsberg,
and in the nineties the most important power in German academic circles.
In 1794 he came under the censure of the reactionary government of
Frederick William II and “was obliged to refrain in the future from
all public addresses on religion.” This was the only outer conflict in
his life. In 1804, at the age of eighty, he died. The externals of his
life were from the beginning to the end an undeviating routine,――his
lectures, his daily walk, his dinner with friends, his hours of
reflection upon his great problem. These have been made the subject
of many descriptions.[54]
The life of Kant is notable because it is the history of an unusual
singleness of devotion to the solution of a speculative problem. His
youthful point of departure was the rationalism of Wolff; his point of
attainment was the _Critique of Pure Reason_. Between these two points
his history was a series of mental reversals. Kant spoke of his life
as divided into two parts at the year 1770; his pre-critical and his
critical periods. At that time there was a change in the form as well
as the content of his writings. His pre-critical writings possess a
graceful, flowing style; his critical works are heavy and artificial in
their structure, and reveal the labor with which his thought tried to
reconcile contending _motifs_. So far as the content of Kant’s thought
is concerned the pre-critical period will be seen to fall into two
subdivisions at the year 1760. Kant’s life may therefore be divided
into three epochs: (1) 1724–1760, the period when he was a Wolffian
rationalist; (2) 1760–1770, the period when he was an empirical skeptic;
(3) 1770–1804, the period when he was a critical epistemologist.
In the first period he accepted the rationalism of Wolff, but his main
interest, as shown by his writings, was in natural science. He was
inspired by the natural philosophy of Newton, which, in the latter part
of this period, led him to mistrust the metaphysics of Wolff. That is
to say, he began to suspect that the mere logical operation of concepts
by the “pure reason” could not be a statement about things in the real
world. In the next ten years――his second period――he became convinced
that the metaphysics of the rationalists was impossible, and yet that
the metaphysics of the empirical school of the English was equally
absurd. His writings during this time are more strictly devoted to
questions of metaphysics and epistemology. Then came his critical
period. This was inaugurated by his celebrated Dissertation of 1770,
followed by a period of eleven years of literary silence, a silence
broken by the publication of his _Critique of Pure Reason_ in 1781.
Between 1781 and 1790 appeared the more mature works from Kant’s pen.
Among them were the _Critique of Practical Reason_ (1788) and the
_Critique of Judgment_ (1790), formed on the model of the _Critique
of Pure Reason_. Besides these, his minor writings were very numerous,
and one notes an essay by him in the last year of his life. But the
writings of Kant after 1790 treat in the main of the philosophy of law
and conduct, and show themselves to be the writings of his declining
years.
=The Problem of Kant.= The problem which Kant placed before himself
was that of epistemology. Epistemology is the theory of knowledge,
and Kant set to work to investigate the knowing process. The peculiar
significance of Kant rests upon the fact that out of the various
influences converging upon him and his time he matured a new conception
of the problem and of the method of procedure of philosophy. He was
convinced that the problem of his time was not one of metaphysical
speculation, although he felt the value of such speculation in the
regions of religion and morals. Yet he saw that the metaphysical
rationalism of Wolff had proved itself inadequate because it was
merely the logical operation of concepts, and had not dealt with
real relations. He was equally sure that the empirical metaphysics
of the Englishmen was inadequate because it was never certain of any
truth. Rational metaphysics was logically true, but not real; empirical
metaphysics was real enough, but never true. So Kant determined to find
out the relation between the logical process of thought and the reality
of things. He felt that the first problem in his time to be faced and
settled was the problem of knowledge,――the epistemological problem.
He planned to face later the metaphysical problem, but he delayed this
until too late in his old age. The problem of Kant can be put in the
simple question, What can we know? The metaphysical problem that he
deferred was, What is real? Yet his problem was not nearly so simple as
this statement would seem to make it; for the epistemological problem
which he set himself was complicated by the Wolffian metaphysical
dualism which he always presupposed. Since Kant agreed with the
Wolffian dualism――the theory that a great gulf separates mind and
matter――his query about knowledge was not the simple question, What can
we know? but the longer question, What can we know about the external
world?
=The Method of Kant.= There is bound up with the epistemological
problem a new method of procedure in solving it. How shall we find
out what we can know? Kant calls his method the critical method. It is
not only a criticism in a general sense, in that it weighs carefully
the conditions of knowledge. It is also criticism in the special
sense of confining itself to a restricted field. Kant pointed out that
two methods may be employed, the dogmatic and the transcendental. He
asserted that the dogmatic method had been employed in the past and had
proved itself fallacious. What is the dogmatic method? All philosophy
was dogmatic to Kant which sought to find out what knowledge is true
by showing how it originated and developed. Dogmatism is no solution;
it is merely a psychological tracing of ideas to their sources.
These sources will be either innate ideas, if we are rationalists,
or sensations, if we are empiricists. _The true method is the
transcendental or critical method._ What is this method? It is a study
of the nature of the reason itself. It is an examination of the “pure
reason” to see if its judgments have in any instance a universality
beyond human experience, and yet are necessary to human experience.
The logic of such judgments must be absolutely reliable; and yet at
the same time the judgments must be applicable to the world of things.
The method being transcendental, such judgments are transcendental; not
because they transcend our experience, but because they are necessary
to experience. The transcendental is not what is chronologically but
what is rationally _prior_. The transcendental is the indispensable
to knowledge. The critical method is the finding of this indispensable
condition. Kant would search the whole field of the reason for this.
Since to Kant thinking, feeling, and willing are the fundamental forms
of the reason, he sought the realm of thought for the transcendental
principles of knowledge, that of the will for the transcendental
principles of morality, that of feeling for the transcendental
principles of beauty.
=The Threefold World[55] of Kant――Subjective States,
Things-in-Themselves, and Phenomena.= In his search for those
indispensable conditions of knowledge of the external world, Kant
unfolds the threefold character of the realm of human life. To Wolff
the world had been twofold. In other words, Wolff had conceived the
world as dual, in which there was a correspondence, part by part, of
independent reality to the states of consciousness. To Wolff reality is
independent of consciousness, and yet we are conscious of that reality.
Now Kant never gave up entirely the Wolffian dualism, but he came to
see that in such a situation there could be no knowledge. For how can
we be conscious of what is absolutely independent of us? Consequently
Kant plundered the Wolffian worlds of independent realities to build
up an intermediate world,――a world of phenomena. He dissolved the
sharpness of Wolff’s dualism into a world with three divisions; and he
gave to each division a new epistemological value. These were the realm
of the subjective states or the inner consciousness of the individual,
the world of phenomena or the realm of knowledge, and the world of
absolute reality or that of things-in-themselves. The value of the
world of phenomena consists in its being the realm of knowledge. The
other two realms have values of their own, which we shall describe
below.
Wolff’s twofold world may be thus compared with Kant’s threefold
world:――
Wolff. Kant.
1. Mind. 1. Subjective states.
2. Phenomena――the realm of knowledge.
2. Matter. 3. Things-in-themselves.
1. The realm of subjective states evidently is not a realm of knowledge.
For it is the realm of intuition and immediate apprehension of the
individual’s own ideas and sensations; and this is not what we mean by
knowledge. This subjective world is that in which I live alone. It is
a realm of which nobody else is conscious, a realm which gives to me
my individuality. The only connecting linkage between my various purely
subjective states is the accidental order of time in which, empirically
or by association, they occur. Animal intelligence possesses only
such sense-perceptions and sensations, and these are modifications of
its subjective consciousness. Such a mental constitution has not the
capacity for knowledge, but only the haphazard association of ideas.
Kant looked upon the content of subjective consciousness as the object
only of psychological investigation.
2. The realm of things-in-themselves is not to Kant the realm of
knowledge. By things-in-themselves Kant distinctly does not mean
things-for-us, not material bodies, not nature objects. It must be
remembered that Kant has plundered the material realm of the dualist.
The things-in-themselves which are left behind as a residuum lie
outside all sense-perception and so beyond all knowledge. A divine
intelligence might have the things-in-themselves as objects of
knowledge, but not we human beings. The thing-in-itself is the unknown
and unknowable. But if this realm of things-in-themselves is so
absolutely independent of us that we cannot in any way know it, how
can we say that it exists? Kant replies to this: while we cannot say
_what_ a thing-in-itself is, we are obliged to say _that_ it is. For
although beyond even our sense-perception, it stands as a necessary
postulate to perception, as a mere “problem.” Kant also calls
things-in-themselves Noumena, and regards them as “limiting concepts”
to the divine non-sensuous intelligence. Their reality is as little to
be denied as affirmed.
3. Kant pointed out that between or beside the realm of subjectivity
and that of the things-in-themselves lies the realm of human knowledge,
which we in our every-day speech call physical nature, and to which he
gave the name “the world of phenomena” or “the world of experience.”
The subjective world is apprehended by the individual alone, the world
of things-in-themselves is known by no human being, but the world of
phenomena is the common object of knowledge of humanity. Phenomena are
not things-in-themselves, but things-for-us; they are physical nature,
an interrelated totality for us. They constitute not absolute reality,
but a reality relative to us. Phenomena are experiences in their
relations; such related experiences are objects of knowledge, and in
their thoroughly organized and systematic form they constitute nature.
Thus the dualism which we ordinarily meet, like the “two world” theory
of Wolff, has many differences from this critical theory of Kant with
its threefold divisions of one world. One of the most important is that
in Kant’s theory the correspondence between states of consciousness
and reality has disappeared. Reality touches consciousness only at
one point,――at that point where sensations arise. Sensations mark
the boundary between unknown reality and conscious life. On the side
of reality all is darkness; on the side of conscious life all is the
creation of our complex synthetic activity. With the boundary line of
sensation as a base, the two realms extend in opposite directions. In
value the realm of our conscious life is only relative; that of reality
or things-in-themselves is absolute.
=The World of Knowledge.= There is this to be observed about the
threefold realm of Kant: the realm of subjectivity and that of
knowledge together make up our conscious life. One is the realm of
the conscious individual, and the other the realm of the consciousness
of humanity. Kant conceived this further distinction between the two
realms: in a purely subjective state the mind is entirely passive
and its content is without control; in a state of knowing the mind is
actively engaged in collecting and relating its ideas. This is called
by Kant synthesis.
When Kant was formulating his problem, there gradually came to him
in clearer outline the synthetic nature of the activity of the human
reason. He felt more and more that the secret of the knowing process
was to be explained by its function of combining many experiences into
a unity. This conception of synthesis is what separates the _Critique
of Pure Reason_ from all the previous writings of Kant. Furthermore,
the three books of the _Critique_ are expositions of the different
stages in which mental synthesis completes itself: in (1) perception,
(2) understanding, and (3) reason. The knowing activity of man develops
in these three different forms of synthesis, in which each lower stage
is the content of the higher.
What, then, is the central factor in knowledge? It is the synthetic
power of the mind. The mind is not merely passively aware of its
sensations as they come _seriatim_, but it actively relates them
and holds them together. The mind is a dynamic agent whose activity
consists in synthesizing in the present moment its experiences of the
past. The human mind is not like a curtain upon which stereopticon
pictures appear and then disappear in turn. It retains its pictures,
although they are no longer being thrown upon the screen. Suppose we
hear the ticking of a clock. Now if we had no synthetic power, all we
should apprehend would be one, one, one,――and so on. But we do have
synthetic power, and we say one, two, three, and so on. We count in
a series in which each term includes the preceding term. Two includes
one, and three includes two, etc. This is knowledge. It is cumulative
experience. The experience of twenty animals, each having one
experience, is not the same as the experience of one man having twenty
experiences. In vain would nature act on man if the mind of man through
memory and imagination did not carry over experiences. So the important
thing is not what happens, but what power the human mind has. Knowledge,
then, to Kant is the unifying of the manifold.
There are, therefore, two aspects to knowledge; the passive sensations
and the active power of synthesis. Sensations, on the one hand, are the
raw material out of which reason through its various forms creates the
finished fabric of knowledge. Sensations are the content of knowledge.
On the other hand, there is the active unifying power of the reason.
_Knowledge consists of sensations and synthesis in conjunction._ Reason
alone deals with “thought relations” or imaginations, whenever it
tries to treat objects of which sensations are not the raw material.
Sensations alone, however, are only subjective states. The oft-quoted
sayings of Kant, that “Only in experience is the truth,” and that
“Conception without perception is empty, perception without conception
is blind,” refer to the restriction of knowledge to the sense-materials
and to the synthetic function of the reason.
=The Place of Synthesis in Knowledge.= What position does synthesis
occupy in the total process of knowledge? Is synthesis one of the
factors or elements of knowledge? Is synthesis on the same level
with the sensations, the feelings, the imaginations? No, it is very
different. The synthesis that Kant is describing is not the product
or conclusion from an inference. Kant does not mean by synthesis the
combination of facts as a result, such as a biologist might make in
framing the law of the habits of animals from his observation of them.
The synthesis that Kant is talking about is not so much the result of
combining experiences _as the act of combining them_. The frame of the
unified manifold, the law of its unification, the act of binding the
isolated experiences together is synthesis. Synthesis occupies a higher
level than the elements of knowledge or knowledge itself. Synthesis is
the knowing process rather than the known product. It is constitutive;
it is creative; it conditions experience and puts the material of
experience together. It must not be thought to be a voluntary act of
the mind, which the mind will or will not do, as it pleases. When the
mind acts, it synthesizes.
Furthermore, the synthetic functioning of all human minds everywhere
is the same. However much their sensations differ, they combine
and orderly arrange their sense-materials in the same ways. The
synthesis of the human mind is the source of the universality belonging
to knowledge; the sensations, the “given,” are the source of the
difference in knowledge. Knowledge is the result of minds that function
in absolutely the same ways; and we should never have knowledge if the
order and linkage of the world depended on the accident of experience.
Take, for example, such laws as those of mathematics or the physical
law of cause. These are the same for everybody. They are universal
laws. The ordinary conception of them as independent principles of
an independent nature world will not account for their necessity for
everybody and their universality. As independent principles they would
differ for different peoples just as sensations differ. In that case we
should have no knowledge. Human beings could not then think about the
same things, nor reason under the same guiding principles. However, we
do think alike, we have the same geometry, the same physical laws, the
same time-estimates; and simply because we function alike synthetically.
Knowledge is thus the common possession of humanity because the
synthetic functioning of the different individual men is identically
the same.
A very good way to get at Kant’s central principle of synthesis is to
draw this picture. Suppose that besides the race of human beings with
its own peculiar way of ordering its world, there were a race of angels
endowed with its own powers, another of hobgoblins likewise endowed
with its own powers, and so on to x, y, and z races――any number you
please. What would be the situation? In the first place, each one of
the groups would be absolutely isolated from each of the others. No
one would have the power to know even the existence of the others. No
one race would even have anything in common with the others. The world
of each would be different. In the next place each would be trying
to interpret reality, and in doing so, each would construct and order
a world of reality of its own. The members of each race would have a
world in common and the members would know one another. But that is
all. The members of each race would not be able to get outside their
own powers of synthesis. In Holy Writ the home of the angels has been
sometimes described as having no time and space, but this means only
that space and time are aspects of our mental synthesis and not of
theirs. We live in our world of our interpretative construction of
reality, and they in theirs. The same would have to be said of x,
y, and z. None would live in a world of absolute reality. But each
would live in a world made different from all the other worlds by the
differing mental powers of each race. Yet the members of each race
would inhabit a world in common because the individuals of each had
common mental powers. The particular world that human beings inhabit
is called physical nature, whose laws are known as the laws of science.
How can it be _one_ world in which so many millions of different human
beings live? Because these millions of human beings are under the same
fundamental rational laws, and they construct the world in a common
fashion. The laws of nature are, after all, the laws of our own minds.
They are the laws of reason. The laws of nature are not the laws of
absolute reality, but the laws of the human interpretation of reality.
All the linkage of facts, all the law and order of our universe, all
the combination of the variety of objects of knowledge――in a word,
the entire body of science or the world of physical nature is a human
mental synthesis. Does independent absolute reality exist? Yes; but
it exists behind the scenes for us as for the angels. Mental synthesis
is constitutive of the world in which we are actually engaged――mental
synthesis is shot through and through all our experiences. Mental
synthesis is the framework of the universe, and therefore Kant says,
“The world is my representation.”
=The Judgments Indispensable to Human Knowledge.= It will be seen
from the above discussion that Kant does not believe that an idea or a
sensation taken by itself constitutes knowledge. Knowledge consists of
sensations framed together in a synthesis. That is, ideas must be taken
together with other ideas. This is called in grammar a proposition,
having a subject and a predicate. In logic it is called a judgment.
The only way a human being can express knowledge is in the form of
judgments, but all judgments of human beings are not necessarily
knowledge.
Judgments are divided by Kant into two large classes,――analytic and
synthetic. The large class of analytic judgments are not expressions
of knowledge. What is an analytic judgment? An analytic judgment merely
expresses in the predicate something that is contained in the usual
meaning of the subject. Such a judgment articulates the meaning of
an idea by emphasizing some of its well-known attributes. Thus we
say, “Gold is yellow.” Such a statement about “gold” does not show
any knowledge. It is called sometimes an explicative statement. It
is tautologous, but not on that account trivial. Let us look then to
synthetic judgments to see if they express knowledge. But first, what
is a synthetic judgment? A synthetic judgment is one in which the
predicate is not contained in the usual meaning of the subject. It is
a statement of something new about the subject in hand. For example,
the judgment, “The watch is yellow” is a synthetic judgment because the
predicate “yellow” is not a necessary part of the meaning of “watch.”
A synthetic judgment therefore brings two ideas together in a new
relation. It thereby enriches knowledge and is the expression of
discovery. The synthetic judgment is often called ampliative. (The
double meaning which Kant gives the term “synthetic” need not confuse
us. Synthesis is used by Kant to mean the framing constitution of
the mind, and also as one of the results of the activity of the mind,
_i. e._ a class of judgments. In the first sense all judgments, both
analytic and synthetic, are expressions of synthesis.)
Are all synthetic judgments expressions of knowledge? Kant replies
that they certainly are not. He points out that there are two classes
of synthetic judgments: one class he calls _a posteriori_ and the
other _a priori_. By _a posteriori_ he means judgments founded in some
sense-perception, which are particular judgments or judgments that
are inferences from a greater or less induction of sense-perceptions.
For example, if I say, “To-day is warm,” or that “Swans, so far
as I have observed, are white,” I am making a synthetic judgment,
because I am joining two ideas in a new relation, and I am also
making an _a posteriori_ judgment, because it is a statement founded
upon sense-perception. Now Kant rules such judgments out from those
that constitute true knowledge. This would rule out even empirical
generalizations of high probability, such as “The sun rises in the
east.” _A posteriori_ judgments, or those founded on experience,
however large, do not give us knowledge, but merely probability. The
cases upon which such judgments are founded are always limited, and
there may be exceptions beyond our observation.
The only kind of judgments that are the expression of true knowledge
must, therefore, be synthetic judgments that are _a priori_. That
is to say, they must express some new relation between ideas that
is also universally and necessarily true. By _a priori_ Kant means
the universal and necessary; and, furthermore, he maintains that the
universal and necessary, and nothing else, constitutes knowledge. He
points out that we make such judgments. When we say that the three
angles of a triangle equal two right angles, or that every event has
a cause, we are saying something universal and necessary, something not
founded on experience. No one would admit that there were exceptions
to these propositions. The question, then, that Kant tries to answer
in his _Critique of Pure Reason_ is, How are synthetic judgments _a
priori_ possible? Or since to Kant knowledge consists of synthetic
judgments _a priori_, under what conditions is knowledge possible?[56]
For the sake of clearness, let us state this problem of Kant in another
way. It is the nature of man to try by mere thinking to discover the
nature of reality. The dogmatic school of Rationalists had attempted,
without calling in experience to its aid, to weave out of pure thought
answers to the questions about God, immortality, and nature. It had
maintained that clear and distinct notions have a reality corresponding
to them, and are therefore real. Judgments formed in this way are
analytic _a priori_; but it is evident that while such analyses of
thought have a cogency for thought, they do not necessarily have
a corresponding reality. On the other hand, conclusions based on
experience have a kind of validity for the real world, but they yield
no certain truth about it. These are synthetic judgments _a posteriori_.
If Hume is right in saying that these are the only judgments dealing
with nature, then we have no certain truth about nature. They give
generalizations that are useful on the whole, but their conclusions
range only from possibility to high probability, and never reach
certainty. Besides (1) conceptual knowledge and (2) “knowledge of
matters of fact,” Kant pointed out that there is a third kind. This
is the only valid kind. This knowledge is based on synthetic judgments
_a priori_. Such knowledge arises independently of experience, _i. e._
is _a priori_, and yet is valid for experience, _i. e._ is synthetic.
Hume’s statement that such knowledge is synthetic _a posteriori_ is
not accepted by Kant. Kant is, therefore, bound to show how this third
class of synthetic judgments _a priori_ is possible, and how pure
thought can be binding on experience.
=The Proof of the Validity of Human Knowledge.= If we turn now to
review what we have said about Kant, we find that he undertakes to
solve the problem, _How can we know?_ by a critical study of the
forms of the reason. We have found that the reason is essentially a
synthetic power, and is the framework of the world of phenomena to
which knowledge is limited. Knowledge is the complex thing, consisting
of sensations as its woof and synthesis as its warp. To answer the
question, Under what conditions is knowledge possible? we must study
not sensations, but synthesis in its several forms. If Kant can show
that the mind furnishes the _a priori_, that is, the universal and
necessary forms to knowledge, he thinks he has proved his case. He
has then explained why human knowledge is valid and thus proved that
human knowledge _is_ valid. Now Kant tries to show what the special
_a priori_ forms of knowledge are and in what the validity of such
forms consists. In the first book of the _Critique of Pure Reason_,
the _Æsthetic_, he undertakes to show what the _a priori_ forms of
mathematics are and how they make knowledge valid by being forms of
mental synthesis. In the next part of the _Critique_, the _Analytic_,
he tries to show what the _a priori_ forms of the knowledge of physical
science are and how they make physical science valid and objective.
In the last part, the _Dialectic_, he discusses the _a priori_ forms
of the reason and shows why they have no validity in knowledge. These
are three stages in which the knowing activity develops as three
different forms of synthesis. The stages are perception, understanding,
and reason. Each higher stage has the lower as its content. Finished
knowledge involves perceptions, reproductions in the understanding,
and a recognition of the whole by a thinking subject. Perception,
understanding, and reason are not separate acts, but different levels
of one consciousness. These will be taken up in succession.
=1. In What does the Validity of Sense-Perception Consist?= Kant points
out:
(1) Sense-perception has (a) a content of sense qualities, like sound,
color, etc., and (b) the relations of space and time.
(2) Space and time originally belong to the subject as its forms of
sense-perception, and are not introduced from without by experience.
(3) By means of space and time _a priori_ knowledge is possible.
If there is any validity in perceptual knowledge, it depends upon
the constitution of space and time; not upon the character of the
empirical content, or the sensations. The question about the validity
of sense-perception, then, is a question about the reliability of
mathematics.
There are two elements in sense-perception: a necessary and constant,
and a changing and accidental. Space and time are the constant element.
They are homogeneous, and always one and the same in quality. They are
unities, for there is only one space and one time, and the many spaces
and times are only divisions of this oneness. All the differences in
space and time are due to the relation and movements of bodies, and
are not inherent in space and time themselves. How is this unity and
homogeneity of space and time to be explained? By assuming that space
and time are original and uniform functions of perception, the forms
of perception, the ways of apprehension, the “prehensile organs of our
sensibility.” They are the ways in which we synthesize on the lower
level of consciousness. If they were given in experience, there is no
reason why the several spaces and times should not be intrinsically
different, like different bodies with different qualities. However,
by conceiving them to be mental syntheses in the level of perception,
they explain the universality of the laws of mathematics. They are
the colored spectacles that all human beings wear; or, to use another
figure, they are the mould into which all sensations are run. Being the
unchangeable forms of our sensuous receptivity, they have a validity
for the entire compass of perception. They are universal because one
experience of space and time is valid for all spaces and times; they
are necessary because we cannot think of objects apart from them; they
are perceptual syntheses because they increase knowledge. Of course we
are unconscious of this perceptual synthesis of the sensory elements
in space and time. The process takes place automatically. We can
nevertheless analyze the process after it has taken place, and speak
of the sensations as the materials of knowledge, and the forms of
space and time as the _a priori_ elements. But in actual conscious
experience, sensations never come to us in their rawness. They are
never turned over to the understanding unless they bear the stamp
of space and time. The process of knowledge, therefore, starts with
complex material――complex because it has been synthesized below
consciousness. In other words, perceptions come into the process of
knowledge with two aspects: (1) their permanent and necessary form;
and (2) their accidental and changing content.
=2. In What does the Validity of the Understanding Consist?= Kant’s
discussion of the synthesis of the understanding is given in the
_Analytic_, the second part of his _Critique_. His treatment of the
understanding is similar to that of perception. The understanding, be
it remembered, is regarded by Kant as the second stage in the process
of a complete synthesis of knowledge. It is synthesis on a higher
level than perception. Indeed, perception is the material which the
understanding synthesizes. As in the _Æsthetic_ Kant seeks to show:
(1) the _a priori_ factors of the understanding and (2) that these _a
priori_ factors give to knowledge its validity. The unifying principle
of perception is the mathematical; but physical nature, which is
the subject-matter of the study of the understanding, is more than
mathematical, more than an aggregate of space and time forms, more than
shapes and motions. Nature exists as a connected system of substances,
causes, etc. Natural science possesses besides its mathematical basis
a number of general _a priori_ principles for the validity of its
conclusions.
Kant’s task was therefore only begun by showing that perception
possesses the universal and synthetic principles of space and time.
Perception is only the beginning of knowledge. It is not knowledge, but
only subjective consciousness. On the other hand, the understanding is
the faculty of knowledge, and therefore Kant seeks to point out its _a
priori_ or universal elements, and by their presence prove its validity.
Since the days of Aristotle the general terms used in reasoning
have been called categories. Any class-term or genus may be called a
category. There are certain _summa genera_, the most extensive classes
or classes with the lowest connotation, that have been traditionally
known as categories, because everything that can be affirmed in
a judgment must come under some one or other of them. Aristotle
names ten,――substance, quality, quantity, etc. But these Aristotelian
categories are classes of analytical relations, such as formal logic
treats. They are the classes of the attributes and relations into
which objects may be analyzed. These evidently are not what Kant
is seeking. He is in search of synthetic categories. He is looking
for the synthetic forms of the understanding itself, which transform
perceptions into objects of knowledge. He is not looking merely for
abstract conceptions. For ideas become nature objects only when they
are thought as things with qualities universal to every human mind.
The understanding creates out of the perceptions the objects of thought
which form the nature-world; and the categories of the understanding
are the constitutive principles of such objects. The categories are
the relating forms of synthesis through which objects arise. The
most difficult part of the _Critique_ is called the “Deduction of
the Categories,” in which Kant attempts to derive the synthetic forms
of the understanding from the various kinds of judgment. Kant’s list
is curious but unimportant, and only two of these categories are
useful,――substance and cause. He divides the categories into four
general kinds and enumerates three categories of each of these kinds,
as follows:――
Categories of Quantity,――Unity, Plurality, Totality.
Categories of Quality,――Reality, Negation, Limitation.
Categories of Relation,――Substance, Cause, Reciprocity.
Categories of Modality,――Possibility, Existence, Necessity.
These categories occupy the same position in the understanding
that space and time do in the perception,――they are the _a priori_
principles. In respect to them the perceptions are the _a posteriori_
material. The categories are pure, innate, and transcendental. They
are the inner nature of the understanding. Thus the objects of the
understanding contain both _a priori_ and _a posteriori_ factors, and
are syntheses of manifolds. Perception synthesizes sensations, while
the understanding synthesizes perceptions, and states the synthesis in
the form of a judgment.
Having named the _a priori_ forms of the understanding, how does
Kant show that by their means our knowledge of nature has validity?
Because when the understanding functions, it prescribes these forms
to perception. Impressions would remain vague and formless, if we did
not think them; by means of thought we weld impressions into objects
and give them a coherent reality. This is exactly what is meant by
understanding. If nature were an independent thing and prescribed
laws to the understanding, the laws would never be universal and
necessary. The universality of the laws of nature can be explained
only by supposing that the understanding prescribes its laws to nature,
not to nature as a Thing-in-Itself, but only so far as it appears
in sense-perception. Universal and necessary knowledge of nature
is possible only if the connections and relations of nature are
absolutely identical with the modes of thought. The categories of the
understanding have objective validity, therefore, because the laws of
the understanding are the fundamental laws of nature. The understanding
has given such laws to nature. _A priori_ and therefore universal and
necessary, synthetic and therefore creative, the world consists of
objects under laws of the understanding. There are as many kinds of
natural objects as there are categories of the understanding.
If we will examine what we call the world of nature, we shall find
that many of its objects have never been perceived. Man has only
partly explored the earth, and there are vast regions in space that
he has never seen. He has never seen the South Pole, and the North
Pole only recently; he has never seen the other side of the moon, and
there are myriads of stars beyond even the reach of his telescope.
These are not perceptible things, and yet they are the objects of
the understanding――objects of knowledge. How is it possible? It would
not be possible if the laws of nature were limited to the empirically
perceived facts. It is possible because the laws of the understanding
are the laws of nature and apply everywhere, whether the thing is
actually perceived or not. The moon must have another side because the
human understanding conceives all substances in this way; the law of
cause and effect obtains beyond the stars, and at the South Pole, even
though they have never been perceived. The world of physical objects,
or in other words the world of objects of the understanding, consists
of both possible and actually perceived objects. If the laws of nature
were prescribed by nature to the mind, then the world of objects would
consist only of actually perceived objects.
But look at the world of nature a little more closely. It is one whole
world with very many things in it. Why is this the case? Would it
ever be so if our knowledge of the world was simply a reproduction of
what the world presented to us? Of course not. There would be as many
different worlds as there are human beings. The wholeness, the oneness
of our world of many things to many individuals indicates not only that
the understanding is the source of the laws of the world, but also that
the faculties of understanding in all the millions of human beings have
a transcendental unity. Knowledge has therefore a stronger proof of its
validity, since what is knowledge for one human being is knowledge for
all. Every individual man is conscious of the contrast between his own
subjective world and the world of knowledge which he shares with other
men. His own ideas have a movement of their own and have no validity
beyond themselves; the ideas which he shares with others, however, are
valid for all others because these ideas are beyond the control of any
one man. Each individual man has to acknowledge this control of his
knowledge as residing in something beyond himself. The categories of
each man’s understanding coöperate exactly with those of every other
man. The individual man is not actually conscious of this process of
coöperation in experience, but he accepts the objective necessity of it.
The individual consciousness is not therefore the creator of
the objects of knowledge; rather consciousness in general――the
consciousness of humanity――is the creator. Kant is not a solipsist,
but an idealist. A higher consciousness, a super-conscious Self, must
be assumed to explain the compactness of human knowledge. Kant does
not call this super-conscious Self the “soul” or “spirit,” but the
“I think” or the “transcendental ego,” or by the more clumsy phrase
“the transcendental unity of apperception.” He contrasts it with what
he calls the “empirical ego” on the ground that it is the ego always
identical with itself, rather than the Self at this or that particular
moment. It is the Self as thinker rather than the Self as thought about.
The super-conscious Self is always self-active and never dependent
upon empirical conditions. It must be accepted as the postulate of all
knowledge. It is the universal Self, and through it the categories of
the human understanding become universalized. Just as space and time
are the unifying forms of synthetic consciousness on its lower level;
just as the categories of the understanding are the unifying forms of
the synthetic consciousness on a higher level; so the universal Self
must be postulated to explain the universality of the categories. It is
a postulate only because it, not known in experience, is necessary to
explain the unity of knowledge. This theoretical conception of the Self
by Kant is thus very different from the traditional notion of the soul.
=Has the Reason by Itself any Validity?= When Kant calls his criticism
the _Critique of Pure Reason_, he uses the term “Reason” in a wide
sense as the whole knowing process. In the _Dialectic_ he treats the
Reason in a narrow sense, as if it were a special faculty like the
perception or understanding. This is, of course, a confusing use of
terms, like his use of the term “Synthesis”; but it should cause no
difficulty provided the two uses are known beforehand. The term “Ideas”
is also used in two senses. In this place it has a special use. While
usually an idea means any thought, here it means the synthetic form of
the special faculty of the reason, just as the categories are the form
of the understanding, and space and time the form of sense-perception.
The synthetic forms of the Reason are the three Ideas, viz., God, the
soul, and the totality of the universe.
What is the office of this special faculty of the Reason and its
Idea-forms? They represent Kant’s way of stating the natural tendency
of the human mind to get from its knowledge the greatest possible unity
with the greatest possible extension. Consciousness is a synthesis
which is never satisfied in being partial and incomplete. The partial
syntheses of its faculties of perception and understanding do not
satisfy it. Perception and understanding tell us nothing about God,
about the soul, and about the totality of the universe, for these
faculties are fettered to experience. Yet God, the soul, and the
totality of the universe are very important matters. So the Reason
leaps over the boundaries of experience, and thinks it is justified
in poaching in the territory forbidden to knowledge. The Reason is
not content with the partial and relational knowledge of mathematics
and of physical science, but it would deal with the unrelated and the
unconditioned. Indeed, we need only search our own minds to see how
true Kant is to fact. We find that we ourselves are not satisfied with
conditioned things, which must be explained by other conditioned things.
On the contrary, we long to know the absolutely unconditioned, which
alone will explain all conditions. We are forever seeking to make our
synthesis complete, and to render a rational and complete account of
what is nevertheless impossible to our knowledge.
Now it is evident that the Ideas of the Reason are not indispensable
to knowledge in the sense that the categories of the understanding and
the forms of sense perception are indispensable. Cause, time, and space
enter into all knowledge. Physical and mathematical laws exist as facts,
and need no proof for their existence. Kant asked about them, “How are
synthetic _a priori_ judgments possible?” But concerning the judgments
of the Reason, he asks a different question: not _How_ are they
possible, but _Are_ they possible?
The Reason and its three Ideas give what Kant calls transcendent
knowledge in distinction from the transcendental knowledge of the
understanding and its categories. By transcendent knowledge he
means that which is beyond the limits of possible experience; while
transcendental knowledge refers to knowledge about the necessary
principles of experience. Kant, however, is willing to acknowledge that
the Ideas of the Reason have a legitimate use. They are “regulative
principles” in that, by showing what our limitations are, they also
show that human knowledge is not the final goal. Their illegitimate
use appears when they make a show of being true knowledge. Both science
and theology will be the gainers when the Ideas are no longer used
illegitimately. Kant says that he has destroyed knowledge of God and
the soul “in order to make room for faith.”
=The Idea of the Soul.= Rational psychology had taught that the soul
had direct and intuitive knowledge of itself. From the time when
Descartes formulated his famous “_Cogito ergo sum_,” this conception
of self-consciousness has been popular. I can have myself as the direct
object of my own thought. Upon the basis of such assumed intuitive
knowledge that each soul has of itself, the Rationalists had ascribed
the qualities of simplicity, substantiality, spirituality, and
immortality to the soul.
Kant denies that we have any such self-knowledge. If we turn back to
his definition of knowledge we find it to be a synthesis of a manifold.
Knowledge, to be knowledge, must (1) be based upon sensations, and on
that account (2) consist only of phenomena. The soul is not phenomenal,
but the deepest kind of reality. How can I have knowledge of my
soul? The soul is spiritual and not phenomenal, even according to the
Rationalistic philosophy. Therefore the soul is precluded from being
an object of knowledge. Furthermore the Rationalists’ conception of
the soul as simple and immortal would make it an impossible object of
knowledge. An object of knowledge is not simple, but is the unity of
a manifold. The unifying or synthesizing function is not an object to
itself. Sensations are synthesized by space and time into perceptions;
but space and time are not objects for the sensations. In understanding,
therefore, the “I think,” which synthesizes the perceptions into
judgment, cannot be an object for the understanding.
Kant points out that we must be careful to distinguish between
the transcendental and the empirical ego. We have referred to this
distinction already. In Kant’s criticism of knowledge he maintained
that there must be postulated a “synthetic unity of apperception,”
if knowledge is possible. But such an ego is only a postulate; we
can have no knowledge of it nor can we say what it is. We know that
the immediacy of experience or the sameness of knowledge from moment
to moment demands this. This is the transcendental ego, a kind of
universal synthetic background.
But this is different from the empirical ego, which I can know as an
object of experience. The empirical ego is what I can know of myself at
any time――a group of sensations, feelings, or thoughts. Now such groups
change from moment to moment. My knowledge of myself consists only of
my momentary, changing self. This changing self is not the immortal,
simple, and identical soul of which the Rationalists have been speaking.
The empirical self is complex and transitory; it is an object of
knowledge, and it is not therefore the same as the immortal soul. “I
think I” is impossible. “I think me” is possible. To make the “I” an
object is to commit a fallacy.
=The Idea of the Universe.= The contradiction in reasoning about
matters beyond the test of experience appears sharply with reference to
problems about the world as a totality. The inherent self-contradiction
of the reason attracted Kant’s attention very early with reference
to the problems of infinity. Such self-contradictions were put into
final shape by Kant in the _Critique_ in the four following so-called
antinomies:――
(1) The antinomy of creation. Thesis: The world must have a beginning
in time and be inclosed in finite space. Antithesis: The world is
eternal and infinite.
(2) The antinomy of immortality (or the simple). Thesis: The world is
ultimately divisible into simple parts which cannot be further divided.
Antithesis: The world is composed of parts subject to further division,
and no simple thing exists in the world.
(3) The antinomy of freedom. Thesis: There is freedom; there are
phenomena that cannot be accounted for by necessity. Antithesis: There
is no freedom, but everything takes place entirely according to the
necessary laws of nature.
(4) The antinomy of theology. Thesis: There is a necessary being either
as part or as cause of the world. Antithesis: There exists neither
within nor without the world an absolutely necessary being.
Critics have pointed out that these problems as thus stated by Kant are
not altogether cosmological problems, but include the contradictions of
psychology and theology; that is, all the contradictions of the Reason
when it is used dialectically. They show how both Rationalism and
Empiricism, as metaphysical theories, are in their nature contradictory.
When the universe is treated as an object of knowledge, contradictory
propositions can be maintained. The contradictories are both proved
and refuted. In respect to the first two antinomies, both theses and
antitheses are false; in respect to the last two, both theses and
antitheses may be true, if they refer to different worlds. If the Ideas
are applied only to the world of phenomena, they involve inexplicable
contradiction. The Idea of free will and unconditioned being may apply
to the world of Noumena; while the Idea of necessity and conditioned
being may apply to the world of phenomena.
=The Idea of God.= The Idea of the soul involves us in a
paralogism, the Idea of the universe as a whole involves us in
inextricable difficulties and contradictions; the Idea of God cannot be
demonstrated. Kant does not deny that God exists. He merely maintains
that we cannot make God an object of knowledge. The Idea of God is to
Kant the expression of the need of the Reason for a perfect unity.
In one of his earlier writings Kant had constructed a conception of
God, which is the same as appears in the _Critique_. God, purely as
a conception, is constructed by Kant as the sum total of reality, the
_ens realissimum_, who so includes all finite qualities in Himself that
they do not limit Him. He is the primal cause of the possibility of
all being. Now, can such an Idea have objective validity? No; the Idea
of a sum total of all that is conceivable is not an object of possible
experience. Only particular things or phenomena are realities for
us. God as the transcending total of particular things can have only
a conceptual reality and a validity for thought. The total has the
reality that any idea has. This is Kant’s general criticism of the
dialectic Idea of God.
But the general conception of God had played so important a part in
traditional philosophy that Kant felt it necessary to examine the three
important intellectual proofs for His existence in order to show their
falsity.
He takes up first _the ontological proof_ of God’s existence, which
originated with St. Anselm and had been accepted by the Rationalists.
The Idea of God is the idea of a perfect being. A being would not be
perfect who did not exist. Therefore the Idea of a perfect being must
include the quality “existence” among its predicates. The essence
of God must involve His existence, because the unreality of the _ens
realissimum_ cannot be thought. Kant replies thus: “Being is no real
predicate.” It is not a quality like love, power, or goodness, for it
adds nothing to the content of the subject. “A hundred dollars contains
no more content than a hundred possible or conceptual dollars.” We
cannot reason from the concept of the actual to its existence. The only
test of actuality is perception.
_The cosmological proof_, which Kant examines next, is an argument
from the existence of contingent phenomena to the existence of an
unconditioned reality. There must be some uncaused cause of existing
caused phenomena. Kant’s reply is this: Cause has no meaning if it
is applied beyond the bounds of experience. Within experience all
causes are the results of causes, and therefore an uncaused cause is a
contradiction in terms. Every existing thing is contingent. A necessary
being can be only a thought, and would not be powerful. It would not be
as powerful as a very great finite being which had existence.
_The physico-teleological argument_ comes next under Kant’s criticism.
This argument is based upon the inference that intelligent design found
in nature implies an intelligent designer of nature. Kant replies as
follows: Even granting that the world exhibits the design of beauty,
goodness, and purpose in its construction, such a beautiful, good, and
purposeful world would only prove the existence of an architect and
not the existence of a creator. Kant points out, however, that this
proof is the oldest, clearest, and the most popular; and he thinks it
deserves to be treated with respect on that account. The wonder and
magnificence of nature must free man from the oppression of any subtle
argument against the significance of nature. Nevertheless Kant feels
that this proof lacks intellectual cogency; for it is possible that
nature is freely acting and has power within itself.
The conclusion of the _Dialectic_, in which the Reason attempts through
its Ideas to soar beyond experience, is that such speculation has never
added to our knowledge. Mere conceptual thought cannot be knowledge of
the reality of the soul, God, and the world. Still, the Ideas of the
reason are an integral part of the human mind, and they must have their
purpose. They cannot be verified by experience, in which alone is truth,
but they can regulate experience. They are “regulative Ideas” in that
our experience is better governed if we act as if there were a soul,
as if God existed, and as if the world were a totality of related
things. Moreover, while speculation cannot prove the existence of God,
the immortality of the soul, and the freedom of the will, atheistic
speculation is unable to prove the contrary of all these propositions.
The Ideas of the Reason clear the way for faith based on morality.
=Conclusion.= The _Critique of Pure Reason_ is what its name
implies,――a criticism of our conscious powers. It points out the limits
and extent of human knowledge. In one sense, it is constructive; for
it establishes against skepticism the conclusion that knowledge has a
validity within its own limits. In another sense, it is destructive;
for it shows against dogmatism how futile our intellectual striving is
to explore many regions that have been considered the proper realm of
knowledge. No knowledge is possible that is transcendent――no knowledge
beyond the limits of experience. Experience ties our mental powers to
itself. Experience is the boundary of the understanding. Reality, the
Things-in-Themselves, are unknown and unknowable. But transcendental
knowledge is possible. Within experience there are the transcendental
factors that on the one hand transform sensations into phenomena, and
on the other give to these phenomena a validity for all mankind. These
transcendental factors make knowledge reliable, but they add not one
whit to its content. On account of these transcendental factors we
can be rational with one another and members of one world of humanity.
The value of knowledge is not lessened, but is defined. Our world of
phenomenal existence is now accurately assessed as a world of relative
reality. It is placed in its proper perspective. It is seen as our own
_interpretation_ of what is really real. This is very important; for
although the restricted form of our mental powers withholds us from
knowing reality, we may nevertheless think it. The pure intellection
of reality will be of value, if in some other way its contents can be
assured. Kant now points out that this assurance is found in the moral
will.
=The Problem of the Critique of Practical Reason: The Ethics of Kant.=
“Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration
and awe, the oftener and the longer we reflect upon them: the starry
heavens above and the moral law within.” In this classic sentence
Kant showed that he had no desire to humiliate the theoretical
reason, which is the understanding. He was merely assigning it to its
place among the powers of man, in order that it might do its proper
work more efficiently. The world of morality and the starry heaven
impressed Kant equally. Kant would not have the understanding chasing
will-o’-the-wisps. After his criticism of the understanding he turned
to the will, or as he calls it the practical reason, and criticized
its functions and scope. This ethical teaching of Kant appears in his
_Metaphysic of Morality_ and in the _Critique of Practical Reason_.
His early Pietistic education, his reading of Rousseau, his study
of the English moralists, influenced his theory of morals; while
his investigations into the history of civilization, his theoretical
philosophy, and his independent analysis of the ethical feeling marked
the route which his ethical development took. The world of morality
to Kant has primacy. In his theory it is the real world, for compared
to it the world of scientific phenomena, the world of the theoretical
reason, is relative.
The central idea in Kant’s theory of morals is that rational
spontaneity is exactly the same as freedom. This contrasts his
theory with Hedonism. The value of man’s life depends on what he does
spontaneously, not on what happens to him. This idea of freedom is the
central thought in all Kant’s discussions of society. In his theory
of government the republic is to be preferred to the monarchy, because
of the opportunity to its citizens of spontaneous freedom; in religion
the true church is composed of free beings worshiping God freely; in
education self-activity is the sole principle of growth. Ethics is
a system of the pure rational laws of freedom, just as science is a
system of the pure rational laws of nature. If ethics has real validity
its laws must be, as in science, _a priori_ or derived from the reason
itself, and synthetic or applicable to experience everywhere. If the
moral law be valid it must be indifferent as to its content, and yet
valid for all content irrespectively. The source of the principle
of morals is thus the same as that of science: it is _a priori_. The
principle of morals is universal in its application to experience,
just as the _a priori_ synthesis of knowledge is. However, just at that
point the difference is to be seen between the foundation of science
and that of morals――between the reason as pure and the reason as
practical. Reason in the form of knowledge is restricted to experience;
but reason in the form of the will, while applicable to experience,
is not restricted to experience. If the understanding is without the
content of experience, it is empty and useless. The understanding must
always be a synthesis of a manifold. On the other hand, the practical
reason needs no content. It is sufficient in itself. It need not be
obeyed anywhere nor have any concrete content in the phenomenal world.
It has no reference to what is but to what _ought to be_. The world
of morality and the world of phenomena are different worlds. The world
of morality is absolute reality, while the world of knowledge is only
relative. The world of morality is the unconditioned, while that of
knowledge is conditioned by experience. Morality applies not only
to human beings, but to all rational beings, if any other rational
beings exist. Knowledge, however, belongs to human beings alone. The
moral law has not its home in the empirical, but in the transcendent,
intelligible world, which to knowledge would be the world of
Things-in-Themselves.
=The Moral Law and the Two Questions concerning It.= The questions
of the _Critique of Practical Reason_ are the same as those of the
_Dialectic_: (1) Is there any _a priori_ synthesis? This is not the
question of the _Analytic_, which is, How is an _a priori_ synthesis
possible? (2) Can the human being be moral and still be a part of the
world of phenomena and necessity? We shall now comment on the first of
these problems. If the will has validity, it must be the expression of
some universal and necessary principle. Can we find any such _a priori_
principle in our consciousness?
1. _The First Question concerning the Moral Law._ If we search our
consciousness, we shall find that there are two classes of incentives
to action. The first are called the inclinations, or perhaps better
the impulses. We may will because we desire to gain something, of use,
pleasure, perfection, etc. Such an act of will is dependent upon the
object that arouses it. Such an act of will would not be an example
for any one else; for the circumstances that called it forth would be
likely to be different in each case. For example, there is no consensus
as to pleasure among individual men; and what is pleasant to one
is unpleasant to another. The same is true about objects of use and
ambition. In all these matters judgment does not help us in making our
selection, for people who are the most discriminating often are the
most unhappy and useless. All these things are indeed goods, but they
are goods for the moment――goods that are dependent on something else,
and not goods in themselves. They are legitimate ends enough, but they
are so transitory that they cannot be valid. It is evident that when
the will is governed by inclination, it is governed by an empirical
(_a posteriori_), and not by a universal and necessary (_a priori_)
principle. Such empirical principles are called by Kant hypothetical
imperatives.
Let us look to the reason itself to see if the principle of its
practice lies there; for it is certain that we shall not find the
principle of universal validity for our will among our impulses.
The reason is a spontaneous synthesis. It is a fact that any one
may verify who will search his consciousness――that man may will from
reason. The will may be impelled from within, and need not be compelled
from without. The will may be an imperative in itself, proclaiming
its right because it is reasonable, justifying itself because it is
reasonable, functioning because it is the function of reason. Then
is the will the expression of reason. It is the reason in practice.
The will is unconditioned and free because it is the unconditioned
reason acting. It is then autonomous. It has then validity because the
reason is universal and necessary. This kind of willing Kant calls the
categorical imperative. It is the moral law. It is a law unto itself,
and it is the only basis for morality because it is the universally
valid reason.
The categorical imperative is unique――there is nothing like it in
human nature. It is the one kind of willing that has absolute validity;
and that is because it is unique in having itself for its own end. The
conscience may be said to be its expression in the individual. Kant
formulates the valid command of the moral law as, “Act as if the maxim
from which you act were to become through your will a universal law
of nature.” The various maxims of morality, like “Thou shalt not lie,”
occupy the same position to the will that the categories do to the
understanding. They are the forms of the moral will. Actions should
proceed from maxims rather than from impulses, and the moral maxims are
adapted for all beings who act rationally. A specific act may become
good because the moral law, that inspires it, is good. Nevertheless
“nothing can possibly be conceived in the world or even out of it,
which can be called good without qualification, except a good will.”
The virtues or the gifts of fortune may be good and desirable; they
may also be evil and mischievous, if they are not the expression of the
moral will.
2. _The Second Question concerning the Moral Law._ This leads us to
the answer to the second question, How can such a purely necessary and
universal principle be effective in human life? Of what service to man
is a principle so formal that if the inclinations coöperate with it,
the act is no longer moral? The moral law is not only transcendental,
but it is transcendent, for it does not have experience as its content.
It is its own content. It is independent of all experience in three
ways: (1) In origin, it contains only a formal principle; (2) In
content, it contains only a formal principle; (3) In validity, it is
not concerned as to whether it is obeyed or not; it declares what ought
to be, even if what ought to be is never done. The question always
arises about Kant’s ethics, Of what service can such a remote and
formal principle be? Morality takes place in the world of experience;
and here is Kant’s principle of morality existing in the world of
unconditioned reality. Of the usefulness of such a principle Kant’s
explanation is not fully satisfactory. His ethics is fundamentally a
rigorism, from which he is unable to escape. Duty and inclination are
in antagonism. Only those acts of will are moral which are performed
solely from the sense of duty. In themselves the natural inclinations
are indifferent; when they oppose the moral will, they become bad; only
when they are inspired by the moral will are they of ethical service.
Moral action is therefore narrowed to that in which the imperative of
duty is consciously paramount.
“The friends whom I love, I gladly would serve, but to this
inclination incites me;
And so I am forced from virtue to swerve, since my act through
affection delights me.
The friends, whom thou lovest, thou must first seek to scorn,
for to no other way can I guide thee;
’Tis alone with disgust thou canst rightly perform the acts to
which duty would lead thee.”[57]
=The Moral Postulates.= Kant’s ethical theory points away from the
phenomenal world rather than toward it. To be sure, the natural
inclinations take the color of the moral law when they are inspired
by it; but the moral law tells us of the world of reality rather than
of the world of phenomena. The moral law shows to man that he is more
a resident of the world of reality than of that of phenomena. Man’s
nature is dual. Of its two sides――the theoretical and the moral――the
moral is primary. Fundamentally man is a willing agent rather than
a thinking being. He is a phenomenal being, bound to the laws of
natural necessity; but he is also a real unconditioned being, because
the unconditioned reason is his real self. What was implicated in
the _Critique of Pure Reason_ becomes explicit in the _Critique of
Practical Reason_. The understanding hints at what the will makes
plain. Human knowledge is a mixture of transcendental understanding and
empirical sensations. God’s knowledge would be pure understanding; the
knowledge of the brutes is pure sensations. Human morality, however,
contains a dualism; for the practical morality of man consists of
the formal moral law inspiring the sensibilities although not heeding
them. The will as pure reason is the activity of God; the will as pure
impulses is the activity of brutes. But the true realm of man is this
world of reason in which he is one with God, although he is at the same
time hampered by being part of the world of phenomena.
=1. The Postulate of Freedom.= The unconditioned moral law is the
basis of freedom for which all scientific knowledge seeks in vain. An
unconditioned will is a free will. The will based upon the reason is
based upon itself and is therefore free. The consciousness of the moral
law within us implies freedom in its exercise. The “I ought” implies
“I can.” We can have no knowledge of freedom, for in the eye of the
understanding only causal necessity rules. But the reason commands
as well as knows. It states what ought to be as well as what is. Its
mandate implies freedom, as its knowledge states existence. When we
will, we act as if we were free, and our freedom is a postulate which
cannot be proved to the understanding. Freedom is not an object of
knowledge, but an act of faith. Freedom as a postulate is the condition
of morality, and the primacy of the will over the pure reason is shown
in the fact that it can guarantee what the understanding cannot prove.
=2. The Postulate of the Immortality of the Soul.= The goal of the
inclinations is happiness. The goal of the will is virtue. There is
no relation or correspondence between the two in this world. A man
may be happy and still not virtuous; he may be virtuous and not happy.
Since a man belongs to both the world of free spirits and the world of
necessity, he is thwarted in reaching for his highest good in this life.
His highest good is the union of virtue and happiness. If this is to be
attained, another life must be guaranteed. Yet this is only a postulate
and not a proof. When man wills, he wills as if he were an immortal
being.
=3. The Postulate of the Existence of God.= Faith in reaching forward
must postulate God, as alone able to vouchsafe future harmony between
goodness and happiness and alone able to distribute justly the rewards
and punishments that are so disproportionate in this world. When I
will, I will _as if_ God existed. When I will, I create by my willing
my freedom, my immortality, and God’s existence. But because my will is
an unconditioned law of my real being, my faith in these things is well
founded.[58]
CHAPTER XI
THE GERMAN IDEALISTS
=Idealism after Kant.=[59] Kant’s criticism had been a fine dissection
of the processes of knowledge. He had laid scientific knowledge open
and separated it into its parts. In doing this he had acted in the
spirit of his time, which had been inaugurated by Lessing. His doctrine
became the point of departure of many differing systems. A modern
German professor in the University of Berlin has been wont to say,
“There are ten interpretations of Kant’s _Critique_, which are the ten
kinds of philosophy at the present time.” The incoherence of Kant’s
philosophy made it famous. He represented the first stage of a social
movement; and like all social movements the world over, the first
stage was critical, self-inconsistent, and destructive of tradition.
The second stage is the one upon which we now enter, and we shall
find it to be reconstructive along several lines. Criticism is always
an inducement to new systematization. In Germany, after Kant, there
was naturally, therefore, a great systematic movement which its
intellectually virile and many-sided life was ready to express. Culture
and philosophy went hand in hand. Jena was the centre of Kantianism and
was in close proximity to Weimar, the centre of German culture.
At the time that the philosophy of Kant became popular, the teaching
of Spinoza was resurrected from its long sleep and introduced into
Germany. Kant was the “all-crushing” critic; Spinoza was the dogmatic
mystic. Their opposition did not amount to a contradiction, but was of
the correlative sort. Kant and Spinoza became the two intellectual foci
about which revolved the thought of the generation after Kant. All the
succeeding philosophers show Kant’s influence upon them, for they all
accept his epistemology. They show the influence of Spinoza in varying
degrees.
The philosophers whom we shall now meet may be divided into groups.
The first group consists of Rheinhold, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel.
These took the lead in destroying the Kantian conception of the
thing-in-itself and in constructing a pure idealism. The second
group consists of Herbart and Schopenhauer. These tried in different
ways to develop a metaphysics of the thing-in-itself. A third group
consisted of the old Wolffian rationalistic school, which was, however,
unsuccessful in its opposition to the spread of the doctrines of
Kant and Spinoza. A summary of the leaders of the German thought
of this time would not be complete without mention, lastly, of
the miscellaneous group of literary Romanticists, whose writings
partook of the philosophical spirit. The influence of Spinoza is
especially prominent in this group. Jean Paul Richter (1763–1825)
was the forerunner of this movement, and it included the names of
Tieck, Wackenroder, the two Schlegels, Novalis, the two Romantic
women,――Dorothea and Caroline,――Schiller, and Goethe. The poet Schiller
did much to popularize Kant’s æsthetic and moral doctrines.
Illustration:
MAP SHOWING THE UNIVERSITY TOWNS
AND OTHER IMPORTANT PLACES CONNECTED WITH THE GERMAN IDEALISTS
=Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel.= This group of disciples of Kant can
be understood sympathetically only in the light of their age. They
were not philosophical adventurers, otherwise the great representative
of the age, Goethe, would not have associated with Schelling and Hegel
on equal terms. They stood for the revulsion of the period against
all external systems, and for the realization of a spiritual realm of
free spirits. They sought not a factitious and imaginary condition,
but tried rather to discover the essentials of the spiritual life.
They would reclaim reality spiritually, and their only defect was in
their haste in carrying out their principles. Fichte, Schelling, and
Hegel are sharers in one common movement. They tried systematically to
present the evolution of the world as an unbroken evolution of thought.
They went back to Kant, but they were bolder than he. They sought to
transcend the limitations of thought which he had laid down. They would
set thought free, and, gazing in upon their own spirits, they would
find there the whole infinite universe. The spiritual realm seemed to
them to be wider than any one had supposed. It was a self-governing
realm, quite different from the world of matter. History to them is
cosmic and develops under one law of progression. It is an upward
movement of assertions, negations, and syntheses. Life is cosmic
spirituality. For Fichte the spirit is a cosmic battle for moral ends;
for Schelling the spirit is a cosmic artistic construction, which
transforms the external and internal worlds into a work of living art;
for Hegel the cosmic spirit unfolds in a strict and rigorous logic,
whose consummation is thought of thought. But while Fichte, Schelling,
and Hegel look at the world each in his own way, they are members of
one common movement toward spiritual freedom, and toward the
reëstablishment of metaphysics.
=The Life and Writings of Fichte= (1762–1814).[60] Johann Gottlieb
Fichte was the most notable of the immediate disciples of Kant. In
contrast with the undisturbed and uneventful scholastic retirement of
his master, Fichte’s life looms up as a series of conflicts, sometimes
with extreme poverty and sometimes with hostile forces created by
his own stubborn and irascible disposition. Fichte’s external life
was throughout one of curious contrasts, both of tragedy and romance.
His love for the moral and theological appears in his early youth in
his voluntary self-denial and in his sermons to the geese which he
was herding. Again, he made preparation to become a preacher, but his
intellectual training in the university drove him to abandon it. He
became a necessitarian and tried to square his life with his philosophy,
although it weighed his heart down. Then came the so-called “Atheistic
Controversy” when he was professor at Jena, and his defiance of the
authorities and his dismissal. In the tumultuous days at Berlin he
turned his metaphysics into patriotic appeals, and would have joined
the army, but his death intervened. The inner development of Fichte,
too, was different from that of Kant. Kant’s inner development was
coincident with his long life. Fichte, on the other hand, at the age
of twenty-eight had read and accepted Kant’s philosophy, and four years
later had created his own. This was only slightly modified in his later
years in the direction of the pantheism of Spinoza. Kant’s life was
apart from the political current of his time, while his doctrine became
fundamental for all future philosophy. Fichte’s life and philosophy
were more expressive of his time, but less lasting in their influence.
Fichte is the philosophic preacher to his time; Kant is the instructor
of all time.
Fichte’s life may be divided into four periods, which are marked by
certain external events.
1. _His Education_ (1762–1790). He was the son of a poor ribbon-maker.
As a boy he worked for his father, and again at the equally humble
employment of herding geese. It was during this latter occupation
that his wonderful memory attracted the attention of a philanthropic
nobleman, who gave him means for an education. Fichte studied theology,
philosophy, and philology at Leipsic and Jena; but he had to face
extreme poverty again upon the death of his benefactor. In 1788 he got
a position as tutor in Zurich, and here he met Pestalozzi, Lavater,
and his future wife, a niece of the poet, Klopstock. During this period
his philosophy was a necessitarianism, which he had evolved from the
theology in which he was trained and his reading of certain books on
Spinoza.
2. _Discipleship of Kant_ (1790–1794). Fichte returned from Zurich
to Leipsic, and in the capacity of tutor in philosophy he assisted a
young man in the reading of Kant’s _Critique_. He was at once converted
heart and soul to the Kantian doctrine. In 1791 he called on Kant at
Königsberg and submitted to Kant his _Critique of Revelation_. The next
year he published this work, and by some fortunate accident his name as
author was omitted from the title-page. The work was attributed to Kant,
and was widely read as a masterpiece by Kant. Kant had to correct the
mistake, which, however, made the real author, Fichte, famous. So he
returned to Zurich in 1793 to marry Fräulein Rahn, who was herself now
in comfortable circumstances.
3. _His Life at Jena_ (1794–1799). The year 1794 was another
milestone in the biography of Fichte. In this year he was called to
Jena, then the principal university of Germany, to succeed Rheinhold.
In this year he published his philosophy in his best known work, the
_Wissenschaftslehre_. He remained at Jena only five years. At first his
popularity exceeded that of the popular Rheinhold, but he soon filled
his life with controversies. He quarreled with the students and the
clergy, and in 1799 the so-called “Atheistic Controversy” arose, in
which charges were brought against his teaching as atheism. Brooking no
criticism either of his teaching or of his official position, he defied
the authorities of the university and was dismissed.
4. _His Life at Berlin_ (1799–1814). In 1799 Fichte went to Berlin to
live. At first he had no academic affiliations, but he found a large
and sympathetic public, to whom he lectured. He was warmly received by
the circle of Romanticists,――the Schlegels, Tieck, and Schleiermacher.
His philosophical system got little development; but the influence
of Spinoza appeared in his teaching. He lectured upon the ethical and
religious aspects of his philosophy, and upon political and social
subjects. In 1808 he delivered his famous _Addresses to the German
People_. In 1810 the University of Berlin was founded and he was called
to the chair of philosophy, but he was connected with the university
only two years. For in 1812 came the call to arms, and Fichte was with
difficulty dissuaded from enlisting. He remained in Berlin and preached
to the soldiers in camp. His wife volunteered as hospital nurse and
contracted a fever, from which she recovered. Fichte, however, who
nursed her through her sickness, died of the disease in 1814.
=The Influences upon Fichte’s Teaching.= Any estimate of the
influences upon Fichte would be distorted that did not recognize the
calibre of the man himself. Fichte was essentially a puritan reformer.
He was impetuous and life-loving, but withal a simple-minded man. All
the philosophical influences which he was capable of feeling would
naturally be turned by him into ethical and religious sermons to reach
the life of men. He must be thought of as the crusader armed with
abstract truths, which he wields with a giant’s strength for the moral
uplift of man.
It was natural then that the two principal influences upon Fichte’s
doctrine should be Spinoza and Kant. To be sure, such writers as
Lessing, Rousseau, and Pestalozzi furnished him much material in his
early years, and the Romanticists in his later years. His wife, Johanna
Rahn, was also a source of power to him, and through her influence
after their marriage his aim became clearer and his character lost much
of its harshness. But the two great influences upon Fichte were the
two great philosophical forces of this time, Spinoza and Kant. Fichte’s
philosophy has been described as “Spinoza in terms of Kant,” and also
as “an inverted or idealistic Spinozism.” The influence of Spinoza upon
Fichte’s thought is seen at both ends of his life. At the beginning he
was an amateurish Spinozist. He found that the theological training of
his boyhood was a necessitarianism like Spinozism. He lost his faith
in Christianity, and he was unhappy because he found Spinoza’s doctrine
of necessity was intolerable and yet unanswerable. Then he read Kant
and found a solution of his difficulty without having to change the
doctrine of Spinoza. For Kant had placed behind the necessitated world
the free spirit. In the last period of Fichte’s life the influence of
the mystical side of Spinozism appeared, through Fichte’s intercourse
with the Romanticists in Berlin.
=Why We Philosophize.= To Fichte philosophy was distinctly a personal
problem, and we feel in all his words that he is wrestling with his own
nature. He found in his mind two very different classes of ideas, and
he was certain that philosophical problems arise from their antagonism.
On the one hand there are the ideas about the world of physical nature,
which are only our experiences under the law of necessity. On the
other hand there are the ideas of the individual consciousness, which
are contingent and voluntary. Which of these two classes of ideas is
primal? Fichte felt that all philosophical curiosity arose from the
contrast of these two classes; the solution of philosophy and the
satisfaction of our philosophical curiosity would be reached only by
the reduction of one class to the other. Fichte calls the philosopher
a dogmatist who seeks to reduce voluntary ideas, which compose
our individual consciousness, to the necessitated series. Spinoza
sought to do this, and the philosophy of Spinoza depressed Fichte as
intolerable. But there is the alternative to the philosopher to explain
the necessitated series by voluntary consciousness. This is idealism.
The moment a man begins to reflect, he must choose between dogmatism,
_i. e._ necessitarianism, and idealism. He is always confronted by an
Either-Or, a choice between freedom and necessity.
=The Moral Awakening.= In his early life Fichte saw to his despair no
escape from the philosophy of necessity. When he read the _Critique of
Pure Reason_ a great light came to him. He flung himself immediately
upon the side of idealism. He saw that necessitated events were
phenomena, and therefore the creations of consciousness. Consciousness
cannot be the slave of necessitated events. Kant’s philosophy was to
Fichte a work of art of the free spirit. The world cannot contain man
and compel him. Man may be oppressed by the world, but he can see that
such oppression is not real. In his _Vocation of Man_ (1800) he gave
in autobiographical terms the story of the awakening and development
of the individual mind. At first one is overwhelmed by the sight of
the necessitated events of the world. Next he comes to believe that
all events are mere appearances, and he is weighed down by the still
greater despair that no reality whatever exists. Finally he finds the
rock of hope amid the sea of appearances. He finds an ultimate and
irreducible fact in the categorical imperative of duty. “Thou must”
is above necessity, above the phenomena that are always reducible to
other phenomena. Duty means the freedom of my inner life. That there
is always lodged in me a duty to perform, shows that I am superior to
phenomena, that I am a citizen of the supersensuous world. This “heaven
does not lie beyond the grave, but already encompasses us, and its
light dawns in every human heart.” “That I myself am a freely acting
individual must be the fundamental thought of every true philosopher.”
Every one must therefore choose between dogmatism and idealism, if
he would not fall a victim to skeptical despair. Two motives will
determine one’s choice: one theoretical, the other practical. The
primary motive is the practical one, and since dogmatism and idealism
are equally consistent systems, man’s choice will depend mainly on
the manner of man he is. If the individual has a high sense of duty,
he will be disposed to believe in his moral control over all his
experiences, however much they may seem to be necessitated. Conscious
freedom will seem to him to be the only satisfactory explanation of
practical life. But then there will be the additional theoretical
motive. The man that chooses either dogmatism or idealism must
theoretically make his world consistent. The dogmatist cannot explain
the conscious facts in terms of determinism; but, Fichte thinks, the
idealist can explain the necessitated facts in terms of consciousness.
At any rate the idealist has the task of rethinking his scientific
knowledge.
=The Central Principle in Fichte’s Philosophy.= How does Fichte attempt
to draw up a consistent theory so that he can overcome the dualism
between the necessitated facts of physical nature and the free states
of consciousness? As an idealist he must rethink the knowledge of
science. But how is this to be done? What principle will he place
at the central point of consciousness, so to illuminate the manifold
problems of life that life’s dualism will prove to be only apparent
after all? Here as answer we find the outcome of Fichte’s struggle with
his own nature. He believed that the principle of the true philosophy
of life comes from the study of consciousness. The nature of the Ego
is the subject for philosophical study. What is the essence of the
Ego or the personality? It is activity, will, vitality; not intellect
and changelessness. But can we not get beneath the activity of the
personality and ask, Why does it act? Yes, _because it ought_. When we
have said this we have said all. The essence of the vitality of the Ego
is moral obligation. _Ought_ is the foundation of life; it is ultimate
ground of existence. If we ask why there is an ought, the only answer
is, there ought to be. The duty exists that you and I shall have a
duty. In order to be, the Ego must act; and it acts in response to duty.
This activity is free activity. The Ego is unconditioned because it
is acting out its own nature. Thus when Fichte is talking about the
Ego, the ought, the moral law or freedom, he is talking about the same
thing in different guises. Fichte placed moral freedom as the central
principle of metaphysics and tried to rethink the world of necessitated
experiences in terms of moral freedom. He attempted to construct a
monistic view of life, of which the free moral personality should be
its inner vitality. Monism and liberty was Fichte’s war-cry. Reality is
in us; there can be no reality independent of us. The morally free Ego
is the central principle of life.
Such a message to the German people would appeal to two sides of their
nature. It would appeal as a metaphysics to the mysticism in their
blood; it would find also a practical response in the humanitarian and
revolutionary spirit of that revolutionary time. Be up and be doing,
for reality is not what people commonly think it is. Your environment
is only apparently an independent existence beyond your control.
Reality is not static. Rethink it and make it dynamic. Not being, but
acting, and free acting, is reality. Such was Fichte’s sermon to the
Germans of his day. His theory can be stated in the terms of the Greek
Heracleitus, “All things change,” provided the change be thought of
as moral activity. To philosophize was to Fichte to think the universe
as free moral activity, to see inactivity nowhere, to free ourselves
from dualism and to participate in the universal freedom. Freedom is
higher than truth. Existence is derived from thought in action, and
thus our existence and our environment may be shaped by us. Thought is
essentially action, and we shall educate the world only through our own
activity.
=The Moral World.= Fichte had a philosophy, the principles of which he
repeated over and over again as a kind of habit. He was a man of few
but great ideas. He was inspired by some general conceptions which he
did not carefully elaborate. His philosophy can be expressed in few
words, and his point of view is not difficult to feel. Nevertheless,
there is great difficulty in restating his meaning. He maintained that
Kant’s early philosophy was not truly Kantian, and that he, Fichte,
represented the true Kant. In taking this stand he was obliged to do
two things: to explain away the thing-in-itself, and to rethink the
world of necessitated nature in terms of the activity of the morally
free Ego.
If we start from the heart of existence――the active Ego――the world
spreads out before us as a system of reason which has been created by
the activity of the Ego. On this account Fichte’s philosophy has been
called subjective idealism. In such a scheme of things there is no
place for the Kantian thing-in-itself. All Being is only an extended
product of the active Ego and the object of its knowledge. The Ego acts
because it must, and then reflects upon its activity. Its knowledge of
its activity is in grades from sense-perception to complete knowledge.
Now Kant had referred sensations to the thing-in-itself as their source.
But this is unnecessary, since sensations are only the activity of
the Ego. Sensations are the groundless, free act of the Ego. They
appear to be “given,” because they appear to be foreign and coming
from without. They are, however, only the lowest form of the activity
of the personality――they are unconscious self-limitation of the Ego.
The sensations have no ground that determines them, but as the lowest
form of the activity of the Ego they are absolutely free. Thus the
thing-in-itself becomes superfluous, since it is not necessary to
account for sensations.
The next task for Fichte is to rethink the series of necessitated
events of physical nature. If we will look at these events from the
point of view of the willing Ego, which is reality, they will be seen
to be products of purposive action. Together they will make a world
of connected rational activities rather than a mechanical system. The
necessity in nature is not causal, but teleological. It is not the
necessity linking the series of events together, but rather the linking
of each event to the acting Ego, and thus the connecting of the whole
series. Take the idealist’s position and this illuminating thought will
come to you: a thing is not because something else is, but in order
that something else may be. As moral beings we have tasks. As moral
beings we are the impersonation of duty, and duty is reality. These
phenomena that so trouble us because we think them necessitated are
only contingent upon the performance of our duty. The existence of
one thing is not to be explained by the existence of another, but by
the existence of me, an Ego. Phenomena are little steps toward great
ends. When I rethink the world I see no causal relationship, but the
teleological means for the achievement of purposes by striving souls.
History and nature――these are the material created by human beings for
their own activity. We not only create our human drama, but we create
also the stage upon which it is performed. Being is not the cause of
Doing, but Being is created for the sake of Doing. Whatever is, is to
be explained by what ought to be. “The world is the theatre of moral
action.” “Nature is the sensible material of duty.”
=God and Man.= If Fichte regarded the human personality from this moral
height, he would naturally give a new meaning to God, the absolute
reality. God is not a substance, a something that “is.” God is the
universal moral process, the moral world-order. God is the Universal
Ego, a free, world-creating activity. God was conceived by Fichte as
Matthew Arnold’s “something not ourselves that makes for righteousness.”
When I find in myself that duty is reality and not this or that
fixed and crystallized thing, when I find that my real self is moral
functioning and not a tangible form of flesh and bones, then I take
the next step. I then find that God is universal duty, universal moral
functioning, in which I am participating. We are not only part of
God――yea, we are He. As the Holy Writ says, “Ye are Gods.” The absolute
Ego manifests Itself in our poor finite Egos. How dignified our humble
lot is made by thinking that in our acting, God is acting! We are
fighting God’s battle, and His victory is not won except as we win.
Duty in us is the clarion voice of God, and we are persons so far as
we express that voice. It matters little whether I speak of my own duty
or the moral purpose of the world. They are the same thing.
This enjoined labor upon every rational soul to perform his duty of
reaching high ideals, through his humble tasks, of “fighting the good
fight and keeping the faith,” is to Fichte the meaning of coming to a
consciousness of one’s self. What is myself, my real self? It is not
this phenomenal existence with its appearance of necessity. It is the
eternal and everlasting duty within me. What is it to think myself?
It is to think my duty; and to think duty is to think God. When I
come to consciousness of myself, the cosmic order is coming so far to
self-consciousness. Reality is so far attained. History is the record
of this process of the moral order coming to self-consciousness.
In his later teaching Fichte succumbed to the victorious Spinozism
of the period. He conceived God as an Ego whose infinite impulse is
directed toward Himself; he conceived finite things as products of
this infinitely active consciousness. The finite products find their
vocation in imitating the infinite producer, which imitation consists
not in the activity of producing other finite things through the
categorical imperative, but in the “blessed life” of sinking into the
infinite.
=What a Moral Reality involves.= Since reality is this process of
moral development, its conditions will arise out of itself and be
its own creation. Since the world is reason coming to itself, it must
develop its own conditions out of its original task. All the acts of
history must be explained as the original “deed-act,” as Fichte calls
it. Fichte thought that the whole business of philosophy consists in
showing what is involved in this original “deed-act” of consciousness,
this attempt of consciousness to think itself. Since self-consciousness
is reality, this will be the same as showing what reality involves.
1. In the first place, consciousness always involves the consciousness
of something else. To use Fichte’s technical language, the Ego posits
itself (since it is a moral process) and in the same act it posits a
non-Ego (which is the necessary object of consciousness). “The absolute
Ego asserts a distinguishable Ego against a distinguishable non-Ego.”
It is like a boy who feels the call to become a lawyer. He asserts
himself in that call, and at the same time in that assertion he creates
his life’s career. His career in the law is his non-Ego. Both the
Ego and the non-Ego are creations of that absolute Ego, which is the
ever surging duty or God. While both the Ego and the non-Ego are the
creations of that absolute Ego, which is cosmic duty or God, yet each
limits the other. Ego and non-Ego are correlative terms; both originate
in the free act of God. The world is, therefore, the creation of
the real self as the condition of its own activity. It even creates
its sensations as the given materials of its knowledge. The world is
the material of duty put into sense forms. While we create matter in
order that we may be active in it, the spatial and temporal forms, its
categories, limit our activities.
2. In the second place, this awakening of the Ego to a consciousness
of itself involves a curious contradiction. Duty is by nature
contradictory. Duty calls me to know myself and to perform my task,
and yet in that call duty prevents the task from being performed. In
attempting to know duty completely I am always under the condition of
an opposing and limiting non-Ego. The non-Ego is essential to the Ego
and at the same time thwarts the Ego’s full knowledge of itself. So
long as the non-Ego exists, no complete knowledge of myself is possible.
A limiting non-Ego makes the Ego limited, and therefore prevents
complete knowledge and fulfillment of duty. Duty calls upon us to
perform a task, but under conditions such that it cannot be performed.
So long as the boy strives in his legal profession, duty appears; but
so long is duty rendered incomplete. Moral progress is endless, but
that only shows how contented we must be with the process of striving
and not with some static condition. To strive morally is reality; the
goal is nowhere. The contradiction is seen in the eternal contrast
between what is and what ought to be, between the moral task and the
actual performance. We are under the requirement to perform, and in the
requirement is the restraint. The dialectic process is endless. First
there is the stage which Fichte calls the Thesis in the call of the
absolute Ego. The next stage is the Antithesis, seen in the mutually
limiting Ego and non-Ego. The next stage is the Synthesis, in which
some accomplishment is gained, but which becomes only the Thesis for
another Antithesis; and so on infinitely. The terms Thesis, Antithesis,
and Synthesis are important, for they are employed by Fichte’s
successors, Schelling and Hegel.
=Romanticism.=[61] “We seek the plan of nature in the outside world.
We ourselves are this plan. Why need we traverse the difficult roads
through physical nature? The better and purer road lies within our own
mind.” (Novalis.)
Romanticism was a great European movement which lasted about a century
from 1750 to 1850; and it would be perfectly justifiable to speak of
the intellectual period in Germany from Lessing to Heine as Romanticism.
Rousseau and the French Revolutionists, Ossian, Scott, Wordsworth,
Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats, and Wagner were in the forefront of
this world-wide movement. The Storm and Stress Period was a phase of
it; and so even was the Period of Classicism that followed. Goethe and
Schiller were Romanticists, and Classicism was only an episode in their
lives. The Period of German Classicism (1787–1805) was different from
the Classicism of the seventeenth century, because it was thoroughly
infected with Romantic germs. If one is to take account of the
different phases of German thought after Lessing, one mentions first
the Storm and Stress Period, then Classicism, and then the Romantic
movement proper from 1795 to 1850. Some of the literary names connected
with the Romantic movement have already been mentioned,――Richter, Tieck,
♦Wackenroder, Novalis, the Schlegels, Schiller, and Goethe. Fichte,
Schelling, and Hegel are the philosophers of this Romantic movement and
embody its spirit in different degrees. The true philosophical exponent
of it is Schelling.
Romanticism is an accidental and inadequate name for this world-wide
literary and philosophical movement. In general it means the exalting
of the individual, “who admits no law above himself.” The Romantic
individuality is dominated by unrestrained fancy, is animated by
feeling and passion, and prefers the vague and mystical to the clear
and defined. In literature Romanticism is contrasted with Classicism.
The Classicist emphasizes the type, the Romanticist the individual. The
Classicist defers to traditional form and law; the Romanticist has no
common canon even with other Romanticists except the right to disagree.
The only common principle among Romanticists is subjective――the truth
of the individual intuitions, which in the case of the historical
Romanticists found expression in the play of fiercely egoistic
wills seeking self-realization. The historical Romantic movement
was a passionate and mighty reaction against the previous shallow
intellectual life with its narrow conventions. Romanticism was a revolt
against the period of the Enlightenment, which scorned what it could
not define. These Romanticists were discontented with typical ideas
and with logical reasoning about them. They challenged the universe,
because it was not obedient to their egoistic cravings.
It is very clear what the dangers as well as the greatness of this
German Romanticism were. The dangers of the movement lay within itself,
in its aristocratic exclusiveness, its reluctance to face the forces
of evil, its lack of strength and of firmness of character. Yet the
age itself may be largely responsible for these. Its strength lay also
within, in its deepening of self-consciousness, in its rejuvenating and
ennobling the whole expanse of being, in its intellectual conception of
man’s most intimate relations to himself, to his companions, and to the
world around him. Sometimes, indeed, the spiritual force of this small
band shows itself quite capable of strong action in the outer world.
Napoleon himself ascribed his downfall not primarily to diplomacy or
to the bayonet, but to the resistance of the German Ideologists.
=Goethe as a Romanticist.= We have already spoken of the resurrection
of Spinoza’s doctrine and its acceptance as a model by this time. The
Romanticists, following Spinoza, conceived of nature as a unity in
which the divine manifests itself in its fullness. Nature is Reason
in Becoming. So fitting, indeed, for the time was Spinoza’s pantheism
that Goethe, the literary exponent of the period, made it the central
principle of his poetic thought. Goethe can be understood only as the
Romantic Spinoza. The philosophy that underlies Goethe’s work is noted
here as an example of the Romantic movement.
Like all the Romantic philosophy, Goethe’s philosophy was a personal
revelation, and not a formulated doctrine for universal application.
Like all the Romanticists, Goethe was a highly strung personality, and
his philosophy was conceived to be true by himself only for himself.
He did not look upon the trivialities and the conventions of life as
mere limitations of his personality, but as a fall from truth. _Truth
is realized by man when he is in vital interchange with the universe._
Therefore Goethe was in full agreement with Spinoza in longing for
emancipation from human littleness and in his desire for the infinite.
Goethe differed from Spinoza’s pantheism in his own way; for Goethe
conceived man to have an independent function in the infinite. Man
makes his contribution to history and does not merely passively
appropriate the products of the world around himself. Man reacts upon
the world, he resists it, and becomes alive to the joy of it.
To Goethe the world had a soul, because the world gives clearness
to the human soul. Nature shows how closely she is related to us by
disclosing to us her inmost soul. Here in Goethe is a mysticism in
modern garb, an artistic view of life. Besides, the world expresses
human experiences on a large scale, and the way to nature’s heart
is not to go behind nature-phenomena, but through them. The facts
of nature are real, and our own life is like nature. Both move in
prescribed orbits, but both are empty if the connection between them
is severed. We find therefore the secret of our life by returning
to nature, and this is a return to the spiritual whole of things.
At different times Goethe was pantheist, naturalist, and theist.
He believed that all finite life is divine, and is a synthesis of
opposite forces, in which individuality has a place. Humanity is ruled
by necessary types, yet within them the individual is free. Such free
individuals take their objects from the world, spiritually endow these
objects, and thus make art and ethics very close to nature.
=Romanticism in Philosophy.=[62] The Romantic movement was
intrinsically speculative and naturally had its representatives
in philosophy, which is systematic speculation. Fichte and Hegel,
but especially Schelling, are the philosophical exponents of the
revolutionary spirit of the age. All three were demonstrators
in philosophy of the truths and dreams held by ardent souls, but
Schelling’s system reflected the spiritual upheaval. Fichte belongs
to the Romantic movement inasmuch as he strives for the infinite, but
Fichte separates himself from that movement by distinguishing between
consciousness and its content. The true Romantic spirit appears in
Schelling――the impulse to revel in intuitions, in symbolism, to run
riot first in nature and art, and afterwards in religion. The Romantic
philosophers were friends and sympathizers of the Romanticists, living
in the same city, sometimes in the same house, and were members of the
same spiritual family. But it must be remembered that there was not
one Romanticist leader with many imitators, but that each Romanticist
followed out his own line. When we speak of Schelling as a Romantic
philosopher we mean that he gives the speculative tendency of the many
Romanticists his own clearer definition and formulation. The background
of Schelling’s philosophy is the source of the Romanticists’ motives.
It may be stated under three headings:――
(1) Man’s ideal is to expand his soul until it becomes one with God.
(2) There is no Thing-in-Itself. The finite world is only a limitation
of the ego.
(3) Man and the nature world are essentially one. Man has a knowledge
of nature when he has a knowledge of himself. In reading his own
history he reads the history of nature. The Romanticist drew a veil
from the face of nature and found there his own spirit.
=The Life and the Writings of Schelling= (1775–1854).[63] Of
Schelling’s long life of seventy-nine years, the fifteen years from
1795 to 1810 were the most important productive period. Like Berkeley,
he was a many-sided genius, and began to write brilliantly in his early
years. He published his first treatise at sixteen years, and before he
was twenty he published several essays of distinct merit on Fichte’s
philosophy, the success of which led to his call to the chair of
philosophy at Jena. All his technical works were written in an academic
atmosphere. After 1812 he, so fond of writing, became silent. He even
ceased to deliver lectures at the University of Berlin when he found
that notes of them were published without his consent. Hegel, in
commenting on Schelling, said that Schelling liked to carry on his
thinking in public.
Schelling and Fichte may be studied together because they are alike
in developing one side of Kant’s doctrine. But their careers were
very different. Contrasted with Fichte’s life of poverty, struggle,
self-created antagonisms, long-delayed victory, and devotion to
rigorous morality, is Schelling’s life of early academic success,
prosperity, and romantic friendships. The life of Kant was one of inner
development and outward routine; that of Fichte of early formulated
thought and external warfare. Schelling’s life, on the other hand, does
not strike us as one of development, either externally or subjectively.
It was rather a series of changes. He looked upon his own philosophy
as a development, but its linkage is thread-like, due to his wonderful
imagination and mobility of thought. With his great suggestive
power, he depended more upon analogy than logic; his argument and
his philosophy lie before us as if ever in process of continuous
readaptation. Schelling possessed all the fervor and insight of
the Romanticists, and all their egoism and caprice. It is even more
difficult to characterize his philosophy than that of Spinoza. He was
monist, pantheist, and evolutionist; parallelist, theosophist, and
believer in freedom; he accepted the doctrine of the Trinity; in all
this he was the true Romanticist. Schelling’s philosophy of nature
is intelligible only in the light of the great artistic ferment of
his time and as the expression of his strong artistic personality.
His ideal of artistic insight into nature became for him his idea
of science. Reality is nature, and nature is a work of art, self
composed and self renewing. The endeavor of Schelling was to fashion
all human existence into artistic form. At first he looked upon nature
as rational, but later he was impressed with its irrationality.
Schelling’s life may be divided into six periods on the basis of the
changes of his thought:――
1. _Earlier Period_ (1775–1797). Schelling was the son of the
chaplain of a cloister school near Tübingen, and was educated in
history and speculative science in the university of that town. After
his university education he held the position of tutor in a nobleman’s
family at Leipsic for two years. During this time he listened to
lectures at the University of Leipsic on medicine and physics. Before
he was twenty he had published several notable essays on speculative
matters, among them _The Ego as a Principle in Philosophy_; and in 1797
_Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature_. These led to his call to a chair
in the University of Jena. Schelling was early acquainted with the
doctrine of Leibnitz, but the most powerful influences upon him at this
time were Kant and, especially, Fichte.
2. _The Philosophy of Nature_ (1797–1800). Schelling was called to Jena
through the influence of Goethe, Schiller, and Fichte; and it was here
that he completed what he had begun at Leipsic――the supplementation
of Fichte’s philosophy with a _Philosophy of Nature_ (written 1798).
He was colleague of Fichte and afterwards a helpful friend of Hegel.
Jena was then the centre of the Romantic movement, the moving spirit
of which was Caroline, the wife of August Schlegel. Schelling was very
successful at Jena as lecturer, and his publications at this time were
very many.
3. _The Transcendental Philosophy_ (1800–1801). While still at Jena
he felt the influence of Schiller, who had united the ideas of Kant
and Goethe into an Æsthetic Idealism. Under this influence Schelling
reconstructed the Fichtean philosophy of the Ego on a Romantic basis.
4. _The Philosophy of Identity_ (1801–1804). Schelling now undertook to
put his recast philosophy of Fichte upon the basis of Spinozism. This
caused a break between him and Fichte and Hegel. In 1803 he married
Caroline, the divorced wife of August Schlegel and the idol of the
Romantic circle, and the same year accepted a call to the University
of Wurzburg, where he remained three years (1803–1806).
5. _The Philosophy of Freedom and God_ (1804–1809). The doctrine of
Schelling now became mystical and showed the influence of Boehme. In
1806 Schelling was called to the Academy of Munich.
6. _The Philosophy of Mythology and Revelation_ (1809–1854). This may
be well called Schelling’s period of silence, so far as publication was
concerned. He who had poured forth his thoughts in print now became
averse to publishing anything. He accepted the call to Munich in 1806
and remained there, excepting his seven years at Erlangen, thirty-five
years (until 1841). During this time he was much under the influence
of Aristotle, neo-Platonism, and the Gnostics. He had first an official
position at the Academy of Munich; then he spent seven years as teacher
at the University of Erlangen (1820–1827); and in 1827 he entered the
newly founded University of Munich. In 1841 he was called to Berlin to
counteract the Hegelian movement, and he became a member of the Academy
with the privilege of lecturing at the University. He was now sixty-six,
and he spent the remaining years in elaborating his system. He died in
1854.
=A Brief Comparison of Fichte and Schelling as Philosophers.= We have
already spoken of the relation of Fichte and Schelling to the Romantic
movement. What is their relation as philosophers? Fichte’s idealism
is commonly called subjective because of his emphasis upon the Ego
at the expense of the non-Ego. In non-technical terms Fichte gave no
adequate philosophy of nature; for his assumption was that nature is
only material for the reason. Nature to Fichte was only the stage upon
which the reason could act. Fichte’s keen insight into human affairs
blinded him to the meaning of nature. The contribution of Schelling to
the philosophy of nature was not therefore unwelcomed by Fichte; for
he saw that such a philosophy could easily be developed from his point
of view, provided nature be regarded as a unity in the service of the
reason. _In brief, the development of Schelling over Fichte was this_:
(1) Schelling added a science of nature to Fichte’s science of mind;
(2) Then he transformed Fichte’s philosophy of mind into an æsthetic
philosophy of mind; (3) Then he tried in several successive attempts
to find a common metaphysical ground for his own philosophy of nature
and his recast philosophy of mind. While the method of Schelling was
not different from that of Fichte, his general motive was different;
for to Schelling the universe must not be regarded as the creation of
an active moral Ego, but as having an existence of its own. While for
Fichte to think is to produce, for Schelling it is to reproduce. To
the investigating mind of Schelling experience and observation are
the sources of knowledge; yet it must not be inferred that Schelling’s
philosophy was inductive or that he _derived_ the Ego from the non-Ego,
as if the Ego had been evolved from the non-Ego. These were the days
before the modern theory of evolution. Mind does not have its source
in nature; on the contrary, mind and nature have a common source in
the Reason. They have a parallel existence and develop according to
the same law. Nature is existing Reason, mind is thinking Reason.
=Schelling’s Philosophy of Nature.= Schelling started with Kant’s
early conception of nature as dynamic――that matter exists through the
interplay of the forces of attraction and repulsion. The human organism
is the highest expression of such dynamic activity. In the world there
is nothing dead. Matter is the lowest expression of dynamic activity;
the vegetable is next, the animal next, and the human brain is the
consummation of this process of productivity. Thus matter on the one
hand and mind on the other are the two poles of reason in nature.
Everything is life movement; everything is the oscillation between two
extremes, the interplay of contrary but correlative forces. In romantic
terms, nature is the Self in Becoming. Nature is a living whole which
manifests itself in an ascending scale of rich and varied forces
between matter and mind.
Such a conception met consistently the demands of this Romantic
period.[64] The high expectations of the physicists of the previous
century had been unfulfilled, for they had not succeeded in obtaining
a purely mechanical explanation of the derivation of life from matter.
Darwin was still to come. Medicine, which was at that time showing
great progress, offered no argument for the mechanical conception of
the world. There had, however, been many discoveries at this time in
electricity and magnetism; and these mysterious qualities seemed to
repudiate the mechanical theory. Vitalism thus usurped the place of
mathematics. Spinoza rather than Galileo was the model of the time.
Nature must be conceived as a unity in which the Divine manifests
itself in its fullness.
All these influences appear in Schelling’s first philosophical
undertaking. He states philosophically what Goethe states poetically.
Nature is not to be described in quantities nor measured by rule.
It transcends measurement. It is to be truly understood only as
productivity having organic life as its goal. Nature is rational life,
not mechanism. Everything has its logically determined place. Schelling
used the natural science of his time to show how the connection of
forces and their transformation into one another were the manifestation
of divine cosmic purpose. The gaps he filled in with teleological
conceptions. He used morphology with the same purpose as Goethe. He
felt the same need of a deeper meaning of nature than mathematics can
give――the need of a rational purposeful meaning. Goethe shows this
in his “Theory of Colors” when he looks upon colors not as atomic
movements, but as something essentially qualitative. Schelling, too,
was not an evolutionist in the modern sense, and he did not regard one
species as derived from another. He thought of species in an ascending
scale, to be sure; but he saw in each only the preliminary stage to the
next, and all as the divine expression. One accomplishment of nature
merely precedes another in time.
The nineteenth century looked back on this Romantic science as merely a
fit of excessive sentiment that has impeded the modern work of serious
investigation. Yet it may safely be said that the nineteenth century
has not settled the question, and that nature will always need a
rational as well as a mechanical explanation.
=Schelling’s Transcendental Philosophy.= _The Philosophy of Nature_
ends with the explanation of sensitivity; and it is there for Schelling
that the philosophy of knowledge begins. When three years later
Schelling was ready to reconstruct Fichte’s philosophy of mind――when he
was ready to break with Fichte――he was influenced by the great change
that had come over the thought of the Jena idealists. This change was
due curiously enough to the philosophy of the intimate friend of Goethe,
the poet Schiller. Here again the proximity of Weimar and Jena was
the cause of the reciprocal influence of philosophy and literature.
Schelling was the first to give this new thought its philosophical
expression. The theory of Schiller is an æsthetic idealism in which
the artistic function supplants the moral law of Fichte and Kant, and
is the fundamental reality of life.
When Schiller[65] reshaped Kant’s moral philosophy he was not
concerned, as might be supposed, merely with æsthetic results, but
with conduct, history, and the whole system of metaphysics. The problem
always uppermost in Schiller’s mind was the place of art and beauty
in the whole system of things. So when he tried to reconcile Kant’s
theoretical reason and Kant’s practical reason, he naturally looked to
art for such reconciliation. What is there that is both necessary and
free? Beauty! “Beauty is freedom in phenomenal appearance.” Æsthetic
contemplation apprehends the beautiful object, and yet in so doing
it transcends all the trammels and bonds of experience. The artistic
ecstasy is freedom in necessity. It is independent of moral as well as
intellectual rules. Beauty is as little an object of sense as of will.
It does not have the quality of need that belongs to sense phenomena,
nor of earnestness that accompanies morality. Sense is obliterated;
the stirrings of the will become silent. That which appears was called
by Schiller the “play impulse.” Toward the education of man Schiller
thus offered art, while Kant had presented religion. Art refines the
feelings, tempers the sensuous will, and makes room for the moral will.
Yet the moral will is not the end; for art is not only the means of
education, but the goal as well. Complete life comes when the conflict
between morality and sense disappears in artistic feeling. “Only as
man plays is he truly man.” The ideal that Schiller formulated for
this Romantic age was the “schöne Seele.” While in the soul of man the
Kantian rigoristic moral law exists when sense stands in opposition to
duty, the “beautiful soul” does not know conflict because its nature
is ennobled by its own inclination. This æsthetic humanism Schiller
expresses for his time in antithesis to Kant’s and Fichte’s rigorism.
Goethe impersonated this ideal in his life and represented it in his
works. The Romanticists carried this conception to its extreme both
in their practice and in their literary productions. Thus they came to
stand for an aristocracy of culture, and in them “ethical geniality”
culminated. The Romanticist contrasted himself with the “Philistine”
who lives according to rules. The Romanticist would live out his own
individuality as valuable in itself. He substituted the endless play of
the imagination for Fichte’s moral law, and was frequently very wayward
and capricious. This is seen in Schlegel’s _Lucinde_. Schleiermacher
the preacher tried to preserve the purity of Schiller’s doctrine.
In his construction of his own philosophy of mind Schelling adopted
completely Schiller’s theory of the æsthetic reason in what he called
_Transcendental Idealism_. He looked upon the Fichtean antithesis
between theoretical and practical reason as the same as that between
the unconscious and the conscious activity of the Self. Theoretically,
or from the point of view of the understanding, consciousness is
determined by the unconscious; practically, or from the point of view
of the will, the unconscious is the creation of consciousness. The
practical or willing Self re-shapes the products of the nature world.
For a thinking being is not merely a reflector or re-presenter of
events as they occur in the nature world――as nature produces them.
Thinking man is not merely passive. He re-shapes and transforms nature
through the freedom of his morality.
But neither the series of passively apprehended events, nor the
series of events transformed by the active moral will, is ever
complete. Neither as a passive product of nature nor as a moral will
is man a perfected being. In either condition man perpetually feels the
contradiction, since he is neither wholly passive nor wholly active.
The antagonism between will and sense is ever present. Man realizes
the fullness of his Ego, when he transcends both will and sense,
both morality and science, in the conscious-unconscious activity of
artistic genius. This is the highest synthesis. In Schelling’s lectures
delivered at Jena on the philosophy of art, after he had written his
_Transcendental Idealism_, he developed and applied this theory and
it determined the subsequent development of æsthetics in the Jena
circle. Kant had previously defined genius as intellect that works like
nature; Schiller had defined it as playing; Schelling looked upon it as
æsthetic reason and the climax of the philosophy of mind. Art, and not
logic, is the instrument by which the reason develops. Artistic reason
is the goal toward which the reason aims.
=The System of Identity.= Schelling published his _Transcendental
Idealism_ in 1800. In the next year he published his _System of
Identity_ in the hope of finding some common ground for his two
preceding points of view. For Nature is not absolute, but is a limited
objective Ego; and Mind is also not absolute, but is also limited,
although subjective. The Self perceives the object as other than itself,
and in subsequent reflection it sees the object as a form of its own
deeper Self. Subject and object, mind and nature, are one in reality.
The question then is, Does the absolute Self exist? Yes, but outside
the conditions of existence and beyond all contradictions. It is itself
the highest condition, the unconditioned condition. But what is the
basis of these two antithetical aspects of life? The most suitable name
that Schelling could give it was Identity or Indifference; for other
names would imply conditions. In this attempt to construct an absolute
Idealism, Schelling shows the influence of Spinoza. Identity reminds
us of Spinoza’s substance,――a reality that is absolutely indifferent
to both mental and nature phenomena, and yet is the reality of both. It
is absolute reason undetermined in its content. It was this turning to
Spinozism on the part of Schelling, that made Hegel break with him and
call his Identity “the night, in which all cows are black.” Schelling
even came so much under the influence of Spinoza as to imitate
Spinoza’s form of presentation in the Ethics. But Schelling regarded
the objective and subjective worlds not after the manner of Spinoza
as independent of each other. On the contrary he looked upon every
phenomenon as both ideal and real, and as having its logical place
according to the degree in which the two elements are combined.
Differences are what constitute phenomena; the Absolute is the
Indifferent. Schelling illustrates this by the magnet, which is itself
an indifference of opposite poles of varying intensity.
In the nature series the objective factor predominates, and in the
mental series the subjective factor. The universe is the most perfect
work of art, the most perfect organism, and the best expression of God.
=Schelling’s Religious Philosophy.= Romanticism took a religious turn
at the beginning of the eighteenth century under the influence of
Schleiermacher.[66] The motive of this movement was the thought that
religious feeling lies below art. Reason can be completed only in
religion, by which is meant not dogma, nor morality, but an æsthetic
relation to the world-ground, a pious feeling of absolute dependence.
It is the feeling of being permeated by the Absolute. Schleiermacher
taught in the true Romantic spirit that religion is an individual
matter and is different from church organization. Thus in this time of
quickly passing shades of imaginative thought Schiller idealized Greece
and Schleiermacher the Middle Ages. Susceptible as he was to every
idea of his time, Schelling embodied this teaching of Schleiermacher
in his later teaching. With the other Romanticists he expected that the
concept of religion would furnish a final basis for the solution of all
problems, overcome all antitheses in an inner harmony, and bring about
the eternal welfare of all.
Schelling now no longer called the Absolute Indifference, but God
or Infinity, and he conceived Him as possessing modes and potencies.
In the development of this new line of thought he introduced the
neo-Platonic doctrine of Ideas as God’s intuitions of Himself, and as
intermediaries with the world. Later Schelling passed through another
change, and this doctrine grew under his hands into a theosophy and a
theory of the irrational. The influence of Schelling was eclipsed by
Hegel after Schelling retired to Munich; and Schelling saw his rival
in control of German academic thought for many years. But he had the
satisfaction in his old age of being called by the authorities to
Berlin as the official spokesman against the Hegelian doctrine.
=Hegel and the Culmination of Idealism.= We have divided the
philosophers after Kant into two groups; (1) Fichte, Schelling and
the Romanticists, and Hegel; (2) Herbart and Schopenhauer. In this
first group, which we have at present under our eye, Fichte is the
ethical exhorter, Schelling the Romantic nature-lover, and Hegel the
intellectual systematizer. Fichte’s conception of Reality is always
an ethical ideal unrealized, in whose cause men are called to fight
for conviction’s sake. Schelling points to the beauty of nature’s
productivity as a reality that lies hidden in mystery. Both these
theories show profound insight into life and both are expressive
of the period in its attitude toward life. Fichte is the type of
the Puritan idealist; Schelling the type of the sentimentalist. Yet
both, even from the point of view of the Idealism of the period, were
partial expressions. Idealism was a social movement; and like all
social movements must run its course. It would not stop until it had
culminated in a full and systematic formulation. This was found in the
philosophy of Hegel. The social forces of the eighteenth century had
been gathering a momentum, which naturally came to a magnificent climax.
On its political side this movement culminated under the leadership of
the greatest of all political idealists, Napoleon Bonaparte, in 1815
at Waterloo. On its intellectual side it reached its completion in the
philosophical system of Hegel. Hegel died in 1831, and his intellectual
kingdom, like the political kingdom of Napoleon, was immediately
shattered. But the observer of the currents of history will find much
significance in the stubborn persistence of the intellectual phase of
the Idealistic movement long after its political dominance had gone.
Hegel ruled the intellectual world of Germany from Berlin for sixteen
years after the battle of Waterloo, and his philosophy was officially
recognized by the Berlin authorities. This stubbornness of the realm of
ideas can be exemplified throughout history, for it requires more than
one political earthquake to demolish a well-organized intellectual
theory.
Hegel may be said to have drawn the scattered threads of the preceding
idealists into a system. Like them, he firmly grounded his philosophy
on the Kantian epistemology. Like them also, he sought to find absolute
reality by means of the conscious Ego. This only means that all three
were idealists. But Fichte’s conception of the Ego was only partially
formed. It could not be an absolute reality, since it needed to be
confronted by a non-Ego in order to assert itself and live. Hegel was
discerning enough to see that Reason was more fundamental than either
action, purpose, or consciousness itself. To him both the Ego and
the non-Ego were in essence Reason. The Ego could not know that it
had created the non-Ego unless the Ego was in the beginning rational.
To distinguish the Ego from the non-Ego, there must be some ground of
similarity upon which both are based. In his search for this ground
Hegel at first allied himself with Schelling. The brilliancy of
Schelling’s thought dazzled him. Then he saw that Schelling only
led back to the abstract universal of Spinoza. A mystical “black
night” Identity was not actual nor did it explain anything actual.
It merely said that the Absolutely Real is unknowable. This is too
easy a solution of the complexity of life. Having neither meaning nor
actuality, it cannot explain the actual concrete and meaningful things.
The Absolutely Real must be a universal, but it must also be concrete.
History has been the Reason in its toil and travail. The Absolutely
Real must include history and it must be Reason. With Fichte the “deed
act” had primacy, with Schelling the æsthetic feeling, with Hegel the
Reason as an articulated series of concepts.
=Why Hegel remains to-day the Representative of Kant.= There were
several reasons why Hegel remains the representative of Kant:――
1. He had more learning and ability than the other post-Kantians.
2. His own interpretation was an interpretation of facts. By the other
post-Kantians things are not represented as they are, but as they have
been transformed. Hegel, however, was a respecter of things as they
are. Hegel was possessed of no sentiment. He was a satirist; although
a romanticist, he was an encyclopædic historian as well. He was a
philosopher in that old-time sense of wishing to know the nature of
things.
3. He was fortunate in his application of Kant’s doctrine to evolution.
It proved to be the beginning of the movement which appeared later in
Darwin. People were going to be evolutionists in the nineteenth century,
and Hegel played into their hands and helped evolution.
4. Hegel gave to his philosophy the air of orthodoxy. In the nineteenth
century there was a desire for Christianity that was orthodox. Hegel
offered no objection to allowing that interpretation to be placed upon
his philosophy.
=The Life and Writings of Hegel= (1770–1831).[67] The slow movement of
Hegel’s diction is paralleled by his gradual development in thought. He
was the most painstaking metaphysician that ever completed a philosophy.
While he was lacking in the painful hesitation that made Kant consume
so much time in introductions as to have little for the body of his
discourses and none for the completion of his philosophy, he was
nevertheless a plodding, careful, and prosaic thinker. As a boy he
showed these traits without showing any predominant taste or capacity.
“He was that uninteresting character――the good boy who takes prizes
in every class, including the prize for good conduct.” As a man he
was shrewd and reserved, overbearing to his inferiors and opponents,
and even patronizing to his superiors. He was the type of the pedantic
teacher who brooks no opposition. Like Kant’s, his life was entirely
academic, but unlike Kant’s, his experience was in many university
circles――Tübingen, Jena, Heidelberg, and Berlin. His thirteen years at
Berlin were remarkable, not only for his philosophical dominance, but
for his influence in society and court. The official recognition of
his philosophy by the Berlin authorities was a detriment in the end;
for immediately after his death, in 1831, it lost its influence. Hegel
had succeeded Fichte at Berlin, and by the irony of fate, Schelling,
already an old man in Vienna, was called by the Berlin authorities to
combat Hegel’s influence. Hegel’s followers, after his death, became
engaged in angry disputes over their interpretations of their master’s
philosophy. His philosophy was attacked by Herbart. The intellectual
world turned away from him to empirical discoveries and the doctrine
of evolution. In twenty years Hegel’s influence was insignificant, and
to-day his name is scarcely mentioned in the lecture room of a German
university. His influence is, however, growing and powerful in England
and the United States. Still it must be said that even in Germany
no one has so dominated the direction of jurisprudence, sociology,
theology, æsthetics, and history (a science which Hegel himself
created). Hegel’s erudition, his ability to systematize, his power
of discrimination, are sufficient to explain such influence. The
illumination that his philosophy gives, lies less in his metaphysical
theory than in his application of it to history and tradition. He won
adherents, not by his abstruse arguments that so few can understand,
but by illustration; not by his demonstration of the Absolute, but by
showing how that Absolute is what the religious devotee seeks, what
the moralist presupposes and the historian recognizes. In carrying out
his theory in detail he arbitrarily fitted his facts to his theory,
especially in the philosophy of nature, the history of philosophy, and
history. In the realm of pure thought, where conceptual facts are dealt
with, this is not so apparent. He was successful, for example, in the
science of æsthetics.
Hegel’s literary style is difficult, and his technicalities are almost
barbarous. He uses philosophical and common terms with meanings to
suit himself. He loves paradoxical phrases, and is pedantic in his
insistence on systematic arrangement.
1. _Formative Period_ (1770–1796). Hegel was born at Stuttgart in 1770,
and in the years between 1788 and 1793 he studied philosophy, theology,
and the classics in the University of Tübingen. Among his companions
there were Schelling and Hölderlin. From 1793 to 1796 he was a tutor in
Switzerland, where he made a further study of Kant.
2. _Formulation of his Philosophy_ (1796–1806). Hegel formulated his
philosophy for the first time in the four years (1796–1800) of his life
at Frankfort, where he was acting in the capacity of tutor. In 1801
he became privat-docent at Jena through Schelling’s recommendation. He
edited a philosophical journal with Schelling, and the two were friends
so long as Hegel found Schelling’s assistance of value to himself.
When, in 1803, Schelling left Jena, Hegel began to criticize his former
friend’s philosophy. Hegel was appointed professor of philosophy at
Jena in 1805.
3. _Development of his Philosophy_ (1806–1831).
1806. He wrote the _Phänomenologie_, which was published in 1807.
1807. The university was discontinued after the battle of Jena,
and Hegel went to Bamberg to edit a newspaper.
1807–1815. Hegel was at Nuremberg as teacher in its gymnasium,
and in 1811, at the age of forty-one, he married.
1812–1813. He published his _Logic_.
1816–1817. He was professor of philosophy at Heidelberg. He
published his _Encyclopædia_, which consists of three parts:
Logic, Philosophy of Nature, and Philosophy of Mind. This was
enlarged in 1827.
1818. Hegel succeeded Fichte at Berlin, where he met with marked
success, and where he exercised a very wide influence. When
Hegel came to Berlin his philosophical theory was already
formulated, and his thirteen years at Berlin were spent in
illustrating and verifying it in history.
1831. At the height of his fame, he died of cholera.
=Realism, Mysticism, and Idealism.= It will not be amiss at this
point to contrast three of the great types of human thought,――Realism
and Mysticism with the Idealism of which Hegel was the consummate
expression. The Idealistic Period of European thought is confined
within the forty-one years between 1790 and 1831. Moreover it is
a world-wide movement, the philosophical expression of which is
restricted to the German people. Mysticism and Realism represent the
civilizations of longer periods and of many peoples. Mysticism is, for
example, the attitude of mind frequently found in the Middle Ages in
Europe, and may be roughly said to be the philosophy of the Oriental
peoples. Spinoza was a belated mystic and its best European exponent;
and against the revival of Spinoza’s Mysticism during this period Hegel
as an idealist took his stand. Realism has been a popular philosophy
in all civilizations at all times, and it was the irony of fate that
Realism followed directly upon Hegel’s long period of dominance as an
idealist. Modern science is based on Realism, and so, on the whole,
was Greek civilization. In contrast to Realism, Idealism represents a
few years of history and has been confined to a limited civilization,
yet for profundity of insight into the meaning of life Idealism is the
consummation of human reflection.
Since “philosophy lends itself to extended discourse,” it is quite
impossible to contrast these theories briefly in more than a crude
way. From the mystic’s point of view, absolute reality is that which
can be immediately apprehended. However, since immediate intuition is
always undetermined, the mystic’s reality is a very vague and abstract
thing, although for him it is none the less real. Such a reality is
not usually sought in the “world of nature”; for nature objects are
very definite, besides being very transitory. The mystic’s world of
reality is within; therefore God to the mystic is to be found within
the soul and is to be contrasted with the unreality of the world of
sense. There is only one reality, and that is within the soul; all
else is an illusion. Reality is gained by direct knowledge and never
by the process of logical reflection. Mysticism is frequently allied
with æsthetics; the love of God is apparently the same as the love
for a work of art; the immediate intuition that the soul has of God
apparently is the same psychological process as the artistic ecstasy
over a thing of beauty. Both result in the absorption of the soul in
its object, and in the presence of either all else seems illusory.
Now Realism is a theory that is more easily defined than Mysticism. It
is simply the conception of many realities independent of one another
and of the thinking mind. Reality is not one, it is a plurality of
independent things, all of which are independent of the thinking
process. Such realities are not undefined. As in Idealism, our
knowledge of them is a definite matter of reflection; but against
Mysticism, such definite knowledge is proof of their reality.
This can be illustrated by the series 1 + ½ + ¼ + ⅛ ... 2. Let the
number “2” represent the reality or meaning of the infinite series,
which, however far extended, never reaches “2.” Let the series itself
represent the definite processes of phenomenal nature. The Realist
would say that only the increasing series is real, and the “2” is
an unknowable. The Realist admits that the series is fragmentary and
incomplete, but it is quite definite and certainly the best we can
do. It is at least exact and scientific; and the goal of scientific
knowledge belongs to the realm of the attainable. On the other hand the
Mystic maintains that, since exact knowledge attains only the changing
and phenomenal, exact knowledge is illusory. When we cannot attain the
real by effort and sense knowledge, why waste our time in seeking to do
so? Reality is right at hand――in one’s self. To the Mystic the infinite
series of fractions is unreal, because it is and always will be
incomplete. The ideal “2” can be got by direct and intuitive knowledge.
Thus to the Realist the infinite series is real and the goal ”2”
is unreal, while to the Mystic the “2” is real and the fractions of
experience are unreal.
Hegel felt profoundly convinced that neither Realism with its
definite realities nor Mysticism with its undefined goal was an
adequate explanation of the world and life. The truly real must not
only be definite, but it must also be all-inclusive. It must not on
the one hand be incomplete, nor on the other must it be vague. It
must be both the number “2” and the infinite series leading to “2.”
A truly and absolutely real must be the explanation of everything that
happens,――joy, evil, necessity in nature, every least event and change.
In the light of the idealism of Hegel the solutions of the Mystic and
the Realist seem to fade in importance, and the problem of life seems
to grow in significance and meaning.
=The Fundamental Principles of Hegel’s Idealism.= In contrast with
Mysticism and Realism, as well as with the doctrine of Fichte and
Schelling, Hegel tried to formulate a conception of the universe that
would include everything and yet be an organic whole. In what terms can
this world of richness and variety, of coördinations and contradictions,
be conceived as a single whole? How can it be one and still be many?
Hegel saw clearly that this was his problem. The truly absolute must be
a unity, and still be absolute.
There are two fundamental principles upon which his doctrine rests:
(1) _The world must be conceived in terms of consciousness._ To any
one who has studied the principles of psychology, or who has followed
Kant’s epistemological analysis, it is clear that the only real unities
are conscious unities. The characteristic of consciousness is synthesis.
This is what we mean by consciousness, and consciousness is unique in
this. (2) _The world as a conscious whole must be essentially a world
of contradictions._ We must accept contradiction and not consistency
as the fundamental and explanatory principle of life. In science
and our ordinary human problems we try to get results that are
logically consistent. This is useful, but in doing so we do not get
a full explanation. We omit in such calculations life’s negations
and incongruities. But do not inconsistencies and negations and
incongruities exist? They certainly do; everything has its opposite;
and if we will take the pains to observe the processes of thought,
we shall find that thought is fundamentally inconsistent. Why do
we usually regard thought as a self-consistent process? Because our
methods of formal logic are such. In formal logic we reason smoothly
and consistently from the premises to the conclusion. If we look
more deeply into thought, we shall find that such consistency is made
possible by ignoring the inconsistencies necessary to the very being
of thought. The question therefore is not, Can the cosmic whole be
conceived as consistent? but _What is the law of its inconsistencies?_
Let us consider these two principles of the Hegelian philosophy more in
detail.
=The Cosmic Unity.= Hegel insists on the old truth that thought
is self-operating within us. Thought belongs to our nature, yet it
controls our nature. Thought develops consequences without regard
to the will and demands that contradictions shall be solved. It is
not correct to say that we think, but rather that thinking goes on
within us. Thought is the life of the world. Thought is a process which
embraces all things and projects them. Hegel emancipates thought from
all the limitations of human minds. He would make thought objective and
transform reality into thought.
Thus Hegel conceives that this self-operating thought within us
is essentially the reality of the universe. Thought is the great
cosmic undercurrent that includes all things in its sweep. Indeed,
the universe cannot be conceived as a unity unless the universe is
conceived as a cosmic consciousness or reason. The true study of the
nature of the world is cosmic logic, and philosophy becomes in Hegel’s
hands panlogism,――universal logic. Kant restricted the categories of
thought to the human understanding; Hegel universalizes them and they
become categories of the cosmos. For if the reality of the world is
conscious reason, the categories are not only the forms of thought,
but also the modes of being. The categories are, therefore, more
comprehensive than Kant supposed. To use a term from the Middle Ages,
they are “substantial forms.” They are at one and the same time the
forms that mould thought and the stages of eternal creation. The
knowing process and the cosmic process are one and the same――one writ
small and the other writ large. They are not separate from each other,
but are the transformations of one Being. If we would study the cosmic
forms, let us study thought-forms. Logic is really ontology; the study
of the genealogy of thought is the study of Being. The real is reason,
and the reason is real. By reason Hegel does not mean intuition or
even immediate perception, which Fichte and Schelling claimed to
be the fundamental principle of the mind. The reason which Hegel is
talking about is the concept or general notion. All actuality is the
development of the general notion in a necessary and self-creative
movement. History, matter, and thought are exhibitions of the divine
Idea. “All Being is thought realized and all Becoming is a development
of thought.”
Hegel’s philosophy is a monism of reason,――a universalized concept, in
which everything has its divine place. It is an all-embracing system,
moulding every department. Mind and matter are not aspects of a reality
which is behind them, but are the modes of that reality. The cosmic
reason is successively mind and matter, and not the principle of
mind and nature. In Schelling things proceed from the absolute. In
Hegel they are the absolute. The absolute does not exceed things,
but is wholly in them as their organic unity. Everything is under the
conceptual labor of thought. The important thing is to refer all our
complex states to the unifying cosmic concept and have one illuminating
idea. Absolute reason is absolute movement――the perpetual movement
of life. Yet this absolute reason――the reason that refuses to change
according to our likes and dislikes――is its own law and goal. The
cosmos is the law of reason and has as its end its own unfolding
self-consciousness. It is not the purpose of philosophy, according to
Hegel, to tell what the world should be, but to recognize its nature
as rational.
We must, therefore, be careful to distinguish Hegel’s conception of
the unity of God from that other conception of Him as a quantitative,
single, and isolated unity. An isolated and single Being would imply
the existence of other isolated Beings. Such an individual would be
limited by others and dependent upon them. In technical terms sameness
with one’s self implies difference from others. A good example of the
conception of an isolated God can be found in modern theology; such
a God is a unity, but He is only the greatest of the several powers
in the universe. Such an One is not an absolute, for the One to be
absolute must be all that there is. Limitation implies something else.
_Das Wahre ist das Ganze._
But Hegel does not mean by the Oneness of God an aggregation of parts,
nor does he mean a system or arrangement of parts. An aggregation of
parts, however big, is never complete and cannot include all that there
is. An aggregation, even if it includes the past and the present, is
not Absolute. The temporal series points to something else to give
it meaning; and yet Reality must not stand outside any part of the
temporal series. The Absolute Reality must include the temporal series,
and yet the temporal series is not in itself Reality. Neither does
Hegel mean that Reality is a system or society of individuals, whose
knowledge and will imply one another; for such an organization of
individuals also has its meaning in something below it.
The Absolute Reality is a spiritual individual. It is a unifying
consciousness, which is self-moving, subjective, and active. “It is
the Idea that thinks itself and is completely self-identical in its
otherness.” It cannot be abstract thought like Spinoza’s God, for
the Absolute must be actual. Nor does Hegel mean by Reality merely
life or vitality, as Haeckel has conceived it in modern times; for
these, too, are only abstract terms. “It is pure personality which
alone through the absolute dialectic encloses all within itself.”
Reality is an Absolute Cosmic Spirit engaged in its self-discovery and
self-appropriation by means of its own movement; and this movement is
revealed in art, religion, and philosophy. The Absolute is, as Shelley
makes the Earth picture man in _Prometheus Unbound_,
“One harmonious Soul of many a soul,
Whose nature is its own divine control,
Where all things flow to all, as rivers to the sea.”
The panorama of _history_ is the progressive knowledge of the
Absolute appearing under successively more adequate forms. _Morality_
is the Absolute in ever enlarging social relations. _Religion_ is the
Absolute in personal relations to man. _Philosophy_ is the Absolute in
reasoned apprehension of himself. The Absolute is not to be conceived
in anthropomorphic terms, but is the world-process realized as an
individual self-consciousness. It is cosmic consciousness become more
significant. It is Being regarded as an individuality and including all
development.
=The Cosmic Law.= If the cosmic unity is a cosmic synthetic
consciousness, it must be subject to the law of reason which is
fundamental in consciousness. The process of consciousness is an
unfolding. It is an evolution, but an evolution that is an unfolding.
Ordinarily biological evolution restricts itself to the particular
type under consideration. It does not take account of the fact that the
growth of one type means the destruction of another. It does not view
nature in a universal way and consider construction and destruction,
action and reaction, equal. It looks upon development as a process
along a tangent or like the infinite series of numbers. But the
destructions, the defeats, the reciprocal retrogressions, must be
accounted for in a truly Absolute consciousness. Evolution is not
therefore an upward advance, but a closed circle. The Absolute is not
therefore a consistency, but includes contradictions; and evolution
cannot truly be interpreted in quantitative but in qualitative
terms, as the unfolding of consciousness. The only way to include
everything in the Absolute is to think of the Absolute as coming to
a consciousness of itself. The Absolute Reality is the same at any
temporal beginning or ending. Its meaning is becoming clearer to
itself alone. Such clearness appears in the clearness with which the
categories which are the forms of any consciousness become related.
The task of philosophy is not to understand these forms together or
_seriatim_, but as moments of a unitary development. They are the links
in the development of Spirit, God, the Idea, or the Absolute.
What is this law of spiritual circular development? What are the
categories of the cosmic Ego? How can the cosmic organism take account
of the contradictions as well as the consistencies of life? The three
necessary categories or three fundamental conceptions of the cosmic
consciousness are “to be,” “to be denied,” “to be transcended,”――Thesis,
its Antithesis, and the Synthesis of the two. In other words they
are Assertion, Contradiction, and Return-to-itself. The cosmic law
is the Law of Negativity. It is a dialectic process in the union of
contradictories, of extremes meeting, of the equality of action and
reaction. In Hegel’s hands contradiction becomes the very principle
of cosmic harmony. It is the struggle of thought to comprehend itself
by using its own contradictory and created experiences for such
comprehension. “The phenomenon is the arising and passing away which
itself does not pass away, but exists in itself. It constitutes
the movement and reality of the life of truth.” The law of human
consciousness is this: Assume the truth of any doctrine. Examine
it and you will find it in some detail asserting not only its own
contradiction or opposite, but also the relation between its assertion
and its contradiction. The truth lies in the assertion that transcends
the two opposites. The law of the cosmic consciousness is the same. Any
stage of history appears in the conscious assurance of the truth of the
principles upon which history is founded. But any such assertion by any
epoch arouses opposition; and the next stage in historical development
is the assertion of principles that synthesize the assertion of the
previous epoch and the opposition to it. The law of consciousness
drives history to oppose its own self-assertions and then to a deeper
apprehension of itself in a higher assertion, until it finds rest in
the knowledge of the Absolute Idea――_that Absolute Truth is continuous
contradiction_. Perhaps Hegel’s most notable contribution to modern
thought was his emphasis upon the tremendous power of negation and the
stimulating force in contradiction. Spiritual advance is made through
opposition.
=Hegel’s Application of his Theory.= Formulating his theory in 1800,
Hegel spent the most of his literary career in exemplifying it. The
_Phänomenologie_ (1807) is an attempt to show the natural history of
thought in experience. He shows there the series of stages through
which the mind passes,――stages corresponding to logic, to the growth
of the individual, and to society. In the dialectic movement,
consciousness views the world in an external way until it becomes
self-conscious; then reason is evolved as a synthesis of the two:
_i. e._ of external consciousness and self-consciousness. Reason then
develops by continually turning back upon itself into an ethical,
religious, and, lastly, an absolute reason. Hegel wrote his _Logic_
(1812) as an application of his theory to thought――regarding thought
as consisting of general concepts. Then came his _Encyclopædia_ (1816),
containing his _Philosophy of Nature_ and _Philosophy of Mind_. In
his _Philosophy of Nature_, nature is regarded as revealing the same
dialectic as logic, but in the external world. Nature, therefore,
stands to logic as its antithesis. The _Philosophy of Mind_ places
mind as the synthesis of logic and nature, and elaborates the subject
as mind, objective mind, and the synthesis of the two, or Absolute
mind. Thus the dialectic of the _Logic_ is repeated and applied to
the _Philosophy of Nature_ and the _Philosophy of Spirit_. Logic and
history are therefore parallel. The content is always the same in both;
and the development is always in logical forms. The Absolute Idea by
differentiation with itself comes to itself: (1) in Logic through Being,
Essence, and Idea; (2) in Nature through matter, individual forms,
and organism; (3) in Spirit through consciousness, self-consciousness,
reason, right, morality, social morality, art, religion, philosophy.
Logic is the Spirit _an-sich_; nature is the spirit _für-sich_; mind
is the Spirit _an-und-für-sich_.
CHAPTER XII
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE THING-IN-ITSELF
=Herbart and Schopenhauer.= The main line of development of the
critical Kantian movement was the idealism of Fichte, Schelling,
and Hegel. It was the most perfect expression of the period of German
philosophy. There were, however, so many distinct elements in the
Kantian doctrine, and these were so loosely tied together by Kant, that
one is not surprised to find many divergent lines of its subsequent
elaboration. It is difficult to classify all these later philosophers.
But most prominent in this group stood Herbart and Schopenhauer.
Herbart was a Realist, and Schopenhauer a voluntarist and pessimist.
They had a common ground and motive for their respective philosophies,
and may be placed together in the second group of the disciples of
Kant. They were allied (1) in their emphasis upon the importance of
the thing-in-itself and (2) in their strong opposition to the idealist
movement. While both published their principal writings before the
death of Hegel in 1831, both lived to the middle of the nineteenth
century and both represent the reaction against the period of idealism.
They speak more for the subsequent nineteenth century than for German
ideals and Romanticism. They represented a certain feeling of the
time that Kant’s doctrine had not received its due at the hands of
the Idealists.
Some philosophers had remained true to Kant, but they could not get
the public ear until they were reinforced by the positive science and
historical criticism of the second quarter of the nineteenth century.
Bands of men had gathered to study Kant even while Idealism was
dominant. These were not professional philosophers, but politicians
and others engaged in active service. Kant himself in his later years
protested against his “false disciples.” Fries and Herbart, even
though pupils of Fichte, were true to Kant; and turned attention away
from idealistic construction to an examination of the psychological
foundations upon which the Kantian criticism rested. Herbart was the
most prominent of the empirical psychologists and physicists who turned
away from the speculative tendency back to Kant. Schopenhauer was the
early spokesman for that mysticism and pessimism which characterized
the nineteenth century and appeared in the music of Wagner, the
literature of Ibsen, and the philosophy of Von Hartmann and Nietzsche.
What discredited Hegelianism in particular and philosophy in general in
the eyes of the nineteenth century was (1) the errors of Hegelianism as
to facts; (2) the patronizing tone of the Hegelians toward scientists
like Copernicus, Newton, and Lavoisier; and (3) the refusal of the
Hegelians to test hypotheses by facts. The opposition against Hegel
was against his principles, his method, and his conclusions. At
the downfall of Napoleon the age gave up the hope of reconstructing
the world either politically or philosophically. The new spirit was
scientific and positive. It tried to accept the world as it found it,
and to explain it mechanically so far as it could be done. Things are
not the creation of thought, and thought cannot change the reality of
things. We must observe and experiment, since we cannot construct. We
must restore the boundaries of Kant. Yet both Herbart and Schopenhauer
were true to the spirit that inspired German idealism, for they could
not develop their philosophy of education, psychology, or art except
upon a metaphysical background. Metaphysics was necessary. It was
as necessary a foundation to the Germans as ethics to the Greeks and
psychology to the English.
=Johann Friedrich Herbart.=[68] As “a Kantian of the year 1828”
Herbart claimed to have carried the Kantian doctrine a step further
by disclosing its psychological grounds. He insisted that analysis
was the only true method; and he contended against Fichte that it is
impossible to deduce the theory of the world from a single principle.
An all-inclusive principle may be the conclusion, but not the premise,
of a philosophy. Thus his thought moved in exactly the opposite
direction from the monism of the Idealists and Schleiermacher, with
which he was in constant hostility. Experience proved to Herbart the
existence of independent realities; and he could not reconcile himself
with the _a priori_ doctrine of the idealists, which begins by denying
the existence of the Thing-in-Itself. On the contrary, philosophy
to Herbart had the Thing-in-Itself as its chief concern. Herbart did
not see how paradoxical his position must be――how futile must be the
results of attempting to know the unknowable. He was impressed with the
depth of the problem of existence, and he felt that, if it was to be
explained at all, it must be along scientific lines, especially in the
fields of psychology and education. The scientific method of Herbart
was mechanics; his Realism was the result of his method.
Herbart’s programme at the beginning of his teaching at Göttingen
in 1802 was as follows: He defined philosophy in a general way by
simplifying the concepts that underlie the different sciences. Thus he
(1) reconstructed Realism, (2) restored the principle of contradiction,
and (3) established philosophy on the same basis as science. Of all the
philosophical schools in the nineteenth century the Herbartian school
was the most numerous and compact. Hegel’s attitude had driven many
thinkers into science, and the majority of them attached themselves
to Herbart for want of something better.
=The Life and Writings of Herbart= (1776–1841). Herbart was the
typical scholar. He was a man of quiet and conservative tastes, and
his life was never disturbed by dramatic situations arising out of
contradictions in his character or environment. His days were spent in
study, lecturing, and efforts for social education. The philosophical
influences upon his thought were Leibnitz, Kant, and negatively the
Idealists. In his early life he had read Leibnitz and Kant, and before
he was eighteen he had read enough of Fichte to be repelled by his
doctrine. In 1796 he was a student at Jena. From Jena he went as tutor
to Switzerland, where he met Pestalozzi and laid the foundation of his
own philosophy. In 1802 he was called to Göttingen, where he became
full professor in 1805. In 1806 he published _Principal Points in
Metaphysics_. In 1809 he was called to Königsberg, where he published
his chief works:――
1813 _Text-book of the Introduction to Philosophy_.
1816 _Text-book of Psychology_.
1822 _Possibility and Necessity of Applying Mathematics to
Psychology_.
1824–1825 _Psychology as a Science_.
1828–1829 _General Metaphysics_.
In 1830 he was called back to Göttingen, and he died in 1841.
=The Contradictions of Experience.= All the conceptions of practical
life are self-contradictory and are therefore vicious. This applies
not only to the conceptions of unreflecting minds, but also to those of
scientists and philosophers. To philosophize is nothing else than this:
to free our conceptions of their self-contradictions by simplifying
and revising them. We think of the world as consisting of things,
persons, relations, and laws; but such a view of the world is founded
upon the fallacy of thinking an object at the same time as one and
as many. This general fallacy takes four specific forms: inherence,
change, continuity, and selfhood. For example, it is contradictory to
think of a plant as one thing in which many qualities inhere; it is
contradictory to think of a plant as the same when it passes through
many changes; it is contradictory to think of space as continuous and
yet divided into parts; and it is contradictory to think of the self as
always the same and yet as a stream of conscious states.[69]
=The Argument for Realism.= This inherent contradiction in human
conceptions had been a matter of observation by philosophers for many
centuries, but it had led to many divergent conclusions. The Greek
Skeptics had long ago observed it, and had concluded therefore that
there is no such thing as reality. To them thought is discredited
because the contradictions of thought are insoluble. Truth does not
exist. On the other hand Hegel developed his great dialectic system
upon the basis of these contradictions. Is thought self-contradictory?
Yes. But is thought discredited because it is self-contradictory?
By no means. It is the nature of thought to be self-contradictory,
and the highest truth is the knowledge of this. So Hegel, instead of
rejecting the conception of reality because thought is contradictory,
incorporated contradictions into his conception of the Being of the
universe. Indeed, he made contradictions the “head of the corner” of
his system. Contradiction to Hegel is cosmic law. However, in such
a conception Hegel had to give up entirely the principle upon which
formal logic was founded. This was the principle that a thing cannot
be different from itself. To Hegel the highest truth was exactly the
opposite――everything is self-contradictory.
While Herbart agreed with the Skeptics and with Hegel that experience
is self-contradictory, he differed from them in the inference which he
drew from such contradictions. In acknowledging the contradictions of
experience Herbart did not find himself driven to either one of these
alternatives. Philosophy did not mean for him skepticism. On the other
hand he was repelled by the turn that Hegel had given to logic, and
he refused to accept reasoning as a self-contradictory process. He
returned to the demands of formal logic and restored the principle
of contradiction[70] to the place which it had occupied during the
Enlightenment. Herbart took as his _fundamental philosophical principle
that experiences are not actual when they are self-contradictory_.
The self-contradictoriness of experiences shows that they are
phenomena and not actualities. It also shows that they have reality
as their ground. Seeming things imply realities as the ground of their
qualities; seeming occurrences imply actual relations between the
reals. Seeming is just so much an indication of Being. Consistency lies
behind phenomena. The existence of appearances must be admitted, but
appearances are appearances of something. If nothing existed, nothing
would appear to exist; and yet things are not in reality what they
appear to be.
Herbart agreed with Kant that we can experience only phenomena. There
is also a similarity in the two theories as to the relationship between
phenomena and the thing-in-itself. The similarity is, however, only
superficial. Kant reasoned from the relativity of phenomena to the
synthetic unity of apperception, _i. e._ to consciousness in general,
while the ♦thing-in-itself was to Kant an unknowable and irreducible
remainder. To Kant phenomena pointed to consciousness rather than
to things-in-themselves. On the other hand, Herbart reasoned from
phenomena to the existence of things-in-themselves. Phenomena point
to an independent, objective reality rather than to a thinking subject.
While in Kant’s doctrine phenomena depend for their existence upon
the creative power of consciousness, to Herbart consciousness has no
creative power, but itself depends on the existence and independence
of a plurality of independent Reals. Even the categories and the forms
of space and time are not innate synthetic forms. All are the result of
the relationships among independent Reals, which are the spring of all
activity and existence. Herbart thus gave to the things-in-themselves
all the independent functions that Kant attributed to consciousness.
=The Many Reals and Nature Phenomena.= We must remove the
contradictions of experience, if we would get at a true conception of
Reality and the meaning of phenomena. The true way is (1) to posit a
plural number of Reals, and (2) to interpret the phenomena as derived
from the relation among these Reals.
In the first place, a multiplicity of Reals, and not a single Real,
is needed to explain the multiplicity of phenomena. Herbart’s doctrine
is therefore a pluralism. He conceives the many Reals to exist, not in
phenomenal, but in “intellectual space.” They are not subject to any
phenomenal limitations whatsoever; they may occupy one point of space
at the same time. Their nature cannot be known, but we can say that
they have “absolute position.” They cannot be limited nor negated, and
even their plurality does not mean that they limit one another.
In the second place, Herbart assumes a multiplicity of relations. Why
do the Reals appear as phenomena? Why should the Reals appear to be
the qualities that inhere in things, the continuities of things, and
the changes of things? Herbart is not altogether satisfactory in his
explanation of this problem. It is the problem of the unity of the
manifold, which Kant could explain as due to the synthetic power of
consciousness; but such an explanation was precluded from Herbart’s
Realism. Herbart speaks of two kinds of relations. There are the actual
relations among the Reals. Although the Reals are conceived by Herbart
as simple and unchangeable, he also thinks of them as “coming and going
in intelligible space.” We can never know what the nature of these
actual relations is. The actual relations between two Reals are not
essential to either Real, nor can such relations have their basis in
the Reals. All that we can know are the seeming relations among things.
These are the relations of phenomenal space――of inherence, continuity,
and change. Herbart calls these phenomenal relations “contingent views”
(_zufallige Ansichten_), and looks upon them as having a semi-existence.
That is to say, Herbart regards the world of experience as a world
of relations which are not the actual relations among Realities, but
merely the phenomenal relations, or relations as they appear to us.
=The Soul and Mental Phenomena.= Each Real has one single function,
viz., self-preservation; and inasmuch as the Reals “co-exist,” they
mutually disturb each other. The disturbances take the form of inner
reactions on the part of the Real in its effort at self-preservation.
Prominent among the Reals is the Soul-real. Like all the other
Reals, it is unknowable. We have, however, immediate knowledge of
its manifestations in its self-preservation among the other Reals.
Psychology is the science of the relations which the Soul-real bears
to other Reals. From the conflict of the Soul with other Reals,
mental phenomena take their rise. Consciousness is, therefore, not
the same as the Soul; it is the sum-total of the acts of the Soul in
self-preservation. Consciousness is the aggregate mental states, and is
not essential to the Soul. Nevertheless, isolated souls do not think;
they have no states of consciousness. Consciousness can arise only in
a community of Reals.
Our knowledge consists therefore of ideas, which are the results of
the disturbance of the Soul-real by other Reals. These ideas live
within the Soul, which is merely an indifference point where they are
held together. The ideas in turn disturb and inhibit one another, and
the description of our mental life is a description of the reciprocal
tension of ideas. The tension among the ideas modifies the intensity
of each, and consciousness of an idea is proportional to its intensity.
An idea is just on the threshold of consciousness when it has the
lowest degree of intensity, and is still actual. When it drops below
that threshold it is changed into an impulse. The primary ideas are
sensations. They are not the images of things, but the primary acts of
the Soul in its attempt at self-preservation. All other mental states,
like memory, imagination, feeling, and will, are to be described as
kinds of tension of the ideas. Feeling and will are kinds of inhibitive
tension. The coming of sensations and the interplay of sensations
can be reduced to a mechanical law. Therefore, according to Herbart,
psychology is the “statics and mechanics of ideas,” and must be treated
mathematically.
Herbart’s contribution to modern thought lies in his psychology. Modern
thought has not accepted his metaphysics, but it has been influenced
to a not inconsiderable degree by his psychology. Herbart gave the
death-blow to the old “faculty psychology,” and he placed psychology
upon the same basis as the natural sciences. The science of psychology
was not to Herbart a discussion of the nature of the soul, for that
is unknowable. It is the study of the aggregate of the contents
of consciousness. It is not a study of psychical faculties, but of
psychical elements. This reduces psychology to an atomism, like other
sciences, and thereby frees it from the influence of theology. Thus
was the so-called modern psychology made possible by Herbart. Herbart’s
theory was also of incalculable value to modern educational theory. The
conception of the influence of environment upon mental life, the theory
of the development of mental life, the natural method of “preparation,
presentation, association, systematization, and application” of an
educational subject, the theory of the correlation of subjects――all
are founded upon his psychology. Herbart’s attempt to apply mathematics
to the laws of psychological phenomena was not so fortunate. At one
time, during the nineteenth century, psychologists hoped much from
mathematics in their science; but the hope has been practically
abandoned. In recent years the demand for exactness has been met in
psycho-physics, which operates with mathematics in a different way.
=Arthur Schopenhauer[71] and his Philosophical Relations.= Schopenhauer
is grouped with Herbart because (1) both had an especial dislike
for the idealistic development that the Kantian movement took; and
(2) both built their theories upon interpretations of the Kantian
thing-in-itself. While Herbart was a Realist, Schopenhauer was a
Mystic; which only shows how theories, seemingly very different, can
have the same source. Herbart’s Realism was an interpretation of Kant’s
thing-in-itself as many realities; while Schopenhauer’s Mysticism
was an interpretation of it as one reality. In both theories the
consciousness, and with it the reason, were conceived as derivations
of the thing-in-itself.
The best approach to Schopenhauer’s doctrine can perhaps be made
by contrasting it with his pet aversion――the doctrine of Hegel.
Schopenhauer was to Idealism what Mephistopheles was to Faust――he
turned Romanticism into pessimism. The theory of empirical evolution,
which was to be highly developed in the nineteenth century, lay in
theoretical germ in the teaching of the immediate followers of Kant.
To Hegel the historical development of the cosmos is the struggle
of reason, which with all its essential contradictions is futilely
striving to come to itself. To Schopenhauer the history of the cosmos
is also an endless struggle, although a struggle in which all reason is
absent. Hegel could conceive the history of the cosmos as a development
worthy of investigation. Schopenhauer, on the contrary, took no
interest in history, because to him it could not be a development. To
Hegel, phenomena form an intimate part of the cosmic struggle, since
they are the content of the cosmic-reason; to Schopenhauer, phenomena
are the surface illusions of an ebullient, unreasoning Will.
As the first theoretical pessimist of Europe, Schopenhauer expressed
for the nineteenth century one of its most essential characteristics.
He got scant recognition during his lifetime on account of the vogue
of Hegel; but to-day it is Schopenhauer, rather than Hegel, who has
a popular influence, and is widely read. This is partly on account
of his masterly literary style and partly by reason of the content of
his doctrine. The nineteenth century was carried along upon a strong
current of pessimism because of (1) industrial problems, which involved
many ethical considerations, and because of (2) its breaking away
from traditional religious ties. So long as the unbounded optimism
of Idealism prevailed, the world had little room for Schopenhauer’s
teaching; but when Realism with its limitations took hold of the
nineteenth century, then did Schopenhauer’s day of recognition come.
The popular mind has found in Schopenhauer its best philosophical
expression, and representatives of his teaching have been numerous.
Among them are Richard Wagner (1813–1883) with his music dramas;
Von Hartmann (b. 1842) with his theory of the unconscious; Nietzsche
(1844–1900) with his extreme statement of egoism――that in view of
universal evil, the only hope is in the survival of the strongest and
in the virtue of selfishness.
=The Life and Writings of Schopenhauer= (1788–1860). Schopenhauer was
the kind of genius who is always an alien to the world of men. He lived
a long, lonely, isolated life, in which his inherited emotional and
brooding nature became more and more cynical and pessimistic. Even in
his paternal home he found himself a stranger. His father pushed him
into mercantile business, which he hated; and after the death of his
father his brilliant mother told him that he was welcome to her Weimar
home only as a visitor. The doors of all academic circles were closed
to him; and he, in commenting on it, said that he had failed to get an
academic hearing, because the German did not believe in a metaphysics
which was so expressed as to be understood. But the cause of his
isolation lay mainly in himself. He was neurasthenic and peculiar――the
subject of ill-temper, night-terrors, causeless depressions and dreads.
With the genealogy of Schopenhauer’s family on his father’s side before
us, who could wonder?――the grandmother insane, one uncle insane, one
uncle idiotic, one neurotic, and his father a suicide. Schopenhauer’s
own peculiarities were not pathological. He had a genius that blossomed
as early in his years as Hegel’s blossomed late. He wrote his two
important works before he was thirty.
1. _Period of Education_ (1788–1813). The parents of Schopenhauer were
wealthy, and in 1803 he traveled with them in England, France, and
Holland. In 1804 he entered business, which he gave up the next year
on the death of his father. In 1809 he was busy studying the classics,
philosophy, and Hindu learning in Weimar, Göttingen, and Berlin.
2. _Period of Literary Production_ (1813–1831). In 1813 he wrote
the _Four-fold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason_, in the
Thuringian forest, when other German young men were rallying to arms
against Napoleon. This was accepted as a doctorate thesis at Jena.
From 1814 to 1819 he lived in Dresden at work on _The World as Will
and Idea_, which is the complete exposition of his doctrine. The work
is divided into four parts: 1. Theory of Knowledge; 2. Description
of the Forms of the Will; 3. Art as a Deliverance from the Will;
4. Morality as a Deliverance from the Will. In 1820 he got a position
as Privat-docent in the University of Berlin. This was the only year
of his teaching and was an utter failure.
3. _Period of Retirement_ (1831–1860). In 1831 he went to
Frankfort-on-the-Main to live alone and in retirement. Slowly he became
known and gathered a little circle of disciples about him. He died in
1860.
=The Influences upon Schopenhauer’s Thought.= The principal influences
upon Schopenhauer’s thought were three: (1) Kant, from whom he got his
transcendental theory of knowledge (he always considered himself to
be Kant’s true heir); (2) Plato, from whom he got his formulation of
eternal Ideas as offering an escape from the Will; (3) the Hindus, from
whom he got his ethical-Mysticism and the confirmation of his pessimism.
Schopenhauer is unique among the philosophers of Europe, because he
denied all for which the Enlightenment stood. Even such reactionaries
against the Enlightenment as Rousseau were a part of its essential
spirit; for the presupposition of traditional theology and philosophy
has been that existence is essentially a harmony. Schopenhauer, however,
appealed to the discordances and the sorrow of existence, and drew the
inference that fundamentally existence is irrational. For the source
of Schopenhauer’s unique teaching we have to look, therefore, farther
than modern Europe. The preceding modern European philosophers whom
we have studied, developed their philosophies from purely Occidental
sources. Schopenhauer drew from the Orient as well as from the Occident.
The Romanticists had re-discovered Orientalism. The study of the
Hindus had been interesting European scholars since the beginning of
the nineteenth century. Schopenhauer, who was introduced to Indian
philosophy by Goethe’s friend, Fr. Mayer, read the Upanishads in a
Latin translation; and they contributed much to the development of the
theory which his own emotional and cynical nature had presaged. The
Hindus had long felt that the main problem of existence is moral and
physical evil. Schopenhauer found in this teaching the statement of his
own attitude.
He esteemed the principles of Christianity and Buddhism because their
central requirement was faith in a redeemer rather than a creator.
Christianity had no original metaphysics, but Buddhism on account of
its metaphysics had an especial importance in Schopenhauer’s eyes. It
was not only a pessimism, but a philosophy of pessimism. Our existence
is only a blind struggle for enlightenment and arises out of a flowing
chain of perennial re-births. Man needs to be freed from the illusion
of existence and released from re-birth.
=The World as Will and the World as Idea.= In _The Four-fold Root of
the Principle of Sufficient Reason_, Schopenhauer summarizes knowledge
as, “The world is my presentation,” which is Kant’s theory of knowledge.
A conscious subject vitalizes all things. But the presentations have
no corresponding reality in the outer world. They are created by my
own subjectivity from the “principle of sufficient reason.” This has
a fourfold root: logic, cause, mathematics, and will-activity. “The
world of phenomena is my idea,” and in _The World as Will and Idea_
Schopenhauer says, “This is a truth which holds good for everything
that lives and knows.” Man alone can reflect upon this truth. When man
comes to the realizing sense that the world is an ideal construction,
he begins to philosophize as to the nature of the reality behind
it. We remember that Herbart started from the same proposition.
However, Schopenhauer departs from Kant’s teaching in one important
respect: although he agrees with Kant that the thing-in-itself
cannot be understood by ideas or a chain of reasoning, he holds that
the thing-in-itself is knowable. The World as Idea is a world of
appearances, but we can know the thing-in-itself by intuition――by
“the look of genius.” The certainty of this first-hand or immediate
knowledge shows how poor our second-hand or mediate knowledge is. For
even reasoned or mediate knowledge in its most perfect form, viz.,
science, is under the law of cause and can therefore reveal nothing
absolute. Science never gets below phenomena.
If reason reveals only the World as Idea, what revelation does
intuition give of the thing-in-itself? Intuition reveals the
thing-in-itself to be Will. Man finds, first, the Will to be in himself.
He finds it objectified in his own body and in its members. All the
members of the body are structures of some function. Every part is the
visible expression of some desire. Hunger, speech, locomotion, have
their different instruments. Will is immediately known to us as the
reality in us. In spite of the exaltation of the reason by the modern
Enlightenment, is it not secondary to Will?
For behold! Let me look beyond myself. The revelation of the reality
within myself illuminates the reality of the outer world. My Will
meets resistance in other things. The everlasting striving of the
Will appears in all nature. It appears in the fall of a stone, the
crystallizing of the diamond――in all the mechanical movements of matter.
“The impulse with which waters hurry to the ocean,” the persistence
of the magnet for the pole, the perennial push of vegetation, the
motivation of animals, show by an analogy stronger than any proof
that the reality of the world is fundamentally Will. All nature is in
reality the “World as Will.” This Will is always one and the same. Only
in the “World as Idea” do differences appear. Will is common to all and
is the only reality. Differences are illusions, and the reason which
exists only in man is one of those differences.
The World as Will and the World as Idea do not stand in the relation
of cause and effect, but the World as Idea is the objectification of
the World as Will. Will is to phenomena what essence is to expression.
Will is the freedom that is within all things; and yet all things are
determined when they have the form of ideas. There is only one Will,
and so the world is in reality a unity. In essence all things are the
same――in appearance they are different. The Will has no content; it
wills to will――to live――to be actual. In the pantheism of the Will the
World as Idea is an illusion.
=The Will as Irrational Reality.= Before Schopenhauer’s time European
mysticism had been of one general type. However universal the character
of illusory appearances had been to the European mystics, there had
always been supposed behind the veil a rational reality. Indeed, the
illusions themselves had been proof of the existence elsewhere of a
governing reason. The mediæval churchman often preached a mysticism,
and his exhortation to turn away from illusions of “the world, the
flesh, and the Devil,” was based upon the compensation to be found in
Heaven and in God. The ineffable rest in the bosom of God was reason
enough for averting the eyes from the passing show of sensuous things.
Schopenhauer now presents to the Occident another type of mysticism,
and in this there is no refuge from illusions. This conception had
long been common enough in the Orient. The _Rubáiyát_ of Omar Khayyám,
written about 1100, represents fundamentally the attitude of the
Persians of his time. “He is said to have been especially hated by the
Sufis, whose practice he ridiculed, but whose faith amounts to little
more than his own when stripped of the mysticism and formal recognition
of Islamism.” (FitzGerald.) But in Europe Schopenhauer’s doctrine was
unique, and he arrived at its construction by stripping mysticism of
all its religious elements. Faith and belief are eliminated because
they have no reality as their object. Reason produces only a world
of illusory ideas; the Will is a reality, but it is a reality which
is only a blind urgency――an instinctive blind force. The essence of
things is undirected striving. Life is the expression of the absolute
unreason of the Will. It is a Will without an object. Nature is the
objectification of the Will that perpetually creates itself and is
forever unsatisfied, unresting, and unhappy.
“A Moment’s Halt――a momentary taste
Of Being from the Well amid the Waste――
And Lo! the phantom Caravan has reacht
The Nothing it set out from――Oh, make haste!”[72]
=The Misery of the World as Idea――Pessimism.= The fundamental
irrationality of the Will reveals the absolute misery of the World
as Idea. The despair of pessimism follows from the very nature of the
Will; for it must be remembered that Schopenhauer’s pessimism does not
merely mean that the appearances of life are illusory, but that reality
itself is irrational. The World as Idea is the objectification of such
misery. Willing has its source in want, and want arises from suffering.
Moreover the proportion of our wants that are satisfied is very small.
To one that is supplied there are many that are not. Furthermore, while
our desires last long, their satisfaction is short and scanty, “like
the alms thrown to a beggar that keeps him alive to-day that his misery
may be prolonged to-morrow.” Our ever-springing wants make lasting
peace impossible. The finite world is not adequate to the infinite
craving which it contains, and there is no equation between the cares
and the satisfactions of life. The greatest evil that can befall a
creature is to have been born; and this is a thousand-fold worse in
man than in any other. To live is to go from willing to attaining and
then to willing again. Attainment means new striving, and the Will
shows “the ache of the not-yet-satisfied.” After all is said and done,
satisfaction destroys not only the desire, but the satisfaction itself.
There is no meaning in life. Pain is positive; pleasure is negative,
and is merely the absence of or respite from pain.
=The Way of Deliverance.= The relief from misery that Schopenhauer
offers is tinged with the grim despair of life itself. It is an escape
that he finds, rather than a haven――an escape that consists in giving
up all that life means. Why not, then, give up life, since it is misery
and torment? But escape is not in suicide, for the act of taking one’s
own life is the performance of the greatest act of affirmation of the
Will; and in the Buddhistic doctrine the suicidal soul only passes by
re-birth (metempsychosis) into another form of Will. Schopenhauer uses
two phrases that have become classic in the description of the two
attitudes possible to man: (1) if man is merely a part of the World
as Idea he is “affirming the Will to life”; and (2) if he seeks a way
of deliverance he “is denying the Will to life.” Suicide is an act of
affirmation of the Will to life.
How may the Will be denied? and since we are in essence Will, the
question takes this form, How may the Will deny the Will? This question
presupposes a transcendental freedom which may be sought in two ways:
one in which the freedom is temporary and the other in which it is
permanent.
1. The temporary deliverance of the Will may be found in artistic
contemplation (Schiller’s disinterested contemplation). Art deals
not with particular forms, but eternal types (Platonic Ideas). Art
isolates an eternal object from out the stream of the world’s changes,
and places it beyond all relations of time, place, and cause. Art not
only removes its object from the World as Idea, but it removes the
contemplator as well. The contemplating subject and the contemplated
object thus become one, and the subject is temporarily saved, for he is
elevated above all desire and pain. This, however, is possible not to
the majority of men, but only to those few possessing æsthetic fancy,
and for them only at intervals. Music is ranked by Schopenhauer as
the highest form of art,――even above poetry,――and it is not surprising
therefore that among the Schopenhauerian worshipers have been many
prominent musicians.
2. But artistic ecstasy is too fleeting and restricted to offer lasting
deliverance from the affirmation of the Will to life and the World as
Idea. Another act of transcendental freedom will bring man into more
complete freedom; but _this act is a miracle and a mystery_, since
it is the complete transformation of our nature. This act must be
supernatural, and the church is right in calling it a new birth and
a work of grace. _Complete freedom from the Will comes through moral
deliverance._
This lasting escape from the Will is open to the man who appreciates
two facts: that all striving for happiness is vain; and that all men
are alike manifestations of the Will. To take this double view of life
involves the feeling of sympathy with others in their misery. Sympathy
is thus the only true moral motive and the fundamental ethical feeling.
The Will in us is moral if we feel another’s hurt as our own. But
sympathy is only a palliative, and it does not remove the cause of
disease. The misery still exists, and our sympathy has only changed its
form. Even though our sympathy goes out to the whole world, the endless
tragedy would still pass on.
In the moral deliverance sympathy can be made complete by absolute
denial, and this will come by asceticism, mortification, and complete
eradication of want and desire. The Hindu _sannyasi_ shows the way.
This is the mystery of the Will. But Schopenhauer is not quite sure
that extreme asceticism can be made effective, since we are full of
Will. At the close of his work he says that even if we could be
completely ascetic the result would be Nothingness. “In thy Nothing I
hope to find the ALL.” Schopenhauer despairs of deliverance for himself,
but does not count it unachievable by others. Absolute deliverance even
by asceticism seems impossible to him. The only hope is that through
art and science the Will may be some time overcome.
CHAPTER XIII
THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY[73]
=The Return to Realism.= If the history of mankind had terminated with
the nineteenth century, the last tendency of thought to be recorded
would have been the return to Realism. The abbreviated account which
follows of the philosophy of the nineteenth century will explain and
illustrate this tendency. Before we set this forth, however, it may be
well to define again the nature of Realism. What is Realism? In general
it is the belief that reality or realities exist quite independent of
anybody’s knowing them. Moreover, Realism has the distinction of being
one of the four great types of metaphysical thought. These types are
Realism, Mysticism, Critical-rationalism, and Idealism.[74] In other
words, Realism is an attitude of mind possible to a whole civilization.
This is what is meant by a great philosophical type. The Idealism
of the period which we have just studied is such a type. Although
Germany had been the leading representative of Idealism, the spread of
philosophical and literary Idealism had been world-wide. All nations
had shared in it. But when the great events and the romancing spirit of
that period had passed, the reaction to Realism was likewise felt the
world over. It is the period of this reaction that we are briefly to
consider.
=The Character of the Realism of the Nineteenth Century.= We have
already discussed the nature of the Realism of ancient civilization as
it appeared in Plato’s theory of Ideas; and we also have reviewed the
variation of Plato’s doctrine in mediæval times. Both ancient and
mediæval societies give expression through Plato to Realistic
conceptions――ancient society to an æsthetic Realism, mediæval to an
ecclesiastical Realism. Now in the modern period we find a still
different kind. _The Realism of the nineteenth century has been that of
natural science._ The question of the nineteenth century has been, What
degree of importance has the scientific conception of phenomena in our
total conception of life? German Idealism had taken up the natural
science of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, and had made it a
part of a world conceived as cosmic Reason. But in the nineteenth
century the conception of the cosmic Reason and that of nature part
company. The two conceptions begin to stand in antithesis. Nature is
conceived as a reality existing in sublime independence. Democritus
wins his victory over Spinoza. There are two reasons for this: (1) The
ideas of science are expressed with a clearness and distinctness
that is in marked contrast with the ideas of German romanticism.
Natural science is formulated mathematically and demonstrated in
experience, and natural science moreover does not require the labor
of interpretation. (2) Natural science proves its usefulness, thereby
responding to the imperative needs of the economic changes of the
nineteenth century.
In this modern period the attention of man has been riveted upon his
environment. If at any time the man of the nineteenth century has
seemed to be interested in man, the interest has really been in man’s
relation to his environment. The nineteenth century has championed
the necessary laws and mechanical structure of the outer world against
man himself. The universe has been enthroned; man has become its
serf. Human effort has become slave to its own progress. Work has been
apotheosized――work in the outer world, work with the hands. Inventions
in material things have multiplied. The nineteenth century has been
the period of steam, of electricity, of machinery, of factories,
of the enormous increase in the number and size of cities, of the
minute division of labor. Social and economic rather than metaphysical
problems have commanded attention. Not another and ideal world, but
_this present world_, is the one in which the modern man has lived.
The sciences have been specialized and man has become practical. Hegel
would have said of our time that the cosmic Reason had been so engaged
in concrete and external realities, that it had had no time to turn
within and scrutinize itself. If one wishes to turn back the leaves
of history for centuries similar to the nineteenth in their spirit,
one will find them in the third and second centuries B. C. and the
fourteenth and fifteenth of the present era. Nevertheless, there is
this to be said about modern Realism in comparison with the Realism of
preceding periods――the preceding Realism had been critical, negative
in its practical results, and usually an opposition to tradition or a
reaction from it; modern Realism has been distinguished by its positive
practical results, its ambition for supremacy, and its shaping of the
whole direction of the life of man. It has assumed control of religion,
art, and social morality, to the end of the well-being of the whole.
=Modern Philosophy and German Idealism.= The nineteenth century
has been remarkable in the extent of its historical, literary, and
scientific productions. It has been poor in its philosophical ideas,
when we compare it with the preceding romantic movement of the German
Idealists. To be sure, there has been much philosophical literature
with a great variety of doctrine, but the many personally impressive
structures have on the whole been only the re-shaping of former thought.
It has sometimes seemed as if some of the philosophic doctrines of this
time were about to take original shape; but none have ever reached it,
with the possible exception of the doctrine of historical evolution.
The explanation of the uncreative character of modern thought is found
in its relation to the Idealism which preceded it. The German Idealists
had conquered the world of the spirit, but in spite of all their
efforts the realm of empirical facts remained stubborn to all their
romancing. Even Hegel, the greatest among them, had not succeeded in
completely penetrating history by his dialectic law. Already in the
eighteenth century a Realistic movement had been stirring in England
and France, and had made notable achievements. So the Idealists turned
to the study of the facts of life――partly in order to subordinate them
to their Idealism, partly because a great interest had appeared in the
study of the records of the past. The origin and history of religions,
of law, of languages, of art, of institutions formed topics of study
within the Romantic circle. A remarkable list of books was published
by the Romanticists on these subjects between the date of the battle
of Waterloo (1815) and that of the death of Hegel (1831). After Hegel
died no adequate successors in speculative power came to take the place
of the old Idealistic leaders, but the interest in empirical science
was borne on by many men of genius. The study of empirical phenomena
was extended to all branches; biology and geology, which were late in
being studied historically, began to occupy the centre of the stage.
In spite of the fact that the nearness of modern philosophical theories
blinds us to their true perspective, yet even now we can see that in
comparison with the German Idealism the philosophical doctrines of the
nineteenth century are partial in their survey of the field. The whole
problem of life was before the eyes of the Idealists; the modern world
about 1831 shifted its attention to a critical scrutiny of only one
part of that problem. The philosophical problem to the Idealists was
the problem of the cosmos; the philosophical problem to the nineteenth
century was concerned only with a reëxamination of the environment of
man.
=The Philosophical Problems of the Nineteenth Century.= In summarizing
what we have above said, we have before us a situation something as
follows. Idealism had run its course as a social attitude of mind, and
about 1831 the leaders of Idealism had died with no one to fill their
places. But within Idealism between 1815 and 1831 there had arisen
a great empirical interest in the origins of history, law, philology,
etc. Side by side with this empirical interest there had come certain
economic conditions that had called forth and rewarded genius in
natural science.
Thus we find even before the fourth decade of the nineteenth century
two strong tendencies: (1) a new conception of the meaning of history
as an evolution from origins; and (2) a remarkable interest in
the natural sciences. The two tendencies modified each other. The
historical view of the world exercised a powerful influence upon
natural science; natural science had to be reckoned with in the writing
of history. History and natural science were drawn together, but
without producing a new philosophical conception that would include
them both.
From the interaction of these two powerful tendencies the great variety
of philosophical interests were grouped around two general problems.
These were (1) _The problem of the functioning of the soul_; (2) _The
problem of the conception of history_.
=1. The Problem of the Functioning of the Soul.= With the decline of
metaphysics and the reaction from speculation, psychology began to
loosen from its anchorage in philosophy. Psychology, which had been a
study of mind, now became the study of the relation of mind and body.
The tendency was strong to make psychology an empirical science, and
by the use of the methods of science to become a part of physiology
and biology. Philosophy has been a nest in which all the sciences have
been brooded. Psychology has been the last to attempt to leave the nest,
and to-day in some of our large universities it is coördinated in the
curriculum with the natural sciences. Deprived of a basis in philosophy,
psychology turned to natural science for support. Concerning the
relation of the soul to the body many solutions have been offered.
Following the Sensationalist, Cabanis, who died in 1808, some of the
French Ideologists, so-called, concluded that the soul is everywhere
determined by physical influences, such as age, sex, temperament,
climate, etc.; some said that the mind is a result of brain activity;
some developed the conception of phrenology, according to which the
shape of the skull determines the faculties of the mind. The French
Ideologists differed widely in their interpretations, but on the
whole the basis of the movement was materialism. The hypothesis of
phrenology aroused great interest in England, but John Stuart Mill
led the movement back to Hume’s associational psychology. He conceived
the psychical and the physical states as two separate realms, and he
concluded that psychology as the study of the laws of mental states
cannot reduce mental states to physical. So Sir William Hamilton, under
the influence of Kant, championed the life of inner experience.
Of course the materialistic challenge of the soul aroused great heat
in theological circles. The personality of God and the nature of
the soul became burning questions, and led to the dissolution of the
Hegelian school into “the right wing” and “the left wing.” Hegel had
always maintained his standing in orthodox circles as the Prussian
“State philosopher.” Those followers who composed the “right wing”
tried to interpret his doctrine in accordance with the traditional
theological conception of the soul; the “left wing” interpreted Hegel
as a pantheist, in whose doctrine the soul could not be considered
as a substance with immortality. Feuerbach followed this by inverting
Hegelianism into a nominalistic materialism, and conceived the soul
as nature “in its otherness.” In 1854, at a convention of naturalists
in Germany, the materialistic conception of the soul was found to be
widely spread among the German physicians and naturalists. But the
contradiction between the inferences of science and “the needs of
the heart” became a subject of controversy, and in 1860, under the
leadership of Kuno Fischer, the “return to Kant” was begun, which
lasted throughout the nineteenth century.
There are two names that stand out most prominently in relation to
this controversy over the nature of the soul: they are those of Lotze
(1817–1881) and Fechner (1801–1887). They are names that were conjured
with by the generation of American scholars before the present. Lotze
regarded the mechanical necessity of nature as the form in which
the impulsive mental life of man realizes its purposes. Every soul
therefore has a life that consists essentially in purposeful relations
with other souls. And this is possible only if the lives of men are
under an all-embracing Providence. Fechner chose another way to escape
from the materialistic tendency. He regarded the soul and body as
separate and qualitatively different, although exactly corresponding,
manifestations of one unknown reality. There is a parallelism between
the mental and the physical, in which the mental phenomena are known
only to the individual perceiving them. As sensations are the surface
waves of a total individual consciousness, so the consciousnesses of
human beings are the surface waves of a universal consciousness. The
mechanical activity of nature corresponds to the consciousness of God.
We can investigate this correspondence by studying the correspondence
between our own mental states and physical states. This is the modern
well-known psychological method of psycho-physics. We can measure
psychical quantities by formulating mathematical laws of their
occurrence.
Our present psychology has seen a development from all these earlier
explanations; but this is a matter of contemporary writing and not of
history.
=2. The Problem of the Conception of History.= The contrast in the
Kantian teaching between nature and mind became an antagonism in the
nineteenth century. When psychology was no longer a purely mental
science, social life in its historical development at first withstood
the vigorous march of the natural science of the nineteenth century.
But the inroads of science in psychology were duplicated in the field
of sociology, and thus the problem of society was only the problem of
the soul on a larger scale.
The first form that this problem took arose from the opposition in
France between the traditional conception of society and that of the
philosophy of the Revolution. The nineteenth century French philosophy
has, however, a religious coloring that differentiates it from that
of the Revolution. Auguste Comte[75] (1798–1857) stands as the chief
representative of this scientific reduction of society. He pushed the
doctrines of Hume and Condillac to their extreme in his positivist
system of social science. He maintained that human knowledge had
as its objects phenomena in their reciprocal relations, but that
there is nothing absolute at the basis of these phenomena. The only
absolute principle is, All is relative. There is a hierarchy of
sciences in which sociology is highest. Sociology includes all the
preceding sciences, and yet it is the original fact. The first social
phenomenon is the family. The stages of the development of society are
(1) theological, (2) metaphysical, and (3) positivistic or scientific.
All mental life in detail, and human history as a whole, are subject
to these stages of growth. In the positivistic stage mankind will be
the object of religious veneration, and the lives of great men will
be justified because they have raised the lives of common men. The
democracy to which Comte looks is one ruled by great minds, and is not
a socialism. In contrast to Comte’s theory is that of Buckle, who would
study history by discovering the mechanical laws governing society.
While human history was thus being invaded by natural science and had
to defend its autonomy against the naturalistic principle of science,
natural science on the other hand was in the nineteenth century invaded
by the historical principle of evolution. Natural science becomes
a history. We have seen that in the Romantic circle there was great
interest in the origin and development of law, philology, art, etc. In
the beginning and middle of the nineteenth century this interest spread
to an investigation of the origin of animal life. This investigation
has been the most notable in this century, because (1) it included
in its scope the source and means of progress of the human race; and
because (2) it advanced a new conception of development. Development
now becomes evolution. Up to the nineteenth century the world was
looked upon as a graded series of types, but no type was supposed to
evolve into another. (See vol. i, pp. 180, 193; vol. ii, p. 306.) The
theory of historical evolution of the nineteenth century is notable
because it advanced the conception, based upon empirical investigation,
that types are changed into others. This theory, among those of the
century, comes the nearest to an original philosophical doctrine.
The book that became the centre of scientific interest for many years
was Darwin’s _Origin of Species_, published in 1859. The name most
prominently linked with that of Darwin is that of Herbert Spencer,
who attempted to make universal the principle of development and to
formulate its law.
The modern theory of the historical evolution of animal life has
reinforced the mechanical principle of nature, which had its origin in
the minds of the philosophers of the Renaissance. It has antagonized
the theological doctrine of creation; it has related the animal and
man by filling in the supposably impassable gulf between them; it has
advanced the doctrine of chemical synthesis against the hylozoistic
notion of a vital principle; it has pushed forward with great assurance
its theories of transformation and equivalence of forces, and of the
action of electricity as a substitute for thought-activity; it has
shown a wonderful parsimony in giving a value to all the facts of
history which had hitherto been conceived as trivial; and on the other
hand it has reduced the conception of mighty cosmic cataclysms to
a geological series of gradual gradations. Darwin’s place in this
movement of the nineteenth century was this: he tried to show that
animal life can be explained without the aid of final causes. In other
words, the adaptation of the structure of animals can be accounted for
mechanically. The factors involved in the development of organic life
upon the earth were, according to Darwin, infinite differentiation,
adaptation, natural selection, and the survival of the fittest.
Now at the beginning of the twentieth century there seems to be a
reaction from the scientific positivism of the last century. This has
taken the form of an extravagant mysticism, although at heart it is an
optimism and an idealism.
INDEX
Abbott, E. A.,
_Francis Bacon_, 40 n.
Absolute Reality,
of Hegel, 314, 316, 321, 323–326, 328, 329.
_See_ Reality.
Absolutism, spirit of,
in Germany, from 1648 to 1740, 217–223;
in France, 217, 225;
destroyed by Frederick the Great and Lessing, 225, 226, 228, 229.
Æsthetic Idealism,
of Schelling, 302, 304, 307.
Agnosticism,
of Hume, 188.
Alchemists, the,
25.
Alembert, Jean le Rond d’,
211.
Althusius, Johannes,
47.
America,
discovery of, 6.
Anacreonticists, the,
224.
Analysis.
_See_ Induction.
Analytic judgments,
of Kant, 249–252.
Antinomies,
of Kant, 264, 265.
Antithesis,
of Fichte, 295;
of Hegel, 327.
_A posteriori_,
judgments, of Kant, 250–252;
material, the perceptions, 257;
principle, in ethics, 271, 272.
_A priori_,
judgments, of Kant, 250–252;
principles, categories, 257, 271, 272.
Archæus, the,
of Paracelsus, 26, 27.
Aristotle,
represented by two antagonistic schools in the Renaissance, 11.
Art,
in Schelling’s philosophy, 308;
and in Schopenhauer’s philosophy, 359.
Association of Ideas,
according to Hume, 191–193;
by law of contiguity, 192–194;
by law of resemblance, 192–196;
by law of causation, 192, 193, 196–199.
Associational Psychology,
Hobbes the father of, 56.
Associationalist Psychologists,
141.
Astronomers,
mathematical, 32–36.
Atheistic controversy,
of Fichte, 282, 284.
Atoms,
scientific conception of, examined by Leibnitz, 119, 120, 121.
Attributes,
according to Spinoza, 95, 96.
_See_ Qualities.
Auerbach, Berthold,
_Spinoza_, 88 n.
Autobiographies,
many of them written in the Enlightenment, 137.
Bacon, Francis,
31, 35;
life of, 39;
position of, in philosophy, 39–42;
his _New Atlantis_, 40–42;
the aim of, 42, 43;
his method, 43–46;
compared with Hobbes, 48;
seems to stand apart, 146.
Baldwin, J. M.,
_Fragments in Philosophy_, 84 n.
Ball, W. W. R.,
_History of Mathematics_, 36 n., 40 n.
Bayle, Pierre,
203.
Beauty,
in Schelling’s philosophy, 307.
Beers, H. A.,
_History of Romanticism in Eighteenth Century_, 295 n.;
_History of Romanticism in Nineteenth Century_, 295 n.
Berkeley, George,
life and writings of, 169–172;
the influences upon his thought, 172;
the purpose of, 173, 174;
general relation of, to Locke and Hume, 174, 175;
his points of agreement with Locke, 175, 176;
the negative side of his philosophy, 176–179;
denies existence of abstract ideas, 177–179;
the positive side of his philosophy, 179–183;
and Hume, compared, 183, 184.
Blackwood Classics,
_Descartes_, 70 n., 73 n.
Bodin, Jean,
47.
Body,
relation of mind and, according to Descartes, 78–80;
in Leibnitz’s philosophy, 126.
Bohn’s Libraries,
_Spinoza_, 90 n.
Brahe, Tycho,
32, 33.
Brown, Thomas,
202.
Browning, Robert,
_Paracelsus_, 25, 26 n.
Bruno, Giordano,
25, 27–30, 32, 33.
Buckle, H. T.,
362.
Buffon, G. L. L. de,
211.
Butler, Joseph,
his _Analogy of Religion_, 166.
Byron, G. G., Lord,
on Berkeley, 182.
Caird, E.,
_Philosophy of Kant_, 236 n.
Calkins, M. W.,
_Persistent Problems in Philosophy_, iv, 66 n., 73 n., 110 n.
Cambridge School, the,
61.
Campanella, ♦Tommaso,
his _State of the Sun_, 41 n.
Cartesian argument, the,
74, 75.
Categorical imperative, the,
of Kant, 273.
Categories,
Aristotelian and Kantian, 256, 257;
of Hegel, 323, 327.
Causation,
association of, 192, 193, 196–199.
Chubb, Thomas,
165.
Church,
mediæval, 14;
attitude of, toward science, in the period of the Renaissance,
19–21, 62–65;
according to Hobbes, 60.
Civilization,
of the Middle Ages, causes of the decay of, 4–7;
modern, is subjective, 15.
Classicism,
German, 224, 296.
Coleridge, S. T.,
and Spinoza, 85.
Collegiants, the,
Spinoza’s acquaintance with, 87–89.
Collins, Anthony,
165.
Columbus, Christopher,
discovers America, 6.
Comte, Auguste,
quoted on the _Encyclopædia_, 211;
his philosophy, 360.
Concomitant variations,
the name, 38 n.
Condillac, E. B. de,
212.
Consciousness,
ultimate certainty of, according to Descartes, 70–72;
implications of, according to Descartes, 72, 73;
in Fichte’s philosophy, 286–288, 293;
in Schelling’s philosophy, 309;
in Hegel’s philosophy, 321, 322, 326, 327;
in Herbart’s philosophy, 336, 338;
in Fechner’s philosophy, 359.
Constantinople,
fall of, 6.
Constitutionalists and Political Economists, the,
of the Enlightenment, 142.
Contiguity,
association of, 192–194.
Continuity,
law of, 129.
Contradictions,
the world a world of, according to Hegel, 321, 327, 328, 335;
of experience, according to Herbart, 334, 335.
Copernicus, Nikolaus,
7, 32–34.
Cosmic,
unity, of Hegel, 322–326;
law, of Hegel, 326–328.
Counter-Revolution, the,
17.
Criticism,
the Enlightenment a period of, 138;
Kant’s method of, 239.
Cusanus, Nicolas (Nicolas of Cusa),
23–25.
Darwin, Charles Robert,
his _Origin of Species_ formulated most fully the Evolution
movement, 3, 362.
Decentralization of Europe and of philosophy,
iv, 12, 13.
Deduction,
in the Natural Science period, 19, 21, 35;
defined, 35 n.;
use of, according to Galileo, 37;
according to Bacon, 40, 46;
according to Descartes, 70, 72, 73;
use made of, by the followers of Descartes, 81.
Deed-act,
of Fichte, 293.
Deism,
and Hume, 200;
of Voltaire, 210.
Deists,
the English, 141, 164–166;
the German, 142.
Descartes, René,
31, 35;
compared with Hobbes, 48, 49;
the mental conflict in, 65, 66;
life and philosophical writings of, 66, 67;
the two conflicting influences upon the thought of, 67–69;
the method of, 69, 70;
the great contribution of, an absolute principle, 70;
induction, provisional doubt, ultimate certainty of consciousness,
according to, 70–72;
deduction, implications of consciousness, according to, 70, 72, 73;
his proofs of the existence of God, 73–75;
the reality of matter, according to, 75–77;
his view of the relation of God to the world, 77;
of God to matter, 77, 78;
of God to minds, 78;
of mind and body, 78–80;
influence of, 80, 81;
relation of the Occasionalists and Spinoza to, 81–84;
his influence on Spinoza, 87;
his influence on Locke, 145, 146, 152.
Determinism,
53.
Dewing, A. S.,
_Introduction to Modern Philosophy_, iv, 8 n., 332 n.
Diderot, Denis,
211.
Differential calculus,
discovered by Leibnitz, 112, 114, 119.
Discoveries.
_See_ Inventions.
Dogmatism,
defined, 187.
Doubt,
provisional, of Descartes, 70–72.
Dualism,
Cartesian, of mind and matter, assumed in the Enlightenment, 135;
of Berkeley, 179;
formed the background of Kant’s thought, 232.
Dualists,
174 n.
Duty,
according to Fichte, 289–295.
Eclecticism,
revived by Renaissance scholars, 11.
Edwards, Jonathan,
171.
Ego, the,
of Kant, 260, 263, 264;
of Fichte, 288–295, 313;
of Schelling, 304, 309;
of Hegel, 313, 314.
Empiricism,
begun by Locke, 61;
defined, 61 n.;
in the Enlightenment, 137;
of Berkeley, 174;
of Hume, 189;
of the nineteenth century, 355–357, 361, 362.
Encyclopædists, the,
of the Enlightenment, 142, 211, 212.
England,
in the Natural Science period, 17, 21, 31;
the Natural Science movement in, 46;
the Renaissance in, after Hobbes, 61;
the Enlightenment in, 140, 145–147;
comparison of the French Enlightenment with the Enlightenment
in, 204, 205;
influence of, in France, in the Enlightenment, 206, 207.
Enlightenment, the,
the second period of modern philosophy, 2, 3;
general treatment of, 132–143;
begins when the “new man” tries to understand his own nature, 132;
the practical presupposition of, 134;
the metaphysical presupposition of, 135;
the problems of, 135–140;
the period of empirical psychology, autobiographies, and
Methodism, 137;
a period of criticism, 138;
a period of remarkable changes in the political map of Europe, 139;
a comparison of, in England, France, and Germany, 140, 204, 205;
the many groups of philosophers in, 140–143;
birthplaces of influential thinkers of (map), 144;
in Great Britain, 145–147;
in France, 203–216;
the situation in, in France, 203–206;
the English influence in, in France, 206, 207;
the two periods of, in France, 207, 208;
the intellectual (Voltaire, Montesquieu, the Encyclopædists),
208–212;
the social (Rousseau), 213–216;
in Germany, 216–229;
the introductory period (absolutism), 217–223;
sources of, 218–223;
the literary, in Germany, summary of, 223, 224;
the political (Frederick the Great), 224–226;
the course of, in Germany, 226–228;
Lessing, 228, 229.
Epicureanism,
revived by Renaissance scholars, 11.
Epistemology,
of Locke, 155, 156, 158, 160–162;
of Kant, 238, 239.
_See_ Knowledge.
Erdmann, J. E.
on the Enlightenment, 133.
Eternity,
in Spinoza’s philosophy, 105, 106.
Ethics
of Spinoza, 102–106;
of Hume, 200, 201;
of Kant, 269–277.
Eucken, Rudolf,
_Problem of Human Life_, iv, 8 n., 23 n., 40 n., 47 n., 66 n.,
84 n., 107 n., 147 n., 183 n., 203 n., ♦213 n., 236 n.,
282 n., 300 n., 315 n., 340 n., 352 n.
Evil,
in Leibnitz’s philosophy, 130.
Evolution,
principle of, 3, 361, 362.
Experience,
contradictions of, according to Herbart, 334, 335.
Extension,
the essence of matter, according to Descartes, 77, 82;
in Spinoza’s philosophy, 93, 95, 96, 102.
Faith philosophy,
Herder a writer on, 143.
Falckenberg, Richard,
_History of Modern Philosophy_, iv, 26 n., 36 n., 47 n., 55 n.,
70 n., 73 n.;
quoted, 274, 275.
Fechner, G. T.,
359.
Feuerbach, L. A.,
358.
Fichte, J. G.,
and Schelling and Hegel, what they sought, 279, 281, 312;
life and writings of, 282–285;
the influences upon his teaching, 285, 286;
his two kinds of ideas, 286;
the moral awakening, according to, 287, 288;
the central principle in his philosophy, 288–290;
the moral world of, 290–292;
God and man, in the philosophy of, 292, 293;
what a moral reality involves, according to, 293–295;
his relation to Romanticism, 299;
and Schelling, a brief comparison of, as philosophers, 303–305.
Fischer, Kuno,
_Descartes and his School_, 70 n.;
leads the “return to Kant,” 359.
FitzGerald, Edward,
his translation of the _Rubáiyát_, 347, 348.
Force,
fundamental ground of motion, according to Leibnitz, 119, 120;
identified with the metaphysical atom by Leibnitz, 121;
the word, as used by Leibnitz, squints toward physics and
psychology, 122.
France,
in the Natural Science period, 17, 21, 31;
the Enlightenment in, 140, 203–216;
the situation in, in the Enlightenment, 203–206;
the English influence in, 206, 207;
the two periods of the Enlightenment in, 207, 208;
the intellectual Enlightenment (Voltaire, Montesquieu, the
Encyclopædists) in, 208–212;
the social Enlightenment (Rousseau) in, 213–216;
absolutism in, 217.
Francke, A. H.,
220.
Frederick the Great,
223–226.
Freedom,
Spinoza’s conception of, 104;
according to Locke, 154, 155;
Kant’s idea of, 270;
the postulate of, according to Kant, 276;
according to Fichte, 289, 290;
and God, Schelling’s philosophy of, 303;
transcendental, of Schopenhauer, 349–351.
Galilei, Galileo,
31–33, 35–39.
Gama, Vasco da,
discovers all-sea route to India, 7.
Gassendi, Pierre,
was author of the introduction of Greek atomism into modern
thought, 120.
Geneva,
new religious centre in the Renaissance, 12.
Geometrical Method and its Opponents,
in the Enlightenment, 142.
German Idealism,
and modern philosophy, 355, 356.
German Idealists,
places connected with (map), 280;
treated, 278–329.
German literature,
a factor in the Enlightenment, 218, 219, 223.
German Philosophy,
the third period of modern philosophy, 3;
treatment of, 230–329;
the three characteristics of, 231, 232;
the two periods of, 232, 233.
Germany,
in the Renaissance, 12, 16, 17, 21, 31;
the Enlightenment in, 140, 216–229;
the introductory period (absolutism), 217–223;
summary of the literary Enlightenment in, 223, 224;
the political Enlightenment in (Frederick the Great), 224–226;
the course of the Enlightenment in, 226–228;
Lessing, 228, 229;
the convergence of philosophical influences in, 230, 231.
Geulincx, Arnold,
63, 83.
Gibbon, Edward,
quoted, 138.
God,
in the philosophy of Cusanus, 25;
in Bruno’s philosophy, 28–30;
Descartes’ proofs of the existence of, 73–75;
relation of, to the world, to matter, and to minds, according
to Descartes, 77, 78;
in the philosophy of the Occasionalists, 83;
in Spinoza’s philosophy, 91–106;
in Leibnitz’s philosophy, 126, 127, 130, 131;
in the Enlightenment, 135;
in Berkeley’s philosophy, 181–183;
in Hume’s philosophy, 200;
in Voltaire’s philosophy, 210;
the idea of, according to Kant, 261, 265–268;
the postulate of the existence of, according to Kant, 276, 277;
in Fichte’s philosophy, 292, 293;
in Schelling’s philosophy, 300;
and freedom, Schelling’s philosophy of, 303, 312;
of the Mystic, 319;
in Hegel’s philosophy, 324;
according to Fechner, 359.
Goethe, J. W. von,
_Faust_, 25, 26 n., 85 n.;
and Spinoza, 84, 85;
describes the Enlightenment as an age of self-conceit, 134;
prominent in the Storm and Stress movement, 227;
as a Romanticist, 297–299;
and Schelling, their philosophy, 306.
Gottsched, J. C.,
219, 223, 294.
Grace,
world of. _See_ World of grace.
Great Britain,
the Enlightenment in, 145–147.
_See_ England.
Greek,
language and literature, study of, before and in the Renaissance,
10–14, 16.
Greeks, the,
naturalism of, recovered in the Renaissance, 14.
Grotius, Hugo,
47.
Gunpowder,
discovery of, 6.
Hamilton, Sir William,
202, 358.
Hardenberg, Friedrich von (Novalis),
on Spinoza, 92;
quoted, 295.
Hartmann, K. R. E. von,
342.
Harvey, William,
35.
Hegel, G. W. F.,
German philosophy ends with, 3;
and Fichte and Schelling, what they sought, 279, 281, 312;
comment of, on Schelling, 299;
and the culmination of Idealism, 312–314;
why he remains to-day the representative of Kant, 314, 315;
life and writings of, 315–318;
the fundamental principle of his idealism, 321, 322;
the cosmic unity of, 322–326;
the cosmic law of, 326–328;
his application of his theory, 328, 329;
basis of the opposition against, 331, 332;
and Schopenhauer, compared, 340, 341;
his philosophy, how interpreted by his followers, 358.
Heidelberg,
University of, 12.
Herbart, J. F.,
as a follower of Kant, 330–332;
turns to the thing-in-itself, 332;
his programme at the beginning of his teaching, 332, 333;
life and writings of, 333, 334;
his contradictions of experience, 334;
his argument for realism, 334–336;
the many reals and nature phenomena, according to, 337, 338;
the soul and mental phenomena, according to, 338–340.
Herbert of Cherbury,
165.
Herder, J. G. von,
brought into currency the word “humanity,” 133;
prominent in the Storm and Stress movement, 227;
true interpreter of Leibnitz, 228.
Hibben, J. G.,
_Philosophy of Enlightenment_, 107 n., 119 n., 132 n., 179 n.;
quoted on Berkeley, 180.
History,
conception of, in the nineteenth century, 357, 360–363.
Hobbes, Thomas,
31, 35, 36;
a political theorist, 47;
forerunner of modern materialism, 48, 49;
compared with Bacon, 48;
compared with Descartes, 48;
life and writings of, 49, 50;
the influences upon the thought of, 50–52;
his mission, to construct a mechanical view of the world, 52;
the fundamental principle in the teaching of, 52–54;
the method of, 54, 55;
kinds of bodies, according to, 55, 56;
his application of the mathematical theory to psychology, 56–58;
to politics, 58–60;
his _Leviathan_, 60;
and Descartes and Locke, 145, 146;
began the school of English Moralists, 167, 168.
Höffding, Harold,
_History of Modern Philosophy_, iv, 36 n., 40 n., 70 n.
Holland,
in the Natural Science period, 17, 21, 31.
Holy Roman Empire,
217, 225.
Humanistic period,
general character of, 15–21;
long list of representatives of, 22, 23;
consideration of representatives of (Cusanus, Paracelsus, Bruno),
23–30.
_Humanity_,
the word, brought into currency by Herder, 133.
Hume, David,
on Spinoza, 88;
the change in English intellectual interests shown in, 147;
general relation of Berkeley to, 174, 175;
a dualist, 174 n.;
life and writings of, 183–186;
compared with Berkeley, 183, 184;
influences upon the thought of, 186, 187;
his Skepticism and Phenomenalism, 187–189;
the origin of ideas, according to, 189–191;
the association of ideas, according to, 191–193;
association, by law of contiguity, 192–194;
by law of resemblance, 192–196;
association of causation, 192, 193, 196–199;
mathematics in his philosophy, 194, 195;
his conception of substance, 195, 196;
his attack on theology, 195, 196;
his attack on science, 196–199;
the extent and limits of human knowledge, according to, 199, 200;
his theory of religion and ethics, 200, 201;
the ♦skepticism of, influenced Kant, 235.
Huyghens, Christian,
32.
Idea,
the world as, and as Will, according to Schopenhauer, 345–347;
the misery of the world as, according to Schopenhauer, 348, 349.
Idealism,
of Berkeley, 174;
after Kant, 278, 279;
subjective, of Fichte, 290, 304;
æsthetic, of Schelling, 302, 304, 307;
Transcendental, of Schelling, 309, 310;
Hegel and the culmination of, 312–314;
and Realism, and Mysticism, contrasted, 318–321;
Hegel’s, the fundamental principle of, 321, 322;
German, and modern philosophy, 355, 356.
Idealists,
German, treated, 279–329.
Ideas,
the proof of their truth, according to Descartes, 72;
innate, of Descartes, 73, 156;
innate, of Spinoza, 156;
innate, denied by Locke, 156, 157, 189;
innate, of Leibnitz, 157;
source of, according to Locke, 157–159;
in the philosophies of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, 174, 175;
abstract, in Berkeley’s philosophy, 177, 179, 189;
source of, according to Berkeley, 181–183;
origin of, according to Hume, 187, 189–191;
association of, according to Hume, 191–193;
association of, by law of contiguity, 192–194;
by law of resemblance, 192–196;
Kant’s use of the term, 261;
the three, according to Kant (God, soul, totality of the universe),
261–268;
of Fichte, 286;
neo-Platonic, in Schelling’s philosophy, 312.
Identity,
of indiscernibles, 129;
Schelling’s philosophy of, 303, 310, 311.
Ideologists,
French, 358.
Idols, the,
of Bacon, 45.
Illuminati, the,
227.
Immortality of the soul,
the postulate of, according to Kant, 276.
Impressions,
in Hume’s philosophy, 190.
Inconsistencies,
of the world according to Hegel, 322.
Independent Philosophers, the,
of the Enlightenment, 142.
Individual, independence of the,
in the Enlightenment, 134.
Individualism,
movement toward, in the Renaissance, 12, 15;
modern, the rise of, 132–134;
in the Enlightenment, its expression in England, France, and
Germany, 140;
in France, in the Enlightenment, 207–209;
in Germany, 219, 220, 223, 225–229;
of the Romantic movement, 296.
Induction,
in the Natural Science period, 19, 21, 35;
defined, 35 n.;
use of, according to Galileo, 37;
according to Bacon, 40, 46;
according to Descartes, 70–72.
Infinity,
Spinoza’s idea of, 94, 95, 105, 106.
Innate Ideas,
of Descartes, 73, 156;
of Spinoza, 156;
existence of, denied by Locke, 156, 157, 189;
of Leibnitz, 157.
Intellectual Enlightenment,
in France, 207–212.
Inventions,
of the Middle Ages, 6, 9;
in the nineteenth century, 354.
Italian nature philosophers,
22.
Italy,
in the Renaissance, 10, 12, 16, 17, 21, 31.
James, William,
_Hibbert Journal_, 315 n.;
_Pragmatism_, 352 n.
Jena,
233, 284, 302, 307.
Jewish Cabala, the,
11.
Johnson, Samuel,
president of King’s College in New York, 171.
Judgments indispensable to knowledge,
according to Kant (analytic, synthetic, _a posteriori_,
_a priori_), 248–252.
Kant, Immanuel,
his _Critique of Pure Reason_, marks the transition from the
Enlightenment to German Philosophy, 2–4, 232;
the influences upon, 233–235;
life and writings of, 235–238;
the problem of, 238, 239;
the method of, 239, 240;
the threefold world of (subjective states, things-in-themselves,
and phenomena), 240–243;
his world of knowledge, 243–245;
place of synthesis in knowledge, according to, 245–248;
the judgments indispensable to knowledge, according to, 248–252;
proof of the validity of human knowledge, according to, 252–260;
validity of sense-perception consists in space and time, 253–255;
the validity of the understanding, 255–260;
the question of the validity of the reason, 260–262;
the idea of the soul, 261–264;
the idea of the universe, 261, 264, 265;
the idea of God, 261, 265–268;
summary of the theory of knowledge contained in the _Critique of
Pure Reason_, 268, 269;
the ethics of (the problem of the _Critique of Practical Reason_),
269–271;
the moral law and the two questions concerning it, 271–275;
the moral postulates, 275–277;
idealism after, 278, 279;
his influence upon Fichte, 285, 286;
why Hegel remains to-day the representative of, 314, 315;
followers of (Herbart and Schopenhauer), 330–332.
Kepler, Johann,
32–34.
Khayyám, Omar,
347, 348.
Knowledge,
in Hobbes’s philosophy, 57;
in Descartes’s philosophy, 77;
God the only object of, according to Spinoza, 92;
Locke’s theory of, 155, 156, 158, 160–162;
in Berkeley’s philosophy, 176;
in Hume’s philosophy, 187, 199, 200;
in Reid’s philosophy, 202;
Kant’s theory of, 238, 239;
Kant’s world of, 243–245;
the place of synthesis in, according to Kant, 245–248;
the judgments indispensable to, according to Kant, 248–252;
human, proof of the validity of, according to Kant, 252–262;
transcendent and transcendental, of Kant, 262;
of the soul, 262–264;
of the universe, 264, 265;
of God, 265–268;
summary of Kant’s theory of, contained in the _Critique of Pure
Reason_, 268, 269;
according to Schopenhauer, 345.
Knutzen, Martin, teacher of Kant, 234.
Latin,
before and in the Renaissance, 10–12.
Leibnitz, G. W. von,
31;
as the finisher of the Renaissance and the forerunner of the
Enlightenment, 107, 108;
life and writings of, 108–112;
his early classical studies, 112, 113;
the new science and his discoveries, 113, 114;
influenced by political pressure for religious reconciliation,
114, 115;
the method of, 115–118;
the immediate problem for (that of reconciling science and
religion), 118, 119;
the result of his examination of the principles of science, a
plurality of metaphysical substances, 119–122;
his examination of the scientific conception of motion, 119, 120;
his examination of the scientific conception of the atom, 120, 121;
his theory of monadology, 121;
the double nature of his monads, 122–125;
the two forms of his conception of the unity of the substances,
125;
the intrinsic (philosophical) unity of his monads, 125–129;
the superimposed (theological) unity of his monads, 129–131;
his toleration compared with that of Locke, 151;
his philosophy, a source of the German Enlightenment, 220–223;
his philosophy developed and transformed by Wolff and Thomasius,
221–223;
Lessing and Herder as interpreters of, 228;
appears, through Lessing, as a motive power in German
Enlightenment, 229.
Leibnitz-Wolffian philosophy,
221–223, 231;
influenced Kant, 233, 234.
Lessing, G. E.,
and Spinoza, connection of, 85;
helped save Germany from a political revolution, 226–228;
gave the death-blow to pedantic absolutism, 228;
German literature begins with, 228;
as interpreter of Leibnitz, 228;
his philosophy, 229.
Life,
in Leibnitz’s philosophy, 128.
Locke, John,
his _Essay on the Human Understanding_ marks the transition from
the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, 2–4;
his general position in the history of philosophy, 145–147;
his life and writings, 147–150;
the sources of his thought, 150–153;
his Puritan ancestry, 150;
his training in tolerance, 150, 151;
the scientific influence on, 151, 152;
the political influence on, 152, 153;
the purpose of, 153–155;
two sides of his philosophy, 155–158;
and scholasticism, 156, 157;
his psychology, 157–160;
his epistemology, 155, 156, 158, 160–162;
his practical philosophy, 162, 163;
the influence of, 163, 164;
general relation of Berkeley to, 174, 175;
Berkeley’s points of agreement with, 175, 176.
Logic,
in the latter part of the Middle Ages, studied for its own sake, 4;
in Hegel’s philosophy, 323, 328.
London,
new religious centre in the Renaissance, 12;
becomes an intellectual centre about the time of the publication
of Locke’s _Essay_, 206.
Lotze, R. H.,
359.
Louis XIV, French King,
203.
Louis XV, French King,
204.
Macaulay, T. B.,
_Essay on Bacon_, 40 n.;
on Bacon, 42.
Macchiavelli, Niccolò,
47.
Magic,
in the Humanistic period, 18, 19, 21, 25.
Magnetic needle,
discovery of, 6, 7.
Malebranche, Nicolas de,
63, 83.
Man,
his relation to the universe in the Renaissance, 8–18;
in the philosophy of Paracelsus, 26;
in Hobbes’s philosophy, 55, 58;
in Descartes’s philosophy, 79;
in Spinoza’s philosophy, 103;
in Leibnitz’s philosophy, 126;
in Fichte’s philosophy, 292, 293;
in Schelling’s philosophy, 300, 309.
_See_ New man.
Materialism,
of Hobbes, 48, 49, 53;
defined, 53 n.;
of the nineteenth century, 358.
Mathematical Astronomers, the,
32–36.
Mathematical law,
according to Galileo, 37, 38.
Mathematics,
in the Natural Science period, 19, 21;
modern influence of, grew from astronomical beginnings among the
Humanists, 35;
of Hobbes, 48, 54, 56–60;
of Descartes, 48, 68, 69, 74, 76;
in Spinoza’s philosophy, 90, 91, 93, 99;
differential calculus, discovered by Leibnitz, 112, 114, 119;
in Leibnitz’s philosophy, 116, 122, 123;
in Hume’s philosophy, 194, 195.
Matter,
the reality of, according to Descartes, 75–77, 82;
relation of God to, according to Descartes, 77, 78;
in Berkeley’s philosophy, 177, 178;
in Schelling’s philosophy, 305;
in Hegel’s philosophy, 324.
Mechanism,
of the world of Hobbes, 52–54.
Mediæval,
man, 9, 10;
science, 11;
institutions, 11;
church, 14;
world, 15.
Mendelssohn, Moses,
221.
Metaphysics,
Cartesian, assumed in the Enlightenment, 135.
Methodism,
rise of, 137.
Middle Ages, the,
causes of the decay of the civilization of, 4–7.
Mill, J. S.,
38 n., 358.
Mind,
relation of God to, according to Descartes, 78;
relation of body and, according to Descartes, 78–80;
in the philosophy of the Occasionalists, 83;
in the philosophy of Locke, 156–162;
in Berkeley’s philosophy, 176, 180;
in Hume’s philosophy, 191;
in Reid’s philosophy, 202;
of Fichte and Schelling, 304;
in Hegel’s philosophy, 324;
phenomena of, according to Herbart, 338–340.
_See_ Soul.
Modern philosophy,
comparative short time-length of, iii, iv;
difficulty in the study of, 1, 2;
periods of, 2–4;
and German idealism, 355, 356.
Modes,
of mind and matter, according to Descartes, 77;
of thought and extension, according to Spinoza, 95, 96.
Monadology,
Leibnitz’s theory of, 121.
Monads,
of Leibnitz, metaphysical atoms, 112, 114, 119, 121;
the double nature of, 122–125;
conceived as soul-atoms, 122, 123, 126;
representation the general function of, 124;
are windowless, and mirror the universe, 125, 127;
the principle of unity among, called a pre-established harmony,
125;
the intrinsic (philosophical) unity of, 125–129;
the superimposed (theological) unity of, 129–131.
Montesquieu, C. de S. de, Baron,
208.
Moral,
awakening, the, according to Fichte, 287, 288;
freedom, of Fichte, 289, 290;
world, of Fichte, 290–292;
reality, a, what it involves, according to Fichte, 293–295.
Moral Philosophers,
of the Enlightenment, 141.
Moralists,
English, the, 166–168.
Morality,
according to Hegel, 326.
Morals,
Kant’s theory of, 269–277.
More, Thomas,
his _Utopia_, 41 n., 47.
Morley, John,
_Diderot_, 211 n.
Motion,
in Galileo’s philosophy, 38;
in Hobbes’s philosophy, 53;
Leibnitz’s examination of the scientific conception of, 119, 120.
Music according to Schopenhauer,
350.
Mysticism,
self-destructive, 5;
of Spinoza, 98–102;
and Realism, and Idealism, contrasted, 318–321;
of Schopenhauer, 347;
of twentieth century, 363.
Mystics,
Protestant, the, 23.
Mythology and Revelation,
Schelling’s philosophy of, 303, 311, 312.
Napoleon,
quoted, 231.
_Natura naturans_ and _natura naturata_,
29, 30, 97.
Natural Religion,
the creed of, 165.
Natural Science period, the,
general facts about, 15–21;
discussion of (Galileo, Bacon, Hobbes), 31–61;
discussion of the Rationalism of, 62–131.
Naturalism,
of the Greeks, recovered in the Renaissance, 14;
in Hobbes, 53;
defined, 53 n.
Nature,
in the Natural Science period, 18;
in the philosophy of Paracelsus, 27;
in Bruno’s philosophy, 29, 30;
its two aspects, _natura naturans_ and _natura naturata_, 29, 30;
in the philosophy of the Rationalists, 63, 64;
continuity of, according to Leibnitz, 123, 126, 128, 129;
in the Enlightenment, 135;
in the philosophy of Locke, 163;
according to Kant, 248, 255, 258, 259;
as conceived by the Romanticists, 297;
Schelling’s philosophy of, 300, 304–306;
phenomena of, and the many reals, according to Herbart, 337, 338;
in Schopenhauer, 348;
how conceived, in the nineteenth century, 353;
according to Fechner, 359.
Nature philosophers,
Italian, 22.
Neo-Platonism,
dominated the Humanistic period, 17, 18, 21, 23, 25, 27–29.
New Man,
in a New Universe, phrase characterizing first period of modern
philosophy, 8–18;
the emergence of the, in the Enlightenment, 132–134.
Newton, Sir Isaac,
32;
his physics, Kant influenced by, 234.
Nietzsche, Friedrich,
342, 352 n.
Nineteenth century,
pessimistic, 341, 342;
the character of the realism of, 353–355;
the barrenness of the philosophy of, and German idealism, 355, 356;
the philosophical problems of, 356–362.
Nineteenth Century Philosophy,
the fourth period of modern philosophy, 3, 352–363.
Nominalism,
doctrine of, led to the dissolution of the civilization of the
Middle Ages, 6.
Noumena of Kant,
242.
Novalis.
_See_ Hardenberg.
Occasionalists, the,
63, 81;
their relation to Descartes, 81–83.
Owen, John,
Locke influenced by, 150.
Oxford University,
12.
Panpsychism,
102.
Pantheism,
defined, 94;
of Spinoza, 94–98.
Paracelsus,
23, 25–27.
Paris,
the centre of scholastic influence in the seventeenth century, 206.
Paulsen, Friedrich,
cited, 231;
on Kant’s synthetic judgments _a priori_, 251 n.
Perceptions,
of Berkeley, 181;
of Hume, 190.
_See_ Sense-perception.
Periods of modern philosophy,
2–4.
Pessimism,
341, 342, 344, 348–351.
Phenomena,
the world of, according to Kant, 242–243;
realities implied by, according to Herbart, 336;
nature, and the many reals, according to Herbart, 337, 338.
Phenomenalism,
of Hume, 187–189.
“Philosopher’s stone, the,”
25.
Philosophical Religion,
Lessing a writer on, 143.
Philosophical Revolutionists, the,
of the Enlightenment, 142.
Philosophy,
according to Hegel, 326;
modern, barren of ideas, 355;
and German Idealism, 355, 356.
Phrenology,
in the nineteenth century, 358.
Physics,
in Hobbes’s philosophy, 56;
of Descartes, 68.
_See_ Science.
Pietism,
and Leibnitz, 115;
a factor in the German Enlightenment, 219, 220, 223, 230;
influenced Kant, 233.
Pietists, the,
of the Enlightenment, 142.
Plato,
45 n.
Platonic Academy, the,
of the Renaissance, 10.
Platonism,
reaction toward, after Hobbes, 61.
Plotinus,
28.
Pluralism,
of Leibnitz, 119–122.
Political Economists and Constitutionalists, the,
of the Enlightenment, 142.
Political philosophers,
23.
Politics,
according to Hobbes, 56, 58–60.
Pope, Alexander,
on Bacon, 42;
_Essay on Man_, quoted, 133.
Popular Philosophers, the,
of the Enlightenment, 142.
Positivism,
Bacon the father of, in England, 43;
defined, 43 n.;
of Hume, 188, 189.
Prague,
University of, 12.
Printing,
discovery of, 6.
Protestant Mystics, the,
23.
Prussia,
rise of, 218, 219, 223;
and Frederick the Great, 224–226.
Psychologists and related philosophers,
of the Enlightenment, 142.
Psychology,
in Hobbes’s philosophy, 56–58;
empirical, took the place of metaphysics in the Enlightenment, 137;
of Locke, 157–160;
of Hume, 189;
of Herbart, 338–340;
in the nineteenth century, 357.
_See_ Associational Psychology, Associational Psychologists.
Psycho-physical parallelism,
of Spinoza, 102.
Ptolemaic system, the,
33.
Pyrrho,
Skeptic philosopher, 187.
Qualities,
primary and secondary, in Locke’s philosophy, 161;
in Berkeley’s philosophy, 177, 178.
_See_ Attributes.
Rand,
_Modern Classical Philosophers_, iv, 40 n., 47 n., 66 n., 84 n.,
107 n., 147 n., 169 n., 183 n., 212 n., 236 n., 282 n., 300 n.,
315 n., 340 n., 352 n., 360 n.
Rationalism,
defined, 61 n.;
the nature of, 62–65;
School of, in Germany, France, and Holland, 80;
of Wolff and the Leibnitz-Wolffians, 221–223, 231.
Rationalists, the,
31, 63–65.
_See_ Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz.
Realism, Mysticism, and Idealism,
contrasted, 318–321;
the argument for, according to Herbart, 334–336;
multiple, according to Herbart, 337, 338;
the return to, in the nineteenth century, 352, 353;
of the nineteenth century, the character of, 353–355.
Realistic Movement, the,
224.
Reality,
of Fichte, 287–295;
of Realism, Mysticism, and Idealism, 320, 321;
implied by phenomena, according to Herbart, 336;
irrational, the will as, according to Schopenhauer, 347, 348.
_See_ Absolute Reality.
Reason,
the question of its validity, according to Kant, 260–262;
the will exerted from, 272, 273;
in Hegel’s philosophy, 314, 323.
Reflections in Locke’s philosophy,
158, 159.
Reformation, Protestant, the,
7.
Reid, Thomas,
201, 202.
Religion,
according to Hobbes, 60;
and science, Leibnitz’s attempt to reconcile, 118, 119;
in the Enlightenment, 137;
Philosophical, Lessing a writer on, 143;
of the Deists, 164, 165;
in Hume’s philosophy, 200, 201;
according to Hegel, 326.
Religious philosophy,
of Schelling, 311, 312.
Renaissance, the,
the first period of modern philosophy, 2–4;
general character of, 8–11;
significance of, in history, 11–15;
the problem of, 14;
two periods of, 15–21;
discussion of the Humanistic period of, 22–30;
birthplaces of the chief philosophers of (map), 30;
discussion of the Natural Science period of (Galileo, Bacon,
Hobbes), 31–61;
in England after Hobbes, 61;
discussion of the Rationalism of the Natural Science period of,
62–131.
Representation,
the general function of Leibnitz’s monads, 124, 126.
Resemblance,
association by, 192–196.
Revelation and Mythology,
Schelling’s Philosophy of, 303, 311, 312.
Revolution,
French, the, 213, 214, 216.
Revolutionists,
Philosophical, the, of the Enlightenment, 142.
Ribot, Théodule,
_German Psychology of To-day_, 332 n.
Richter, J. P.,
forerunner of the literary Romanticists, 279.
Robertson, G. C.,
_Hobbes_, 47 n., 66 n.
Romantic philosophers, the,
299.
Romanticism,
224;
the period of, 295, 296;
its meaning, 296, 297;
in philosophy, 299, 300;
takes a religious turn at beginning of eighteenth century, 311.
Romanticists, the,
284, 285;
Goethe as one of, 297–299;
the æsthetic humanism of, 308.
Rousseau, J. J.,
the most notable figure of France during the Enlightenment, 142;
his philosophy, 213–216;
his influence, 216, 230, 234, 235.
Royal Society, the,
40.
Royce, Josiah,
_Spirit of Modern Philosophy_, iv, 84 n., 169 n., 236 n., 282 n.,
299 n., 315 n., 352 n.;
_The World and the Individual_, 352 n.
Salvation,
Spinoza’s doctrine of, 102–106.
Schelling, F. W. J. von,
and Fichte and Hegel, what they sought, 279, 281, 312;
the true Romantic spirit appears in, 299;
life and writings of, 300–303;
his philosophy of Nature, 300, 304–306;
his philosophy characterized, 301;
his transcendental philosophy, 302, 307–310;
his system of identity, 303, 310, 311;
and Fichte, a brief comparison of, as philosophers, 303–305;
his religious philosophy, 311, 312.
Schiller, J. C. F. von,
prominent in the Storm and Stress movement, 227;
notable example of the influence of Kant upon literature, 233;
quoted on Kant, 233;
_Artists, Letters on Æsthetic Education_, 307 n.
Schleiermacher, F. E. D.,
308, 311.
Scholasticism,
a self-destructive method, 4;
mediæval, Renaissance had to reckon with, 11;
representatives of the revival of, 22;
after Hobbes, 61;
and Locke, 156, 157.
Schopenhauer, Arthur,
his relation to Kant, 330–332;
and his philosophical relations, 340–342;
and pessimism, 341, 342, 344, 348, 349–351;
life and writings of, 342, 343;
the influences upon his thought, 343–345;
the world as will and the world as idea, 345–347;
the will as irrational reality, 347, 348;
the misery of the world as idea, 348, 349;
the way of deliverance, 349–351.
Schultze, F. A.,
teacher of Kant, 233.
Science,
attitude of the Church toward, in the period of the Renaissance,
19–21;
modern methods in, began with Galileo, 32, 37–39;
in Bacon, 40–46;
in Hobbes, 54, 58;
and religion, Leibnitz’s attempt to reconcile, 118, 119;
Hume’s attack on, 196–199;
Hume’s two classes of, 199, 200;
in the nineteenth century, 353–357;
invaded by evolution, 361.
_See_ Natural Science period, Physics.
Scientific methods,
in the Renaissance, 18, 19.
Scientists,
of the Natural Science period, 31–39, 62–65.
_See_ Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz.
Scottish School of Philosophy, the,
of the Enlightenment, 141, 201, 202.
Self,
idea of, in Locke’s philosophy, 159, 160;
of Kant, 260;
of Fichte, 293;
of Schelling, 309, 310.
_See_ Ego.
Sensationalism,
53.
Sensationalists.
_See_ Sensualists.
Sensations,
of Locke, 158, 159;
of Kant, 245;
of Fichte, 290, 291;
of Herbart, 339;
of Fechner, 359.
Sense-perception,
in what its validity consists, according to Kant, 253–255.
_See_ Perceptions.
Sensualists, the,
of the Enlightenment, 141, 212.
Sentimentalist, the,
of the Enlightenment (Rousseau), 142.
Seven Years’ War,
225.
Shaftesbury, Lord,
and Locke, 148, 152, 153.
Shelley, P. B.,
_Love’s Philosophy_, 305 n.;
_Prometheus Unbound_ quoted, 325.
Skepticism,
revived by Renaissance scholars, 11;
of Hume, 187–189;
of Hume, influenced Kant, 235.
Skeptics, the,
of the Enlightenment, 141.
Social Enlightenment,
in France, 213–216.
Sociology,
according to Comte, 360.
Solipsism,
of Descartes, 72;
defined, 183.
Soul,
according to Descartes, 72, 79;
the monad of Leibnitz conceived as, 122, 123, 126;
according to Hume, 196;
the idea of the, according to Kant, 261–264;
the postulate of the immortality of, according to Kant, 276;
in Herbart’s philosophy, 338–340;
the problem of the functioning of, 357–360.
_See_ Mind.
Space and time,
knowledge possible by means of, according to Kant, 253–255.
Spencer, Herbert,
_Education_, 43 n.;
and evolution, 362.
Spener, P. J.,
220, 230.
Spinoza, Baruch de,
31, 35;
his relation to Descartes, 81–84;
the historical place of, 84–86;
influence of his Jewish training on, 86;
his impulse from the new science, and Descartes’s influence upon,
86, 87;
his acquaintance with the Collegiants, 87, 88;
life and philosophical writings of, 88–90;
the method of, 90, 91;
the ♦fundamental principle in his philosophy, 91, 92;
three central problems in his teaching, 93;
his pantheism, 94–98;
the mysticism of, 98–102;
his doctrine of salvation, 102–106;
summary of his teaching, 106;
his conception of the world compared with Leibnitz’s, 127;
and Kant, foci of the philosophy of the generation after Kant,
278, 279;
his influence upon Fichte, 285.
Spirit.
_See_ Mind, Soul.
Spirituality of Fichte,
Schelling, and Hegel, 281.
Staël, Madame de,
quoted, 231.
State, the,
according to Hobbes, 55, 58–60.
States,
ideal, 41, 47.
Stephen, Leslie,
_Hobbes_, 47 n.;
_History of English Thought_, 166 n.
Stewart, Dugald,
141, 202.
Stirling, J. H.,
_Textbook to Kant_, 236 n.
Stoicism,
revived by Renaissance scholars, 11.
Storm and Stress movement,
224, 227, 229, 295, 296.
“Strife of methods, the,”
19, 35.
“Struggle of traditions, the,”
17, 18.
Subjective idealism,
of Fichte, 290, 304.
Subjective states,
the world of, according to Kant, 240–242.
Subjectivism,
Renaissance marked by the rise of, 14, 15.
Substance,
in Descartes’s philosophy, 77, 81, 82;
in the philosophy of the Occasionalists and Spinoza, 81–84,
91–95, 101;
in Leibnitz’s philosophy, 119–122;
in Locke’s philosophy, 160–162;
according to Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, 174, 175;
in Berkeley’s philosophy, 176, 178;
Hume’s conception of, 195, 196,
Sufficient reason,
law of, 129.
Suicide,
according to Schopenhauer, 349.
Sympathy,
according to Schopenhauer, 350, 351.
Synthesis,
according, to Kant, 244, 245;
the place of, in knowledge, according to Kant, 245–248;
of Fichte, 295;
of Hegel, 327.
_See_ Deduction.
Synthetic,
judgments of Kant, 249–252.
Taurellus,
11.
Tetens, J. N.,
221.
Theology,
Hume’s attack on, 195, 196.
Thesis,
of Fichte, 295;
of Hegel, 327.
Things-in-themselves,
the world of, according to Kant, 240–242, 336;
how treated by Fichte, 290, 291;
how treated by Schelling, 300;
the philosophy of, 330–351;
the chief concern of philosophy, according to Herbart, 332;
implied by phenomena, according to Herbart, 336;
basis of Schopenhauer’s philosophy, 340;
according to Schopenhauer, 345, 346.
Thirty Years’ War,
217.
Thomasius, Christian,
142, 221.
Thought,
in Spinoza’s philosophy, 95, 101, 102;
in Hegel’s philosophy, 322, 335.
Time and space,
knowledge possible by means of, according to Kant, 253–255.
Tindal, Matthew,
165.
Toland, John,
165.
Transcendental,
method, of Kant, 239, 240;
philosophy, of Schelling, 302, 307–310;
freedom, of Schopenhauer, 349–351.
Trent,
Council of, 16, 20.
Truth,
standard of, in the Middle Ages, self-destructive, 5;
criterion of, according to Descartes, 72.
Truths,
of Leibnitz, 116, 117.
Tschirnhausen, E. W. von,
221.
Turner, William,
_History of Philosophy_, 73 n.
Ueberweg, Friedrich,
_History of Philosophy_, iv, 209 n.
Understanding,
in what its validity consists, according to Kant, 255–260.
Unity,
of Leibnitz, 122;
a preëstablished harmony, 125;
the intrinsic (philosophical), 125–129;
the superimposed (theological), 129–131;
cosmic, of Hegel, 322–326.
Universal,
concrete and abstract, 99, 100.
Universe,
Man’s relation to, in the Renaissance, 8–18;
according to the Ptolemaic system, 33;
according to the Copernican system, 34;
the idea of the, according to Kant, 261, 264, 265;
according to Schelling, 304, 311.
_See_ New Man.
Universities,
in the Renaissance, 12;
towns containing (map), 280.
Utilitarianism,
43.
Utopias,
41, 47.
Van der Ende,
his influence on Spinoza, 87, 89.
Vienna,
University of, 12.
Voltaire, F. M. A. de,
208–210, 223.
Wagner, Richard,
342.
Watson, John,
_Hedonistic Theories_, 47 n.
Weber, E. A.,
_History of Philosophy_, iv, 70 n., 73 n., 107 n., 332 n., 352 n.
Weimar,
233, 307.
Wernaer, R. M.,
_Romanticism and the Romantic School in Germany_, 300 n.
Will, the,
Kant’s theory of, 269–277;
the world as, and as idea, according to Schopenhauer, 345–347;
as irrational reality, according to Schopenhauer, 347, 348;
suicide and, according to Schopenhauer, 349;
the denial of, according to Schopenhauer, 349–351.
Windelband, Wilhelm,
_History of Philosophy_, iv, 8 n., 23 n., 30 n., 47 n., 70 n.,
119 n., 132 n., 183 n., 230 n., 236 n., 278 n., 282 n.;
on Kant’s synthetic judgments _a priori_, 251 n.
Wittenberg,
new religious centre in the Renaissance, 12.
_Wolfenbüttel Fragments_,
85.
Wolff, Christian,
221, 222, 228.
Wolffians, the,
142.
World,
of grace, 63, 64, 76, 83;
relation of God to, according to Descartes, 77;
in Spinoza’s philosophy, 97;
the, Leibnitz’s conception of, as the best possible, 130;
according to Goethe, 298;
in terms of consciousness, 321;
a world of contradictions, 321;
as will and as idea, according to Schopenhauer, 345–347;
as idea, the misery of, according to Schopenhauer, 348, 349.
_See_ Universe.
Footnotes.
1 – Read Eucken, _Problem of Human Life_, pp. 303–321;
Windelband, _History of Philosophy_, pp. 348–351;
Dewing, _Introduction to Modern Philosophy_, pp. 52–54.
2 – Read Eucken, _Problem of Human Life_, pp. 321–331;
Windelband, _Hist. of Phil._, pp. 352–354.
3 – Read Falckenberg, _Hist. of Modern Phil._, pp. 27–28;
Browning, _Paracelsus_; Goethe, _Faust_, lines 1–165.
4 – These two phrases will be found again in the philosophy
of Spinoza. Nature is conceived as having two aspects: one
is _natura naturans_, or God as the animating principle
of nature; the other is _natura naturata_, or the world as
materialized forms or effects.
5 – Read Windelband, _Hist. of Phil._, pp. 378–379.
6 – Induction and deduction are methods of reasoning.
Induction is the method of beginning with particular cases
and inferring from them a general conclusion. Deduction is
the opposite method of reasoning.
7 – Read Höffding, _Hist. of Phil._, vol. i, p. 175; Ball,
_Hist. of Math._, pp. 249 ff.; Falckenberg, _Hist. of
Mod. Phil._, pp. 59 ff.
8 – An example used by Galileo is the law of the velocity of
falling bodies in empty space.
9 – The name, “concomitant variations,” was later given by
John Stuart Mill.
10 – Read Ball, _Hist. of Math._, pp. 253 ff.; Höffding, _Hist.
of Mod. Phil._, vol. i, pp. 184–186; Macaulay, _Essay on
Bacon_; Bacon, _Essays_,――_Studies, Truth, Friendship,
Simulation, and Dissimulation_; Abbott, _Francis Bacon_;
Eucken, _Problem of Human Life_, pp. 336–344; Rand,
_Modern Classical Philosophers_, pp. 24–56.
11 – Bacon wrote his _New Atlantis_ in 1623. The same year
Campanella wrote his _State of the Sun_, and the preceding
year Thomas More wrote his _Utopia_.
12 – Utilitarianism regards adaptation to general happiness
as the ideal of society. Positivism, broadly used, is
that philosophy which limits the scope of thought to
the observation of facts, although the observations are
inferior to the facts. The data and methods of positivism
are the same as those of natural science, and opposed to
the _a priori_ methods of metaphysics.
13 – In this connection read Herbert Spencer, _Education_.
14 – Bacon chooses the word Idols, because it is the same as
the Greek word for false forms (eidola, εἴδολα).
15 – Bacon is here alluding to Plato’s myth of the cave. Read
Plato, _Republic_ (Jowett’s trans.), Bk. VII, 514 A–520 E.
16 – Bacon is satirical here and is likening philosophical
systems to stage-plays.
17 – But see the contradiction in the theory of Hobbes.
18 – Read Robertson, _Hobbes_ (Blackwood’s _Phil. Classics_),
pp. 204–206; Falckenberg, _Hist. Mod. Phil._, pp. 71–72;
_Encyclopædia Britannica_, article, “Hobbes”; Leslie
Stephen, _Hobbes_; Watson, _Hedonistic Theories_, pp.
73–94; Turner, _Hist. Phil._, pp. 443–446; Windelband,
_Hist. Phil._, p. 389; Eucken, _Problem of Human Life_,
pp. 359–360; Rand, _Modern Classical Philosophers_, pp.
57–69, 80–84.
19 – See also the ideal States of Campanella and Bacon, p. 41.
20 – The theory that the assumption of extended, impenetrable,
eternal, and moving bodies explains the universe.
21 – The theory that all knowledge originates in sensations;
that all complex mental states (like memory, reason, etc.)
are only combinations of elementary sensations.
22 – The theory that between alternative courses of conduct
the choice decided upon is fully accounted for by
psychological and other pre-conditions.
23 – The theory sometimes meaning materialism, sometimes
positivism, but sometimes, as here, meaning that man in
all his operations is a product of his environment.
24 – Read Falckenberg, _Hist. Mod. Phil._, p. 72, for his
quotation from Grimm’s criticism of the irreconcilable
contradiction of the empirical and the rational in Hobbes.
25 – Empiricism and Rationalism have reference to the source
of truth. Empiricism is the theory that truth is to be
found in immediate sense experience. The opposite theory
is Rationalism, which declares that the reason is an
independent source of knowledge, distinct from sensation,
and having a higher authority.
26 – Read Robertson, _Hobbes_ (Blackwood Phil. Classics), p. 40;
Rand, _Modern Classical Philosophers_, pp. 117–147; Eucken,
_Problem of Human Life_, pp. 351–362; Calkins, _Persistent
Problems_, pp. 459–463.
27 – Read Descartes, _Method_, _Meditations_, for the dramatic
struggle of his inner life; Falckenberg, _Hist. Modern
Phil._, pp. 86–88; Fischer, _Descartes and his School_,
p. 199; Blackwood Classics, _Descartes_, pp. 144–149;
Windelband, _Hist. Phil._, pp. 389 ff.; Höffding, _Hist.
Modern Phil._, pp. 219 ff.; Weber, _Hist. Phil._, pp. 306
ff., for an opposing opinion about the place of Descartes.
28 – Read Falckenberg, _Hist. of Modern Phil._, pp. 92–94;
Blackwood’s Classics, _Descartes_, pp. 151–153; Weber,
_Hist. of Phil._, p. 310; Calkins, _Persistent Problems
in Philosophy_, pp. 25–30; Turner, _Hist. of Phil._,
pp. 451 f., which presents Descartes’ arguments as reduced
to two.
29 – Read Royce, _Spirit of Modern Phil._, chap. iii; Baldwin,
_Fragments in Philosophy_, pp. 24–42; Rand, _Modern
Classical Philosophers_, pp. 148–166; Eucken, _Problem of
Human Life_, pp. 362–380.
30 – See page 279. Read Goethe, _Geheimnisse_, in this connection.
31 – Read Auerbach, _Spinoza_, an historical romance.
32 – Read _Bohn’s Libraries, Spinoza_, vol. ii, pp. 275 ff.,
for Spinoza’s interesting correspondence with notable men.
33 – Read Rand, _Modern Classical Philosophers_, pp. 199–214;
Eucken, _Problem of Human Life_, pp. 388–405; Weber,
_History of Philosophy_, pp. 343–369; Hibben, _Phil. of
Enlightenment_, pp. 161–193.
34 – A good selection of Leibnitz’s works for the student
to read is: _Discourse on Metaphysics_ (1690), _Letters
to Arnauld_, _Monadology_ (1714), _New System of
Nature_ (1695), _Principles of Nature and Grace_ (1714),
_Introduction to New Essays_ (1704), and the _Theodicy_
(1710). See Calkins, _Persistent Problems in Phil._,
p. 74, note.
35 – Read Hibben, _Phil. of Enlightenment_, ch. vii; Windelband,
_Hist. of Phil._, pp. 420–425.
36 – Read Windelband, _Hist. of Phil._, pp. 437–440, 447–449,
500–502; Hibben, _Phil. of Enlightenment_, pp. 3–13, 18–20.
37 – Read Rand, _Modern Classical Philosophers_, pp. 215–217,
248–262; Eucken, _Problem of Human Life_, pp. 380–388.
38 – See _Essay_, introductory epistle to the reader.
39 – Read Leslie Stephen, _History of English Thought_, vol. i,
pp. 86–88.
40 – Read Royce, _Spirit of Modern Philosophy_, p. 86; Rand,
_Modern Classical Philosophers_, pp. 263–277.
41 – Berkeley and Hume were really also dualists, like Locke
and all other Enlighteners. The ideas were substituted by
them for material substances. As objects of knowledge the
ideas were antithetical to the knowing process. Hume tried
to overcome this dualism, but he was not successful in his
attempt.
42 – Read Hibben, _The Philosophy of the Enlightenment_,
chap. iii.
43 – Hibben, _Phil. of Enlightenment_, p. 64.
44 – Read Rand, _Modern Classical Philosophers_, pp. 326–342;
Eucken, _Problem of Human Life_, pp. 420–422; Windelband,
_Hist. of Phil._, pp. 472–476.
45 – Causal events are to Hume merely _alleged_ matters of fact.
46 – Read Eucken, _Problem of Human Life_, pp. 415–420.
47 – Voltaire’s _Letters on the English_ were written in 1728,
published first in London, and appeared in France in 1734.
His _Elements of the Philosophy of Newton_ was published
in Amsterdam in 1738, but was not allowed to be published
in France until 1741.
48 – Read Ueberweg, _Hist. of Phil._, vol. ii, pp. 124–125.
49 – Read Morley, _Diderot_, vol. i, ch. v, pp. 113–171.
50 – Read Rand, _Modern Classical Philosophers_, pp. 347–375.
51 – Read Eucken, _Problem of Human Life_, pp. 423–433.
52 – In a real sense the German Enlightenment has never come
to an end. Classicism and the Romantic movement were a
continuation of it.
53 – Read Windelband, _Hist. of Phil._, pp. 529–531.
54 – Read the quotation from Heine in E. Caird, _Phil. of Kant_,
vol. i, p. 63; Stirling, _Textbook to Kant_, Biographical
Sketch; Royce, _Spirit of Modern Philosophy_, chap. iv;
Windelband, _Hist. of Phil._, pp. 532–534; Rand, _Modern
Classical Philosophers_, pp. 376–405, 420–424; Eucken,
_Problem of Human Life_, pp. 435–452.
55 – The word “world” is used for lack of a better. The reader
is, however, again reminded that Kant’s problem is one of
epistemology and not of metaphysics.
56 – Paulsen says (_Immanuel Kant, His Life and Teaching_,
p. 135) that this formula of synthetic judgments _a
priori_ appears only in the introduction to the _Critique_
and in Kant’s later writings, and it would have been no
misfortune if Kant had never discovered it. But Windelband
(_Hist. of Phil._, p. 533, n. 2) says, “No one who
does not make this clear to himself has any hope of
understanding Kant.”
57 – Quoted from Falckenberg, _Hist. of Modern Phil._, p. 387.
This is a paraphrase of some of Schiller’s verses in _The
Philosophers_, a satirical poem of philosophical theories.
58 – Kant’s theory of Beauty, discussed in his _Critique
of Judgment_, through which he tries to reconcile the
antagonism of knowledge and morality, is omitted here.
59 – Read Windelband, _Hist. of Phil._, pp. 568–569.
60 – Read Royce, _Spirit of Modern Phil._, chap. v; Eucken,
_Problem of Human Life_, pp. 486–490; Rand, _Modern
Classical Philosophers_, pp. 486–496, 516–535; Windelband,
_Hist. of Phil._, pp. 579–581.
61 – Read Beers, _History of Romanticism in Eighteenth Century_,
pp. 1–25; Beers, _History of Romanticism in Nineteenth
Century_, pp. 132–139.
62 – Read Royce, _Spirit of Modern Philosophy_, ch. vi.
63 – Read Eucken, _Problem of Human Life_, pp. 457–464, 490–494;
Wernaer, _Romanticism and the Romantic School in Germany_,
pp. 132–143; Rand, _Modern Classical Philosophers_,
pp. 535–568.
64 – Read Shelley, _Love’s Philosophy_.
65 – Read Schiller, _Artists; Letters on Æsthetic Education_.
66 – F. E. D. Schleiermacher, b. 1768; educated in the
Herrnhuten institutions and at the University of Halle;
in 1796 preacher at the Berlin Charité; in 1802 court
preacher at Stolpe; in 1804 professor extraordinary at
Halle; in 1809 preacher at a church in Berlin; in 1810
professor in Berlin University.
67 – Read Royce, _Spirit of Modern Phil._, chap. vii; James,
_Hibbert Journal_, 1908–09, pp. 63 ff.; Eucken, _Problem
of Human Life_, pp. 494–507; Rand, _Modern Classical
Philosophers_, pp. 569–574, 583–592, 614–628.
68 – Read Ribot, _German Psychology of To-day_, pp. 24–67;
Weber, _History of Philosophy_, pp. 536–543; Dewing,
_Introduction to Modern Philosophy_, pp. 230–235.
69 – A discussion of these contradictions can be found in any
text-book in metaphysics.
70 – The “principle of contradiction” in logic is the
prohibition to commit contradiction.
71 – Read Eucken, _Problem of Human Life_, pp. 510–518; Rand,
_Modern Classical Philosophers_, pp. 629–671.
72 – Read _Rubáiyát_ of Omar Khayyám, FitzGerald’s translation,
4th ed., quatrains xlvii–lxxiii; Goethe, _Sorrows of
Werther_, as an example of pessimism due mainly to
environment.
73 – Read Rand, _Modern Classical Philosophers_, pp. 703–708;
Weber, _Hist. of Phil._, §§ 69, 70; Eucken, _Problem of
Human Life_, pp. 518–523, 524–553, 559–573; Nietzsche,
_Also Sprach Zarathustra_; James, _Pragmatism_, Lectures
I, IV, VII; Royce, _Spirit of Mod. Phil._, Lecture IX.
74 – Royce, _The World and the Individual_, vol. i, pp. 60 f.
75 – Read Rand, _Modern Classical Philosophers_, pp. 672–689.
Transcriber’s Notes.
The following corrections have been made in the text:
Page xiv:
Sentence starting: In what does the Validity....
– ‘Persception’ replaced with ‘Perception’
(Validity of Sense-Perception consist?)
Page 8:
Sentence starting: The fusion did not result....
– ‘homogenous’ replaced with ‘homogeneous’
(in a homogeneous whole,)
Page 85:
Sentence starting: It formed the background....
– ‘Wolffenbüttel’ replaced with ‘Wolfenbüttel’
(Wolfenbüttel Fragments)
Page 114:
Sentence starting: He was led to this conclusion....
– ‘Leeuwenhook’ replaced with ‘Leeuwenhoek’
(of Swammerdam and Leeuwenhoek)
Page 174:
Sentence starting: Berkeley started out by....
– ‘speculalation’ replaced with ‘speculation’
(against scholastic speculation and abstraction;)
Page 296:
Sentence starting: Some of the literary names....
– ‘Wackenrode’ replaced with ‘Wackenroder’
(Tieck, Wackenroder, Novalis,)
Page 336:
Sentence starting: Kant reasoned from the relativity....
– ‘thing-it-itself’ replaced with ‘thing-in-itself’
(while the thing-in-itself was)
Index Campanella:
– ‘Tommasso’ replaced with ‘Tommaso’
(Campanella, Tommaso)
Index Eucken:
– ‘223’ replaced with ‘213’
(213 n.)
Index Hume:
– ‘scepticism’ replaced with ‘skepticism’
(the skepticism of, influenced Kant)
Index Spinoza:
– ‘fundanental’ replaced with ‘fundamental’
(the fundamental principle in)
Index Unity:
– ‘preëstabished’ replaced with ‘preëstablished’
(a preëstablished harmony)
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