HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY

From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time

by

RICHARD FALCKENBERG

_Professor of Philosophy in the University of Erlangen_

_THIRD AMERICAN FROM THE SECOND GERMAN EDITION_

TRANSLATED WITH THE AUTHOR'S SANCTION BYA. C. ARMSTRONG, JR. _Professor of Philosophy in Wesleyan University_

1893

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE. 

The aim of this translation is the same as that of the original work. Eachis the outcome of experience in university instruction in philosophy, andis intended to furnish a manual which shall be at once scientific andpopular, one to stand midway between the exhaustive expositions of thelarger histories and the meager sketches of the compendiums. A pupil ofKuno Fischer, Fortlage, J. E. Erdmann, Lotze, and Eucken among others, Professor Falckenberg began his career as _Docent_ in the university ofJena. In the year following the first edition of this work he became_Extraordinarius_ in the same university, and in 1888 _Ordinarius_ atErlangen, choosing the latter call in preference to an invitation to Dorpatas successor to Teichmüller. The chair at Erlangen he still holds. His workas teacher and author has been chiefly in the history of modern philosophy. Besides the present work and numerous minor articles, he has published thefollowing: _Ueber den intelligiblen Charakter, zur Kritik der KantischenFreiheitslehre_ 1879; _Grundzüge der Philosophie des Nicolaus Cusanus_, 1880-81; and _Ueber die gegenwärtige Lage der deutschen Philosophie_, 1890(inaugural address at Erlangen). Since 1884-5 Professor Falckenberg hasalso been an editor of the _Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophischeKritik_, until 1888 in association with Krohn, and after the latter'sdeath, alone. At present he has in hand a treatise on Lotze for a Germanseries analogous to Blackwood's Philosophical Classics, which is to beissued under his direction. Professor Falckenberg's general philosophicalposition may be described as that of moderate idealism. His historicalmethod is strictly objective, the aim being a free reproduction of thesystems discussed, as far as possible in their original terminology andhistorical connection, and without the intrusion of personal criticism. 

The translation has been made from the second German edition (1892), with still later additions and corrections communicated by the author inmanuscript. The translator has followed the original faithfully butnot slavishly. He has not felt free to modify Professor Falckenberg'sexpositions, even in the rare cases where his own opinions would have ledhim to dissent, but minor changes have been made wherever needed to fit thebook for the use of English-speaking students. Thus a few alterations havebeen made in dates and titles, chiefly under the English systems and fromthe latest authorities; and a few notes added in elucidation of portionsof the text. Thus again the balance of the bibliography has been somewhatchanged, including transfers from text to notes and _vice versa_ and a fewomissions, besides the introduction of a number of titles from our Englishphilosophical literature chosen on the plan referred to in the prefaceto the first German edition. The glossary of terms foreign to the Germanreader has been replaced by a revision and expansion of the index, with theanalyses of the glossary as a basis. Wherever possible, and this has beentrue in all important cases, the changes have been indicated by the usualsigns. 

The translator has further rewritten Chapter XV. , Section 3, on recentBritish and American Philosophy. In this so much of the author's(historical) standpoint and treatment as proved compatible with the aim ofa manual in English has been retained, but the section as a whole has beenrearranged and much enlarged. 

The labor of translation has been lightened by the example of previouswriters, especially of the translators of the standard treatises ofUeberweg and Erdmann. The thanks of the translator are also due to severalfriends who have kindly aided him by advice or assistance: in particular tohis friend and former pupil, Mr. C. M. Child, M. S. , who participated in thepreparation of a portion of the translation; and above all to ProfessorFalckenberg himself, who, by his willing sanction of the work and hisco-operation throughout its progress, has given a striking example ofscholarly courtesy. 

A. C. A. , Jr. 

Wesleyan University, June, 1893. 

PREFACE TO THE FIRST GERMAN EDITION. 

Since the appearance of Eduard Zeller's _Grundriss der Geschichte dergriechischen Philosophie_ (1883; 3d ed. 1889) the need has become even moreapparent than before for a presentation of the history of modern philosophywhich should be correspondingly compact and correspondingly available forpurposes of instruction. It would have been an ambitious undertaking toattempt to supply a counterpart to the compendium of this honored scholar, with its clear and simple summation of the results of his much admired fivevolumes on Greek philosophy; and it has been only in regard to practicalutility and careful consideration of the needs of students--concerningwhich we have enjoyed opportunity for gaining accurate information in thereview exercises regularly held in this university--that we have venturedto hope that we might not fall too far short of his example. 

The predominantly practical aim of this _History_--it is intended to serveas an aid in introductory work, in reviewing, and as a substitute fordictations in academical lectures, as well as to be a guide for thewider circle of cultivated readers--has enjoined self-restraint in thedevelopment of personal views and the limitation of critical reflectionsin favor of objective presentation. It is only now and then that criticalhints have been given. In the discussion of phenomena of minor importanceit has been impossible to avoid the _oratio obliqua_ of exposition; but, wherever practicable, we have let the philosophers themselves develop theirdoctrines and reasons, not so much by literal quotations from theirworks, as by free, condensed reproductions of their leading ideas. If theprincipiant view of the forces which control the history of philosophy, andof the progress of modern philosophy, expressed in the Introduction and inthe Retrospect at the end of the book, have not been everywhere verifiedin detail from the historical facts, this is due in part to the limits, inpart to the pedagogical aim, of the work. Thus, in particular, more spacehas for pedagogical reasons been devoted to the "psychological" explanationof systems, as being more popular, than in our opinion its intrinsicimportance would entitle it to demand. To satisfy every one in the choiceof subjects and in the extent of the discussion is impossible; but our hopeis that those who would have preferred a guide of this sort to be entirelydifferent will not prove too numerous. In the classification of movementsand schools, and in the arrangement of the contents of the various systems, it has not been our aim to deviate at all hazards from previous accounts;and as little to leave unutilized the benefits accruing to later comersfrom the distinguished achievements of earlier workers in the field. Inparticular we acknowledge with gratitude the assistance derived from therenewed study of the works on the subject by Kuno Fischer, J. E. Erdmann, Zeller, Windelband, Ueberweg-Heinze, Harms, Lange, Vorlãnder, and Pünjer. 

The motive which induced us to take up the present work was the perceptionthat there was lacking a text-book in the history of modern philosophy, which, more comprehensive, thorough, and precise than the sketches ofSchwegler and his successors, should stand between the fine but detailedexposition of Windelband, and the substantial but--because of the divisionof the text into paragraphs and notes and the interpolation of pages ofbibliographical references--rather dry outline of Ueberweg. While theformer refrains from all references to the literature of the subject andthe latter includes far too many, at least for purposes of instruction, andJ. B. Meyer's _Leitfaden_ (1882) is in general confined to biographical andbibliographical notices; we have mentioned, in the text or the notes andwith the greatest possible regard for the progress of the exposition, boththe chief works of the philosophers themselves and some of thetreatises concerning them. The principles which have guided us in theseselections--to include only the more valuable works and those best adaptedfor students' reading, and further to refer as far as possible to the mostrecent works--will hardly be in danger of criticism. But we shall notdispute the probability that many a book worthy of mention may have beenoverlooked. 

The explanation of a number of philosophical terms, which has been added asan appendix at the suggestion of the publishers, deals almost entirelywith foreign expressions and gives the preference to the designations offundamental movements. It is arranged, as far as possible, so that it maybe used as a subject-index. 

JENA, December 23, 1885. 

PREFACE TO THE SECOND GERMAN EDITION. 

The majority of the alterations and additions in this new edition are inthe first chapter and the last two; no departure from the general characterof the exposition has seemed to me necessary. I desire to return mysincere thanks for the suggestions which have come to me alike from publiccritiques and private communications. In some cases contradictory requestshave conflicted--thus, on the one hand, I have been urged to expand, on theother, to cut down the sections on German idealism, especially those onHegel--and here I confess my inability to meet both demands. Among thereviews, that by B. Erdmann in the first volume of the _Archiv fürGeschichte der Philosophie_, and, among the suggestions made by letter, those of H. Heussler, have been of especial value. Since others commonlysee defects more clearly than one's self, it will be very welcome if I canhave my desire continually to make this _History_ more useful supported byfarther suggestions from the circle of its readers. In case it continues toenjoy the favor of teachers and students, these will receive conscientiousconsideration. 

For the sake of those who may complain of too much matter, I may remarkthat the difficulty can easily be avoided by passing over Chapters I. , V. (§§ 1-3), VI. , VIII. , XII. , XV. , and XVI. 

Professor A. C. Armstrong, Jr. , is preparing an English translation. Myearnest thanks are due to Mr. Karl Niemann of Charlottenburg for his kindparticipation in the labor of proof-reading. 

R. F. 

ERLANGEN, June 11, 1892. 

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%CONTENTS. %

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER I. 

THE PERIOD OF TRANSITION: FROM NICOLAS OF CUSA TO DESCARTES

1. Nicolas of Cusa2. The Revival of Ancient Philosophy and the Opposition to it3. The Italian Philosophy of Nature4. Philosophy of the State and of Law5. Skepticism in France6. German Mysticism7. The Foundation of Modern Physics8. Philosophy in England to the Middle of the Seventeenth Century (_a_) Bacon's Predecessors (_b_) Bacon (_c_) Hobbes (_d_) Lord Herbert of Cherbury9. Preliminary Survey

PART I. 

%From Descartes to Kant. %

CHAPTER II. 

DESCARTES

1. The Principles2. Nature3. Man

CHAPTER III. 

THE DEVELOPMENT AND TRANSFORMATION OF CARTESIANISM IN THE NETHERLANDS ANDIN FRANCE

1. Occasionalism: Geulincx2. Spinoza _(a)_ Substance, Attributes, and Modes _(b)_ Anthropology; Cognition and the Passions _(c)_ Practical Philosophy3. Pascal, Malebranche, Bayle

CHAPTER IV. 

LOCKE

 _(a)_ Theory of Knowledge _(b)_ Practical Philosophy

CHAPTER V. 

ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

1. Natural Philosophy and Psychology2. Deism3. Moral Philosophy4. Theory of Knowledge _(a)_ Berkeley _(b)_ Hume _(c)_ The Scottish School

CHAPTER VI. 

THE FRENCH ILLUMINATION

1. The Entrance of English Doctrines2. Theoretical and Practical Sensationalism3. Skepticism and Materialism4. Rousseau's Conflict with the Illumination

CHAPTER VII. 

LEIBNITZ

1. Metaphysics: the Monads, Representation, the Pre-established Harmony;the Laws of Thought and of the World2. The Organic World3. Man: Cognition and Volition4. Theology and Theodicy

CHAPTER VIII. 

THE GERMAN ILLUMINATION

1. The Contemporaries of Leibnitz2. Christian Wolff3. The Illumination as Scientific and as Popular Philosophy4. The Faith Philosophy

PART II. 

%From Kant to the Present Time. %

CHAPTER IX. 

KANT

1. Theory of Knowledge _(a)_ The Pure Intuitions (Transcendental Aesthetic) _(b)_ The Concepts and Principles of the Pure Understanding (Transcendental Analytic) _(c)_ The Reason's Ideas of the Unconditioned (Transcendental Dialectic)2. Theory of Ethics3. Theory of the Beautiful and of Ends in Nature _(a)_ Aesthetic Judgment _(b)_ Teleological Judgment4. From Kant to Fichte

CHAPTER X. 

FICHTE

1. The Science of Knowledge _(a)_ The Problem _(b)_ The Three Principles _(c)_ The Theoretical Ego _(d)_ The Practical Ego2. The Science of Ethics and of Right3. Fichte's Second Period: his View of History and his Theoryof Religion

CHAPTER XI. 

SCHELLING

1_a_. Philosophy of Nature1_b_. Transcendental Philosophy2. System of Identity3_a_. Doctrine of Freedom3_b_. Philosophy of Mythology and Revelation

CHAPTER XII. 

SCHELLING'S CO-WORKERS

1. The Philosophers of Nature2. The Philosophers of Identity (F. Krause)3. The Philosophers of Religion (Baader and Schleiermacher)

CHAPTER XIII. 

HEGEL

1. Hegel's View of the World and his Method2. The System (_a_) Logic (_b_) The Philosophy of Nature (_c_) The Doctrine of Subjective Spirit (_d_) The Doctrine of Objective Spirit (_e_) Absolute Spirit

CHAPTER XIV. 

THE OPPOSITION TO CONSTRUCTIVE IDEALISM: FRIES, HERBART, SCHOPENHAUER

1. The Psychologists: Fries and Beneke2. Realism: Herbart3. Pessimism: Schopenhauer

CHAPTER XV. 

PHILOSOPHY OUT OF GERMANY

1. Italy2. France3. Great Britain and America4. Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Holland

CHAPTER XVI. 

GERMAN PHILOSOPHY SINCE THE DEATH OF HEGEL

1. From the Division of the Hegelian School to the MaterialisticControversy2. New Systems: Trendelenburg, Fechner, Lotze, and Hartmann3. From the Revival of the Kantian Philosophy to the Present Time (_a_) Neo-Kantianism, Positivism, and Kindred Phenomena (_b_) Idealistic Reaction against the Scientific Spirit (_c_) The Special Philosophical Sciences4. Retrospect

INDEX

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INTRODUCTION. 

In no other department is a thorough knowledge of history so important asin philosophy. Like historical science in general, philosophy is, on theone hand, in touch with exact inquiry, while, on the other, it has acertain relationship with art. With the former it has in common itsmethodical procedure and its cognitive aim; with the latter, its intuitivecharacter and the endeavor to compass the whole of reality with a glance. Metaphysical principles are less easily verified from experience thanphysical hypotheses, but also less easily refuted. Systems of philosophy, therefore, are not so dependent on our progressive knowledge of facts asthe theories of natural science, and change less quickly; notwithstandingtheir mutual conflicts, and in spite of the talk about discardedstandpoints, they possess in a measure the permanence of classical works ofart, they retain for all time a certain relative validity. The thought ofPlato, of Aristotle, and of the heroes of modern philosophy is ever provinganew its fructifying power. Nowhere do we find such instructive errors asin the sphere of philosophy; nowhere is the new so essentially a completionand development of the old, even though it deem itself the whole and assumea hostile attitude toward its predecessors; nowhere is the inquiry so muchmore important than the final result; nowhere the categories "true andfalse" so inadequate. The spirit of the time and the spirit of the people, the individuality of the thinker, disposition, will, fancy--all these exerta far stronger influence on the development of philosophy, both by way ofpromotion and by way of hindrance, than in any other department of thought. If a system gives classical expression to the thought of an epoch, anation, or a great personality; if it seeks to attack the world-riddle froma new direction, or brings us nearer its solution by important originalconceptions, by a subtler or a simpler comprehension of the problem, by awider outlook or a deeper insight; it has accomplished more than it couldhave done by bringing forward a number of indisputably correct principles. The variations in philosophy, which, on the assumption of the unity oftruth, are a rock of offense to many minds, may be explained, on the onehand, by the combination of complex variety and limitation in the motiveswhich govern philosophical thought, --for it is the whole man thatphilosophizes, not his understanding merely, --and, on the other, by theinexhaustible extent of the field of philosophy. Back of the logical laborof proof and inference stand, as inciting, guiding, and hindering agents, psychical and historical forces, which are themselves in large measurealogical, though stronger than all logic; while just before stretchesaway the immeasurable domain of reality, at once inviting and resistingconquest. The grave contradictions, so numerous in both the subjectiveand the objective fields, make unanimity impossible concerning ultimateproblems; in fact, they render it difficult for the individual thinker tocombine his convictions into a self-consistent system. Each philosophersees limited sections of the world only, and these through his own eyes;every system is one-sided. Yet it is this multiplicity and variety ofsystems alone which makes the aim of philosophy practicable as it endeavorsto give a complete picture of the soul and of the universe. The history ofphilosophy is the philosophy of humanity, that great individual, which, with more extended vision than the instruments through which it works, is able to entertain opposing principles, and which, reconciling oldcontradictions as it discovers new ones, approaches by a necessary andcertain growth the knowledge of the one all-embracing truth, which isrich and varied beyond our conception. In order to energetic labor in thefurther progress of philosophy, it is necessary to imagine that the goddessof truth is about to lift the veil which has for centuries concealed her. The historian of philosophy, on the contrary, looks on each new system asa stone, which, when shaped and fitted into its place, will help to raisehigher the pyramid of knowledge. Hegel's doctrine of the necessityand motive force of contradictories, of the relative justification ofstandpoints, and the systematic development of speculation, has great andpermanent value as a general point of view. It needs only to be guardedfrom narrow scholastic application to become a safe canon for thehistorical treatment of philosophy. 

In speaking above of the worth of the philosophical doctrines of the pastas defying time, and as comparable to the standard character of finishedworks of art, the special reference was to those elements in speculationwhich proceed less from abstract thinking than from the fancy, the heart, and the character of the individual, and even more directly from thedisposition of the people; and which to a certain degree may be divorcedfrom logical reasoning and the scientific treatment of particularquestions. These may be summed up under the phrase, views of the world. Thenecessity for constant reconsideration of them is from this standpoint atonce evident. The Greek view of the world is as classic as the plastic artof Phidias and the epic of Homer; the Christian, as eternally valid as thearchitecture of the Middle Ages; the modern, as irrefutable as Goethe'spoetry and the music of Beethoven. The views of the world which proceedfrom the spirits of different ages, as products of the general developmentof culture, are not so much thoughts as rhythms in thinking, not theoriesbut modes of intuition saturated with feelings of worth. We may disputeabout them, it is true; we may argue against them or in their defense; butthey can neither be established nor overthrown by cogent proofs. It is notonly optimism and pessimism, determinism and indeterminism, that have theirultimate roots in the affective side of our nature, but pantheism andindividualism, also idealism and materialism, even rationalism andsensationalism. Even though they operate with the instruments of thought, they remain in the last analysis matters of faith, of feeling, and ofresolution. The aesthetic view of the world held by the Greeks, thetranscendental-religious view of Christianity, the intellectual view ofLeibnitz and Hegel, the panthelistic views of Fichte I and Schopenhauer arevital forces, not doctrines, postulates, not results of thought. One viewof the world is forced to yield its pre-eminence to another, which it hasitself helped to produce by its own one-sidedness; only to reconquer itsopponent later, when it has learned from her, when it has been purified, corrected, and deepened by the struggle. But the elder contestant is nomore confuted by the younger than the drama of Sophocles by the drama ofShakespeare, than youth by age or spring by autumn. 

If it is thus indubitable that the views of the world held in earlier timesdeserve to live on in the memory of man, and to live as something betterthan mere reminders of the past--the history of philosophy is not a cabinetof antiquities, but a museum of typical products of the mind--the valueand interest of the historical study of the past in relation to the exactscientific side of philosophical inquiry is not less evident. In everyscience it is useful to trace the origin and growth of problems andtheories, and doubly so in philosophy. With her it is by no means theuniversal rule that progress shows itself by the result; the statement ofthe question is often more important than the answer. The problem is moresharply defined in a given direction; or it becomes more comprehensive, is analyzed and refined; or if now it threatens to break up into subtledetails, some genius appears to simplify it and force our thoughts backto the fundamental question. This advance in problems, which happily iseverywhere manifested by unmistakable signs, is, in the case of many of thequestions which irresistibly force themselves upon the human heart, theonly certain gain from centuries of endeavor. The labor here is of morevalue than the result. 

In treating the history of philosophy, two extremes must be avoided, lawless individualism and abstract logical formalism. The historyof philosophy is neither a disconnected succession of arbitraryindividual opinions and clever guesses, nor a mechanically developed seriesof typical standpoints and problems, which imply one another in just theform and order historically assumed. The former supposition does violenceto the regularity of philosophical development, the latter to its vitality. In the one case, the connection is conceived too loosely, in the other, toorigidly and simply. One view underestimates the power of the logical Idea, the other overestimates it. It is not easy to support the principle thatchance rules the destiny of philosophy, but it is more difficult to avoidthe opposite conviction of the one-sidedness of formalistic construction, and to define the nature and limits of philosophical necessity. Thedevelopment of philosophy is, perhaps, one chief aim of the world-process, but it is certainly not the only one; it is a part of the universal aim, and it is not surprising that the instruments of its realization do notwork exclusively in its behalf, that their activity brings about results, which seem unessential for philosophical ends or obstacles in their way. Philosophical ideas do not think themselves, but are thought by livingspirits, which are something other and better than mere thoughtmachines--by spirits who live these thoughts, who fill them with personalwarmth and passionately defend them. There is often reason, no doubt, forthe complaint that the personality which has undertaken to develop somegreat idea is inadequate to the task, that it carries its subjectivedefects into the matter in hand, that it does too much or too little, orthe right thing in the wrong way, so that the spirit of philosophy seemsto have erred in the choice and the preparation of its instrument. But thereverse side of the picture must also be taken into account. The thinkingspirit is more limited, it is true, than were desirable for the perfectexecution of a definite logical task; but, on the other hand, it is fartoo rich as well. A soulless play of concepts would certainly not helpthe cause, and there is no disadvantage in the failure of the history ofphilosophy to proceed so directly and so scholastically, as, for instance, in the system of Hegel. A graded series of interconnected general forcesmediate between the logical Idea and the individual thinker--the spirit ofthe people, of the age, of the thinker's vocation, of his time of life, which are felt by the individual as part of himself and whose impulseshe unconsciously obeys. In this way the modifying, furthering, hinderingcorrelation of higher and lower, of the ruler with his commands and theservant with his more or less willing obedience, is twice repeated, thesituation being complicated further by the fact that the subject affectedby these historical forces himself helps to make history. The mostimportant factor in philosophical progress is, of course, the state ofinquiry at the time, the achievements of the thinkers of the immediatelypreceding age; and in this relation of a philosopher to his predecessors, again, a distinction must be made between a logical and a psychologicalelement. The successor often commences his support, his development, or hisrefutation at a point quite unwelcome to the constructive historian. At allevents, if we may judge from the experience of the past, too much cautioncannot be exercised in setting up formal laws for the development ofthought. According to the law of contradiction and reconciliation, aSchopenhauer must have followed directly after Leibnitz, to oppose hispessimistic ethelism to the optimistic intellectualism of the latter; when, in turn, a Schleiermacher, to give an harmonic resolution of the antithesisinto a concrete doctrine of feeling, would have made a fine third. But itturned out otherwise, and we must be content. 

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The estimate of the value of the history of philosophy in general, given atthe start, is the more true of the history of modern philosophy, since themovement introduced by the latter still goes on unfinished. We are still atwork on the problems which were brought forward by Descartes, Locke, andLeibnitz, and which Kant gathered up into the critical or transcendentalquestion. The present continues to be governed by the ideal of culturewhich Bacon proposed and Fichte exalted to a higher level; we all liveunder the unweakened spell of that view of the world which was developed inhostile opposition to Scholasticism, and through the enduring influence ofthose mighty geographical and scientific discoveries and religious reformswhich marked the entrance of the modern period. It is true, indeed, thatthe transition brought about by Kant's noëtical and ethical revolution wasof great significance, --more significant even than the Socratic period, with which we are fond of comparing it; much that was new was woven on, much of the old, weakened, broken, destroyed. And yet, if we take intoaccount the historical after-influence of Cartesianism, we shall find thatthe thread was only knotted and twisted by Kantianism, not cut through. Thecontinued power of the pre-Kantian modes of thought is shown by the factthat Spinoza has been revived in Fichte and Schelling, Leibnitz in Herbartand Hegel, the sensationalism of the French Illuminati in Feuerbach; andthat even materialism, which had been struck down by the criticism of thereason (one would have thought forever), has again raised its head. Eventhat most narrow tendency of the early philosophy of the modern period, theapotheosis of cognition is, --in spite of the moralistic counter-movementof Kant and Fichte, --the controlling motive in the last of the greatidealistic systems, while it also continues to exercise a marvelouslypowerful influence on the convictions of our Hegel-weary age, alike withinthe sphere of philosophy and (still more) without it. In view of theintimate relations between contemporary inquiry and the progress of thoughtsince the beginning of the modern period, acquaintance with the latter, which it is the aim of this _History_ to facilitate, becomes a pressingduty. To study the history of philosophy since Descartes is to study thepre-conditions of contemporary philosophy. 

We begin with an outline sketch of the general characteristics of modernphilosophy. These may be most conveniently described by comparing them withthe characteristics of ancient and of mediaeval philosophy. The characterof ancient philosophy or Greek philosophy, --for they are practically thesame, --is predominantly aesthetic. The Greek holds beauty and truth closelyakin and inseparable; "cosmos" is his common expression for the world andfor ornament. The universe is for him a harmony, an organism, a work ofart, before which he stands in admiration and reverential awe. In quietcontemplation, as with the eye of a connoisseur, he looks upon the world orthe individual object as a well-ordered whole, more disposed to enjoy thecongruity of its parts than to study out its ultimate elements. He preferscontemplation to analysis, his thought is plastic, not anatomical. He findsthe nature of the object in its form; and ends give him the key to thecomprehension of events. Discovering human elements everywhere, he isalways ready with judgments of worth--the stars move in circles becausecircular motion is the most perfect; the right is better than left, upperfiner than lower, that which precedes more beautiful than that whichfollows. Thinkers in whom this aesthetic reverence is weaker than theanalytic impulse--especially Democritus--seem half modern rather thanGreek. By the side of the Greek philosophy, in its sacred festal garb, stands the modern in secular workday dress, in the laborer's blouse, withthe merciless chisel of analysis in its hand. This does not seek beauty, but only the naked truth, no matter what it be. It holds it impossible tosatisfy at once the understanding and taste; nay, nakedness, ugliness, and offensiveness seem to it to testify for, rather than against, thegenuineness of truth. In its anxiety not to read human elements intonature, it goes so far as completely to read spirit out of nature. Theworld is not a living whole, but a machine; not a work of art which is tobe viewed in its totality and enjoyed with reverence, but a clock-movementto be taken apart in order to be understood. Nowhere are there ends in theworld, but everywhere mechanical causes. The character of modern thoughtwould appear to a Greek returned to earth very sober, unsplendid, undevout, and intrusive. And, in fact, modern philosophy has a considerable amountof prose about it, is not easily impressed, accepts no limitations fromfeeling, and holds nothing too sacred to be attacked with the weapon ofanalytic thought. And yet it combines penetration with intrusiveness;acuteness, coolness, and logical courage with its soberness. Never beforehas the demand for unprejudiced thought and certain knowledge been madewith equal earnestness. This interest in knowledge for its own sakedeveloped so suddenly and with such strength that, in presumptuousgladness, men believed that no previous age had rightly understood whattruth and love for truth are. The natural consequence was a generaloverestimation of cognition at the expense of all other mental activities. Even among the Greek thinkers, thought was held by the majority to be thenoblest and most divine function. But their intellectualism was checkedby the aesthetic and eudaemonistic element, and preserved from theone-sidedness which it manifests in the modern period, because of thelack of an effective counterpoise. However eloquently Bacon commends theadvantages to be derived from the conquest of nature, he still understandsinquiry for inquiry's sake, and honors it as supreme; even the ethelisticphilosophers, Fichte and Schopenhauer, pay their tribute to the prejudicein favor of intellectualism. The fact that the modern period can showno one philosophic writer of the literary rank of Plato, even though itincludes such masters of style as Fichte, Schelling, Schopenhauer, andLotze, not to speak of lesser names, is an external proof of how noticeablythe aesthetic impulse has given way to one purely intellectual. 

When we turn to the character of mediaeval thinking; we find, instead ofthe aesthetic views of antiquity and the purely scientific tendency of themodern era, a distinctively religious spirit. Faith prescribes the objectsand the limitations of knowledge; everything is referred to the hereafter, thought becomes prayer. Men speculate concerning the attributes of God, onthe number and rank of the angels, on the immortality of man--all purelytranscendental subjects. Side by side with these, it is true, the worldreceives loving attention, but always as the lower story merely, [1] abovewhich, with its own laws, rises the true fatherland, the kingdom of grace. The most subtle acuteness is employed in the service of dogma, with thetask of fathoming the how and why of things whose existence is certifiedelsewhere. The result is a formalism in thought side by side with profoundand fervent mysticism. Doubt and trust are strangely intermingled, and afeeling of expectation stirs all hearts. On the one side stands sinful, erring man, who, try as hard as he may, only half unravels the mysteries ofrevealed truth; on the other, the God of grace, who, after our death, willreveal himself to us as clearly as Adam knew him before the fall. Godalone, however, can comprehend himself--for the finite spirit, eventruth unveiled is mystery, and ecstasy, unresisting devotion to theincomprehensible, the culmination of knowledge. In mediaeval philosophythe subject looks longingly upward to the infinite object of his thought, expecting that the latter will bend down toward him or lift him upwardtoward itself; in Greek philosophy the spirit confronts its object, theworld, on a footing of equality; in modern philosophy the speculativesubject feels himself higher than the object, superior to nature. Inthe conception of the Middle Ages, truth and mystery are identical; toantiquity they appear reconcilable; modern thought holds them as mutuallyexclusively as light and darkness. The unknown is the enemy of knowledge, which must be chased out of its last hiding-place. It is, therefore, easyto understand that the modern period stands in far sharper antithesis tothe mediaeval era than to the ancient, for the latter has furnished it manyprinciples which can be used as weapons against the former. Grandparentsand grandchildren make good friends. 

[Footnote 1: On the separation and union of the three worlds, _natura, gratia, gloria_, in Thomas Aquinas, cf. Rudolph Eucken, _Die Philosophiedes Thomas von Aquino und die Kultur der Neuzeit_, Halle. 1886. ]

When a new movement is in preparation, but there is a lack of creativeforce to give it form, a period of tumultuous disaffection with existingprinciples ensues. What is wanted is not clearly perceived, but there is alively sense of that which is not wanted. Dissatisfaction prepares a placefor that which is to come by undermining the existent and making itripe for its fall. The old, the outgrown, the doctrine which had becomeinadequate, was in this case Scholasticism; modern philosophy showsthroughout--and most clearly at the start--an anti-Scholastic character. Ifup to this time Church dogma had ruled unchallenged in spiritual affairs, and the Aristotelian philosophy in things temporal, war is now declaredagainst authority of every sort and freedom of thought is inscribed onthe banner. [1] "Modern philosophy is Protestantism in the sphere of thethinking spirit" (Erdmann). Not that which has been considered true forcenturies, not that which another says, though he be Aristotle or ThomasAquinas, not that which flatters the desires of the heart, is true, butthat only which is demonstrated to my own understanding with convincingforce. Philosophy is no longer willing to be the handmaid of theology, but must set up a house of her own. The watchword now becomes freedom andindependent thought, deliverance from every form of constraint, alike fromthe bondage of ecclesiastical decrees and the inner servitude of prejudiceand cherished inclinations. But the adoption of a purpose leads to theconsideration of the means for attaining it. Thus the thirst for knowledgeraises questions concerning the method, the instruments, and the limits ofknowledge; the interest in noëtics and methodology vigorously develops, remains a constant factor in modern inquiry, and culminates in Kant, notagain to die away. 

[Footnote 1: The doctrine of twofold truth, under whose protecting cloakthe new liberal movements had hitherto taken refuge, was now disdainfullyrepudiated. Cf. Freudenthal, _Zur Beurtheilung der Scholastik_, in vol. Iii. Of the _Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie_, 1890. Also, H. Reuter, _Geschichte der religiösen Aufklärung im Mittelalter_ 1875-77; and Dilthey, _Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften_, 1883. ]

This negative aspect of modern tendencies needs, however, a positivesupplement. The mediaeval mode of thought is discarded and the new one isnot yet found. What can more fittingly furnish a support, a preliminarysubstitute, than antiquity? Thus philosophy, also, joins in that greatstream of culture, the Renaissance and humanism, which, starting fromItaly, poured forth over the whole civilized world. Plato and Neoplatonism, Epicurus and the Stoa are opposed to Scholasticism, the real Aristotle tothe transformed Aristotle of the Church and the distorted Aristotle of theschools. Back to the sources, is the cry. With the revival of the ancientlanguages and ancient books, the spirit of antiquity is also revived. Thedust of the schools and the tyranny of the Church are thrown off, and theclassical ideal of a free and noble humanity gains enthusiastic adherents. The man is not to be forgotten in the Christian, nor art and science, therights and the riches of individuality in the interest of piety; work forthe future must not blind us to the demands of the present nor lead us toneglect the comprehensive cultivation of the natural capacities of thespirit. The world and man are no longer viewed through Christian eyes, theone as a realm of darkness and the other as a vessel of weakness and wrath, but nature and life gleam before the new generation in joyous, hopefullight. Humanism and optimism have always been allied. 

This change in the spirit of thought is accompanied by a correspondingchange in the object of thought: theology must yield its supremacy to theknowledge of nature. Weary of Christological and soteriological questions, weary of disputes concerning the angels, the thinking spirit longs tomake himself at home in the world it has learned to love, demands realknowledge, --knowledge which is of practical utility, --and no longer seeksGod outside the world, but in it and above it. Nature becomes the home, thebody of God. Transcendence gives place to immanence, not only in theology, but elsewhere. Modern philosophy is naturalistic in spirit, not onlybecause it takes nature for its favorite object, but also because itcarries into other branches of knowledge the mathematical method sosuccessful in natural science, because it considers everything _sub rationenaturae_ and insists on the "natural" explanation of all phenomena, eventhose of ethics and politics. 

In a word, the tendency of modern philosophy is anti-Scholastic, humanistic, and naturalistic. This summary must suffice for preliminaryorientation, while the detailed division, particularization, modification, and limitation of these general points must be left for later treatment. 

Two further facts, however, may receive preliminary notice. Theindifference and hostility to the Church which have been cited among theprominent characteristics of modern philosophy, do not necessarily meanenmity to the Christian religion, much less to religion in general. Inpart, it is merely a change in the object of religious feeling, whichblazes up especially strong and enthusiastic in the philosophy of thesixteenth century, as it transfers its worship from a transcendent deity toa universe indued with a soul; in part, the opposition is directed againstthe mediaeval, ecclesiastical form of Christianity, with its monasticabandonment of the world. It was often nothing but a very deep and strongreligious feeling that led thinkers into the conflict with the hierarchy. Since the elements of permanent worth in the tendencies, doctrines, andinstitutions of the Middle Ages are thus culled out from that which iscorrupt and effete, and preserved by incorporation into the new view of theworld and the new science, and as fruitful elements from antiquity enterwith them, the progress of philosophy shows a continuous enrichment inits ideas, intuitions, and spirit. The old is not simply discarded anddestroyed, but purified, transformed, and assimilated. The same factforces itself into notice if we consider the relations of nationality andphilosophy in the three great eras. The Greek philosophy was entirelynational in its origin and its public, it was rooted in the character ofthe people and addressed itself to fellow-countrymen; not until toward itsdecline, and not until influenced by Christianity, were its cosmopolitaninclinations aroused. The Middle Ages were indifferent to nationaldistinctions, as to everything earthly, and naught was of value incomparison with man's transcendent destiny. Mediaeval philosophy is in itsaims un-national, cosmopolitan, catholic; it uses the Latin of the schools, it seeks adherents in every land, it finds everywhere productivespirits whose labors in its service remain unaffected by their nationalpeculiarities. The modern period returns to the nationalism of antiquity, but does not relinquish the advantage gained by the extension of mediaevalthought to the whole civilized world. The roots of modern philosophy aresunk deep in the fruitful soil of nationality, while the top of thetree spreads itself far beyond national limitations. It is national andcosmopolitan together; it is international as the common property of thevarious peoples, which exchange their philosophical gifts through an activecommerce of ideas. Latin is often retained for use abroad, as theuniversal language of savants, but many a work is first published in themother-tongue--and thought in it. Thus it becomes possible for the ideasof the wise to gain an entrance into the consciousness of the people, fromwhose spirit they have really sprung, and to become a power beyond thecircle of the learned public. Philosophy as illumination, as a factor ingeneral culture, is an exclusively modern phenomenon. In this speculativeintercourse of nations, however, the French, the English, and the Germansare most involved, both as producers and consumers. France gives theinitiative (in Descartes), then England assumes the leadership (in Locke), with Leibnitz and Kant the hegemony passes over to Germany. Besides thesepowers, Italy takes an eager part in the production of philosophicalideas in the period of ferment before Descartes. Each of these nationscontributes elements to the total result which it alone is in a positionto furnish, and each is rewarded by gifts in return which it would beincapable of producing out of its own store. This international exchange ofideas, in which each gives and each receives, and the fact that the chiefmodern thinkers, especially in the earlier half of the era, prior to Kant, are in great part not philosophers by profession but soldiers, statesmen, physicians, as well as natural scientists, historians, and priests, givemodern philosophy an unprofessional, worldly appearance, in strikingcontrast to the clerical character of mediaeval, and the propheticcharacter of ancient thinking. 

Germany, England, and France claim the honor of having produced the first_modern_ philosopher, presenting Nicolas of Cusa, Bacon of Verulam, andRené Descartes as their candidates, while Hobbes, Bruno, and Montaigne havereceived only scattered votes. The claim of England is the weakest of all, for, without intending to diminish Bacon's importance, it may be said thatthe programme which he develops--and in essence his philosophy is nothingmore--was, in its leading principles, not first announced by him, andnot carried out with sufficient consistency. The dispute between the tworemaining contestants may be easily and equitably settled by making thesimple distinction between forerunner and beginner, between path-breakerand founder. The entrance of a new historical era is not accompanied by anaudible click, like the beginning of a new piece on a music-box, but isgradually effected. A considerable period may intervene between the pointwhen the new movement flashes up, not understood and half unconscious ofitself, and the time when it appears on the stage in full strength andmaturity, recognizing itself as new and so acknowledged by others: theperiod of ferment between the Middle Ages and modern times lasted almosttwo centuries. It is in the end little more than logomachy to discusswhether this time of anticipation and desire, of endeavor and partialsuccess, in which the new struggles with the old without conquering it, andthe opposite tendencies in the conflicting views of the world interplay ina way at once obscure and wayward, is to be classed as the epilogue of theold era or the prologue of the new. The simple solution to take it as a_transition period_, no longer mediaeval but not yet modern, has met withfairly general acceptance. Nicolas of Cusa (1401-64) was the first toannounce _fundamental principles_ of modern philosophy--he is the leader inthis intermediate preparatory period. Descartes (1596-1650) brought forwardthe first _system_--he is the father of modern philosophy. 

A brief survey of the literature may be added in conclusion:

Heinrich Ritter's _Geschichte der neueren Philosophie_ (vols. Ix. -xii. Ofhis _Geschichte der Philosophie_), 1850-53, to Wolff and Rousseau, hasbeen superseded by more recent works, J. E. Erdmann's able _Versuch einerwissenschaftlichen Darstellung der neueren Philosophie_ (6 vols. , 1834-53)gives in appendices literal excerpts from non-German writers; the sameauthor's _Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie_ (2 vols. , 1869; 3d ed. , 1878) contains at the end the first exposition of German Philosophy sincethe Death of Hegel [English translation in 3 vols. , edited by W. S. Hough, 1890. --TR. ]. Ueberweg's _Grundriss_ (7th ed. By M. Heinze, 1888) isindispensable for reference on account of the completeness of itsbibliographical notes, which, however, are confusing to the beginner[English translation by G. S. Morris, with additions by the translator, NoahPorter, and Vincenzo Botta, New York, 1872-74. --TR. ]. The most detailed andbrilliant exposition has been given by Kuno Fischer (1854 seq. ; 3ded. , 1878 seq. ; the same author's _Baco und seine Nachfolger_, 2d ed. , 1875, --English translation, 1857, by Oxenford, --supplements the first twovolumes of the _Geschichte der neueren Philosophie_). This work, which isimportant also as a literary achievement, is better fitted than any otherto make the reader at home in the ideal world of the great philosophers, which it reconstructs from its central point, and to prepare him for thestudy (which, of course, even the best exposition cannot replace) of theworks of the thinkers themselves. Its excessive simplification of problemsis not of great moment in the first introduction to a system [Englishtranslation of vol. Iii. Book 2 (1st ed. ), _A Commentary on Kant's Critickof the Pure Reason_, by J. P. Mahaffy, London, 1866; vol. I. Part 1 and part2, book 1, _Descartes and his School_, by J, P. Gordy, New York, 1887;of vol. V. Chaps, i. -v. , _A Critique of Kant_, by W. S. Hough, London, 1888. --TR. ]. Wilhelm Windelband _(Geschichte der neueren Philosophie_, 2 vols. , 1878 and 1880, to Hegel and Herbart inclusive) accentuates theconnection of philosophy with general culture and the particular sciences, and emphasizes philosophical method. This work is pleasant reading, yet, inthe interest of clearness, we could wish that the author had given moreof positive information concerning the content of the doctrines treated, instead of merely advancing reflections on them. A projected third volumeis to trace the development of philosophy down to the present time. Windelband's compendium, _Geschichte der Philosophie_, 1890-91, isdistinguished from other expositions by the fact that, for the most part, it confines itself to a history of _problems_. Baumann's _Geschichte derPhilosophie_, 1890, aims to give a detailed account of those thinkers onlywho have advanced views individual either in their content or in theirproof. Eduard Zeller has given his _Geschichte der deutschen Philosophieseit Leibniz_ (1873; 2d ed. , 1875) the benefit of the same thoroughand comprehensive knowledge and mature judgment which have made his_Philosophie der Griechen_ a classic. [Bowen's _Modern Philosophy_, New York, 1857 (6th ed. , 1891); Royce's _Spirit of Modern Philosophy_, 1892. --TR. ]

Eugen Dühring's hypercritical _Kritische Geschichte der Philosophie_(1869; 3d ed. , 1878) can hardly be recommended to students. Lewes (Germantranslation, 1876) assumes a positivistic standpoint; Thilo (1874), aposition exclusively Herbartian; A. Stoeckl (3d ed. , 1889) writes from thestandpoint of confessional Catholicism; Vincenz Knauer (2d ed. , 1882) isa Güntherian. With the philosophico-historical work of Chr. W. Sigwart(1854), and one of the same date by Oischinger, we are not intimatelyacquainted. 

Expositions of philosophy since Kant have been given by the Hegelian, C. L. Michelet (a larger one in 2 vols. , 1837-38, and a smaller one, 1843); byChalybaeus (1837; 5th ed. , 1860, formerly very popular and worthy of it, English, 1854); by Fr. K. Biedermann (1842-43); by Carl Fortlage (1852, Kantio-Fichtean standpoint); and by Friedrich Harms (1876). The last ofthese writers unfortunately did not succeed in giving a sufficiently clearand precise, not to say tasteful, form to the valuable ideas and originalconceptions in which his work is rich. The very popular exposition by ananonymous author of Hegelian tendencies, _Deutschlands Denker seit Kant_(Dessau, 1851), hardly deserves mention. 

Further, we may mention some of the works which treat the historicaldevelopment of particular subjects: On the history of the _philosophy ofreligion_, the first volume of Otto Pfleiderer's _Religionsphilosophie aufgeschichtlicher Grundlage_ (2d ed. , 1883;--English translation by AlexanderStewart and Allan Menzies, 1886-88. --TR. ), and the very trustworthyexposition by Bernhard Pünjer (2 vols. , 1880, 1883; English translation byW. Hastie, vol. I. , 1887. --TR. ). On the history of _practical philosophy_, besides the first volume of I. H. Fichte's _Ethik_ (1850), Franz Vorländer's_Geschichte der philosophischen Moral, Rechts- und Staatslehre derEngländer und Franzosen_ (1855); Fr. Jodl, _Geschichte der Ethik in derneueren Philosophie_ (2 vols. , 1882, 1889), and Bluntschli, _Geschichte derneueren Staatswissenschaft_ (3d ed. , 1881); [Sidgwick's _Outlines ofthe History of Ethics_, 3d ed. , 1892, and Martineau's _Types of EthicalTheory_, 3d ed. , 1891. --TR. ]. On the history of the _philosophy ofhistory_: Rocholl, _Die Philosophie der Geschichte_, 1878; Richard Fester, _Rousseau und die deutsche Geschichtsphilosophie_, 1890 [Flint, _ThePhilosophy of History in Europe_, vol. I. , 1874, complete in 3 vols. , 1893_seq_. ]. On the history of _aesthetics_, R. Zimmermann, 1858; H. Lotze, 1868; Max Schasler, 1871; Ed. Von Hartmann (since Kant), 1886; Heinrichvon Stein, _Die Entstehung der neueren Aesthetik_ (1886); [Bosanquet, _AHistory of Aesthetic_, 1892. --TR. ]. Further, Fr. Alb. Lange, _Geschichtedes Materialismus_, 1866; 4th ed. , 1882; [English translation by E. C. Thomas, 3 vols. , 1878-81. --TR. ]; Jul. Baumann, _Die Lehren von Raum, Zeitund Mathematik in der neueren Philosophie_, 1868-69; Edm. König, _DieEntwickelung des Causalproblems von Cartesius bis Kant_, 1888, _seitKant_, 1890; Kurd Lasswitz, _Geschichte der Atomistik vom Mittelalter bisNewton_, 2 vols. , 1890; Ed. Grimm, _Zur Geschichte des Erkenntnissproblems, von Bacon zu Hume_, 1890. The following works are to be recommended on theperiod of transition: Moritz Carrière, _Die philosophische Weltanschauungder Reformationszeit_, 1847; 2d ed. , 1887; and Jacob Burckhardt, _Kulturder Renaissance in Italien_, 4th ed. , 1886. Reference may also be made toA. Trendelenburg, _Historische Beiträge zur Philosophie_, 3 vols. , 1846-67;Rudolph Eucken, _Geschichte und Kritik der Grundbegriffe der Gegenwart_, 1878; [English translation by M. Stuart Phelps, 1880. --TR. ]; the same, _Geschichte der philosophischen Terminologie_, 1879; the same, _Beiträgezur Geschichte der neueren Philosophie_, 1886 (including a valuablepaper on parties and party names in philosophy); the same, _DieLebensanschauungen der grossen Denker_, 1890; Ludwig Noack, _Philosophiegeschichtliches Lexicon_, 1879; Ed. Zeller, _Vorträge undAbhandlungen_, three series, 1865-84; Chr. Von Sigwart, _Kleine Schriften_, 2 vols. , 1881; 2d ed. , 1889. R. Seydel's _Religion und Philosophie_, 1887, contains papers on Luther, Schleiermacher, Schelling, Weisse, Fechner, Lotze, Hartmann, Darwinism, etc. , which are well worth reading. 

Among the smaller compends Schwegler's (1848; recent editions revisedand supplemented by R. Koeber) remains still the least bad [Englishtranslations by Seelye and Smith, revised edition with additions, New York, 1880; and J. H. Stirling, with annotations, 7th ed. , 1879. --TR. ]. The meagersketches by Deter, Koeber, Kirchner, Kuhn, Rabus, Vogel, and others areuseful for review at least. Fritz Schultze's _Stammbaum der Philosophie_, 1890, gives skillfully constructed tabular outlines, but, unfortunately, ina badly chosen form. 

CHAPTER I. 

THE PERIOD OF TRANSITION: FROM NICOLAS OF CUSA TO DESCARTES. 

The essays at philosophy which made their appearance between the middle ofthe fifteenth century and the middle of the seventeenth, exhibit mediaevaland modern characteristics in such remarkable intermixture that they canbe assigned exclusively to neither of these two periods. There are eagerlongings, lofty demands, magnificent plans, and promising outlooks inabundance, but a lack of power to endure, a lack of calmness and maturity;while the shackles against which the leading minds revolt still bind toofirmly both the leaders and those to whom they speak. Only here and thereare the fetters loosened and thrown off; if the hands are successfullyfreed, the clanking chains still hamper the feet. It is a time just suitedfor original thinkers, a remarkable number of whom in fact make theirappearance, side by side or in close succession. Further, however littlethese are able to satisfy the demand for permanent results, they everarouse our interest anew by the boldness and depth of their brilliantideas, which alternate with quaint fancies or are pervaded by them; by theyouthful courage with which they attacked great questions; and not leastby the hard fate which rewarded their efforts with misinterpretation, persecution, and death at the stake. We must quickly pass over the broadthreshold between modern philosophy and Scholastic philosophy, which isbounded by the year 1450, in which Nicolas of Cusa wrote his chiefwork, the _Idiota_, and 1644, when Descartes began the new era withhis _Principia Philosophiae_; and can touch, in passing, only the mostimportant factors. We shall begin our account of this transition periodwith Nicolas, and end it with the Englishmen, Bacon, Hobbes, and LordHerbert of Cherbury. Between these we shall arrange the various figuresof the Philosophical Renaissance (in the broad sense) in six groups:the Restorers of the Ancient Systems and their Opponents; the ItalianPhilosophers of Nature; the Political and Legal Philosophers; the Skeptics;the Mystics; the Founders of the Exact Investigation of Nature. In Italythe new spiritual birth shows an aesthetic, scientific, and humanistictendency; in Germany it is pre-eminently religious emancipation--in theReformation. 

%1. Nicolas of Cusa. %

Nicolas[1] was born in 1401, at Cues (Cusa) on the Moselle near Treves. He early ran away from his stern father, a boatman and vine-dresser namedChrypps (or Krebs), and was brought up by the Brothers of the Common Lifeat Deventer. In Padua he studied law, mathematics, and philosophy, but theloss of his first case at Mayence so disgusted him with his profession thathe turned to theology, and became a distinguished preacher. He took partin the Council of Basle, was sent by Pope Eugen IV. As an ambassador toConstantinople and to the Reichstag at Frankfort; was made Cardinal in1448, and Bishop of Brixen in 1450. His feudal lord, the Count of Tyrol, Archduke Sigismund, refused him recognition on account of certain quarrelsin which they had become engaged, and for a time held him prisoner. Previous to this he had undertaken journeys to Germany and the Netherlandson missionary business. During a second sojourn in Italy death overtookhim, in the year 1464, at Todi in Umbria. The first volume of the Parisedition of his collected works (1514) contains the most important of hisphilosophical writings; the second, among others, mathematical essays andten books of selections from his sermons; the third, the extended work, _DeConcordantia Catholica_, which he had completed at Basle. In 1440 (havingalready written on the Reform of the Calendar) he began his imposing seriesof philosophical writings with the _De Docta Ignorantia_, to which the_De Conjecturis_ was added in the following year. These were succeeded bysmaller treatises entitled _De Quaerendo Deum, De Dato Patris Luminum, DeFiliatione Dei, De Genesi_, and a defense of the _De Docta Ignorantia_. Hismost important work is the third of the four dialogues of the _Idiota_ ("Onthe Mind"), 1450. He clothes in continually changing forms the one supremetruth on which all depends, and which cannot be expressed in intelligiblelanguage but only comprehended by living intuition. In many different wayshe endeavors to lead the reader on to a vision of the inexpressible, orto draw him up to it, and to develop fruitfully the principle of thecoincidence of opposites, which had dawned upon him on his return journeyfrom Constantinople (_De Visione Dei, Dialogus de Possest, De Beryllo, De Ludo Globi, De Venatione Sapientiae, De Apice Theoriae, Compendium_). Sometimes he uses dialectical reasoning; sometimes he soars in mysticalexaltation; sometimes he writes with a simplicity level to the common mind, and in connection with that which lies at hand; sometimes, with the mostcomprehensive brevity. Besides these his philosophico-religious worksare of great value, _De Pace Fidei, De Cribratione Alchorani_. LiberalCatholics reverence him as one of the deepest thinkers of the Church; butthe fame of Giordano Bruno, a more brilliant but much less original figure, has hitherto stood in the way of the general recognition of his greatimportance for modern philosophy. 

[Footnote 1: R. Zimmermann, _Nikolaus Cusanus als Vorläufer Leibnizens_, invol. Viii. Of the _Sitzungsberichte der philosophisch-historischen Klasseder Akademie der Wissenschaften_, Vienna, 1852, p. 306 seq. R. Falckenberg, _Grundzüge der Philosophie des Nikolaus Cusanus mit besondererBerücksichtigung der Lehre vom Erkennen_, Breslau, 1880. R. Eucken, _Beiträge zur Geschichte der neueren Philosophie_, Heidelberg, 1886, p. 6seq. ; Joh. Uebinger, _Die Gotteslehre des Nikolaus Cusanus_, Münster, 1888. Scharpff, _Des Nikolaus von Cusa wichtigste Schriften in deutscherUebersetzung, Freiburg i. Br_. , 1862. ]

Human knowledge and the relation of God to the world are the two poles ofthe Cusan's system. He distinguishes four stages of knowledge. Lowest ofall stands sense (together with imagination), which yields only confusedimages; next above, the understanding (_ratio_), whose functions compriseanalysis, the positing of time and space, numerical operations, anddenomination, and which keeps the opposites distinct under the law ofcontradiction; third, the speculative reason (_intellectus_), which findsthe opposites reconcilable; and highest of all the mystical, supra-rationalintuition (_visio sine comprehensione, intuitio, unio, filiatio_), for which the opposites coincide in the infinite unity. The intuitiveculmination of knowledge, in which the soul is united with God, --sincehere even the antithesis of subject and object disappears, --is but seldomattained; and it is difficult to keep out the disturbing symbols and imagesof sense, which mingle themselves in the intuition. But it is just thisinsight into the incomprehensibility of the infinite which gives us a trueknowledge of God; this is the meaning of the "learned ignorance, " the_docta ignorantia_. The distinctions between these several stages ofcognition are not, however, to be understood in any rigid sense, foreach higher function comprehends the lower, and is active therein. Theunderstanding can discriminate only when it is furnished by sensation withimages of that which is to be discriminated, the reason can combine onlywhen the understanding has supplied the results of analysis as material forcombination; while, on the other hand, it is the understanding which ispresent in sense as consciousness, and the reason whose unity guidesthe understanding in its work of separation. Thus the several modes ofcognition do not stand for independent fundamental faculties, but forconnected modifications of one fundamental power which work together andmutually imply one another. The position that an intellectual function ofattention and discrimination is active in sensuous perception, is a viewentirely foreign to mediaeval modes of thought; for the Scholastics wereaccustomed to make sharp divisions between the cognitive faculties, on theprinciple that particulars are felt through sense and universals thoughtthrough the understanding. The idea on which Nicolas bases his argument forimmortality has also an entirely modern sound: viz. , that space and timeare products of the understanding, and, therefore, can have no power overthe spirit which produces them; for the author is higher and mightier thanthe product. 

The confession that all our knowledge is conjecture does not simply meanthat absolute and exact truth remains concealed from us; but is intended atthe same time to encourage us to draw as near as possible to the eternalverity by ever truer conjectures. There are degrees of truth, and oursurmises are neither absolutely true nor entirely false. Conjecture becomeserror only when, forgetting the inadequacy of human knowledge, we restcontent with it as a final solution; the Socratic maxim, "I know that Iam ignorant, " should not lead to despairing resignation but to courageousfurther inquiry. The duty of speculation is to penetrate deeper and deeperinto the secrets of the divine, even though the ultimate revelation willnot be given us until the hereafter. The fittest instrument of speculationis furnished by mathematics, in its conception of the infinite and thewonders of numerical relations: as on the infinite sphere center andcircumference coincide, so God's essence is exalted above all opposites;and as the other numbers are unfolded from the unit, so the finite proceedsby explication from the infinite. A controlling significance in the serialconstruction of the world is ascribed to the ten, as the sum of the firstfour numbers--as reason, understanding, imagination, and sensibility arerelated in human cognition, so God, spirit, soul, and body, or infinity, thought, life, and being are related in the objective sphere; so, further, the absolute necessity of God, the concrete necessity of the universe, the actuality of individuals, and the possibility of matter. Beside thequaternary the tern also exercises its power--the world divides into thestages of eternity, imperishability, and the temporal world of sense, or truth, probability, and confusion. The divine trinity is reflectedeverywhere: in the world as creator, created, and love; in the mind ascreative force, concept, and will. The triunity of God is very variouslyexplained--as the subject, object, and act of cognition; as creativespirit, wisdom, and goodness; as being, power, and deed; and, preferably, as unity, equality, and the combination of the two. 

God is related to the world as unity, identity, _complicatio_, tootherness, diversity, _explicatio_, as necessity to contingency, ascompleted actuality to mere possibility; yet, in such a way that theotherness participates in the unity, and receives its reality from this, and the unity does not have the otherness confronting it, outside it. Godis triune only as the Creator of the world, and in relation to it; inhimself he is absolute unity and infinity, to which nothing disparatestands opposed, which is just as much all things as not all things, andwhich, as the Areopagite had taught of old, is better comprehended bynegations than by affirmations. To deny that he is light, truth, spirit, is more true than to affirm it, for he is infinitely greater than anythingwhich can be expressed in words; he is the Unutterable, the Unknowable, the supremely one and the supremely absolute. In the world, each thing hasthings greater and smaller by its side, but God is the absolutely greatestand smallest; in accordance with the principle of the _coincidentiaoppositorum_, the absolute _maximum_ and the absolute _minimum_ coincide. That which in the world exists as concretely determinate and particular, is in God in a simple and universal way; and that which here is presentas incompleted striving, and as possibility realizing itself by gradualdevelopment, is in God completed activity. He is the realization of allpossibility, the Can-be or Can-is (_possest_); and since this absoluteactuality is the presupposition and cause of all finite ability and action, it may be unconditionally designated ability (_posse ipsum_), in antithesisto all determinate manifestations of force; namely, to all ability to be, live, feel, think, and will. 

However much these definitions, conceived in harmony with the dualisticview of Christianity, accentuate the antithesis between God and the world, this is elsewhere much softened, nay directly denied, in favor of apantheistic view which points forward to the modern period. Side by sidewith the assertion that there is no proportion whatever between theinfinite and the finite, the following naïvely presents itself, in opencontradiction to the former: God excels the reason just as much asthe latter is superior to the understanding, and the understanding tosensibility, or he is related to thought as thought to life, and life tobeing. Nay, Nicolas makes even bolder statements than these, when he callsthe universe a sensuous and mutable God, man a human God or a humanlycontracted infinity, the creation a created God or a limited infinity; thushinting that God and the world are at bottom essentially alike, differingonly in the form of their existence, that it is one and the same beingand action which manifests itself absolutely in God, relatively and in alimited way in the system of creation. It was chiefly three modern ideaswhich led the Cusan on from dualism to pantheism--the boundlessness of theuniverse, the connection of all being, and the all-comprehensive richnessof individuality. Endlessness belongs to the universe as well as to God, only its endlessness is not an absolute one, beyond space and time, butweakened and concrete, namely unlimited extension in space and unendingduration in time. Similarly, the universe is unity, yet not a unityabsolutely above multiplicity and diversity, but one which is divided intomany members and obscured thereby. Even the individual is infinite in acertain sense; for, in its own way, it bears in itself all that is, itmirrors the whole world from its limited point of view, is an abridged, compressed representation of the universe. As the members of the body, theeye, the arm, the foot, interact in the closest possible way, and no oneof them can dispense with the rest, so each thing is connected with each, different from it and yet in harmony with it, so each contains all theothers and is contained by them. All is in all, for all is in the universeand in God, as the universe and God in all. In a still higher degree man isa microcosm (_parvus mundus_), a mirror of the All, since he not merely, like other beings, actually has in himself all that exists, but also hasa knowledge of this richness, is capable of developing it into consciousimages of things. And it is just this which constitutes the perfection ofthe whole and of the parts, that the higher is in the lower, the cause inthe effect, the genus in the individual, the soul in the body, reasonin the senses, and conversely. To perfect, is simply to make active apotential possession, to unfold capacities and to elevate the unconsciousinto consciousness. Here we have the germ of the philosophy of Bruno and ofLeibnitz. 

As we have noticed a struggle between two opposite tendencies, onedualistic and Christian, one pantheistic and modern, in the theology ofNicolas, so at many other points a conflict between the mediaeval and themodern view of the world, of which our philosopher is himself unconscious, becomes evident to the student. It is impossible to follow out the detailsof this interesting opposition, so we shall only attempt to distinguish ina rough way the beginnings of the new from the remnants of the old. Modernis his interest in the ancient philosophers, of whom Pythagoras, Plato, andthe Neoplatonists especially attract him; modern, again, his interest innatural science[1] (he teaches not only the boundlessness of the world, butalso the motion of the earth); his high estimation of mathematics, althoughhe often utilizes this merely in a fanciful symbolism of numbers; hisoptimism (the world an image of the divine, everything perfect of its kind, the bad simply a halt on the way to the good); his intellectualism (knowingthe primal function and chief mission of the spirit; faith an undevelopedknowledge; volition and emotion, as is self-evident, incidental results ofthought; knowledge a leading back of the creature to God as its source, hence the counterpart of creation); modern, finally, the form andapplication given to the Stoic-Neoplatonic concept of individuality, andthe idealistic view which resolves the objects of thought into productsthereof. [2] This last position, indeed, is limited by the lingeringinfluence of nominalism, which holds the concepts of the mind to be merelyabstract copies, and not archetypes of things. Moreover, _explicatio, evolutio_, unfolding, as yet does not always have the meaning ofdevelopment to-day, of progressive advance. It denotes, quite neutrally, the production of a multiplicity from a unity, in which the former has lainconfined, no matter whether this multiplicity and its procession signifyenhancement or attenuation. For the most part, in fact, involution, _complicatio_ (which, moreover, always means merely a primal, germinalcondition, never, as in Leibnitz, the return thereto) represents the moreperfect condition. The chief examples of the relation of involution andevolution are the principles in which science is involved and out of whichit is unfolded; the unit, which is related to numbers in a similar way;the spirit and the cognitive operations; God and his creatures. Howeverobscure and unskillful this application of the idea of development mayappear, yet it is indisputable that a discovery of great promise has beenmade, accompanied by a joyful consciousness of its fruitfulness. Of thenumberless features which point backward to the Middle Ages, only one needbe mentioned, the large space taken up by speculations concerning theGod-man (the whole third book of the _De Docta Ignorantia_), and by thoseconcerning the angels. Yet even here a change is noticeable, for theearthly and the divine are brought into most intimate relation, while inThomas Aquinas, for instance, they form two entirely separate worlds. Inshort, the new view of the world appears in Nicolas still bound on everyhand by mediaeval conceptions. A century and a half passed before thefetters, grown rusty in the meanwhile, broke under the bolder touch ofGiordano Bruno. 

[Footnote 1: The attention of our philosopher was called to the naturalsciences, and thus also to geography, which at this time was springing intonew life, by his friend Paul Toscanelli, the Florentine. Nicolas was thefirst to have the map of Germany engraved (cf. S. Ruge in _Globus_, vol. Lx. , No. I, 1891), which, however, was not completed until long after hisdeath, and issued in 1491. ]

[Footnote 2: On the modern elements in his theory of the state and ofright, cf. Gierke, _Das deutsche Genossenschaftsrecht_, vol. Iii. § II, 1881. ]

%2. The Revival of Ancient Philosophy and the Opposition to it%. 

Italy is the home of the Renaissance and the birthplace of importantnew ideas which give the intellectual life of the sixteenth century itscharacter of brave endeavor after high and distant ends. The enthusiasmfor ancient literature already aroused by the native poets, Dante (1300), Petrarch (1341), and Boccaccio (1350), was nourished by the influx of Greekscholars, part of whom came in pursuance of an invitation to the Council ofFerrara and Florence (1438) called in behalf of the union of the Churches(among these were Pletho and his pupil Bessarion; Nicolas Cusanus was oneof the legates invited), while part were fugitives from Constantinopleafter its capture by the Turks in 1453. The Platonic Academy, whosemost celebrated member, Marsilius Ficinus, translated Plato and theNeoplatonists into Latin, was founded in 1440 on the suggestion of GeorgiusGemistus Pletho[1] under the patronage of Cosimo dei Medici. The writingsof Pletho ("On the Distinction between Plato and Aristotle"), of Bessarion(_Adversus Calumniatorem Platonis_, 1469, in answer to the _ComparatioAristotelis et Platonis_, 1464, an attack by the Aristotelian, George ofTrebizond, on Pletho's work), and of Ficinus (_Theologia Platonica_, 1482), show that the Platonism which they favored was colored by religious, mystical, and Neoplatonic elements. If for Bessarion and Ficinus, just asfor the Eclectics of the later Academy, there was scarcely any essentialdistinction between the teachings of Plato, of Aristotle, and ofChristianity; this confusion of heterogeneous elements was soon carriedmuch farther, when the two Picos (John Pico of Mirandola, died 1494, andhis nephew Francis, died 1533) and Johann Reuchlin (_De Verbo Mirifico_, 1494; _De Arte Cabbalistica_, 1517), who had been influenced by the former, introduced the secret doctrines of the Jewish Cabala into the Platonicphilosophy, and Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim of Cologne (_De OccultaPhilosophia_, 1510; cf. Sigwart, _Kleine Schriften_, vol. I. P. 1 seq. )made the mixture still worse by the addition of the magic art. The impulseof the modern spirit to subdue nature is here already apparent, only thatit shows inexperience in the selection of its instruments; before long, however, nature will willingly unveil to observation and calm reflectionthe secrets which she does not yield to the compulsion of magic. 

[Footnote 1: Pletho died at an advanced age in 1450. His chief work, the[Greek: Nomoi], was given to the flames by his Aristotelian opponent, Georgius Scholarius, surnamed Gennadius, Patriarch of Constantinople. Portions of it only, which had previously become known, have beenpreserved. On Pletho's life and teachings, cf. Fritz Schultze, _G. G. Plethon_, Jena, 1874. ]

A similar romantic figure was Phillipus Aureolus Theophrastus BombastParacelsus[1] von Hohenheim (1493-1541), a traveled Swiss, who endeavoredto reform medicine from the standpoint of chemistry. Philosophy forParacelsus is knowledge of nature, in which observation and thoughtmust co-operate; speculation apart from experience and worship of thepaper-wisdom of the ancients lead to no result. The world is a livingwhole, which, like man, the microcosm, in whom the whole content ofthe macrocosm is concentrated as in an extract, runs its life course. Originally all things were promiscuously intermingled in a unity, theGod-created _prima materia_, as though inclosed in a germ, whence themanifold, with its various forms and colors, proceeded by separation. The development then proceeds in such a way that in each genus that isperfected which is posited therein, and does not cease until, at the lastday, all that is possible in nature and history shall have fulfilleditself. But the one indwelling life of nature lives in all the manifoldforms; the same laws rule in the human body as in the universe; that whichworks secretly in the former lies open to the view in the latter, and theworld gives the clew to the knowledge of man. Natural becoming is broughtabout by the chemical separation and coming together of substances; theultimate constituents revealed by analysis are the three fundamentalsubstances or primitive essences, quicksilver, sulphur, and salt, by which, however, something more principiant is understood than the empiricalsubstances bearing these names: _mercurius_ means that which makes bodiesliquid, _sulfur_, that which makes them combustible, _sal_, that whichmakes them fixed and rigid. From these are compounded the four elements, each of which is ruled by elemental spirits--earth by gnomes or pygmies, water by undines or nymphs, air by sylphs, fire by salamanders (cf. Withthis, and with Paracelsus's theory of the world as a whole, Faust's twomonologues in Goethe's drama); which are to be understood as forcesor sublimated substances, not as personal, demoniacal beings. To eachindividual being there is ascribed a vital principle, the _Archeus_, anindividualization of the general force of nature, _Vulcanus_; so also tomen. Disease is a checking of this vital principle by contrary powers, which are partly of a terrestrial and partly of a sidereal nature; and thechoice of medicines is to be determined by their ability to support theArcheus against its enemies. Man is, however, superior to nature--he is notmerely the universal animal, inasmuch as he is completely that which otherbeings are only in a fragmentary way; but, as the image of God, he has alsoan eternal element in him, and is capable of attaining perfection throughthe exercise of his rational judgment. Paracelsus distinguishes threeworlds: the elemental or terrestrial, the astral or celestial, and thespiritual or divine. To the three worlds, which stand in relations ofsympathetic interaction, there correspond in man the body, which nourishesitself on the elements, the spirit, whose imagination receives its food, sense and thoughts, from the spirits of the stars, and, finally, theimmortal soul, which finds its nourishment in faith in Christ. Hencenatural philosophy, astronomy, and theology are the pillars ofanthropology, and ultimately of medicine. This fantastic physic ofParacelsus found many adherents both in theory and in practice. [2] Amongthose who accepted and developed it may be named R. Fludd (died 1637), andthe two Van Helmonts, father and son (died 1644 and 1699). 

[Footnote 1: On Paracelsus cf. Sigwart, _Kleine Schriften_, vol. I. P. 25seq. ; Eucken, _Beiträge zur Geschichteder neueren Philosophie_, p. 32 seq. ;Lasswitz, _Geschichte der Atomistik_, vol. I. P. 294 seq. ]

[Footnote 2: The influence of Paracelsus, as of Vives and Campanella, isevident in the great educator, Amos Comenius (Komensky, 1592-1670), whosepansophical treatises appeared in 1637-68. On Comenius cf. Pappenheim, Berlin, 1871; Kvacsala, Doctor's Dissertation, Leipsic, 1886; WalterMueller, Dresden, 1887. ]

Beside the Platonic philosophy, others of the ancient systems were alsorevived. Stoicism was commended by Justus Lipsius (died 1606) and CasparSchoppe (Scioppius, born 1562); Epicureanism was revived by Gassendi(1647), and rhetorizing logicians went back to Cicero and Quintilian. Amongthe latter were Laurentius Valla (died 1457); R. Agricola (died 1485); theSpaniard, Ludovicus Vives (1531), who referred inquiry from the authorityof Aristotle to the methodical utilization of experience; and MariusNizolius (1553), whose _Antibarbarus_ was reissued by Leibnitz in 1670. 

The adherents of Aristotle were divided into two parties, one of whichrelied on the naturalistic interpretation of the Greek exegete, Alexander of Aphrodisias (about 200 A. D. ), the other on the pantheisticinterpretation of the Arabian commentator, Averroës (died 1198). Theconflict over the question of immortality, carried on especially in Padua, was the culmination of the battle. The Alexandrist asserted that, accordingto Aristotle, the soul was mortal, the Averroists, that the rational partwhich is common to all men was immortal; while to this were added thefurther questions, if and how the Aristotelian view could be reconciledwith the Church doctrine, which demanded a continued personal existence. The most eminent Aristotelian of the Renaissance, Petrus Pomponatius (_DeImmortalite Animae_, 1516; _De Fato, Libero Arbitrio, Providentia etPraedestinatione_), was on the side of the Alexandrists. Achillini andNiphus fought on the other side. Caesalpin (died 1603), Zabarella, andCremonini assumed an intermediate, or, at least, a less decided position. Still others, as Faber Stapulensis in Paris (1500), and Desiderius Erasmus(1520), were more interested in securing a correct text of Aristotle'sworks than in his philosophical principles. 

 * * * * *

Among the Anti-Aristotelians only two famous names need be mentioned, thatof the influential Frenchman, Petrus Ramus, and the German, Taurellus. Pierre de la Ramée (assassinated in the massacre of St. Bartholomew, 1572), attacked the (unnatural and useless) Aristotelian logic in his_Aristotelicae Animadversiones_, 1543, objecting, with the Ciceroniansmentioned above, to the separation of logic and rhetoric; and attempted anew logic of his own, in his _Institutiones Dialecticae_, which, in spiteof its formalism, gained acceptance, especially in Germany. [1] NicolausOechslein, Latinized Taurellus (born in 1547 at Mömpelgard; at his death, in 1606, professor of medicine in the University of Altdorf), stood quitealone because of his independent position in reference to all philosophicaland religious parties. His most important works were his _PhilosophiaeTriumphus_, 1573; _Synopsis Aristotelis Metaphysicae_, 1596; _Alpes Caesae_(against Caesalpin, and the title punning on his name), 1597; and _De RerumAeternitate_, 1604. [2] The thought of Taurellus inclines toward the ideal ofa Christian philosophy; which, however, Scholasticism, in his view, didnot attain, inasmuch as its thought was heathen in its blind reverencefor Aristotle, even though its faith was Christian. In order to heal thisbreach between the head and the heart, it is necessary in religion toreturn from confessional distinctions to Christianity itself, and inphilosophy, to abandon authority for the reason. We should not seek to beLutherans or Calvinists, but simply Christians, and we should judge onrational grounds, instead of following Aristotle, Averroës, or ThomasAquinas. Anyone who does not aim at the harmony of theology and philosophy, is neither a Christian nor a philosopher. One and the same God is theprimal source of both rational and revealed truth. Philosophy is the basisof theology, theology the criterion and complement of philosophy. The onestarts with effects evident to the senses and leads to the suprasensible, to the First Cause; the other follows the reverse course. To philosophybelongs all that Adam knew or could know before the fall; had there been nosin, there would have been no other than philosophical knowledge. But afterthe fall, the reason, which informs us, it is true, of the moral law, butnot of the divine purpose of salvation, would have led us to despair, sinceneither punishment nor virtue could justify us, if revelation did not teachus the wonders of grace and redemption. Although Taurellus thus softens theopposition between theology and philosophy, which had been most sharplyexpressed in the doctrine of "twofold truth" (that which is true inphilosophy may be false in theology, and conversely), and endeavors tobring the two into harmony, the antithesis between God and the world stillremains for him immovably fixed. God is not things, though he is all. Heis pure affirmation; all without him is composed, as it were, of being andnothing, and can neither be nor be known independently: _negatio non nihilest, alias nec esset nec intelligeretur, sed limitatio est affirmationis_. Simple being or simple affirmation is equivalent to infinity, eternity, unity, uniqueness, --properties which do not belong to the world. He whoposits things as eternal, sublates God. God and the world are opposed toeach other as infinite cause and finite effect. Moreover, as it is ourspirit which philosophizes and not God's spirit in us, so the faith throughwhich man appropriates Christ's merit is a free action of the human spirit, the capacity for which is inborn, not infused from above; in it, God actsmerely as an auxiliary or remote cause, by removing the obstacles whichhinder the operation of the power of faith. With this anti-pantheistictendency he combines an anti-intellectualistic one--being and productionprecedes and stands higher than contemplation; God's activity does notconsist in thought but in production, and human blessedness, not in theknowledge but the love of God, even though the latter presupposes theformer. While man, as an end in himself, is immortal--and the whole man, not his soul merely--the world of sense, which has been created only forthe conservation of man (his procreation and probation), must disappear;above this world, however, a higher rears its walls to subserve man'seternal happiness. 

[Footnote 1: On Ramus cf. Waddington's treatises, one in Latin, Paris, 1849, the other in French, Paris, 1855. ]

[Footnote 2: Schmid Schwarzenburg has written on Taurellus, 1860, 2d ed. , 1864. ]

The high regard which Leibnitz expressed for Taurellus may be in partexplained by the many anticipations of his own thoughts to be found inthe earlier writer. The intimate relation into which sensibility andunderstanding are brought is an instance of this from the theory ofknowledge. Receptivity is not passivity, but activity arrested (through thebody). All knowledge is inborn; all men are potential philosophers (and, sofar as they are loyal to conscience, Christians); the spirit is a thinkingand a thinkable universe. Taurellus's philosophy of nature, recognizingthe relative truth of atomism, makes the world consist of manifold simplesubstances combined into formal unity: he calls it a well constructedsystem of wholes. A discussion of the origin of evil is also given, with asolution based on the existence and misuse of freedom. Finally, it is tobe mentioned to the great credit of Taurellus, that, like his youngercontemporaries, Galileo and Kepler, he vigorously opposed the Aristotelianand Scholastic animation of the material world and the anthropomorphicconception of its forces, thus preparing the way for the modern view ofnature to be perfected by Newton. 

%3. The Italian Philosophy of Nature%. 

We turn now from the restorers of ancient doctrines and their opponents tothe men who, continuing the opposition to the authority of Aristotle, pointout new paths for the study of nature. The physician, Hieronymus Cardanusof Milan (1501-76), whose inclinations toward the fanciful were restrained, though not suppressed, by his mathematical training, may be considered theforerunner of the school. While the people should accept the dogmas of theChurch with submissive faith, the thinker may and should subordinate allthings to the truth. The wise man belongs to that rare class who neitherdeceive nor are deceived; others are either deceivers or deceived, or both. In his theory of nature, Cardanus advances two principles: one passive, matter (the three cold and moist elements), and an active, formative one, the world-soul, which, pervading the All and bringing it into unity, appears as warmth and light. The causes of motion are attraction andrepulsion, which in higher beings become love and hate. Even superhumanspirits, the demons, are subject to the mechanical laws of nature. 

The standard bearer of the Italian philosophy of nature was BernardinusTelesius[1] of Cosenza (1508-88; _De Rerum Natura juxta Propria Principia_, 1565, enlarged 1586), the founder of a scientific society in Naples calledthe Telesian, or after the name of his birthplace, the Cosentian Academy. Telesius maintained that the Aristotelian doctrine must be replaced by anunprejudiced empiricism; that nature must be explained from itself, and byas few principles as possible. Beside inert matter, this requires only twoactive forces, on whose interaction all becoming and all life depend. Theseare warmth, which expands, and cold, which contracts; the former resides inthe sun and thence proceeds, the latter is situated in the earth. AlthoughTelesius acknowledges an immaterial, immortal soul, he puts the emphasison sensuous experience, without which the understanding is incapable ofattaining certain knowledge. He is a sensationalist both in the theory ofknowledge and in ethics, holding the functions of judgment and thoughtdeducible from the fundamental power of perception, and considering thevirtues different manifestations of the instinct of self-preservation(which he ascribes to matter as well). 

[Footnote 1: Cf. On Telesius, Florentine, 2 vols. , Naples, 1872-74; K. Heiland, _Erkenntnisslehre und Ethik des Telesius_, Doctor's Dissertationat Leipsic, 1891. Further, Rixner and Siber, _Leben und Lehrmeinungenberühmter Physiker am Ende des XVI. Und am Anfang des XVII. Jahrhunderts_, Sulzbach (1819-26), 7 Hefte, 2d ed. , 1829. Hefte 2-6 discuss Cardanus, Telesius, Patritius, Bruno, and Campanella; the first is devoted toParacelsus, and the seventh to the older Van Helmont (Joh. Bapt. ). ]

With the name of Telesius we usually associate that of Franciscus Patritius(1529-97), professor of the Platonic philosophy in Ferrara and Rome_(Discussiones Peripateticae, _ 1581; _Nova de Universis Philosophia_, 1591), who, combining Neoplatonic and Telesian principles, holds that theincorporeal or spiritual light emanates from the divine original light, inwhich all reality is seminally contained; the heavenly or ethereallight from the incorporeal; and the earthly or corporeal, from theheavenly--while the original light divides into three persons, the One andAll _(Unomnia)_, unity or life, and spirit. 

The Italian philosophy of nature culminates in Bruno and Campanella, ofwhom the former, although he is the earlier, appears the more advancedbecause of his freer attitude toward the Church. Giordano Bruno was bornin 1548 at Nola, and educated at Naples; abandoning his membership in theDominican Order, he lived, with various changes of residence, in France, England, and Germany. Returning to his native land, he was arrested inVenice and imprisoned for seven years at Rome, where, on February 17, 1600, he suffered death at the stake, refusing to recant. (The same fate overtookhis fellow-countryman, Vanini, in 1619, at Toulouse. ) Besides threedidactic poems in Latin (Frankfort, 1591), the Italian dialogues, _DellaCausa, Principio ed Uno_, Venice, 1584 (German translation by Lasson, 1872), are of chief importance. The Italian treatises have been edited byWagner, Leipsic, 1829, and by De Lagarde, 2 vols. , Göttingen, 1888; theLatin appeared at Naples, in 3 vols. , 1880, 1886, and 1891. Of a passionateand imaginative nature, Bruno was not an essentially creative thinker, butborrowed the ideas which he proclaimed with burning enthusiasm and loftyeloquence, and through which he has exercised great influence on laterphilosophy, from Telesius and Nicolas, complaining the while that thepriestly garb of the latter sometimes hindered the free movement of histhought. Beside these thinkers he has a high regard for Pythagoras, Plato, Lucretius, Raymundus Lullus, and Copernicus (died 1543). [1] He forms thetransition link between Nicolas of Cusa and Leibnitz, as also the linkbetween Cardanus and Spinoza. To Spinoza Bruno offered the naturalisticconception of God (God is the "first cause" immanent in the universe, towhich self-manifestation or self-revelation is essential; He is _naturanaturans_, the numberless worlds are _natura naturata_); Leibnitz heanticipated by his doctrine of the "monads, " the individual, imperishableelements of the existent, in which matter and form, incorrectly divorced byAristotle as though two antithetical principles, constitute one unity. The characteristic traits of the philosophy of Bruno are the lack ofdifferentiation between pantheistic and individualistic elements, themediaeval animation and endlessness of the world, and, finally, thereligious relation to the universe or the extravagant deification of nature(nature and the world are entirely synonymous, the All, the world-soul, and God nearly so, while even matter is called a divine being). [2]

[Footnote 1: Nicolaus Copernicus (Koppernik; 1473-1543) was born at Thorn;studied astronomy, law, and medicine at Cracow, Bologna, and Padua; anddied a Canon of Frauenberg. His treatise, _De Revolutionibus OrbiumCaelestium_, which was dedicated to Pope Paul III. , appeared at Nurembergin 1543, with a preface added to it by the preacher, Andreas Osiander, which calls the heliocentric system merely an hypothesis advanced as abasis for astronomical calculations. Copernicus reached his theory ratherby speculation than by observation; its first suggestion came from thePythagorean doctrine of the motion of the earth. On Copernicus cf. Leop. Prowe, vol. I. _Copernicus Leben_, vol. Ii. (_Urkunden_), Berlin, 1883-84;and K. Lohmeyer in Sybel's _Historische Zeitschrift_, vol. Lvii. , 1887. ]

[Footnote 2: Cf. On Bruno, H. Brunnhofer (somewhat too enthusiastic), Leipsic, 1882; also Sigwart, _Kleine Schriften_, vol. I. P. 49 _seq_. ]

Bruno completes the Copernican picture of the world by doing away with themotionless circle of fixed stars with which Copernicus, and even Kepler, had thought our solar system surrounded, and by opening up the view intothe immeasurability of the world. With this the Aristotelian antithesis ofthe terrestrial and the celestial is destroyed. The infinite space (filledwith the aether) is traversed by numberless bodies, no one of whichconstitutes the center of the world. The fixed stars are suns, and, likeour own, surrounded by planets. The stars are formed of the same materialsas the earth, and are moved by their own souls or forms, each a livingbeing, each also the residence of infinitely numerous living beings ofvarious degrees of perfection, in whose ranks man by no means takes thefirst place. All organisms are composed of minute elements, called _minima_or monads; each monad is a mirror of the All; each at once corporeal andsoul-like, matter and form, each eternal; their combinations alone beingin constant change. The universe is boundless in time, as in space;development never ceases, for the fullness of forms which slumber in thewomb of matter is inexhaustible. The Absolute is the primal unity, exaltedabove all antitheses, from which all created being is unfolded and in whichit remains included. All is one, all is out of God and in God. Inthe living unity of the universe, also, the two sides, the spiritual(world-soul), and the corporeal (universal matter), are distinguishable, but not separate. The world-reason pervades in its omnipresence thegreatest and the smallest, but in varying degrees. It weaves all intoone great system, so that if we consider the whole, the conflicts andcontradictions which rule in particulars disappear, resolved into themost perfect harmony. Whoever thus regards the world, becomes filled withreverence for the Infinite and bends his will to the divine law--from truescience proceed true religion and true morality, those of the spiritualhero, of the heroic sage. 

Thomas Campanella[1] (1568-1639) was no less dependent on Nicolas andTelesius than Bruno. A Calabrian by birth like Telesius, whose writingsfilled him with aversion to Aristotle, a Dominican like Bruno, he wasdeprived of his freedom on an unfounded suspicion of conspiracy against theSpanish rule, spent twenty-seven years in prison, and died in Paris after ashort period of quiet. Renewing an old idea, Campanella directed attentionfrom the written volume of Scripture to the living book of nature as beingalso a divine revelation. Theology rests on faith (in theology, Campanella, in accordance with the traditions of his order, follows Thomas Aquinas);philosophy is based on perception, which in its instrumental part comprisesmathematics and logic, and in its real part, the doctrine of nature and ofmorals, while metaphysics treats of the highest presuppositions and theultimate grounds, --the "pro-principles, " Campanella starts, as Augustinebefore him and Descartes in later times, from the indisputable certitude ofthe spirit's own existence, from which he rises to the certitude of God'sexistence. On this first certain truth of my own existence there followthree others: my nature consists in the three functions of power, knowledge, and volition; I am finite and limited, might, wisdom, andlove are in man constantly intermingled with their opposites, weakness, foolishness, and hate; my power, knowledge, and volition do not extendbeyond the present. The being of God follows from the idea of God in us, which can have been derived from no other than an infinite source. It wouldbe impossible for so small a part of the universe as man to produce fromhimself the idea of a being incomparably greater than the whole universe. I attain a knowledge of God's nature from my own by thinking away fromthe latter, in which, as in everything finite, being and non-being areintermingled, every limitation and negation, by raising to infinitymy positive fundamental powers, _posse, cognoscere_, and _velle_, or_potentia, sapientia_, and _amor_, and by transferring them to him, who ispure affirmation, _ens_ entirely without _non-ens_. Thus I reach as thethree pro-principles or primalities of the existent or the Godhead, omnipotence, omniscience, and infinite love. But the infrahuman world mayalso be judged after the analogy of our fundamental faculties. Theuniverse and all its parts possess souls; there is naught withoutsensation; consciousness, it is true, is lacking in the lower creatures, but they do not lack life, feeling, and desire, for it is impossiblefor the animate to come from the inanimate. Everything loves and hates, desires and avoids. Plants are motionless animals, and their roots, mouths. Corporeal motion springs from an obscure, unconscious impulse ofself-preservation; the heavenly bodies circle about the sun as the centerof sympathy; space itself seeks a content _(horror vacui_). 

[Footnote 1: Campanella's works have been edited by Al. D'Ancona, Turin, 1854, Cf. Sigwart, _Kleine Schriften_, vol. I. P. 125 _seq_. ]

The more imperfect a thing is, the more weakened is the divine being in itby non-being and contingency. The entrance of the naught into the divinereality takes place by degrees. First God projects from himself the idealor archetypal world (_mundus archetypus_), _i. E. _, the totality of thepossible. From this ideal world proceeds the metaphysical world of eternalintelligences _(mundus mentalis)_, including the angels, the world-soul, and human spirits. The third product is the mathematical world of space_(mundus sempiternus_), the object of geometry; the fourth, the temporalor corporeal world; the fifth, and last, the empirical world _(mundussitualis_), in which everything appears at a definite point in space andtime. All things not only love themselves and seek the conservation oftheir own being, but strive back toward the original source of their being, to God; _i. E. _, they possess religion. In man, natural and animal religionare completed by rational religion, the limitations of which render arevelation necessary. A religion can be considered divine only when it isadapted to all, when it gains acceptance through miracles and virtue, andwhen it contradicts neither natural ethics nor the reason. Religion isunion with God through knowledge, purity of will, and love. It is inborn, a law of nature, not, as Machiavelli teaches, a political invention. 

Campanella desired to see the unity in the divine government of the worldembodied in a pyramid of states with the papacy at the apex: above theindividual states was to come the province, then the kingdom, the empire, the (Spanish) world-monarchy, and, finally, the universal dominion of thePope. The Church should be superior to the State, the vicegerent of God totemporal rulers and to councils. 

%4. Philosophy of the State and of Law%. 

The originality of the modern doctrines of natural law was formerlyoverestimated, as it was not known to how considerable an extent the wayhad been prepared for them by the mediaeval philosophy of the state and oflaw. It is evident from the equally rich and careful investigations of OttoGierke[1] that in the political and legal theories of a Bodin, a Grotius, a Hobbes, a Rousseau, we have systematic developments of principles longextant, rather than new principles produced with entire spontaneity. Theirmerit consists in the principiant expression and accentuation and thesystematic development of ideas which the Middle Ages had produced, andwhich in part belong to the common stock of Scholastic science, in partconstitute the weapons of attack for bold innovators. Marsilius of Padua(_Defensor Pacis_, 1325), Occam (died 1347), Gerson (about 1400), and theCusan[2] _(Concordantia Catholica_, 1433) especially, are now seen in adifferent light. "Under the husk of the mediaeval system there is revealeda continuously growing antique-modern kernel, which draws all the livingconstituents out of the husk, and finally bursts it" (Gierke, _DeutschesGenossenschaftsrecht_, vol. Iii. P. 312). Without going beyond theboundaries of the theocratico-organic view of the state prevalent inthe Middle Ages, most of the conceptions whose full development wasaccomplished by the natural law of modern times were already employed inthe Scholastic period. Here we already find the idea of a transition on thepart of man from a pre-political natural state of freedom and equality intothe state of citizenship; the idea of the origin of the state by a contract(social and of submission); of the sovereignty of the ruler (_rex majorpopulo; plenitudo potestatis_), and of popular sovereignty[3] (_populusmajor principe_); of the original and inalienable prerogatives of thegenerality, and the innate and indestructible right of the individual tofreedom; the thought that the sovereign power is superior to positivelaw _(princeps legibus solutus_), but subordinate to natural law; eventendencies toward the division of powers (legislative and executive), and the representative system. These are germs which, at the fall ofScholasticism and the ecclesiastical reformation, gain light and air forfree development. 

[Footnote 1: Gierke, _Johannes Althusius und die Entwickelung dernaturrechtlichen Staatstheorien_, Breslau, 1880; the same, _DeutschesGenossenschaftsrecht_, vol. Iii. § II, Berlin, 1881. Cf. Further, Sigm. Riezler, _Die literarischen Widersacher der Päpste_, Leipsic, 1874; A. Franck, _Réformateurs et Publicistes de L'Europe_, Paris, 1864. ]

[Footnote 2: Nicolas' political ideas are discussed by T. Stumpf, Cologne, 1865. ]

[Footnote 3: Cf. F. Von Bezold, _Die Lehre von der Volkssouveränität imMittelalter_, (Sybel's _Historische Zeitschrift_, vol. Xxxvi. , 1876). ]

The modern theory of natural law, of which Grotius was the most influentialrepresentative, began with Bodin and Althusius. The former conceivesthe contract by which the state is founded as an act of unconditionalsubmission on the part of the community to the ruler, the latter conceivesit merely as the issue of a (revocable) commission: in the view of the one, the sovereignty of the people is entirely alienated, "transferred, " in thatof the other, administrative authority alone is granted, "conceded, " whilethe sovereign prerogatives remain with the people. Bodin is the founderof the theory of absolutism, to which Grotius and the school of Pufendorfadhere, though in a more moderate form, and which Hobbes develops to thelast extreme. Althusius, on the other hand, by his systematic developmentof the doctrine of social contract and the inalienable sovereignty of thepeople, became the forerunner of Locke[1] and Rousseau. 

[Footnote 1: Ulrich Huber (1674) may be called the first representativeof constitutionalism, and so the intermediate link between Althusius andLocke. Cf. Gierke, _Althusius_, p. 290. ]

The first independent political philosopher of the modern period wasNicolo Machiavelli of Florence (1469-1527). Patriotism was the soul of histhinking, questions of practical politics its subject, and historical factits basis. [1] He is entirely unscholastic and unecclesiastical. The powerand independence of the nation are for him of supreme importance, and thegreatness and unity of Italy, the goal of his political system. Heopposes the Church, the ecclesiastical state, and the papacy as the chiefhindrances to the attainment of these ends, and considers the means bywhich help may be given to the Fatherland. In normal circumstances arepublican constitution, under which Sparta, Rome, and Venice have achievedgreatness, would be the best. But amid the corruption of the times, theonly hope of deliverance is from the absolute rule of a strong prince, one not to be frightened back from severity and force. Should the rulerendeavor to keep within the bounds of morality, he would inevitably beruined amid the general wickedness. Let him make himself liked, especiallymake himself feared, by the people; let him be fox and lion together; lethim take care, when he must have recourse to bad means for the sake of theFatherland, that they are justified by the result, and still to preservethe appearance of loyalty and honor when he is forced to act in theirdespite--for the populace always judges by appearance and by results. Theworst thing of all is half-way measures, courses intermediate between goodand evil and vacillating between reason and force. Even Moses had to killthe envious refractories, while Savonarola, the unarmed prophet, wasdestroyed. God is the friend of the strong, energy the chief virtue; andit is well when, as was the case with the ancient Romans, religion isassociated with it without paralyzing it. The current view of Christianityas a religion of humility and sloth, which preaches only the courageof endurance and makes its followers indifferent to worldly honor, is unfavorable to the development of political vigor. The Italians havebeen made irreligious by the Church and the priesthood; the nearer Rome, the less pious the people. When Machiavelli, in his proposals lookingtoward Lorenzo (II. ) dei Medici (died 1519), approves any means forrestoring order, it must be remembered that he has an exceptional casein mind, that he does not consider deceit and severity just, but onlyunavoidable amid the anarchy and corruption of the time. But neither theloftiness of the end by which he is inspired, nor the low condition ofmoral views in his time, justifies his treatment of the laws as mere meansto political ends, and his unscrupulous subordination of morality tocalculating prudence. Machiavelli's general view of the world and of lifeis by no means a comforting one. Men are simple, governed by their passionsand by insatiable desires, dissatisfied with what they have, and inclinedto evil. They do good only of necessity; it is hunger which makes themindustrious and laws that render them good. Everything rapidly degenerates:power produces quiet, quiet, idleness, then disorder, and, finally, ruin, until men learn by misfortune, and so order and power again arise. Historyis a continual rising and falling, a circle of order and disorder. Governmental forms, even, enjoy no stability; monarchy, when it has run outinto tyranny, is followed by aristocracy, which gradually passes over intooligarchy; this in turn is replaced by democracy, until, finally, anarchybecomes unendurable, and a prince again attains power. No state, however, is so powerful as to escape succumbing to a rival before it completes thecircuit. Protection against the corruption of the state is possible onlythrough the maintenance of its principles, and its restoration only by areturn to the healthy source whence it originated. This is secured eitherby some external peril compelling to reflection, or internally, by wisethought, by good laws (framed in accordance with the general welfare, andnot according to the ambition of a minority), and by the example of goodmen. 

[Footnote 1: In his _Essays on the First Decade of Livy (Discorsi)_, Machiavelli investigates the conditions and the laws of the maintenance ofstates; while in _The Prince (II Principe_, 1515), he gives the principlesfor the restoration of a ruined state. Besides these he wrote a historyof Florence, and a work on the art of war, in which he recommended theestablishment of national armies. ]

In the interval between Machiavelli and the system of natural law ofGrotius, the Netherlander (1625: _De Jure Belli et Pacis_), belong thesocialistic ideal state of the Englishman, Thomas More (_De OptimoReipublicae Statu deque Nova Insula Utopia_, 1516), the political theory ofthe Frenchman, Jean Bodin (_Six Livres de la République_, 1577, Latin 1584;also a philosophico-historical treatise, _Methodus ad Facilem HistoriarumCognitionem_, and the _Colloquium Heptaplomeres_, edited by Noack, 1857), and the law of war of the Italian, Albericus Gentilis, at his deathprofessor in Oxford (_De Jure Belli_, 1588). Common to these three wasthe advocacy of religious tolerance, from which atheists alone were tobe excepted; common, also, their ethical standpoint in opposition toMachiavelli, while they are at one with him in regard to the liberation ofpolitical and legal science from theology and the Church. With Gentilis(1551-1611) this separation assigns the first five commandments to divine, and the remainder to human law, the latter being based on the laws of humannature (especially the social impulse). In place of this derivation of lawand the state from the nature of man, Jean Bodin (1530-96) insists on anhistorical interpretation; endeavors, though not always with success, togive sharp definitions of political concepts;[1] rejects compositestate forms, and among the three pure forms, monarchy, aristocracy, anddemocracy, rates (hereditary) monarchy the highest, in which the subjectsobey the laws of the monarch, and the latter the laws of God or of natureby respecting the freedom and the property of the citizens. So far, noone has correctly distinguished between forms of the state and modes ofadministration. Even a democratic state may be governed in a monarchicalor aristocratic way. So far, also, there has been a failure to take intoaccount national peculiarities and differences of situation, conditions towhich legislation must be adjusted. The people of the temperate zone areinferior to those of the North in physical power and inferior to those ofthe South in speculative ability, but superior to both in political giftsand in the sense of justice. The nations of the North are guided byforce, those of the South by religion, those between the two by reason. Mountaineers love freedom. A fruitful soil enervates men, when lessfertile, it renders them temperate and industrious. 

[Footnote 1: What is the state? What is sovereignty? The former is definedas the rational and supremely empowered control over a number of familiesand of whatever is common to them; the latter is absolute and continuousauthority over the state, with the right of imposing laws without beingbound by them. The prince, to whom the sovereignty has been unconditionallyrelinquished by the people in the contract of submission, is accountable toGod alone. ]

Attention has only recently been called (by O. Gierke, in the work alreadymentioned, Heft vii. Of his _Untersuchungen zur deutschen Staats- undRechtsgeschichte_, Breslau, 1880) to the Westphalian, Johannes Althusius(Althusen or Althaus) as a legal philosopher worthy of notice. He was born, 1557, in the Grafschaft Witgenstein; was a teacher of law in Herborn andSiegen from 1586, and Syndic in Emden from 1604 to his death in 1638. Hischief legal work was the _Dicaeologica_, 1617 (a recasting of a treatiseon Roman law which appeared in 1586), and his chief political work the_Politica_, 1603 (altered and enlarged 1610, and reprinted, in addition, three times before his death and thrice subsequently). Down to thebeginning of the eighteenth century he was esteemed or opposed as chiefamong the _Monarchomachi_, so called by the Scotchman, Barclay (_De Regnoet Regali Potestate_, 1600); since that time he has fallen into undeservedoblivion. The sovereign power (_majestas_) of the people is untransferableand indivisible, the authority vested in the chosen wielder of theadministrative power is revocable, and the king is merely the chieffunctionary; individuals are subjects, it is true, but the communityretains its sovereignty and has its rights represented over against thechief magistrate by a college of ephors. If the prince violates thecompact, the ephors are authorized and bound to depose the tyrant, and tobanish or execute him. There is but one normal state-form; monarchy andpolyarchy are mere differences in administrative forms. Mention shouldfinally be made of his valuation of the social groups which mediate betweenthe individual and the state: the body politic is based on the narrowerassociations of the family, the corporation, the commune, and the province. 

While with Bodin the historical, and with Gentilis the _a priori_ method oftreatment predominates, Hugo Grotius[1] combines both standpoints. He baseshis system on the traditional distinction of two kinds of law. The originof positive law is historical, by voluntary enactment; natural law isrooted in the nature of man, is eternal, unchangeable, and everywhere thesame. He begins by distinguishing with Gentilis the _jus humanum_ from the_jus divinum_ given in the Scriptures. The former determines, on the onehand, the legal relations of individuals, and, on the other, those of wholenations; it is _jus personale_ and _jus gentium_. [2]

[Footnote 1: Hugo de Groot lived 1583-1645. He was born in Delft, becameFiscal of Holland in 1607, and Syndic of Rotterdam and member of the StatesGeneral in 1613. A leader of the aristocratic party with Oldenbarneveld, headhered to the Arminians or Remonstrants, was thrown into prison, freed in1621 through the address of his wife, and fled to Paris, where he livedtill 1631 as a private scholar, and, from 1635, as Swedish ambassador. Herehe composed his epoch-making work, _De Jure Belli et Pacis_, 1625. Previousto this had appeared his treatise, _De Veritate Religionis Christianae_, 1619, and the _Mare Liberum_, 1609, the latter a chapter from his maidenwork, _De Jure Praedae_, which was not printed until 1868. ]

[Footnote 2: The meaning which Grotius here gives to _jus gentium_(=international law), departs from the customary usage of the Scholastics, with whom it denotes the law uniformly acknowledged among all nations. Thomas Aquinas understands by it, in distinction to _jus naturale_ proper, the sum of the conclusions deduced from this as a result of the developmentof human culture and its departure from primitive purity. Cf. Gierke, _Althusius_, p. 273; _Deutsches Genossenschaftsrecht_, vol. Iii. P. 612. On the meaning of natural law cf. Gierke's Inaugural Address as Rector atBreslau, _Naturrecht und Deutsches Recht_, Frankfort-on-the-Main, 1883. ]

The distinction between natural and conventional law which has been alreadymentioned, finds place within both: the positive law of persons is called_jus civile_, and the positive law of nations, _jus gentium voluntarium_. Positive law has its origin in regard for utility, while unwritten lawfinds its source neither in this nor (directly) in the will of God, [1] butin the rational nature of man. Man is by nature social, and, as a rationalbeing, possesses the impulse toward ordered association. Unlawful meanswhatever renders such association of rational beings impossible, as theviolation of promises or the taking away and retention of the propertyof others. In the (pre-social) state of nature, all belonged to all, butthrough the act of taking possession _(occupatio)_ property arises (sea andair are excluded from appropriation). In the state of nature everyone hasthe right to defend himself against attack and to revenge himself on theevil-doer; but in the political community, founded by contract, personalrevenge is replaced by punishment decreed by the civil power. The aim ofpunishment is not retribution, but reformation and deterrence. It belongsto God alone to punish because of sin committed, the state can punish onlyto prevent it. (The antithesis _quia peccatum est_--_ne peccetur_ comesfrom Seneca. )

[Footnote 1: Natural law would be valid even if there were no God. Withthese words the alliance between the modern and the mediaeval philosophy oflaw is severed. ]

This energetic revival of the distinction already common in the Middle Agesbetween "positive and natural, " which Lord Herbert of Cherbury broughtforward at the same period (1624) in the philosophy of religion, gave thecatchword for a movement in practical philosophy whose developments extendinto the nineteenth century. Not only the illumination period, but allmodern philosophy down to Kant and Fichte, is under the ban of theantithesis, natural and artificial. In all fields, in ethics as well as innoëtics, men return to the primitive or storm back to it, in the hope offinding there the source of all truth and the cure for all evils. Sometimesit is called nature, sometimes reason (natural law and rational law aresynonymous, as also natural religion and the religion of the reason), bywhich is understood that which is permanent and everywhere the same incontrast to the temporary and the changeable, that which is innate incontrast to that which has been developed, in contrast, further, to thatwhich has been revealed. Whatever passes as law in all places and at alltimes is natural law, says Grotius; that which all men believe forms thecontent of natural religion, says Lord Herbert. Before long it comes tobe said: that _alone_ is genuine, true, healthy, and valuable which haseternal and universal validity; all else is not only superfluous andvalueless but of evil, for it must be unnatural and corrupt. This step istaken by Deism, with the principle that whatever is not natural or rationalin the sense indicated is unnatural and irrational. Parallel phenomena arenot wanting, further, in the philosophy of law (Gierke, _Althusius_). Butthese errors must not be too harshly judged. The confidence with which theywere made sprang from the real and the historical force of their underlyingidea. 

As already stated, the "natural" forms the antithesis to the supernatural, on the one hand, and to the historical, on the other. This combination ofthe revealed and the historical will not appear strange, if we rememberthat the mediaeval view of the world under criticism was, as Christian, historico-religious, and, moreover, that for the philosophy of religion thetwo in fact coincide, inasmuch as revelation is conceived as an historicalevent, and the historical religions assume the character of revealed. Theterm arbitrary, applied to both in common, was questionable, however: asrevelation is a divine decree, so historical institutions are the productsof human enactment, the state, the result of a contract, dogmas, inventionsof the priesthood, _the results of development, artificial constructions_!It took long ages for man to free himself from the idea of the artificialand conventional in his view of history. Hegel was the first to gatherthe fruit whose seeds had been sown by Leibnitz, Lessing, Herder, and thehistorical school of law. As often, however, as an attempt was made fromthis standpoint of origins to show laws in the course of history, only onecould be reached, a law of necessary degeneration, interrupted at timesby sudden restorations--thus the Deists, thus Machiavelli and Rousseau. Everything degenerates, science itself only contributes to thefall--therefore, back to the happy beginnings of things!

If, finally, we inquire into the position of the Church in regard to thequestions of legal philosophy, we may say that, among the Protestants, Luther, appealing to the Scripture text, declares rulers ordained by Godand sacred, though at the same time he considers law and politics butremotely related to the inner man; that Melancthon, in his _Elements ofEthics_ (1538), as in all his philosophical text-books, [1] went back toAristotle, but found the source of natural law in the Decalogue, beingfollowed in this by Oldendorp (1539), Hemming (1562), and B. Winkler(1615). [2]

[Footnote 1: The edition of Melancthon's works by Bretschneider andBindseil gives the ethical treatises in vol. Xvi. And the otherphilosophical treatises in vol. Xiii. (in part also in vols. Xi. And xx. ). ]

[Footnote 2: Cf. C. V. Kaltenborn, _Die Vorläufer des Hugo Grotius_, Leipsic, 1848. ]

On the Catholic side, the Jesuits (the Order was founded in 1534, andconfirmed in 1540), on the one hand, revived the Pelagian theory of freedomin opposition to the Luthero-Augustinian doctrine of the servitude of thewill, and, on the other, defended the natural origin of the state in a(revocable) contract in opposition to its divine origin asserted by theReformers, and the sovereignty of the people even to the sanctioning oftyrannicide. Bellarmin (1542-1621) taught that the prince derives hisauthority from the people, and as the latter have given him power, so theyretain the natural right to take it back and bestow it elsewhere. The viewof Juan Mariana (1537-1624; _De Rege_, 1599) is that, as the people intransferring rights to the prince retain still greater power themselves, they are entitled in given cases to call the king to account. If hecorrupts the state by evil manners, and, degenerating into the tyrant, despises religion and the laws, he may, as a public enemy, be deprived byanyone of his authority and his life. It is lawful to arrest tyranny in anyway, and those have always been highly esteemed who, from devotion to thepublic welfare, have sought to kill the tyrant. 

%5. Skepticism in France. %

Toward the end of the sixteenth century, and in the very country which wasto become the cradle of modern philosophy, there appeared, as a forerunnerof the new thinking, a skepticism in which that was taken for completeand ultimate truth which with Descartes constitutes merely a moment ortransition point in the inquiry. The earliest and the most ingenious amongthe representatives of this philosophy of doubt was Michel de Montaigne(1533-92), who in his _Essays_--which were the first of their kind and soonfound an imitator in Bacon; they appeared in 1580 in two volumes, with anadditional volume in 1588--combined delicate observation and keen thinking, boldness and prudence, elegance and solidity. The French honor him as oneof their foremost writers. The most important among these treatises oressays is considered to be the "Apology for Raymond of Sabunde" (ii. 12)with valuable excursuses on faith and knowledge. Montaigne bases his doubton the diversity of individual views, each man's opinion differing from hisfellow's, while truth must be one. There exists no certain, no universallyadmitted knowledge. The human reason is feeble and blind in all things, knowledge is deceptive, especially the philosophy of the day, which clingsto tradition, which fills the memory with learned note-stuff, but leavesthe understanding void and, instead of things, interprets interpretationsonly. Both sensuous and rational knowledge are untrustworthy: the former, because it cannot be ascertained whether its deliverances conform toreality, and the latter, because its premises, in order to be valid, needothers in turn for their own establishment, etc. , _ad infinitum_. Everyadvance in inquiry makes our ignorance the more evident; the doubter aloneis free. But though certainty is denied us in regard to truth, it is notwithheld in regard to duty. In fact, a twofold rule of practical life isset up for us: nature, or life in accordance with nature and founded onself-knowledge, and supernatural revelation, the Gospel (to be understoodonly by the aid of divine grace). Submission to the divine ruler andbenefactor is the first duty of the rational soul. From obedience proceedsevery virtue, from over-subtlety and conceit, which is the product offancied knowledge, comes every sin. Montaigne, like all who know men, hasa sharp eye for human frailty. He depicts the universal weakness of humannature and the corruption of his time with great vivacity and not without acertain pleasure in the obscene; and besides folly and passion, complainsabove all of the fact that so few understand the art of enjoyment, of whichhe, a true man of the world, was master. 

The skeptico-practical standpoint of Montaigne was developed into a systemby the Paris preacher, Pierre Charron (1541-1603), in his three books _OnWisdom_ (1601). Doubt has a double object: to keep alive the spiritof inquiry and to lead us on to faith. From the fact that reason andexperience are liable to deception and that the mind has at its disposal nomeans of distinguishing truth from falsehood, it follows that we are bornnot to possess truth but to seek it. Truth dwells alone in the bosom ofGod; for us doubt and investigation are the only good amid all the errorand tribulation which surround us. Life is all misery. Man is capable ofmediocrity alone; he can neither be entirely good nor entirely evil; he isweak in virtue, weak in vice, and the best degenerates in his hands. Evenreligion suffers from the universal imperfection. It is dependent onnationality and country, and each religion is based on its predecessor;the supernatural origin of which all religions boast belongs in factto Christianity alone, which is to be accepted with humility and withsubmission of the reason. Charron lays chief emphasis, however, on thepractical side of Christianity, the fulfillment of duty; and the "wisdom"which forms the subject of his book is synonymous with uprightness(_probité_), the way to which is opened up by self-knowledge and whosereward is repose of spirit. And yet we are not to practice it for thesake of the reward, but because nature and reason, i. E. , God, absolutely(entirely apart from the pleasurable results of virtue) require us to begood. True uprightness is more than mere legality, for even when outwardaction is blameless, the motives may be mixed. "I desire men to be uprightwithout paradise and hell. " Religion seeks to crown morality, not togenerate it; virtue is earlier and more natural than piety. In hisdefinition of the relation between religion and ethics, his delimitationof morality from legality, and his insistence on the purity of motives (doright, because the inner rational law commands it), an anticipation ofKantian principles may be recognized. 

Under Francis Sanchez (died 1632; his chief work is entitled _Quod NihilScitur_), a Portuguese by birth, and professor of medicine in Montpellierand Toulouse, skepticism was transformed from melancholy contemplation intoa fresh, vigorous search after new problems. In the place of book-learning, which disgusts him by its smell of the closet, its continued prating ofAristotle, and its self-exhaustion in useless verbalism, Sanchez desiresto substitute a knowledge of things. Perfect knowledge, it is true, can behoped for only when subject and object correspond to each other. But howis finite man to grasp the infinite universe? Experience, the basis ofall knowledge, gropes about the outer surface of things and illuminesparticulars only, without the ability either to penetrate to their innernature or to comprehend the whole. We know only what we produce. ThusGod knows the world which he has made, but to us is vouchsafed merely aninsight into mediate or second causes, _causae secundae_. Here, however, a rich field still lies open before philosophy--only let her attack herproblem with observation and experiment rather than with words. 

The French nation, predisposed to skepticism by its prevailing acuteness, has never lacked representatives of skeptical philosophy. The transitionfrom the philosophers of doubt whom we have described to the great Baylewas formed by La Mothe le Vayer (died 1672; _Five Dialogues_, 1671), thetutor of Louis XIV. , and P. D. Huet(ius), Bishop of Avranches (died 1721), who agreed in holding that a recognition of the weakness of the reason isthe best preparation for faith. 

6. %German Mysticism%. 

In a period which has given birth to a skeptical philosophy, one neverlooks in vain for the complementary phenomenon of mysticism. The stoneoffered by doubt in place of bread is incapable of satisfying the impulseafter knowledge, and when the intellect grows weary and despairing, theheart starts out in the quest after truth. Then its path leads inward, themind turns in upon itself, seeks to learn the truth by inner experience andlife, by inward feeling and possession, and waits in quietude for divineillumination. The German mysticism of Eckhart[1] (about 1300), which hadbeen continued in Suso and Tauler and had received a practical directionin the Netherlands, --Ruysbroek (about 1350) to Thomas à Kempis (about1450), --now puts forth new branches and blossoms at the turning point ofthe centuries. 

[Footnote 1: Master Eckhart's _Works_ have been edited by F. Pfeiffer, Leipsic, 1857. The following have written on him: Jos. Bach, Vienna, 1864;Ad. Lasson, Berlin, 1868; the same, in the second part of Ueberweg's_Grundriss_, last section; Denifle, in the _Archiv für Litteratur undKulturgeschichte des Mittelalters_. Ii. 417 _seq_. ; H. Siebeck, _Der Begriff des Gemuts in der deutschen Mystik (Beiträge zurEntstehungsgeschichte der neueren Psychologie_, i), Giessen Programme, 1891. ]

Luther himself was originally a mystic, with a high appreciation of Taulerand Thomas à Kempis, and published in 1518 that attractive little book byan anonymous Frankfort author, the _German Theology_. When, later, he fellinto literalism, it was the mysticism of German Protestantism which, inopposition to the new orthodoxy, held fast to the original principle ofthe Reformation, _i. E. _, to the principle that faith is not assent tohistorical facts, not the acceptance of dogmas, but an inner experience, a renewal of the whole man. Religion and theology must not be confounded. Religion is not doctrine, but a new birth. With Schwenckfeld, and also withFranck, mysticism is still essentially pietism; with Weigel, and by theaddition of ideas from Paracelsus, it is transformed into theosophy, and assuch reaches its culmination in Böhme. 

Caspar Schwenckfeld sought to spiritualize the Lutheran movement andprotested against its being made into a pastors' religion. Though he hadbeen aroused by Luther's pioneer feat, he soon saw that the latter had notgone far enough; and in his _Letter on the Eucharist_, 1527, he defined thepoints of difference between Luther's view of the Sacrament and his own. Luther, he maintained, had fallen back to an historical view of faith, whereas the faith which saves can never consist in the outward acceptanceof an historical fact. He who makes salvation dependent on preaching andthe Sacrament, confuses the invisible and the visible Church, _Ecclesiainterna_ and _externa_. The layman is his own priest. 

According to Sebastian Franck (1500-45), there are in man, as in everythingelse, two principles, one divine and one selfish, Christ and Adam, aninner and an outer man; if he submits himself to the former (by a timelesschoice), he is spiritual, if to the latter, carnal. God is not the causeof sin, but man, who turns the divine power to good or evil. He who denieshimself to live God is a Christian, whether he knows and confessesthe Gospel or not. Faith does not consist in assent, but in innertransformation. The historical element in Christianity and its ceremonialobservances are only the external form and garb (its "figure"), have merelya symbolic significance as media of communication, as forms of revelationfor the eternal truth, proclaimed but not founded by Christ; the Bible ismerely the shadow of the living Word of God. 

Valentin Weigel (born in 1533, pastor in Zschopau from 1567), whose workswere not printed until after his death, combines his predecessors' doctrineof inner and eternal Christianity with the microcosmos-idea of Paracelsus. God, who lacks nothing, has not created the world in order to gain, but inorder to give. Man not only bears the earthly world in his body, and theheavenly world of the angels in his reason (his spirit), but by virtue ofhis intellect (his immortal soul) participates in the divine world also. Ashe is thus a microcosm and, moreover, an image of God, all his knowledgebecomes self-knowledge, both sensuous perception (which is not caused bythe object, but only occasioned by it), and the knowledge of God. Theliteralist knows not God, but he alone who bears God in himself. Manis favored above other beings with the freedom to dwell in himself orin God. When man came out from God, he was his own tempter and made himselfproud and selfish. Thus evil, which had before remained hidden, wasrevealed, and became sin. As the separation from God is an eternal act, soalso redemption and resurrection form an inner event. Christ is born ineveryone who gives up the I-ness (_Ichheit_); each regenerate man is a sonof God. But no vicarious suffering can save him who does not put off theold Adam, no matter how much an atheology sunk in literalism may comfortitself with the hope that man can "drink at another's cost" (that the meritof another is imputed to him). [1]

[Footnote 1: Weigel is discussed by J. O. Opel, Leipsic, 1864. ]

German mysticism reaches its culmination in the Görlitz cobbler, JacobBöhme (1575-1624; _Aurora, or the Rising Dawn_; _Mysterium Magnum, oron the First Book of Moses_, etc. The works of Böhme, collected by hisapostle, Gichtel, appeared in 1682 in ten volumes, and in 1730 in sixvolumes; a new edition was prepared by Schiebler in 1831-47, with a secondedition in 1861 _seq_. ). Böhme's doctrine[1] centers about the problem ofthe origin of evil. He transfers this to God himself and joins therewiththe leading thought of Eckhart, that God goes through a process, that heproceeds from an unrevealed to a revealed condition. At the sight of a tinvessel glistening in the sun, he conceived, as by inspiration, the ideathat as the sunlight reveals itself on the dark vessel so all light needsdarkness and all good evil in order to appear and to become knowable. Everything becomes perceptible through its opposite alone: gentlenessthrough sternness, love through anger, affirmation through negation. Without evil there would be no life, no movement, no distinctions, norevelation; all would be unqualified, uniform nothingness. And as in naturenothing exists in which good and evil do not reside, so in God, besidespower or the good, a contrary exists, without which he would remain unknownto himself. The theogonic process is twofold: self-knowledge on the part ofGod, and his revelation outward, as eternal nature, in seven moments. 

[Footnote 1: Cf. Windelband's fine exposition, _Geschichte der neuerenPhilosophie_, vol. I. §19. The following have written on Böhme: Fr. Baader(in vols. Iii. And xiii. Of his _Werke_); Hamberger, Munich, 1844: H. A. Fechner, Görlitz, 1857; A. V. Harless, Berlin, 1870, new edition, Leipsic, 1882. ]

At the beginning of the first development God is will without object, eternal quietude and rest, unqualified groundlessness without determinatevolition. But in this divine nothingness there soon awakes the hunger afterthe aught (somewhat, existence), the impulse to apprehend and manifestself, and as God looks into and forms an image of himself, he divides intoFather and Son. The Son is the eye with which the Father intuits himself, and the procession of this vision from the groundless is the Holy Ghost. Thus far God, who is one in three, is only understanding or wisdom, whereinthe images of all the possible are contained; to the intuition of self mustbe added divisibility; it is only through the antithesis of the revealedGod and the unrevealed groundless that the former becomes an actualtrinity (in which the persons stand related as essence, power, andactivity), and the latter becomes desire or nature in God. 

At the creation of the world seven equally eternal qualities, source-spirits or nature-forms, are distinguished in the divine nature. First comes desire as the contractile, tart quality or pain, from whichproceed hardness and heat; next comes mobility as the expansive, sweetquality, as this shows itself in water. As the nature of the first was tobind and the second was fluid, so they both are combined in the bitterquality or the pain of anxiety, the principle of sensibility. (Contractionand expansion are the conditions of perceptibility. ) From these three formsfright or lightning suddenly springs forth. This fourth quality is theturning-point at which light flames up from darkness and the love ofGod breaks forth from out his anger; as the first three, or four, formsconstitute the kingdom of wrath, so the latter three constitute the kingdomof joy. The fifth quality is called light or the warm fire of love, and hasfor its functions external animation and communication; the sixth, reportand sound, is the principle of inner animation and intelligence; theseventh, the formative quality, corporeality, comprehends all the precedingin itself as their dwelling. 

The dark fire of anger (the hard, sweet, and bitter qualities) and thelight fire of love (light, report, and corporeality), separated by thelightning-fire, in which God's wrath is transformed into mercy, standrelated as evil and good. The evil in God is not sin, but simply theinciting sting, the principle of movement; which, moreover, is restrained, overcome, transfigured by gentleness. Sin arises only when the creaturerefuses to take part in the advance from darkness to light, and obstinatelyremains in the fire of anger instead of forcing his way through to thefire of love. Thus that which was one in God is divided. Lucifer becomesenamored of the tart quality (the _centrum naturae_ or the matrix) and willnot grow into the heart of God; and it is only after such lingering behindthat the kingdom of wrath become a real hell. Heaven and hell are notfuture conditions, but are experienced here on earth; he who instead ofsubduing animality becomes enamored of it, stands under the wrath of God;whereas he who abjures self dwells in the joyous kingdom of mercy. He alonetruly believes who himself becomes Christ, who repeats in himself whatChrist suffered and attained. 

The creation of the material world is a result of Lucifer's fall. Böhme'sdescription of it, based on the Mosaic account of creation, may be passedwithout notice; similarly his view of cognition, familiar from the earliermystics, that all knowledge is derived from self-knowledge, that ourdestination is to comprehend God from ourselves, and the world from God. Man, whose body, spirit, and soul hold in them the earthly, the sidereal, and the heavenly, is at once a microcosm and a "little God. "

Under the intractable form of Böhme's speculations and amid their riotousfancy, no one will fail to recognize their true-hearted sensibility and anunusual depth and vigor of thought. They found acceptance in England andFrance, and have been revived in later times in the systems of Baader andSchelling. 

%7. The Foundation of Modern Physics%. 

In no field has the modern period so completely broken with tradition asin physics. The correctness of the Copernican theory is proved by Kepler'slaws of planetary movement, and Galileo's telescopical observations; thescientific theory of motion is created by Galileo's laws of projectiles, falling bodies, and the pendulum; astronomy and mechanics form the entranceto exact physics--Descartes ventures an attempt at a comprehensivemechanical explanation of nature. And thus an entirely new movement is athand. Forerunners, it is true, had not been lacking. Roger Bacon (1214-94)had already sought to obtain an empirical knowledge of nature based uponmathematics; and the great painter Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) haddiscovered the principles of mechanics, though without gaining muchinfluence over the work of his contemporaries. It was reserved for thetriple star which has been mentioned to overthrow Scholasticism. Theconceptions with which the Scholastic-Aristotelian philosophy of naturesought to get at phenomena--substantial forms, properties, qualitativechange--are thrown aside; their place is taken by matter, forces workingunder law, rearrangement of parts. The inquiry into final causes isrejected as an anthropomorphosis of natural events, and deduction fromefficient causes is alone accepted as scientific explanation. Size, shape, number, motion, and law are the only and the sufficient principles ofexplanation. For magnitudes alone are knowable; wherever it is impossibleto measure and count, to determine force mathematically, there rigorous, exact science ceases. Nature a system of regularly moved particles ofmass; all that takes place mechanical movement, viz. , the combination, separation, dislocation, oscillation of bodies and corpuscles; mathematicsthe organon of natural science! Into this circle of modern scientificcategories are articulated, further, Galileo's new conception of motionand the conception of atoms, which, previously employed by physicists, asDaniel Sennert (1619) and others, is now brought into general acceptanceby Gassendi, while the four elements are definitively discarded (Lasswitz, _Geschichte der Atomistik_, 1890). Still another doctrine of Democritusis now revived; an evident symptom of the quantification and mechanicalinterpretation of natural phenomena being furnished by the doctrine of thesubjectivity of sense qualities, in which, although on varying grounds, Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Gassendi, and Hobbes agree. [1] Descartes andHobbes will be discussed later. Here we may give a few notes on theirfellow laborers in the service of the mechanical science of nature. 

[Footnote 1: Cf. Chapter vi. In Natorp's work on _Descartes'Erkenntnisstheorie_, Marburg, 1882, and the same author's _Analekten zurGeschichte der Philosophie_, in the _Philosophische Monatshefte_, vol. Xviii. 1882, p. 572 _seq_. ]

We begin with John Kepler[1] (1571-1630; chief work, _The New Astronomy orCelestial Physics, in Commentaries on the Motions of Mars_, 1609). Kepler'smerit as an astronomer has long obscured his philosophical importance, although his discovery of the laws of planetary motion was the outcome ofendeavors to secure an exact foundation for his theory of the world. Thelatter is aesthetic in character, centers about the idea of a universalworld-harmony, and employs mathematics as an instrument of confirmation. For the fact that this theory satisfies the mind, and, on the whole, corresponds to our empirical impression of the order of nature, is notenough in Kepler's view to guarantee its truth; by exact methods, by meansof induction and experiment, a detailed proof from empirical facts must befound for the existence not only of a general harmony, but of definitelyfixed proportions. Herewith the philosophical application of mathematicsloses that obscure mystical character which had clung to it since the timeof Pythagoras, and had strongly manifested itself as late as in Nicolas ofCusa. Mathematical relations constitute the deepest essence of the real andthe object of science. Where matter is, there is geometry; the latter isolder than the world and as eternal as the divine Spirit; magnitudes arethe source of things. True knowledge exists only where quanta are known;the presupposition of the capacity for knowledge is the capacity to count;the spirit cognizes sensuous relations by means of the pure, archetypal, intellectual relations born in it, which, before the advent ofsense-impressions, have lain concealed behind the veil of possibility;inclination and aversion between men, their delight in beauty, the pleasantimpression of a view, depend upon an unconscious and instinctive perceptionof proportions. This quantitative view of the world, which, with aconsciousness of its novelty as well as of its scope, is opposed to thequalitative view of Aristotle;[2] the opinion that the essence of the humanspirit, as well as of the divine, nay, the essence of all things, consistsin activity; that, consequently, the soul is always active, being consciousof its own harmony at least in a confused way, even when not conscious ofexternal proportions; further, the doctrine that nature loves simplicity, avoids the superfluous, and is accustomed to accomplish large results witha few principles--these remind one of Leibnitz. At the same time, the lawof parsimony and the methodological conclusions concerning true hypothesesand real causes (an hypothesis must not be an artificially constructed setof fictions, forcibly adjusted to reality, but is to trace back phenomenato their real grounds), obedience to which enabled him to deduce _a priori_from causes the conclusions which Copernicus by fortunate conjecture hadgathered inductively from effects--these made our thinker a forerunner ofNewton. The physical method of explanation must not be corrupted eitherby theological conceptions (comets are entirely natural phenomena!) or byanthropomorphic views, which endow nature with spiritual powers. 

[Footnote 1: See Sigwart, _Kleine Schriften_, vol. I. P. 182 _seq_. ; R. Eucken, _Beiträge zur Geschichte der neueren Philosophie_, p. 54 _seq_. ]

[Footnote 2: Aristotle erred when he considered qualitative distinctions(_idem_ and _aliud_) ultimate. These are to be traced back to quantitativedifferences, and the _aliud_ or _diversum_ is to be replaced by _plus etminus_. There is nothing absolutely light, but only relatively. Sinceall things are distinguished only by "more or less, " the possibility ofmediating members or proportions between them is given. ]

Intermediate between Bacon and Descartes, both in the order of time and inthe order of fact, and a co-founder of modern philosophy, stands GalileoGalilei (1564-1641). [1] Galileo exhibits all the traits characteristicof modern thinking: the reference from words to things, from memory toperception and thought, from authority to self-ascertained principles, fromchance opinion, arbitrary opinion, and the traditional doctrines of theschools, to "knowledge, " that is, to one's own, well grounded, indisputableinsight, from the study of human affairs to the study of nature. StudyAristotle, but do not become his slave; instead of yielding yourselvescaptive to his views, use your own eyes; do not believe that the mindremains unproductive unless it allies itself with the understanding ofanother; copy nature, not copies merely! He equals Bacon in his highestimation of sensuous experience in contrast to the often illusoryconclusions of the reason, and of the value of induction; but he does notconceal from himself the fact that observation is merely the first step inthe process of cognition, leaving the chief rôle for the understanding. This, supplementing the defect of experience--the impossibility ofobserving all cases--by its _a priori_ concept of law and with itsinferences overstepping the bounds of experience, first makes inductionpossible, brings the facts established into connection (their combinationunder laws is thought, not experience), reduces them to their primary, simple, unchangeable, and necessary causes by abstraction from contingentcircumstances, regulates perception, corrects sense-illusions, _i. E_. , the false judgments originating in experience, and decides concerning thereality or fallaciousness of phenomena. Demonstration based on experience, a close union of observation and thought, of fact and Idea (law)--theseare the requirements made by Galileo and brilliantly fulfilled in hisdiscoveries; this, the "inductive speculation, " as Dühring terms it, whichderives laws of far-reaching importance from inconspicuous facts; this, as Galileo himself recognizes, the distinctive gift of the investigator. Galileo anticipates Descartes in regard to the subjective character ofsense qualities and their reduction to quantitative distinctions, [2] whilehe shares with him the belief in the typical character of mathematics andthe mechanical theory of the world. The truth of geometrical propositionsand demonstrations is as unconditionally certain for man as for God, onlythat man learns them by a discursive process, whereas God's intuitiveunderstanding comprehends them with a glance and knows more of them thanman. The book of the universe is written in mathematical characters; motionis the fundamental phenomenon in the world of matter; our knowledge reachesas far as phenomena are measurable; the qualitative nature of force, backof its quantitative determinations, remains unknown to us. When Galileomaintains that the Copernican theory is philosophically true and not merelyastronomically useful, thus interpreting it as more than a hypothesis, he is guided by the conviction that the simplest explanation is the mostprobable one, that truth and beauty are one, as in general he concedesa guiding though not a controlling influence in scientific work to theaesthetic demand of the mind for order, harmony, and unity in nature, tocorrespond to the wisdom of the Creator. 

[Footnote 1: Cf. Natorp's essay on Galileo, in vol. Xviii. Of the_Philosophische Monatshefte_, 1882. ]

[Footnote 1: This doctrine is developed by Galileo in the controversialtreatise against Padre Grassi, _The Scales (Il Saggiatore_, 1623, in theFlorence edition of his collected works, 1842 _seq_. , vol. Iv. Pp. 149-369; cf. Natorp, _Descartes' Erkenntnisstheorie_, 1882, chap. Vi. ). Insubstance, moreover, this doctrine is found, as Heussler remarks, _Baco_, p. 94, in Bacon himself, in _Valerius Terminus (Works_, Spedding, vol. Iii. Pp. 217-252. )]

One of the most noted and influential among the contemporaries, countrymen, and opponents of Descartes, was the priest and natural scientist, PetrusGassendi, [1] from 1633 Provost of Digne, later for a short period professorof mathematics at Paris. His renewal of Epicureanism, to which he wasimpelled by temperament, by his reverence for Lucretius, and by theanti-Aristotelian tendency of his thinking, was of far more importance formodern thought than the attempts to revive the ancient systems which havebeen mentioned above (p. 29). Its superior influence depends on the factthat, in the conception of atoms, it offered exact inquiry a most usefulpoint of attachment. The conflict between the Gassendists and theCartesians, which at first was a bitter one, centered, as far as physicswas concerned, around the value of the atomic hypothesis as contrasted withthe corpuscular and vortex theory which Descartes had opposed to it. Itsoon became apparent, however, that these two thinkers followed alongessentially the same lines in the philosophy of nature, sharply as theywere opposed in their noëtical principles. Descartes' doctrine of body isconceived from an entirely materialistic standpoint, his anthropology, indeed, going further than the principles of his system would allow. Gassendi, on the other hand, recognizes an immaterial, immortal reason, traces the origin of the world, its marvelous arrangement, and thebeginning of motion back to God, and, since the Bible so teaches, believesthe earth to be at rest, --holding that, for this reason, the decision mustbe given in favor of Tycho Brahé and against Copernicus, although thehypothesis of the latter affords the simpler and, scientifically, the moreprobable explanation. Both thinkers rejoice in their agreement with thedogmas of the Church, only that with Descartes it came unsought in thenatural progress of his thought, while Gassendi held to it in contradictionto his system. It is the more surprising that Gassendi's works escapedbeing put upon the Index, a fate which overtook those of Descartes in 1663. 

[Footnote 2: Pierre Gassendi, 1592-1655: _On the Life and Character ofEpicurus_, 1647; _Notes on the Tenth Book of Diogenes Laërtius, with aSurvey of the Doctrine of Epicurus_, 1649. _Works_, Lyons, 1658, Florence, 1727. Cf. Lange, _History of Materialism_, book i. § 3, chap, 1; Natorp, _Analekten, Philosophische Monatshefte_, vol. Xviii. 1882, p. 572 _seq_. ]

As modern thought derives its mechanical temper equally from both thesesources, and the natural science of the day has appropriated the corpusclesof Descartes under the name of molecules, as well as the atoms of Gassendi, though not without considerable modification in both conceptions (Lange, vol. I. P. 269), so we find attempts at mediation at an early period. While Père Mersenne (1588-1648), who was well versed in physics, soughtan indecisive middle course between these two philosophers, the Englishchemist, Robert Boyle, effected a successful synthesis of both. The sonof Richard Boyle, Earl of Cork, he was born at Lismore in 1626, lived inliterary retirement at Oxford from 1654, and later in Cambridge, and died, 1692, in London, president of the Royal Society. His principal work, _TheSceptical Chemist (Works_, vol. I. P. 290 _seq_. ), appeared in 1661, thetract, _De Ipsa Natura_, in 1682. [1] By his introduction of the atomicconception he founded an epoch in chemistry, which, now for the first, wasfreed from bondage to the ideas of Aristotle and the alchemists. Atomism, however, was for Boyle merely an instrument of method and not aphilosophical theory of the world. A sincerely religious man, [2] he regardswith disfavor both the atheism of Epicurus and his complete rejection ofteleology--the world-machine points to an intelligent Creator and a purposein creation; motion, to a divine impulse. He defends, on the other hand, the right of free inquiry against the priesthood and the pedantry of theschools, holding that the supernatural must be sharply distinguished fromthe natural, and mere conjectures concerning insoluble problems frompositions susceptible of experimental proof; while, in opposition tosubmission to authority, he remarks that the current coin of opinion mustbe estimated, not by the date when and the person by whom it was minted butby the value of the metal alone. Cartesian elements in Boyle are the startfrom doubt, the derivation of all motion from pressure and impact, and theextension of the mechanical explanation to the organic world. His inquiriesrelate exclusively to the world of matter so far as it was "completed onthe last day but one of creation. " He defends empty space against Descartesand Hobbes. He is the first to apply the mediaeval terms, primary andsecondary qualities, to the antithesis between objective properties whichreally belong to things, and sensuous or subjective qualities present onlyin the feeling subject. [3]

[Footnote 1: Boyle's _Works_ were published in Latin at Geneva, in 1660, insix volumes, and in 1714 in five; an edition by Birch appeared at London, 1744, in five volumes, second edition, 1772, in six. Cf. Buckle, _Historyof Civilization in England_, vol. I. Chap. Vii. Pp. 265-268; Lange, _History of Materialism_, vol. I. Pp. 298-306; vol. Ii. P. 351 _seq_. ;Georg Baku, _Der Streit über den Naturbegriff, Zeitschrift fürPhilosophie_, vol. Xcviii. , 1891, p. 162 _seq_. ]

[Footnote 2: The foundation named after him had for its object to promoteby means of lectures the investigation of nature on the basis of atomism, and, at the same time, to free it from the reproach of leading to atheismand to show its harmony with natural religion. Samuel Clarke's work on _TheBeing and Attributes of God_, 1705, originated in lectures delivered onthis foundation. ]

[Footnote 3: Eucken, _Geschichte der philosophischen Terminologie_, pp. 94, 196. ]

%8. Philosophy in England to the Middle of the Seventeenth Century. %

%(a) Bacon's Predecessors. %--The darkness which lay over the beginningsof modern English philosophy has been but incompletely dispelled bythe meritorious work of Ch. De Rémusat _(Histoire de la Philosophie enAngleterre depuis Bacon jusqu'a Locke_, 2 vols. , 1878). The most recentinvestigations of J. Freudenthal _(Beiträge zur Geschichte der EnglischenPhilosophie_, in the _Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie_, vols. Iv. Andv. , 1891) have brought assistance in a way deserving of thanks, since theylift at important points the veil which concealed Bacon's relations to hispredecessors and contemporaries, by describing the scientific tendenciesand achievements of Digby and Temple. The following may be taken from hisresults. 

Everard Digby (died 1592; chief work, _Theoria Analytica, _ 1579), instructor in logic in Cambridge from 1573, who was strongly influencedby Reuchlin and who favored an Aristotelian-Alexandrian-Cabalisticeclecticism, was the first to disseminate Neoplatonic ideas in England;and, in spite of the lack of originality in his systematic presentation oftheoretical philosophy, aroused the study of this branch in England intonew life. His opponent, Sir William Temple [1] (1553-1626), by his defenseand exposition of the doctrine of Ramus (introduced into Great Britain byGeorge Buchanan and his pupil, Andrew Melville), made Cambridge the chiefcenter of Ramism. He was the first who openly opposed Aristotle. 

[Footnote 1: Temple was secretary to Philip Sidney, William Davison, andthe Earl of Essex, and, from 1619, Provost of Trinity College, Dublin. His maiden work, _De Unica P. Rami Methodo_, which he published under thepseudonym, Mildapettus 1580, was aimed at Digby's _De Duplici Methodo_. Hischief work, _P. Rami Dialectics Libri Dua Scholiis, Illustrati_, appearedin 1584. ]

Bacon was undoubtedly acquainted with both these writers and took ideasfrom both. Digby represented the scholastic tendency, which Baconvehemently opposed, yet without being able completely to break awayfrom it. Temple was one of those who supplied him with weapons for thisconflict. Finally, it must be mentioned that many of the English scientistsof the time, especially William Gilbert (1540-1603; _De Magnete_, 1600), physician to Queen Elizabeth, used induction in their work before Baconadvanced his theory of method. 

%(b) Bacon%. --The founder of the empirical philosophy of modern times wasFrancis Bacon (1561-1626), a contemporary of Shakespeare. Bacon beganhis political career by sitting in Parliament for many years under QueenElizabeth, as whose counsel he was charged with the duty of engaging inthe prosecution of his patron, the Earl of Essex, and at whose command heprepared a justification of the process. Under James I, he attained thehighest offices and honors, being made Keeper of the Great Seal in 1617, Lord Chancellor and Baron Verulam in 1618, and Viscount St. Albans in1621. In this last year came his fall. He was charged with bribery, andcondemned; the king remitted the imprisonment and fine, and for theremainder of his life Bacon devoted himself to science, rejecting everysuggestion toward a renewal of his political activity. The moral laxityof the times throws a mitigating light over his fault; but he cannot beaquitted of self-seeking, love of money and of display, and excessiveambition. As Macaulay says in his famous essay, he was neither malignantnor tyrannical, but he lacked warmth of affection and elevation ofsentiment; there were many things which he loved more than virtue, and manywhich he feared more than guilt. He first gained renown as an author by hisethical, economic, and political _Essays_, after the manner of Montaigne;of these the first ten appeared in 1597, in the third edition (1625)increased to fifty-eight; the Latin translation bears the title _SermonesFideles_. His great plan for a "restoration of the sciences" was intendedto be carried out in four, or rather, in six parts. But only the first twoparts of the _Instauratio Magna_ were developed: the _encyclopaedia_, ordivision of all sciences[1], a chart of the _globus intellectualis_, onwhich was depicted what each science had accomplished and what stillremained for each to do; and the development of the _new method_. Baconpublished his survey of the circle of the sciences in the English work, the_Advancement of Learning_, 1605, a much enlarged revision of which, _DeDignitate et Augmentis Scientiarum_, appeared in Latin in 1623. In 1612he printed as a contribution to methodology the draft, _Cogitata et Visa_(written 1607), later recast into the [first book of the] _Novum Organum_, 1620. This title, _Novum Organum_, of itself indicates opposition toAristotle, whose logical treatises had for ages been collected under thetitle _Organon_. If in this work Bacon had given no connected expositionof his reforming principles, but merely a series of aphorisms, and thisan incomplete one, the remaining parts are still more fragmentary, onlyprefaces and scattered contributions having been reduced to writing. Thethird part was to have been formed by a description of the world or natural_history, Historia Naturalis_, and the last, --introduced by a _ScalaIntellectus_ (ladder of knowledge, illustrations of the methodby examples), and by _Prodromi_ (preliminary results of his owninquiries), --by natural _science, Philosophia Secunda_. The best edition ofBacon's works is the London one of Spedding, Ellis & Heath, 1857 _seq_. , 7vols. , 2d ed. , 1870; with 7 volumes additional of _The Letters and Life ofFrancis Bacon, including His Occasional Works_, and a Commentary, by J. Spedding, 1862-74. Spedding followed this further with a briefer _Accountof the Life and Times of Francis Bacon_, 2 vols. , 1878[2]. 

[Footnote 1: According to the faculties of the soul, memory, imagination, and understanding, three principal sciences are distinguished; history, poesy, and philosophy. Of the three objects of the latter, "nature strikesthe mind with a direct ray, God with a refracted ray, and man himselfwith a reflected ray. " Theology is natural or revealed. Speculative(theoretical) natural philosophy divides into physics, concerned withmaterial and efficient causes, and metaphysics, whose mission, according tothe traditional view, is to inquire into final causes, but in Bacon's ownopinion, into formal causes; operative (technical) natural philosophyis mechanics and natural magic. The doctrine concerning man comprisesanthropology (including logic and ethics) and politics. This division ofBacon was still retained by D'Alembert in his preliminary discourse to the_Encyclopédie_. ]

[Footnote 2: Cf. On Bacon, K. Fischer, 2d ed. , 1875; Chr. Sigwart, in the_Preussische Jahrbücher_, 1863 and 1864, and in vol. Ii. Of his _Logik_;H. Heussler, _Baco und seine geschichtliche Stellung_, Breslau, 1889. [Adamson, _Encyclopedia Britannica_, 9th. Ed. , vol. Iii. Pp. 200-222;Fowler, English Philosophers Series, 1881; Nichol, Blackwood'sPhilosophical Classics, 2 vols. , 1888-89. --TR. ]] Bacon's merit wasthreefold: he felt more forcibly and more clearly than previousthinkers the need of a reform in science; he set up a new and grandideal--unbiased and methodical investigation of nature in order tomastery over nature; and he gave information and directions as tothe way in which this goal was to be attained, which, in spite of theirincompleteness in detail, went deep into the heart of the subject and laidthe foundation for the work of centuries. [1] His faith in the omnipotenceof the new method was so strong, that he thought that science for thefuture could almost dispense with talent. He compares his method to acompass or a ruler, with which the unpractised man is able to draw circlesand straight lines better than an expert without these instruments. 

[Footnote 1: His detractors are unjust when they apply the criterion of thepresent method of investigation and find only imperfection in an imperfectbeginning. ]

All science hitherto, Bacon declares, has been uncertain and unfruitful, and does not advance a step, while the mechanic arts grow daily moreperfect; without a firm basis, garrulous, contentious, and lacking incontent, it is of no practical value. The seeker after certain knowledgemust abandon words for things, and learn the art of forcing nature toanswer his questions. The seeker after fruitful knowledge must increasethe number of discoveries, and transform them from matters of chance intomatters of design. For discovery conditions the power, greatness, andprogress of mankind. Man's power is measured by his knowledge, knowledge ispower, and nature is conquered by obedience--_scientia est potentia; naturaparendo vincitur_. 

Bacon declares three things indispensable for the attainment of thispower-giving knowledge: the mind must understand the instruments ofknowledge; it must turn to experience, deriving the materials of knowledgefrom perception; and it must not rise from particular principles to thehigher axioms too rapidly, but steadily and gradually through middleaxioms. The mind can accomplish nothing when left to itself; but undirectedexperience alone is also insufficient (experimentation without a plan isgroping in the dark), and the senses, moreover, are deceptive and not acuteenough for the subtlety of nature--therefore, methodical experimentationalone, not chance observation, is worthy of confidence. Instead of thecustomary divorce of experience and understanding, a firm alliance, a"lawful marriage, " must be effected between them. The empiricists merelycollect, like the ants; the dogmatic metaphysicians spin the web of theirideas out of themselves, like the spiders; but the true philosopher must belike the bee, which by its own power transforms and digests the gatheredmaterial. 

As the mind, like a dull and uneven mirror, by its own nature distorts therays of objects, it must first of all be cleaned and polished, that is, itmust be freed from all prejudices and false notions, which, deep-rooted byhabit, prevent the formation of a true picture of the world. It must rootout its prejudices, or, where this is impossible, at least understand them. Doubt is the first step on the way to truth. Of these Phantoms or Idols tobe discarded, Bacon distinguishes four classes: Idols of the Theater, ofthe Market Place, of the Den, and of the Tribe. The most dangerous arethe _idola theatri_, which consist in the tendency to put more trust inauthority and tradition than in independent reflection, to adopt currentideas simply because they find general acceptance. Bacon's injunctionconcerning these is not to be deceived by stage-plays (_i. E. _, by theteachings of earlier thinkers which represent things other than they are);instead of believing others, observe for thyself! The _idola fori_, whicharise from the use of language in public intercourse, depend upon theconfusion of words, which are mere symbols with a conventional value andwhich are based on the carelessly constructed concepts of the vulgar, withthings themselves. Here Bacon warns us to keep close to things. The _idolaspecus_ are individual prepossessions which interfere with the apprehensionof the true state of affairs, such as the excessive tendency of thoughttoward the resemblances or the differences of things, or the investigator'shabit of transferring ideas current in his own department to subjects of adifferent kind. Such individual weaknesses are numberless, yet they may inpart be corrected by comparison with the perceptions of others. The _idolatribus_, finally, are grounded in the nature of the human species. To thisclass belong, among others, illusions of the senses, which may in part becorrected by the use of instruments, with which we arm our organs; further, the tendency to hold fast to opinions acceptable to us in spite of contraryinstances; similarly, the tendency to anthropomorphic views, including, as its most important special instance, the mistake of thinking that weperceive purposive relations everywhere and the working of final causes, after the analogy of human action, when in reality efficient causes aloneare concerned. Here Bacon's injunction runs, not to interpret naturalphenomena teleologically, but to explain them from mechanical causes; notto narrow the world down to the limits of the mind, but to extend the mindto the boundaries of the world, so that it shall understand it as itreally is. 

To these warnings there are added positive rules. When the investigator, after the removal of prejudices and habitual modes of thought, approachesexperience with his senses unperverted and a purified mind, he is toadvance from the phenomena given to their conditions. First of all, thefacts must be established by observation and experiment, and systematicallyarranged, [1] then let him go on to causes and laws. [2] The true orscientific induction[3] thus inculcated is quite different from thecredulous induction of common life or the unmethodical induction ofAristotle. Bacon emphasizes the fact that hitherto the importance ofnegative instances, which are to be employed as a kind of counter-proof, has been completely overlooked, and that a substitute for completeinduction, which is never attainable, may be found, on the one hand, in thecollection of as many cases as possible, and, on the other, by consideringthe more important or decisive cases, the "prerogative instances. " Then theinductive ascent from experiment to axiom is to be followed by a deductivedescent from axioms to new experiments and discoveries. Bacon rejectsthe syllogism on the ground that it fits one to overcome his opponent indisputation, but not to gain an active conquest over nature. In his ownapplication of these principles of method, his procedure was that of adilettante; the patient, assiduous labor demanded for the successfulpromotion of the mission of natural investigation was not his forte. Hisstrength lay in the postulation of problems, the stimulation and directionof inquiry, the discovery of lacunae and the throwing out of suggestions;and many ideas incidentally thrown off by him surprise us by theiringenious anticipations of later discoveries. The greatest defect in histheory was his complete failure to recognize the services promised bymathematics to natural science. The charge of utilitarianism, which hasbeen so broadly made, is, on the contrary, unjust. For no matter howstrongly he emphasizes the practical value of knowledge, he is still inagreement with those who esteem the godlike condition of calm and cheerfulacquaintance with truth more highly than the advantages to be expected fromit; he desires science to be used, not as "a courtezan for pleasure, " but"as a spouse for generation, fruit and comfort, " and--leaving entirely outof view his isolated acknowledgments of the inherent value of knowledge--heconceives its utility wholly in the comprehensive and noble sense that thepursuit of science, from which as such all narrow-minded regard for directpractical application must keep aloof, is the most important lever for theadvancement of human culture. 

[Footnote 1: Bacon illustrates the method by the explanation of heat. Theresults of experimental observation are to be arranged in three tables. Thetable of presence contains many different cases in which heat occurs; thetable of absence, those in which, under circumstances otherwise the same, it is wanting; the table of degrees or comparison enumerates phenomenawhose increase and decrease accompany similar variations in the degree ofheat. That which remains after the _exclusion_ now to be undertaken (ofthat which cannot be the nature or cause of heat), yields as a preliminaryresult or commencement of interpretation (as a "first vintage"), thedefinition of heat: "a motion, expansive, restrained, and acting in itsstrife upon the smaller particles of bodies. "]

[Footnote 2: This goal of Baconian inquiry is by no means coincident withthat of exact natural science. Law does not mean to him, as to the physicalscientist of to-day, a mathematically formulated statement of the course ofevents, but the nature of the phenomenon, to be expressed in a definition(E. König, _Entwickelung des Causalproblems bis Kant_, 1883, pp. 154-156). Bacon combines in a peculiar manner ancient and modern, Platonic andcorpuscular fundamental ideas. Rejecting final causes with the atomists, yet handing over material and efficient causes (the latter of which sinkwith him to the level of mere changing occasional causes) to empiricalphysics, he assigns to metaphysics, as the true _science_ of nature, thesearch for the "forms" and properties of things. In this he is guided bythe following metaphysical presupposition: Phenomena, however manifoldthey may be, are at bottom composed of a few elements, namely, permanentproperties, the so-called "simple natures, " which form, as it were, thealphabet of nature or the colors on her palette, by the combination ofwhich she produces her varied pictures; _e. G_. , the nature of heat andcold, of a red color, of gravity, and also of age, of death. Now thequestion to be investigated becomes, What, then, is heat, redness, etc. ?The ground essence and law of the natures consist in certain forms, which Bacon conceives in a Platonic way as concepts and substances, butphenomenal ones, and, at the same time, with Democritus, as the grouping ormotion of minute material particles. Thus the form of heat is a particularkind of motion, the form of whiteness a determinate arrangement of materialparticles. Cf. Natge, _Ueber F. Bacons Formenlehre_, Leipsic, 1891, inwhich Heussler's view is developed in more detail. [Cf. Further, Fowler's_Bacon_, English Philosophers Series, 1881, chap. Iv. --TR. ]]

[Footnote 3: The Baconian method is to be called induction, it is true, only in the broad sense. Even before Sigwart, Apelt, _Theorie derInduction_, 1854, pp. 151, 153, declared that the question it discussed wasessentially a method of abstraction. This, however, does not detract fromthe fame of Bacon as the founder, of the theory of inductive investigation(in later times carefully elaborated by Mill). ]

Bacon intended that his reforming principles should accrue to the benefitof practical philosophy also, but gave only aphoristic hints to thisend. Everything is impelled by two appetites, of which the one aims atindividual welfare, the other at the welfare of the whole of which thething is a part (_bonum suitatis_--_bonum communionis_). The second is notonly the nobler but also the stronger; this holds of the lower creatures aswell as of man, who, when not degenerate, prefers the general welfare tohis individual interests. Love is the highest of the virtues, and is never, as other human endowments, exposed to the danger of excess; therefore thelife of action is of more worth than the life of contemplation. By thisprinciple of morals Bacon marked out the way for the English ethics oflater times. [1] He notes the lack of a science of character, for which morematerial is given in ordinary discourse, in the poets and the historians, than in the works of the philosophers; he explains the power of theaffections over the reason by the fact that the idea of present good fillsthe imagination more forcibly than the idea of good to come, and summonspersuasion, habit, and morals to the aid of the latter. We must endeavorso to govern the passions (each of which combines in itself a masculineimpetuosity with a feminine weakness) that they shall take the part ofthe reason instead of attacking it. Elsewhere Bacon gives (not entirelyunquestionable) directions concerning the art of making one's way. Acuteobservations and ingenious remarks everywhere abound. In order to informone's self of a man's intentions and ends, it is necessary to "keep a goodmediocrity in liberty of speech, which invites a similar liberty, and insecrecy, which induces trust. " "In order to get on one must have a littleof the fool and not too much of the honest. " "As the baggage is to anarmy, so is riches to virtue. It cannot be spared nor left behind, but ithindereth the march; yea, and the care of it sometimes loseth or disturbeththe victory" (impedimenta--baggage and hindrance). On envy and malevolencehe says: "For men's minds will either feed upon their own good or uponothers' evil; . . . And whoso is out of hope to attain another's virtue willseek to come at even hand by depressing another's fortune. "

[Footnote 1: Cf. Vorlaender, p. 267 _seq_. ]

In ethics, as in theoretical philosophy, Bacon demands the completion ofnatural knowledge by revelation. The light of nature (the reason and theconscience) is able only to convince us of sin and not to give us completeinformation concerning our duty, --_e. G. _, the lofty moral principle, Loveyour enemies. Similarly, natural theology is quite sufficient to placethe existence of God beyond doubt, by reasoning from the order in nature("slight tastes of philosophy may perchance move one to atheism but fullerdraughts lead back to religion"); but the doctrines of Christianity arematters of faith. Religion and science are separate fields, any confusionof which involves the danger of an heretical religion or a fabulousphilosophy. The more a principle of faith contradicts the reason, thegreater the obedience and the honor to God in accepting it. 

%(c) Hobbes%. --Hobbes stands in sharp contrast to Bacon both in dispositionand in doctrine. Bacon was a man of a wide outlook, a rich, stimulating, impulsive nature, filled with great plans, but too mobile and desultory toallow them to ripen to perfection; Hobbes is slow, tenacious, persistent, unyielding, his thought strenuous and narrow. To this corresponds aprofound difference in their systems, which is by no means adequatelycharacterized by saying that Hobbes brings into the foreground themathematical element neglected by his predecessor, and turns his attentionchiefly to politics. The dependence of Hobbes on Bacon is, in spite oftheir personal acquaintance, not so great as formerly was universallyassumed. His guiding stars are rather the great mathematicians of theContinent, Kepler and Galileo, while Cartesian influences also are notto be denied. He finds his mission in the construction of a strictlymechanical view of the world. Mechanism applied to the world givesmaterialism; applied to knowledge, sensationalism of a mathematical type;applied to the will, determinism; to morality and the state, ethical andpolitical naturalism. Nevertheless, the empirical tendency of his nationhas a certain power over him; he holds fast to the position that all ideasultimately spring from experience. With his energetic but short-breathedthinking, he did not succeed in fusing the rationalistic elements receivedfrom foreign sources with these native tendencies, so as to producea unified system. As Grimm has correctly shown (_Zur Geschichte desErkenntnissproblems_), there is an unreconciled contradiction between thedependence of thought on experience, which he does not give up, and theuniversal validity of the truths derived from pure reason, which he assertson the basis of the mathematico-philosophical doctrines of the Continent. Asimilar unmediated dualism will meet us in Locke also. 

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) was repelled while a student at Oxford byScholastic methods in thought, with which he agreed only in theirnominalistic results (there are no universals except names). Duringrepeated sojourns in Paris, where he made the acquaintance of Gassendi, Mersenne, and Descartes, he devoted himself to the study of mathematics, and was greatly influenced by the doctrines of Galileo; while the disordersof the English revolution led him to embrace an absolutist theory of thestate. His chief works were his politics, under the title _Leviathan_, 1651, and his _Elementa Philosophiae_, in three parts (_De Corpore, DeHomine, De Cive_), of which the third, _De Cive_, appeared first (in Latin;in briefer form and anonymously, 1642, enlarged 1647), the first, _DeCorpore_, in 1655, and the second, _De Homine_, in 1658. These hadbeen preceded by two books [1] written, like the two last parts of the_Elements_, in English: _On Human Nature_ and _De Corpore Politico_, composed 1640, printed without the author's consent in 1650. Besides thesehe wrote two treatises _Of Liberty and Necessity_, 1646 and 1654, and prepared, 1668, a collected edition of his works (in Latin). InMolesworth's edition, 1839-45, the Latin works occupy five volumes and theEnglish eleven. [2]

[Footnote 1: Or rather one; the treatise _On Human Nature_ consists ofthe first thirteen chapters of the work, _Elements of Law, Natural andPolitic_, and the _De Corpore Politico_ of the remainder. ]

[Footnote 2: Cf. On Hobbes, G. C. Robertson (Blackwood's PhilosophicalClassics, vol. X. ), 1886; Tönnies in the _Vierteljahrsschrift fürwissenschaftliche Philosophie_, Jahrg. 3-5, 1879-81. ]

Philosophy is formally defined by Hobbes as knowledge of effects fromcauses and causes from effects by means of legitimate rational inference. This implies the equal validity of the deductive and inductivemethods, --while Bacon had proclaimed the latter the most importantinstrument of knowledge, --as well as the exclusion of theology based onrevelation from the domain of science. Philosophy is objectively defined asthe theory of body and motion: _all that exists is body; all that occurs, motion_. Everything real is corporeal; this holds of points, lines, andsurfaces, which as the limits of body cannot be incorporeal, as well asof the mind and of God. The mind is merely a (for the senses too) refinedbody, or, as it is stated in another place, a movement in certain partsof the organic body. All events, even internal events, the feelings andpassions, are movements of material parts. "Endeavor" is a diminutivemotion, as the atom is the smallest of bodies; sensation and representationare changes in the perceiving body. Space is the idea of an existing thingas such, _i. E_. , merely as existing outside the perceiving subject; time, the idea of motion. All phenomena are corporeal motions, which take placewith mechanical necessity. Neither formal nor final causes exist, but onlyefficient causes. All that happens takes its origin in the activity of anexternal cause, and not in itself; a body at rest (or in motion) remainsat rest (or in motion) forever, unless affected by another in a contrarysense. And as bodies and their changes constitute the only objects ofphilosophy, so the mathematical method is the only correct method. 

There are two kinds of bodies: natural bodies, which man finds in nature, and artificial bodies, which he himself produces. By the latter Hobbesrefers especially to the state as a human artefact. Man stands between thetwo as the most perfect natural body and an element in the political body. Philosophy, therefore, besides the introductory _philosophia prima_, whichdiscusses the underlying concepts, consists of three parts: physics, anthropology, and politics. Even the theory of the state is capable ofdemonstrative treatment; moral phenomena are as subject to the law ofmechanical causation as physical phenomena. 

The first factor in the cognitive process is an impression on asense-organ, which, occasioned by external motion, continues onward to theheart and from this center gives rise to a reaction. The perception orsensation which thus arises is entirely subjective, a function of theknower merely, and in no way a copy of the external movement. Theproperties light, color, and sound, which we believe to be without us, aremerely internal phenomena dependent on outer and inner motions, but with noresemblance to them. Memory consists in the lingering effects or residuarytraces of perception; it is a sense or consciousness of having felt before_(sentire se sensisse meminisse est_), and ideas are distinguished fromsensations as the perfect from the present tense. Experience is thetotality of perceptions retained in memory, together with a certainforesight of the future after the analogy of the past. These stages ofcognition, which can yield prudence but not necessary and universalknowledge, are present in animals as well as men. The human capacity forscience is dependent on the faculty of speech; words are conventionalsigns to facilitate the retention and communication of ideas. As thememory-images denoted by words are weaker, fainter, and less clearlydiscriminated than the original sensations, it comes to pass that a numberof similar ideas of memory receive a common name. Thus abstract generalideas and generic concepts arise, to which nothing real corresponds, forin reality particulars alone exist. The universal is a human artefact. Thecombination of words into propositions, being an addition or subtractionof arbitrary symbols or marks, is called judgment; the combination ofpropositions into syllogisms, inference; the united body of true ordemonstrated principles, science--hence mathematics is the type of allknowledge. In short, thought is nothing but calculation and the words withwhich we operate are mere counters; he who takes counters for coin is afool. Animals lack reason, _i. E. _, this power of combining artificialsymbols. 

Hobbes's theory of the will is characterized by the same! sensationalismand mechanism as his theory of knowledge. All spiritual events originatein impressions of sense. Man responds to the action of objects by a doublereaction, adding to the theoretical reaction of sensation a practical onein the feeling of pleasure or pain (according as the impression furthers orhinders the vital function), whence desire and aversion follow in respectto future experience. Further developments from the feelings experienced atthe signs of honor (the acknowledgment of superior power) and the contrary, are the affections of pride, courage, anger, of shame and repentance, ofhope and love, of pity, etc. Deliberation is the alternation of differentappetites; the final, victorious one which immediately precedes action iscalled will. Freedom cannot be predicated of the will, but only of theaction, and even in this case it means simply the absence of externalrestraints, the procedure of the action from the will of the agent; whilethe action is necessary nevertheless. Every motion is the inevitable resultof the sum of the preceding (including cerebral) motions. 

Things which we desire are termed good, and those which we shun, evil. Nothing is good _per se_ or absolutely, but only relatively, for a givenperson, place, time, or set of circumstances. Different things are good todifferent men, and there is no objective, universal rule of good andevil, so long as men are considered as individuals, apart from society. Adefinite criterion of the good is first reached in the state: that is rightwhich the law permits, that wrong which it forbids; good means that whichis conducive to the general welfare. In the state of nature nothing isforbidden; nature gives every man a right to everything, and right iscoextensive with might. What, then, induces man to abandon the state ofnature and enter the state of citizenship? The opinion of Aristotle andGrotius that the state originates in the social impulse is false; for manis essentially not social, but selfish, and nothing but regard for his owninterests bids him seek the protection of the state; the civil commonwealthis an artificial product of fear and prudence. The highest good isself-preservation; all other goods, as friendship, riches, wisdom, knowledge, and, above all, power, are valuable only as instruments of theformer. The precondition of well-being, for which each man strives bynature, is security for life and health. This is wanting in the state ofnature, in which the passions govern; for the state of nature is a stateof war of everyone against everyone _(bellum omnium contra omnes_). Eachman strives for success and power, and, since he cannot trust his fellow, seeks to subdue, nay, to kill him; each looks upon his fellow as a wolfwhich he prefers to devour rather than submit himself to the likeoperation. Now, as no one is so weak as to be incapable of inflicting onhis fellows that worst of evils, death, and thus the strongest is unsafe, reason, in the interest of everyone, enjoins a search after peace and theestablishment of an ordered community. The conditions of peace are the"laws of nature, " which relate both to politics and to morals but which donot attain their full binding authority until they become positive laws, injunctions of the sovereign power. Peace is attainable only when each man, in return for the protection vouchsafed to him, gives up his natural rightto all. The compact by which each renounces his natural liberty to do whathe pleases, provided all others are ready for the same renunciation, --towhich are added, further, the laws of justice (sanctity of covenants), equity, gratitude, modesty, sociability, mercifulness, etc. , whoseopposites would bring back the state of nature, --this compact is securedagainst violation by the transfer of the general power and freedom to asingle will (the will of an assembly or of an individual person), whichthen represents the general will. The civil contract includes, then, twomoments: first, renunciation; second, irrevocable transference and(absolute) submission. The second unites the multitude into a civilpersonality, the most perfect unity being vouchsafed by absolute monarchy. The sovereign is the soul of the political body; the officials, its limbs;reward and punishment, its nerves; law and equity, its reason. 

The social contract theory has often experienced democratic interpretationand application, both before and since Hobbes's time; and, in fact, it doesnot include _per se_ the irrevocability of the transfer, the absolutenessof the sovereign power, and the monarchical head, which Hobbes consideredindispensable in order to guard against the danger of anarchy. In everyabridgment of the supreme power, whether by division or limitation, he seesa step toward the renewal of the state of nature; and he defends with ironrigor the omnipotence of the state and the complete lack of legal status onthe part of all individuals in contrast with it. The citizen is not to obeyhis own conscience, which has simply the value of a private opinion, but the laws, as the public conscience; while the supreme ruler, on thecontrary, is superior to the civil laws, for it is he that decrees, interprets, alters, and abrogates them. He is lord over the property, thelife, and the death of the citizens, and can do no one wrong. For healone has retained his original natural right to all, which the rest haveentirely and forever renounced. He must have regard, indeed, to the welfareof the people, but he is accountable to God alone. The obligation of thesubject to obey is extinguished in one case only, --when the civil power isincapable of providing him further with external and internal protection. For the rest, Hobbes declares the existing public order the lawful one, theevils of arbitrary rule much more tolerable than the universal hostility ofthe state of nature, and aversion to tyrants a disease inherited from therepublicans of antiquity. 

The sovereign, by the laws and by instruction, determines what is good andevil; he determines also what is to be believed. Religion unsanctioned bythe state is superstition. The temporal ruler is also the spiritual ruler, the king, the chief pastor, and the clergy his servants. One and the samecommunity is termed state in so far as it consists of men, and church in sofar as it consists of Christian men (the ecclesiastical commonwealth). Thedogmas which the law prescribes are to be received without investigation, to be swallowed like pills, without mastication. 

The principle that every passion and every action is in its natureindifferent, that right and wrong exist only in the state, that the willof a despot is to determine what is moral and what immoral, has given justoffense. Moreover, this was not, in fact, Hobbes's deepest conviction. Evenwithout ascribing great importance to isolated statements, [1] it mustbe admitted that his doctrine was interpreted more narrowly than it wasintended. He does not say that no moral distinctions whatever exist beforethe foundation of the state, but only that the state first supplies a fixedcriterion of the good. Moral ideas have a certain currency before this, butthey lack power to enforce themselves. Further, when he ascribes the originof the state to self-interest, this does not mean that reason, conscience, generosity, and love for our fellows are entirely wanting in the state ofnature, but only that they are not general enough, and, as against thepassions, not strong enough to furnish a foundation for the edifice of thestate. Not only exaggeration in statement but also uncouthness of thoughtmay be forgiven the representative of a movement which is at once new andstrengthened by the consciousness of agreement with a naturalistic theoryof knowledge and physics; and the vigor of execution compels admiration, even though many obscurities remain to be deplored _(e. G_. , the relationof the two moral standards, the standard of the reason or natural law andthe standard of positive law). And recognition must be accorded to thesignificant kernel of doctrine formed, on the one hand, by the endeavor toseparate ethics from theology, and on the other, by the thoughts--which, itis true, were not perfectly brought out--that the moral is not founded ona natural social impulse, but on a law of the reason, and first gains adefinite criterion in society, and that the interests of the individual areinseparably connected with those of the community. In any case, theattempt to form a naturalistic theory of the state would be an undertakingdeserving of thanks, even if the promulgation of this theory had done nofurther service than to challenge refutation. 

[Footnote 1: God inscribed the divine or natural law (Do not that toanother, etc. ) on the heart of man, when he gave him the reason to rule hisactions. The laws of nature are, it is true, not always legally binding(_in foro externo_), but always and everywhere binding on the conscience(_in foro interno_). Justice is the virtue which we can measure by civillaws; love, that which we measure by the law of nature merely. The ruler_ought_ to govern in accordance with the law of nature. ]

%(d) Lord Herbert of Cherbury. %--Between Bacon (1605, 1620) and Hobbes(1642, 1651) stands Lord Herbert of Cherbury (1581-1648), who, by hiswork _De Veritate_ (1624), [1] became the founder of deism, that theory of"natural religion, " which, in opposition to the historical dogmatic faithof the Church theology, takes the reason, which is the same in all men, as its basis and morality for its content. Lord Herbert introduces hisphilosophy of religion by a theory of knowledge which makes universalconsent the highest criterion of truth (_summa veritatis norma consensusuniversalis_), and bases knowledge on certain self-evident principles(_principia_), common to all men in virtue of a natural instinct, whichgives safe guidance. These common notions (_notitiae communes_) precede allreflective inquiry, as well as all observation and experience, which wouldbe impossible without them. The most important among them are the religiousand ethical maxims of conscience. 

[Footnote 1: _Tractatus de Veritate prout distinguitur a Revelatione, aVerisimili, a Possibile, et a False_. Also, _De Religione Gentilium_, 1645, complete 1663. ]

This natural instinct is both an impulse toward truth and a capacity forgood or impulse to self-preservation. The latter extends not only to theindividual but to all things with which the individual is connected, to thespecies, nay, to all the rest of the world, and its final goal is eternalhappiness: all natural capacities are directed toward the highest good ortoward God. The sense for the divine may indeed be lulled to sleep or ledastray by our free will, but not eradicated. To be rational and to bereligious are inseparable; it is religion that distinguishes man from thebrute, and no people can be found in which it is lacking. If atheistsreally exist, they are to be classed with the irrational and the insane. 

The content of natural religion may be summed up in the following fivearticles, which all nations confess: 1. That there is a Supreme Being(_numen supremum_). 2. That he ought to be worshiped. 3. That virtue andpiety are the chief elements of worship. 4. That man ought to repent of hissins. 5. That there are rewards and punishments in a future life. Besidesthese general principles, on the discovery of which Lord Herbert greatlyprides himself, the positive religions contain arbitrary additions, whichdistinguish them from one another and which owe their origin, for the mostpart, to priestly deception, although the rhapsodies of the poets and theinventions of the philosophers have contributed their share. The essentialprinciples of natural religion (God, virtue, faith, hope, love, andrepentance) come more clearly to light in Christianity than in thereligions of heathendom, where they are overgrown with myths andceremonies. 

The _Religio Medici_ (1642) of Sir Thomas Browne shows similar tendencies. 

%9. Preliminary Survey. %

In the line of development from the speculations of Nicolas of Cusa to theestablishment of the English philosophy of nature, of religion, and of thestate by Bacon, Herbert, and Hobbes, and to the physics of Galileo, modernideas have manifested themselves with increasing clearness and freedom. Hobbes himself shows thus early the influence of Descartes's decisive step, with which the twilight gives place to the brightness of the morning. InDescartes the empiricism and sensationalism of the English is confronted byrationalism, to which the great thinkers of the Continent continue loyal. In Britain, experience, on the Continent the reason is declared to be thesource of cognition; in the former, the point of departure is found inparticular impressions of sense, on the latter, in general concepts andprinciples of the understanding; there the method of observation isinculcated and followed, here, the method of deduction. This antithesisremained decisive in the development of philosophy down to Kant, so that ithas long been customary to distinguish two lines or schools, the Empiricaland the Rationalistic, whose parallelism may be exhibited in the followingtable (when only one date is given it indicates the appearance of thephilosopher's chief work):

 _Empiricism. Rationalism_. Bacon, 1620. (Nicolas, 1450; Bruno, 1584). Hobbes, 1651. _Descartes_, died 1650. _Locke_, 1690 (1632-1704). Spinoza, (1632-) 1677. Berkeley, 1710. _Leibnitz_, 1710. Hume, 1748. Wolff, died 1754. 

We must not forget, indeed, the lively interchange of ideas between theschools (especially the influence of Descartes on Hobbes, and of the latteron Spinoza; further, of Descartes on Locke, and of the latter on Leibnitz)which led to reciprocal approximation and enrichment. Berkeley andLeibnitz, from opposite presuppositions, arrive at the same idealisticconclusion--there is no real world of matter, but only spirits and ideasexist. Hume and Wolff conclude the two lines of development: under theformer, empiricism disintegrates into skepticism; under the latter, rationalism stiffens into a scholastic dogmatism, soon to run out into apopular eclecticism of common sense. 

If we compare the mental characteristics of the three great nations which, in the period between Descartes and Kant, participated most productively inthe work of philosophy, --the Italians, with their receptive temperament andso active in many fields, exerted a decisive influence on its developmentand progress in the transition period alone, --it will be seen that theFrenchman tends chiefly to acuteness, the Englishman to clearness andsimplicity, the German to profundity of thought. France is the land ofmathematical, England of practical, Germany of speculative thinkers; thefirst is the home of the skeptics, though of the enthusiasts as well; thesecond, of the realists; the third, of the idealists. 

The English philosopher resembles a geographer who, with conscientiouscare, outlines a map of the region through which he journeys; theFrenchman, an anatomist who, with steady stroke, lays bare the nerves andmuscles of the organism; the German, a mountaineer who loses in clearvision of particular objects as much as he gains in loftiness of positionand extent of view. The Englishman describes the given reality, theFrenchman analyses it, the German transfigures it. 

The English thinker keeps as close as possible to phenomena, and theprinciples which he uses in the explanation of phenomena themselves lie inthe realm of concrete experience. He explains one phenomenon by another; heclassifies and arranges the given material without analyzing it; he keepsconstantly in touch with the popular consciousness. His reverence forreality, as this presents itself to him, and his distrust of far-reachingabstraction, are so strong that it is enough for him to take his bearingsfrom the real, and to give a true reproduction of it, while he willinglyrenounces the ambition to form it anew in concepts. With this respect forconcrete reality he combines a similar reverence for ethical postulates. When the development of a given line of thought threatens to bring him intoconflict with practical life, he is honest enough to draw the conclusionswhich follow from his premises and to give them expression, but he avoidsthe collision by a simple compromise, shutting up the refinements ofphilosophy in the study and yielding in practice to the guidance ofnatural instinct and conscience. His support, therefore, of theories whichcontradict current views in morals is free from the levity in which theFrenchman indulges. Life and thought are separate fields, contradictionsbetween them are borne in patience, and if science draws its material fromlife it shows itself grateful for the favor by giving life the benefit ofthe useful outcome of its labors, and, at the same time, shielding it fromthe revolutionary or disintegrating effect of its doubtful paradoxes. 

While the deliberate craft of English philosophy does not willingly losesight of the shores of the concrete world, French thought sails boldly andconfidently out into the open sea of abstraction. It is not strange thatit finds the way to the principles more rapidly than the way back tophenomena. A free road, a fresh start, a straight course--such is themotto of French thinking. Whatever is inconsistent with rectilinearity isignored, or opposed as unfitting. The line drawn by Descartes through theworld between matter and spirit, and that by Rousseau between natureand culture, are distinctive of the philosophical character of theircountrymen. Dualism is to them entirely congenial; it satisfies theirneed for clearness, and with this they are content. Antithesis is in theFrenchman's blood; he thinks in it and speaks in it, in the salon or on theplatform, in witty jest or in scientific earnestness of thought. Either Aor not-A, and there is no middle ground. This habit of precision andsharp analysis facilitates the formation of closed parties, whereas eachindividual German, in philosophy as in politics, forms a party of his own. The demand for the removal of the rubbish of existing systems and thesanguine return to the sources, give French philosophy an unhistorical, radical, and revolutionary character. Minds of the second order, who areincapable of taking by themselves the step from that which is given to thesources, prove their radicalism by following down to the roots that whichothers have begun (so Condillac and the sensationalism of Locke). Moreover, philosophical principles are to be translated into action; the thinker hasshown himself the doctrinaire in his destructive analysis of that whichis given, so, also, he hopes to play the dictator by overturning existinginstitutions and establishing a new order of things, --only his courageousendeavor flags as soon in the region of practice as in that of theory. 

The German lacks the happy faculty, which distinguishes the two nationsjust discussed, of isolating a problem near at hand, and he is accustomedto begin his system with Leda's egg; but, by way of compensation, hecombines the lofty flight of the French with the phlegmatic endurance ofthe English, _i. E. _, he seeks his principles far above experience, but, instead of stopping with the establishment of points of view or when hehas set the note, he carries his principles through in detail with lovingindustry and comprehensive architectonic skill. While common sense turnsthe scale with the English and analytical thought with the French, theGerman allows the fancy and the heart to take an important part in thediscussion, though in such a way that the several faculties work togetherand in harmony. While in France rationalism, mysticism, and the philosophyof the heart were divided among different thinkers (Descartes, Malebrancheand Pascal, Rousseau), there is in every German philosopher something ofall three. The skeptical Kant provides a refuge for the postulates ofthought in the sanctuary of faith; the earnest, energetic Fichte, towardthe end of his life, takes his place among the mystics; Schelling thinkswith the fancy and dreams with the understanding; and under the broad cloakof the Hegelian dialectic method, beside the reflection of the Critique ofReason and of the Science of Knowledge, the fancies of the Philosophy ofNature, the deep inwardness of Böhme, even the whole wealth of empiricalfact, found a place. As synthesis is predominant in his view of things, soa harmonizing, conciliatory tendency asserts itself in his relations to hispredecessors: the results of previous philosophers are neither discardedout of hand nor accepted in the mass, but all that appears in any wayuseful or akin to the new system is wrought in at its proper place, thoughoften with considerable transformation. In this work of mediation there isconsiderable loss in definiteness, the just and comprehensive considerationof the most diverse interests not always making good the loss. And sincesuch a philosophy, as we have already shown, engages the whole man, itsdisciple has neither impulse nor strength left for reforming labors; while, on the other hand, he perceives no external call to undertake them, sincehe views the world through the glasses of his system. Thus philosophy inGermany, pursued chiefly by specialists, remains a professional affair, andhas not exercised a direct transforming influence on life (for Fichte, whohelped to philosophize the French out of Germany, was an exception); butits influence has been the greater in the special sciences, which inGermany more than any other land are handled in a philosophic spirit. 

The mental characteristics of these nations are reflected also in theirmethods of presentation. The style of the English philosopher is sober, comprehensible, diffuse, and slightly wearisome. The French use a fluent, elegant, lucid style which entertains and dazzles by its epigrammaticphrases, in which not infrequently the epigram rules the thought. TheGerman expresses his solid, thoughtful positions in a form which is atonce ponderous and not easily understood; each writer constructs his ownterminology, with a liberal admixture of foreign expressions, and thelength of his paragraphs is exceeded only by the thickness of his books. These national distinctions may be traced even in externals. The Englishmanmakes his divisions as they present themselves at first thought, and ratherfrom a practical than from a logical point of view. The analytic Frenchmanprefers dichotomy, while trichotomy corresponds to the synthetic, systematic character of German thinking; and Kant's naïve delight, becausein each class the third category unites its two predecessors, has beenoften experienced by many of his countrymen at the sight of their owntrichotomies. 

The division of labor in the pre-Kantian philosophy among these threenationalities entirely agrees with the account given of the peculiaritiesof their philosophical endowment. The beginning falls to the share ofFrance; Locke receives that tangled skein, the problem of knowledge, from the hand of Descartes, and passes it on to Leibnitz; and while theIllumination in all three countries is converting the gold inherited fromLocke and Leibnitz into small coin, the solution of the riddle rings outfrom Königsberg. 

PART I. 

FROM DESCARTES TO KANT. 

CHAPTER II. 

DESCARTES. 

The long conflict with Scholasticism, which had been carried on with everincreasing energy and ever sharper weapons, was brought by Descartes to avictorious close. The new movement, long desired, long sought, and preparedfor from many directions, at length appears, ready and well-established. Descartes accomplishes everything needful with the sure simplicity ofgenius. He furnishes philosophy with a settled point of departure inself-consciousness, offers her a method sure to succeed in deduction fromclear and distinct conceptions, and assigns her the mechanical explanationof nature as her most imperative and fruitful mission. 

René Descartes was born at La Haye in Touraine, in 1596, and died atStockholm in 1650. Of the studies taught in the Jesuit school at La Flèche, mathematics alone was able to satisfy his craving for clear and certainknowledge. The years 1613-17 he spent in Paris; then he enlisted in themilitary service of the Netherlands, and, in 1619, in that of Bavaria. While in winter quarters at Neuburg, he vowed a pilgrimage to Loretto ifthe Virgin would show him a way of escape from his tormenting doubts; andmade the saving discovery of the "foundations of a wonderful science. "At the end of four years this vow was fulfilled. On his return to Paris(1625), he was besought by his learned friends to give to the world hisepoch-making ideas. Though, to escape the distractions of society, he kepthis residence secret, as he had done during his first stay in Paris, andfrequently changed it, he was still unable to secure the complete privacyand leisure for scientific work which he desired. Therefore he went toHolland in 1629, and spent twenty years of quiet productivity in Amsterdam, Franecker, Utrecht, Leeuwarden, Egmond, Harderwijk, Leyden, the palace ofEndegeest, and five other places. His work here was interrupted only bya few journeys, but much disturbed in its later years by annoyingcontroversies with the theologian Gisbert Voëtius of Utrecht, with Regius, a pupil who had deserted him, and with professors from Leyden. Hiscorrespondence with his French friends was conducted through Père Mersenne. In 1649 he yielded to pressing invitations from Queen Christina of Swedenand removed to Stockholm. There his weak constitution was not adequate tothe severity of the climate, and death overtook him within a few months. 

The two decades of retirement in the Netherlands were Descartes'sproductive period. His motive in developing and writing out his thoughtswas, essentially, the desire not to disappoint the widely spread beliefthat he was in possession of a philosophy more certain than the common one. The work entitled _Le Monde_, begun in 1630 and almost completed, remainedunprinted, as the condemnation of Galileo (1632) frightened our philosopherfrom publication; fragments of it only, and a brief summary, appearedafter the author's death. The chief works, the _Discourse on Method_, the_Meditations on the First Philosophy_, and the _Principles of Philosophy_appeared between 1637 and 1644, --the _Discours de la Méthode_ in 1637, together with three dissertations (the "Dioptrics, " the "Meteors, " and the"Geometry"), under the common title, _Essais Philosophiques_. To the (six)_Meditationes de Prima Philosophia_, published in 1641, and dedicated tothe Paris Sorbonne, are appended the objections of various savants to whomthe work had been communicated in manuscript, together with Descartes'srejoinders. He himself considered the criticisms of Arnauld, printed fourthin order, as the most important. The Third Objections are from Hobbes, theFifth from Gassendi, the First, which were also the first received, fromthe theologian Caterus of Antwerp, while the Second and Sixth, collected byMersenne, are from various theologians and mathematicians. In the secondedition there were added, further, the Seventh Objections, by the JesuitBourdin, and the Replies of the author thereto. The four books of the_Principia Philosophiae_, published in 1644 and dedicated to Elizabeth, Countess Palatine, give a systematic presentation of the new philosophy. The _Discourse on Method_ appeared, 1644, in a Latin translation, the_Meditations_ and the _Principles_ in French, in 1647. The _Treatise on thePassions_ was published in 1650; the _Letters_, 1657-67, in French, 1668, in Latin. The _Opera Postuma_, 1701, beside the _Compendium of Music_(written in 1618) and other portions of his posthumous writings, containthe "Rules for the Direction of the Mind, " supposed to have been written in1629, and the "Search for Truth by the Light of Nature. " The complete workshave been often published, both in Latin and in French. The eleven volumeedition of Cousin appeared in 1824-26. [1]

[Footnote 1: Of the many treatises on the philosophy of Descartes those ofC. Schaarschmidt (_Descartes und Spinoza_, 1850) and J. H. Löwe, 1855, maybe mentioned. Further, M. Heinze has discussed _Die Sittenlehre desDescartes_, 1872; Ed. Grimm, _Descartes' Lehre von den angeborenenIdeen_, 1873; G. Glogau, _Darlegung und Kritik des Grundgedankens derCartesianisch. Metaphysik (Zeitschrift für Philosophie_, vol. Lxxiii. P. 209 _seq_. ), 1878; Paul Natorp, _Descartes' Erkenntnisstheorie_, 1882;and Kas. Twardowski, _Idee und Perception_ in Descartes, 1892. In French, Francisque Bouillier (_Histoire de la Philosophie Cartésienne_, 1854) andE. Saisset (_Précurseurs et Disciples de Descartes_, 1862) have writtenon Cartesianism. [The _Method, Meditations, and Selections from thePrinciples_ have been translated into English by John Veitch, 5th ed. , 1879, and others since; and H. A. P. Torrey has published _The Philosophyof Descartes in Extracts from his Writings_, 1892 (Sneath's ModernPhilosophers). The English reader may be referred, also, to Mahaffy's_Descartes_, 1880, in Blackwood's Philosophical Classics; to the article"Cartesianism, " _Encyclopedia Britannica_, 9th ed. , vol. V. , by EdwardCaird; and, for a complete discussion, to the English translation ofFischer's _Descartes and his School_' by J. P. Gordy, 1887. --TR. ]]

We begin our discussion with Descartes's noëtical and metaphysicalprinciples, and then take up in order his doctrine of nature and of man. 

%1. The Principles%. 

That which passes nowadays for science, and is taught as such in theschools, is nothing but a mass of disconnected, uncertain, and oftencontradictory opinions. A principle of unity and certainty is entirelylacking. If anything permanent and irrefutable is to be accomplished inscience, everything hitherto considered true must be thoroughly demolishedand built up anew. For we come into the world as children and we formjudgments of things, or repeat them after others, before we have come intothe full possession of our intellectual powers; so that it is no wonderthat we are filled with a multitude of prejudices, from which we canthoroughly escape only by considering everything doubtful which shows theleast sign of uncertainty. Let us renounce, therefore, all our old views, in order later to accept better ones in their stead; or, perchance, totake the former up again after they shall have stood the test of rationalcriticism. The recognized precaution, never to put complete confidence inthat which has once deceived us, holds of our relation to the senses aselsewhere. It is certain that they sometimes deceive us--perhaps they do soalways. Again, we dream every day of things which nowhere exist, and thereis no certain criterion by which to distinguish our dreams from our wakingmoments, --what guarantee have we, then, that we are not always dreaming?Therefore, our doubt must first of all be directed to the existence ofsense-objects. Nay, even mathematics must be suspected in spite of theapparent certainty of its axioms and demonstrations, since controversyand error are found in it also. 

I doubt or deny, then, that the world is what it appears to be, that thereis a God, that external objects exist, that I have a body, that twicetwo are four. One thing, however, it is impossible for me to bring intoquestion, namely, that I myself, who exercise this doubting function, exist. There is one single point at which doubt is forced to halt--at thedoubter, at the self-existence of the thinker. I can doubt everythingexcept that I doubt, and that, in doubting, I am. Even if a superior beingsought to deceive me in all my thinking, he could not succeed unless Iexisted, he could not cause me not to exist so long as I thought. To bedeceived means to think falsely; but that something is thought, no matterwhat it be, is no deception. It might be true, indeed, that nothing at allexisted; but then there would be no one to conceive this non-existence. Granted that everything may be a mistake; yet the being mistaken, thethinking is not a mistake. Everything is denied, but the denier remains. The whole content of consciousness is destroyed; consciousness itself, thedoubting activity, the being of the thinker, is indestructible. _Cogitatiosola a me divelli nequit_. Thus the settled point of departure required forknowledge is found in the _self-certitude of the thinking ego_. From thefact that I doubt, _i. E. _, think, it follows that I, the doubter, thethinker, am. _Cogito, ergo sum_ is the first and most certain of alltruths. 

The principle, "I think, therefore I am, " is not to be considered adeduction from the major premise, "Whatever thinks exists. " It is rathertrue that this general proposition is derived from the particular andearlier one. I must first realize in my own experience that, as thinking, Iexist, before I can reach the general conclusion that thought and existenceare inseparable. This fundamental truth is thus not a syllogism, but anot further deducible, self-evident, immediate cognition, a pureintuition--_sum cogitans_. Now, if my existence is revealed by my activityof thought, if my thought is my being, and the converse, if in me thoughtand existence are identical, then I am a being whose essence consists inthinking. I am a spirit, an ego, a rational soul. My existence follows onlyfrom my thinking, not from any chance action. _Ambulo ergo sum_ would notbe valid, but _mihi videor_ or _puto me ambulare, ergo sum_. If I believeI am walking, I may undoubtedly be deceived concerning the outward action(as, for instance, in dreams), but never concerning my inward belief. _Cogitatio_ includes all the conscious activities of the mind, volition, emotion, and sensation, as well as representation and cognition; they areall _modi cogitandi_. The existence of the mind is therefore the mostcertain of all things. We know the soul better than the body. It is forthe present the only certainty, and every other is dependent on this, thehighest of all. 

What, then, is the peculiarity of this first and most certain knowledgewhich renders it self-evident and independent of all proof, which makesus absolutely unable to doubt it? Its entire clearness and distinctness. Accordingly, I may conclude that everything which I perceive as clearly anddistinctly as the _cogito ergo sum_ is also true, and I reach this generalrule, _omne est verum, quod clare et distincte percipio_. So far, then, wehave gained three things: a challenge; to be inscribed over the portalsof certified knowledge, _de omnibus dubitandum_; a basal truth, _sumcogitans_; a criterion of truth, _clara et distinct a perceptio_. 

The doubt of Descartes is not the expression of a resigned spirit whichrenounces the unattainable; it is precept, not doctrine, the starting pointof philosophy, not its conclusion, a methodological instrument in the handof a strong and confident longing for truth, which makes use of doubt tofind the indubitable. It is not aimed at the possibility of attainingknowledge, but at the opinion that it has already been attained, at thecredulity of the age, at its excessive tendency toward historical andpoly-historical study, which confuses the acquisition and handing down ofinformation with knowledge of the truth. That knowledge alone is certainwhich is self-attained and self-tested--and this cannot be learnedor handed down; it can only be rediscovered through examination andexperience. Instead of taking one's own unsupported conjectures or theopinions of others as a guide, the secret of the search for truth is tobecome independent and of age, to think for one's self; and the only remedyagainst the dangers of self-deception and the ease of repetition is to befound in doubting everything hitherto considered true. This is the meaningof the Cartesian doubt, which is more comprehensive and more thoroughthan the Baconian. Descartes disputed only the certitude of the knowledgepreviously attained, not the possibility of knowledge--for of the latter noman is more firmly convinced than he. He is a rationalist, not a skeptic. The intellect is assured against error just as soon as, freed fromhindrances, it remains true to itself, as it puts forth all its powers andlets nothing pass for truth which is not clearly and distinctly known. Descartes demands the same thing for the human understanding as Rousseau ata later period for the heart: a return to uncorrupted nature. This faith inthe unartificial, the original, the natural, this radical and naturalistictendency is characteristically French. The purification of the mind, itsdeliverance from the rubbish of scholastic learning, from the pressure ofauthority, and from inert acceptance of the thinking of others--this isall. Descartes finds the clearest proof of the mind's capacity for truth inmathematics, whose trustworthiness he never seriously questioned, but onlyhypothetically, in order to exhibit the still higher certainty of the "Ithink, therefore I am. " He wants to give philosophy the stable characterwhich had so impressed him in mathematics when he was a boy, and recommendsher, therefore, not merely the evidence of mathematics as a generalexample, but the mathematical method for definite imitation. Metaphysics, like mathematics, must derive its conclusions by deduction fromself-evident principles. Thus the geometrical method begins its rule inphilosophy, a rule not always attended with beneficial results. 

With this criterion of truth Descartes advances to the consideration ofideas. He distinguishes volition and judgment from ideas in the narrowsense (_imagines_), and divides the latter, according to their origin, intothree classes: _ideae innatae, adventitiae, a me ipso factae_, consideringthe second class, the "adventitious" ideas, the most numerous, but thefirst, the "innate" ideas, the most important. No idea is higher or clearerthan the idea of God or the most perfect being. Whence comes this idea?That every idea must have a cause, follows from the "clear and distinct"principle that nothing produces nothing. It follows from this sameprinciple, _ex nihilo nihil fit_, however, that the cause must contain asmuch reality or perfection--_realitas_ and _perfectio_ are synonymous--asthe effect, for otherwise the overplus would have come from nothing. Somuch ("objective, " representative) reality contained in an idea, so much ormore ("formal, " actual) reality must be contained in its cause. The ideaof God as infinite, independent, omnipotent, omniscient, and creativesubstance, has not come to me through the senses, nor have I formed itmyself. The power to conceive a being more perfect than myself, can haveonly come from someone who is more perfect in reality than I. Since I knowthat the infinite contains more reality than the finite, I may concludethat the idea of the infinite has not been derived from the idea of thefinite by abstraction and negation; it precedes the latter, and I becomeconscious of my defects and my finitude only by comparison with theabsolute perfection of God. This idea, then, must have been implanted in meby God himself. The idea of God is an original endowment; it is as innateas the idea of myself. However incomplete it may be, it is stillsufficient to give a knowledge of God's existence, although not a perfectcomprehension of his being, just as a man may skirt a mountain withoutencircling it. 

Descartes brings in the idea of God in order to escape solipsism. So longas the self-consciousness of the ego remained the only certainty, there wasno conclusive basis for the assumption that anything exists beyond self, that the ideas which apparently come from without are really occasioned byexternal things and do not spring from the mind itself. For our naturalinstinct to refer them to objects without us might well be deceptive. It isonly through the idea of God, and by help of the principle that the causemust contain at least as much reality as the effect, that I am taken beyondmyself and assured that I am not the only thing in the world. For as thisidea contains more of representative, than I of actual reality, I cannothave been its cause. 

To this empirical argument, which derives God's existence from our ideaof God (from the fact that we have an idea of him), Descartes joins the(modified) ontological argument of Anselm, which deduces the existence ofGod from the concept of God. While the ideas of all other things includeonly the possibility of existence, necessary existence is inseparable fromthe concept of the most perfect being. God cannot be thought apart fromexistence; he has the ground of his existence in himself; he is _a se_or _causa sui_. Finally, Descartes adds a third argument. The idea ofperfections which I do not possess can only have been imparted to me by amore perfect being than I, which has bestowed on me all that I am andall that I am capable of becoming. If I had created myself, I would havebestowed upon myself these absent perfections also. And the existence of aplurality of causes is negatived by the supreme perfection which I conceivein the idea of God, the indivisible unity of his attributes. Among theattributes of God his veracity is of special importance. It is impossiblethat he should will to deceive us; that he should be the cause of ourerrors. God would be a deceiver, if he had endowed us with a reason towhich error should appear true, even when it uses all its foresight inavoiding it and assents only to that which it clearly and distinctlyperceives. Error is man's own fault; he falls into it only when he misusesthe divine gift of knowledge, which includes its own standard. ThusDescartes finds new confirmation for his test of truth in the _veracitasdei_. Erdmann has given a better defense of Descartes than the philosopherhimself against the charge that this is arguing in a circle, inasmuch asthe existence of God is proved by the criterion of truth, and then thelatter by the former: The criterion of certitude is the _ratio cognoscendi_of God's existence; God is the _ratio essendi_ of the criterion ofcertitude. In the order of existence God is first, he creates the reasontogether with its criterion; in the order of knowledge the criterionprecedes, and God's existence follows from it. Descartes himself endeavorsto avoid the circle by making _intuitive_ knowledge self-evident, and bynot bringing in the appeal to God's veracity in _demonstrative_ knowledgeuntil, in reflective thought, we no longer have each separate link in thechain of proof present to our minds with full intuitive certainty, but onlyremember that we have previously understood the matter with clearness anddistinctness. 

Our ideas represent in part things, in part qualities. Substance is definedby the concept of independence as _res quae ita existit, ut nulla alia reindigeat ad existendum_; a pregnant definition with which the concept ofsubstance gains the leadership in metaphysics, which it held till the timeof Hume and Kant, sharing it then with the conception of cause or, rather, relinquishing it to the latter. The Spinozistic conclusion that, accordingto the strict meaning of this definition, there is but one substance, God, who, as _causa sui_, has absolutely no need of any other thing in order tohis existence, was announced by Descartes himself. If created substancesare under discussion, the term does not apply to them in the same sense(not _univoce_) as when we speak of the infinite substance; created beingsrequire a different explanation, they are things which need for theirexistence only the co-operation of God, and have no need of one another. Substance is cognized through its qualities, among which one is pre-eminentfrom the fact that it expresses the essence or nature of the thing, andthat it is conceived through itself, without the aid of the others, whilethey presuppose it and cannot be thought without it. The former fundamentalproperties are termed attributes, and these secondary ones, modes oraccidents. Position, figure, motion, are contingent properties ofbody; they presuppose that it is extended or spatial; they are _modiextensionis_, as feeling, volition, desire, representation, and judgmentare possible only in a conscious being, and hence are merely modificationsof thought. Extension is the essential or constitutive attribute of body, and thought of mind. Body is never without extension, and mind neverwithout thought--_mens semper cogitat_. Guided by the self-evidentprinciple that the non-existent has no properties, we argue from aperceived quality to a substance as its possessor or support. Substancesare distinct from one another when we can clearly and distinctly cognizeone without the other. Now, we can adequately conceive mind without acorporeal attribute and body without a spiritual one; the former hasnothing of extension in it, the latter nothing of thought: hence thinkingsubstance and extended substance are entirely distinct and have nothingin common. Matter and mind are distinct _realiter_, matter and extension_idealiter_ merely. Thus we attain three clear and distinct ideas, threeeternal verities: _substantia infinita sive deus, substantia finitacogitans sive mens, substantia extensa sive corpus_. 

By this abrupt contraposition of body and mind as reciprocally independentsubstances, Descartes founded that dualism, as whose typical representativehe is still honored or opposed. This dualism between the material andspiritual worlds belongs to those standpoints which are valid without beingultimate truth; on the pyramid of metaphysical knowledge it takes a high, but not the highest, place. We may not rest in it, yet it retains apermanent value in opposition to subordinate theories. It is in theright against a materialism which still lacks insight into the essentialdistinction between mind and matter, thought and extension, consciousnessand motion; it loses its validity when, with a full consideration andconservation of the distinction between these two spheres, we succeed inbridging over the gulf between them, whether this is accomplished througha philosophy of identity, like that of Spinoza and Schelling, or by anidealism, like that of Leibnitz or Fichte. In any case philosophy retainsas an inalienable possession the negative conclusion, that, in view of theheterogeneity of consciousness and motion, the inner life is not reducibleto material phenomena. This clear and simple distinction, which sets boundsto every confusion of spiritual and material existence, was an act ofemancipation; it worked on the sultry intellectual atmosphere of the timewith the purifying and illuminating power of a lightning flash. We shallfind the later development of philosophy starting from the Cartesiandualism. 

Descartes himself looked upon the fundamental principles which have nowbeen discussed as merely the foundation for his life work, as the entranceportal to his cosmology. Posterity has judged otherwise; it finds his chiefwork in that which he considered a mere preparation for it. The start fromdoubt, the self-certitude of the thinking ego, the rational criterion ofcertitude, the question of the origin of ideas, the concept of substance, the essential distinction between conscious activity and corporeal being, and, also, the principle of thoroughgoing mechanism in the material world(from his philosophy of nature)--these are the thoughts which assure hisimmortality. The vestibule has brought the builder more fame, and hasproved more enduring, than the temple: of the latter only the ruins remain;the former has remained undestroyed through the centuries. 

%2. Nature. %

What guarantee have we for the existence of material objects affecting oursenses? That the ideas of sense do not come from ourselves, is shown bythe fact that it is not in our power to determine the objects which weperceive, or the character of our perception of them. The supposition thatGod has caused our perceptions directly, or by means of something which hasno resemblance whatever to an external object extended in three dimensionsand movable, is excluded by the fact that God is not a deceiver. Inreliance on God's veracity we may accept as true whatever the reasondeclares concerning body, though not all the reports of the senses, which so often deceive us. At the instance of the senses we clearly anddistinctly perceive matter distinct from our mind and from God, extendedin three dimensions, length, breadth, and depth, with variously formed andvariously moving parts, which occasion in us sensations of many kinds. Thebelief that perception makes known things as they really are is a prejudiceof sense to be discarded; on the contrary, it merely informs us concerningthe utility or harmfulness of objects, concerning their relation to man asa being composed of soul and body. (The body is that material thing whichis very intimately joined with the mind, and occasions in the lattercertain feelings, _e. G. _, pain, which as merely cogitative it would nothave. ) Sense qualities, as color, sound, odor, cannot constitute theessence of matter, for their variation or loss changes nothing in it; I canabstract from them without the material thing disappearing. [1] There is oneproperty, however, extensive magnitude (_quantitas_), whose removal wouldimply the destruction of matter itself. Thus I perceive by pure thoughtthat the essence of matter consists in extension, in that which constitutesthe object of geometry, in that magnitude which is divisible, figurable, and movable. This thesis (_corpus = extensio sive spatium_) is nextdefended by Descartes against several objections. In reply to the objectiondrawn from the condensation and rarefaction of bodies, he urges that theapparent increase or decrease in extension is, in fact, a mere change offigure; that the rarefaction of a body depends on the increase in size ofthe intervals between its parts, and the entrance into them of foreignbodies, just as a sponge swells up when its pores become filled with waterand, therefore, enlarged. The demand that the pores, and the bodies whichforce their way into them, should always be perceptible to the senses, isgroundless. He meets the second point, that we call extension by itself_space_, and not body, by maintaining that the distinction betweenextension and corporeal substance is a distinction in thought, and not inreality; that attribute and substance, mathematical and physical bodies, are not distinct in fact but only in our thought of them. We apply theterm space to extension in general, as an abstraction, and body to a givenindividual, determinate, limited extension. In reality, wherever extensionis, there substance is also, --the non-existent has no extension, --andwherever space is, there matter is also. Empty space does not exist. When we say a vessel is empty, we mean that the bodies which fill it areimperceptible; if it were absolutely empty its sides would touch. Descartesargues against the atomic theory and against the finitude of the world, ashe argues against empty space: matter, as well as space, has no smallest, indivisible parts, and the extension of the world has no end. In theidentification of space and matter the former receives fullness fromthe latter, and the latter unlimitedness from the former, both internalunlimitedness (endless divisibility) and external (boundlessness). Hencethere are not several matters but only one (homogeneous) matter, and onlyone (illimitable) world. 

[Footnote 1: They are merely subjective states in the perceiver, andentirely unlike the motions which give rise to them, although there isa certain agreement, as the differences and variations in sensation areparalleled by those in the object. ]

Matter is divisible, figurable, movable quantity. Natural science needs noother principles than these indisputably true conceptions, by which allnatural phenomena may be explained, and must employ no others. The mostimportant is motion, on which all the diversity of forms depends. Corporealbeing has been shown to be extension; corporeal becoming is motion. Motionis defined as "the transporting of one part of matter, or of one body, fromthe vicinity of those bodies that are in immediate contact with it, or which we regard as at rest, to the vicinity of other bodies. " Thisseparation of bodies is reciprocal, hence it is a matter of choice whichshall be considered at rest. Besides its own proper motion in reference tothe bodies in its immediate vicinity, a body can participate in very manyother motions: the traveler walking back and forth on the deck of a ship, for instance, in the motion of the vessel, of the waves, and of the earth. The common view of motion as an activity is erroneous; since it requiresforce not only to set in motion bodies which are at rest, but also to stopthose which are in motion, it is clear that motion implies no more activitythan rest. Both are simply different states of matter. Since there is noempty space, each motion spreads to a whole circle of bodies: A forces Bout of its place, B drives out C, and so on, until Z takes up the positionwhich A has left. 

The ultimate cause of motion is God. He has created bodies with anoriginal measure of motion and rest, and, in accordance with his immutablecharacter, he preserves this quantity of motion unchanged: it remainsconstant in the world as a whole, though it varies in individual bodies. For with the power to create or destroy motion bodies lack, further, thepower to alter their quantity of motion. By the side of God, the primarycause of motion, the laws of motion appear as secondary causes. The firstof these is the one become familiar under the name, law of inertia:Everything continues of itself in the state (of motion or rest) in which itis, and changes its state only as a result of some extraneous cause. Thesecond of these laws, which are so valuable in mechanics, runs: Everyportion of matter tends to continue a motion which has been begun in thesame direction, hence in a straight line, and changes its direction onlyunder the influence of another body, as in the case of the circle abovedescribed. Descartes bases these laws on the unchangeableness of God andthe simplicity of his world-conserving (_i. E. _, constantly creative)activity. The third law relates to the communication of motion; butDescartes does not recognize the equality of action and reaction asuniversally as the fact demands. If a body in motion meets another body, and its power (to continue its motion in a straight line) is less than theresistance of the other on which it has impinged, it retains its motion, but in a different direction: it rebounds in the opposite direction. If, onthe contrary, its force is greater, it carries the other body along withit, and loses so much of its own motion as it imparts to the latter. Theseven further rules added to these contain much that is erroneous. As_actio in distans_ is rejected, all the phenomena of motion are traced backto pressure and impulse. The distinction between fluid and solid bodies isbased on the greater or less mobility of their parts. 

The leading principle in the special part of the Cartesian physics, --wecan only briefly sketch it, --which embraces, first, celestial, and, then, terrestial phenomena, is the axiom that we cannot estimate God's power andgoodness too highly, nor ourselves too meanly. It is presumptuous to seekto comprehend the purposes of God in creation, to consider ourselvesparticipants in his plans, to imagine that things exist simply for oursake--there are many things which no man sees and which are of advantageto none. Nothing is to be interpreted teleologically, but all must beinterpreted from clearly known attributes, hence purely mechanically. After treating of the distances of the various heavenly bodies, of theindependent light of the sun and the fixed stars and the reflected light ofthe planets, among which the earth belongs, Descartes discusses the motionof the heavenly bodies. In reference to the motion of the earth he seeks amiddle course between the theories of Copernicus and Tycho Brahé. He agreeswith Copernicus in the main point, but, in reliance on his definitionof motion, maintains that the earth is at rest, viz. , in respect to itsimmediate surroundings. It is clear that the harmony of his views withthose of the Church (though it was only a verbal agreement) was notunwelcome to him. According to his hypothesis, --as he suggests, perhaps anerroneous hypothesis, --the fluid matter which fills the heavenly spaces, and which may be compared to a vortex or whirlpool, circles about the sunand carries the planets along with it. Thus the planets move in relation tothe sun, but are at rest in relation to the adjacent portions of the matterof the heavens. In view of the biblical doctrine, according to which theworld and all that therein is was created at a stroke, he apologeticallydescribes his attempt to explain the origin of the world from chaos underthe laws of motion as a scientific fiction, intended merely to make theprocess more comprehensible. It is more easily conceivable, if we thinkof the things in the world as though they had been gradually formed fromelements, as the plant develops from the seed. We now pass to the Cartesiananthropology, with its three chief objects: the body, the soul, and theunion of the two. 

3. %Man. %

The human body, like all organic bodies, is a machine. Artificial automataand natural bodies are distinguished only in degree. Machines fashioned bythe hand of man perform their functions by means of visible and tangibleinstruments, while natural bodies employ organs which, for the most part, are too minute to be perceived. As the clock-maker constructs a clock fromwheels and weights so that it is able to go of itself, so God has mademan's body out of dust, only, being a far superior artist, he produces awork of art which is better constructed and capable of far more wonderfulmovements. The cause of death is the destruction of some important part ofthe machine, which prevents it from running longer; a corpse is a brokenclock, and the departure of the soul comes only as a result of death. Thecommon opinion that the soul generates life in the body is erroneous. Itis rather true that life must be present before the soul enters into unionwith the body, as it is also true that life must have ended before itdissolves the bond. 

The sole principles of physiology are motion and heat. The heat (vitalwarmth, a fire without light), which God has put in the heart as thecentral organ of life, has for its function the promotion of thecirculation of the blood, in the description of which Descartes mentionswith praise the discoveries of Harvey _(De Motu Cordis et Sanguinis inAnimalibus_, 1628). From the blood are separated its finest, most fiery, and most mobile parts, called by Descartes "animal spirits" _(spiritusanimales sive corporales_), and described as a "very subtle wind" or "pureand vivid flame, " which ascend into the cavities of the brain, reachthe pineal gland suspended in its center _(conarion, glans pinealis, glandula_), pass into the nerves, and, by their action on the musclesconnected with the nerves, effect the motions of the limbs. These viewsrefer to the body alone, and so are as true of animals as of men. Ifautomata existed similar to animals in all respects, both external andinternal, it would be absolutely impossible to distinguish them from realanimals. If, however, they were made to resemble human bodies, two signswould indicate their unreality--we would find no communication of ideas bymeans of language, and also an absence of those bodily movements whichtake their origin in the reason (and not merely in the constitution of thebody). The only thing which raises man above the brute is his rationalsoul, which we are on no account to consider a product of matter, but whichis an express creation of God, superadded. The union of the soul or themind _(anima sive mens_) with the body is, it is true, not so loose thatthe mind merely dwells in the body, like a pilot in a ship, nor, on theother hand, in view of the essential contrariety of the two substances, isit so intimate as to be more than a _unio compositionis_. Although the soulis united to the whole body, an especially active intercourse between themis developed at a single point, the pineal gland, which is distinguished byits central, protected position, above all, by the fact that it is the onlycerebral organ that is not double. This gland, together with the animalspirits passing to and from it, mediates between mind and body; and as thepoint of union for the twofold impressions from the (right and left) eyesand ears, without which objects would be perceived double instead ofsingle, is the seat of the soul. Here the soul exercises a direct influenceon the body and is directly affected by it; here it dwells, and at willproduces a slight, peculiar movement of the gland, through this a changein the course of the animal spirits (for it is not capable of generatingmotion, but only of changing its direction), and, finally, movements of themembers; just as, on the other hand, it remarks the slightest change in thecourse of the _spiritus_ through a corresponding movement of the gland, whose motions vary according to the sensuous properties of the object to beperceived, and responds by sensations. Although Descartes thus limits thedirect interaction of soul and body to a small part of the organism, hemakes an exception in the case of _memoria_, which appears to him to bemore of a physical than a psychical function, and which he conjectures tobe diffused through the whole brain. 

In spite of the comprehensive meaning which Descartes gives to the notion_cogitatio_, it is yet too narrow to leave room for an _anima vegetativa_and an _anima sensitiva_. Whoever makes mind and soul equivalent, holdsthat their essence consists in conscious activity alone, and interpretssensation as a mode of thought, cannot escape the paradox of denying toanimals the possession of a soul. Descartes does not shrink from sucha conclusion. Animals are mere machines; they are bodies animated, butsoulless; they lack conscious perception and appetition, though not theappearance of them. When a clock strikes seven it knows nothing of thefact; it does not regret that it is so late nor long soon to be able tostrike eight; it wills nothing, feels nothing, perceives nothing. The lotof the brute is the same. It sees and hears nothing, it does not hunger orthirst, it does not rejoice or fear, if by these anything more than merecorporeal phenomena is to be meant; of all these it possesses merely theunconscious material basis; it moves and motion goes on in it--that is all. The psychology of Descartes, which has had important results, [1] divides_cogitationes_ into two classes: _actiones_ and _passiones_. Action denoteseverything which takes its origin in, and is in the power of, the soul;passion, everything which the soul receives from without, in which it canmake no change, which is impressed upon it. The further development of thisdistinction is marred by the crossing of the most diverse lines of thought, resulting in obscurities and contradictions. Descartes's simple, naïvehabits of thought and speech, which were those of a man of the world ratherthan of a scholar, were quite incompatible with the adoption and consistentuse of a finely discriminated terminology; he is very free with _sive_, andnot very careful with the expressions _actio, passio, perceptio, affectio, volitio_. First he equates activity and willing, for the will springsexclusively from the soul--it is only in willing that the latter isentirely independent; while, on the other hand, passivity is madeequivalent to representation and cognition, for the soul does not createits ideas, but receives them, --sensuous impressions coming to her quiteevidently from the body. These equations, "_actio_--the practical, _passio_= the theoretical function, " are soon limited and modified, however. Thenatural appetites and affections are forms of volition, it is true, but notfree products of the mind, for they take their origin in its connectionwith the body. Further, not all perceptions have a sensuous origin; whenthe soul makes free use of its ideas in imagination, especially when inpure thought it dwells on itself, when without the interference of theimagination it gazes on its rational nature, it is by no means passivemerely. Every act of the will, again, is accompanied by the consciousnessof volition. The _volitio_ is an activity, the _cogitatio volitionis_ apassivity; the soul affects itself, is passively affected through its ownactivity, is at the same instant both active and passive. 

[Footnote 1: For details cf. The able monograph of Dr. Anton Koch, 1881. ]

Thus not every volition, _e. G. _ sensuous desire, is action nor allperception, _e. G. _ that of the pure intellect, passion. Finally, certainpsychical phenomena fall indifferently under the head of perception or ofvolition, _e. G. _, pain, which is both an indistinct idea of something andan impulse to shun it. In accordance with these emendations, and omittingcertain disturbing points of secondary importance, the matter may be thusrepresented:

 COGITATIO. ¦ ¦ ACTIO ¦ PASSIO ¦ ¦ ¦(Mens sola; clarae et distinctae ¦ (Mens unita cum corpore;ideae. ) ¦ confusae ideae. ) ¦VOLITIO: ¦ 6. Voluntas. 3b. Commotiones ¦ 3a. Affectus. 2. Appetitus naturales. ¦ intellectuales¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ ¦ \ / ¦ ¦ --------v------- Judicium. ¦ Sensus interni---------------------------------+----------------------------------- ¦ ¦PERCEPTIO: 4. Imaginatio ------^------ / \ 5. Intellectus 4b. Phantasia. ¦ 4a. Memoria. 1. Sensus externi. 

Accordingly six grades of mental function are to be distinguished: (1)The external senses. (2) The natural appetites. (3) The passions (which, together with the natural appetites, constitute the internal senses, and from which the mental emotions produced by the intellect are quitedistinct). (4) The imagination with its two divisions, passive memory andactive phantasy. (5) The intellect or reason. (6) The will. These variousstages or faculties are, however, not distinct parts of the soul, as in theold psychology, in opposition to which Descartes emphatically defends the_unity of the soul_. It is one and the same psychical power that exercisesthe higher and the lower, the rational and the sensuous, the practical andthe theoretical activities. 

Of the mental functions, whether representative images, perceptions, orvolitions, a part are referred to body (to parts of our own body, oftenalso to external objects), and produced by the body (by the animal spiritsand, generally, by the nerves as well), while the rest find both object andcause in the soul. Intermediate between the two classes stand those actsof the will which are caused by the soul, but which relate to the body, _e. G. _, when I resolve to walk or leap; and, what is more important, the_passions_, which relate to the soul itself, but which are called forth, sustained, and intensified by certain motions of the animal spirits. Sinceonly those beings which consist of a body as well as a soul are capable ofthe passions, these are specifically human phenomena. These affections, though very numerous, may be reduced to a few simple or primary ones, of which the rest are mere specializations or combinations. Descartesenumerates six primitive passions (which number Spinoza afterward reducedone-half)--_admiratio, amor et odium, cupiditas (désir), gaudium ettristitia_. The first and the fourth have no opposites, the former beingneither positive nor negative, and the latter both at once. Wonder, whichincludes under it esteem and contempt, signifies interest in an objectwhich neither attracts us by its utility nor repels us by its hurtfulness, and yet does not leave us indifferent. It is aroused by the powerful orsurprising impression made by the extraordinary, the rare, the unexpected. Love seeks to appropriate that which is profitable; hate, to ward off thatwhich is harmful, to destroy that which is hostile. Desire or longing lookswith hope or fear to the future. When that which is feared or hoped forhas come to pass, joy and grief come in, which relate to existing good andevil, as desire relates to those to come. 

The Cartesian theory of the passions forms the bridge over which its authorpasses from psychology to ethics. No soul is so weak as to be incapable ofcompletely mastering its passions, and of so directing them that from themall there will result that joyous temper advantageous to the reason. Thefreedom of the will is unlimited. Although a direct influence on thepassions is denied it, --it can neither annul them merely at its bidding, nor at once reduce them to silence, at least, not the more violentones, --it still has an indirect power over them in two ways. During thecontinuance of the affection (e. G. , fear) it is able to arrest the bodilymovements to which the affection tends (flight), though not the emotionitself, and, in the intervals of quiet, it can take measures to render anew attack of the passion less dangerous. Instead of enlisting one passionagainst another, a plan which would mean only an appearance of freedom, but in fact a continuance in bondage, the soul should fight with its ownweapons, with fixed maxims _(judicia)_, based on certain knowledge of goodand evil. The will conquers the emotions by means of principles, by clearand distinct knowledge, which sees through and corrects the false valuesascribed to things by the excitement of the passions. Besides this negativerequirement, "subjection of the passions, " Descartes' contributions toethics--in the letters to Princess Elizabeth on human happiness, and toQueen Christina on love and the highest good--were inconsiderable. Wisdomis the carrying out of that which has been seen to be best, virtue issteadfastness, sin inconstancy therein. The goal of human endeavor is peaceof conscience, which is attained only through the determination to bevirtuous, i. E. , to live in harmony with self. 

Besides its ethical mission, the will has allotted to it the theoreticalfunction of affirmation and negation, i. E. , of judgment. If God in hisveracity and goodness has bestowed on man the power to know truth, how ismisuse of this power, how is error possible? Single sensations and ideascannot be false, but only judgments--the reference of ideas to objects. Judgment or assent is a matter of the will; so that when it makes erroneousaffirmations or negations, when it prefers the false judgment to the true, it alone is guilty. Our understanding is limited, our will unlimited; thelatter reaches further than the former, and can assent to a judgmenteven before its constituent parts have attained the requisite degree ofclearness. False judgment is prejudgment, for which we can hold neither Godnor our own nature responsible. The possibility of error, as well as thepossibility of avoiding error, resides in the will. This has the power topostpone its assent or dissent, to hold back its decision until the ideashave become entirely clear and distinct. The supreme perfection is the_libertas non errandi_. Thus knowledge itself becomes a moral function; thetrue and the good are in the last analysis identical. The contradictionwith which Descartes has been charged, that he makes volition and cognitionreciprocally determinative, that he bases moral goodness on the clearnessof ideas and _vice versa_, does not exist. We must distinguish between atheoretical and a practical stadium in the will; it is true of the latterthat it depends on knowledge of the right, of the former that the knowledgeof the right is dependent on it. In order to the possibility of moral_action_ the will must conform to clear judgment; in order to theproduction of the latter the will must _be_ moral. It is the unit-soul, which first, by freely avoiding overhasty judgment, cognizes the truth, toexemplify it later in moral conduct. 

CHAPTER III. 

THE DEVELOPMENT AND TRANSFORMATION OF CARTESIANISM IN THE NETHERLANDS ANDIN FRANCE. [1]

[Footnote 1: Cf. G. Monchamp, _Histoire du Cartésianisme en Belgique_, Brussels, 1886. ]

%1. Occasionalism: Geulincx. %

The propagation and defense of a system of thought soon give occasionto its adherents to purify, complete, and transform it. Obscurities andcontradictions are discovered, which the master has overlooked or allowedto remain, and the disciple exerts himself to remove them, while retainingthe fundamental doctrines. In the system of Descartes there were twoclosely connected points which demanded clarification and correction, viz. , his double dualism (1) between extended substance and thinking substance, (2) between created substance and the divine substance. In contrast witheach other matter and mind are substances or independent beings, forthe clear conception of body contains naught of consciousness, thought, representation, and that of mind nothing of extension, matter, motion. In comparison with God they are not so; apart from the creator they canneither exist nor be conceived. In every case where the attempt is made todistinguish between intrinsic and general (as here, between substance inthe stricter and wider senses), an indecision betrays itself which is notpermanently endured. 

The substantiality of the material and spiritual worlds maintained byDescartes finds an excellent counterpart in his (entirely modern) tendencyto push the _concursus dei_ as far as possible into the background, tolimit it to the production of the original condition of things, to giveover motion, once created, to its own laws, and ideas implanted in the mindto its own independent activity; but it is hard to reconcile with it theview, popular in the Middle Ages, that the preservation of the world is aperpetual creation. In the former case the relation of God to the world ismade an external relation; in the latter, an internal one. In the one theworld is thought of as a clock, which once wound up runs on mechanically, in the second it is likened to a piece of music which the composer himselfrecites. If God preserves created things by continually recreating themthey are not substances at all; if they are substances, preservationbecomes an empty word, which we repeat after the theologians without givingit any real meaning. 

Matter and spirit stand related in our thought only by way of exclusion;is the same true of them in reality? They can be conceived and can existwithout each other; can they, further, without each other effect all thatwe perceive them to accomplish? There are some motions in the materialworld which we refer to a voluntary decision of the soul, and some amongour ideas (_e. G. _, perceptions of the senses) which we refer to corporealphenomena as their causes. If body and soul are substances, how can theybe dependent on each other in certain of their activities, if they are ofopposite natures, how can they affect each other? How can the incorporeal, unmoved spirit move the animal spirits and receive impulses from them?The substantiality (reciprocal independence) of body and mind, and theirinteraction (partial reciprocal dependence), are incompatible, one orthe other is illusory and must be abandoned. The materialists (Hobbes)sacrifice the independence of mind, the idealists (Berkeley, Leibnitz), theindependence of matter, the occasionalists, the interaction of the two. This forms the advance of the last beyond Descartes, who either naïvelymaintains that, in spite of the contrariety of material and mentalsubstances, an exchange of effects takes place between them as anempirical fact, or, when he realizes the difficulty of the anthropologicalproblem, --how is the union of the two substances in man possible, --ascribesthe interaction of body and mind, together with the union of the two, tothe power of God, and by this abandonment of the attempt at a naturalexplanation, opens up the occasionalistic way of escape. Further, inhis more detailed description of the intercourse between body and mindDescartes had been guilty of direct violations of his laws of naturalphilosophy. If the quantity of motion is declared to be invariable and achange in its direction is attributed to mechanical causes alone, we mustnot ascribe to the soul the power to move the pineal gland, even in thegentlest way, nor to control the direction of the animal spirits. Theseinconsistencies also are removed by the occasionalistic thesis. 

The question concerning the substantiality of mind and matter in relationto God, is involved from the very beginning in this latter problem, "Howis the appearance of interaction between the two to be explained withoutdetriment to their substantiality in relation to each other?" The denialof the reciprocal dependence of matter and spirit leads to sharperaccentuation of their common dependence upon God. Thus occasionalism formsthe transition to the pantheism of Spinoza, Geulincx emphasizing thenon-substantiality of spirits, and Malebranche the non-substantiality ofbodies, while Spinoza combines and intensifies both. And yet history wasnot obliging enough to carry out this convenient and agreeable scheme ofdevelopment with chronological accuracy, for she had Spinoza complete hispantheism _before_ Malebranche had prepared the way. The relation which wasnoted in the case of Bruno and Campanella is here repeated: the earlierthinker assumes the more advanced position, while the later one seemsbackward in comparison; and that which, viewed from the standpoint of thequestion itself, may be considered a transition link, is historically to betaken as a reaction against the excessive prosecution of a line of thoughtwhich, up to a certain point, had been followed by the one who now shrinksback from its extreme consequences. The course of philosophy takes first atheological direction in the earlier occasionalists, then a metaphysical(naturalistic) trend in Spinoza, to renew finally, in Malebranche, thefirst of these movements in opposition to the second. The Cartesian school, as a whole, however, exhibits a tendency toward mysticism, which wasconcealed to a greater or less extent by the rationalistic need for clearconcepts, but never entirely suppressed. 

Although the real interaction of body and mind be denied, some explanationmust, at least, be given for the appearance of interaction, _i. E. _ for theactual correspondence of bodily and mental phenomena. Occasionalism denotesthe theory of occasional causes. It is not the body that gives rise toperception, nor the mind that causes the motion of the limbs which it hasdetermined upon--neither the one nor the other can receive influence fromits fellow or exercise influence upon it; but it is God who, "on theoccasion" of the physical motion (of the air and nerves); produces thesensation (of sound), and, "at the instance" of the determination of thewill, produces the movement of the arms. The systematic development andmarked influence of this theory, which had already been more or lessclearly announced by the Cartesians Cordemoy and De la Forge, [1] was due tothe talented Arnold Geulincx (1624-69), who was born at Antwerp, taughtin Lyons (1646-58) and Leyden, and became a convert to Calvinism. Itultimately gained over the majority of the numerous adherents of theCartesian philosophy in the Dutch universities, --Renery (died 1639) andRegius (van Roy; _Fundamenta Physicae_, 1646; _Philosophia Naturalis_, 1661) in Utrecht; further, Balthasar Bekker (1634-98; _The WorldBewitched_, 1690), the brave opponent of the belief in angels and devils, of magic, and of prosecution for witchcraft, --in the clerical orders inFrance and, finally, in Germany. 

[Footnote 1: Gerauld de Cordemoy, a Parisian advocate (died 1684, _Dissertations Philosophiques_, 1666), communicated his occasionalisticviews orally to his friends as early as 1658 (cf. L. Stein in the _Archivfür Geschichte der Philosophie_, vol. I. , 1888, p. 56). Louis de la Forge, a physician of Saumur, _Tractatus de Mente Humana_, 1666, previouslypublished in French; cf. Seyfarth, Gotha, 1887. But the logician, JohannClauberg, professor in Duisburg (1622-65; _Opera_, edited by Schalbruch, 1691), is, according to the investigations of Herm. Müller _(J. Claubergund seine Stellung im Cartesianismus_, Jena, 1891), to be stricken fromthe list of thinkers who prepared the way for occasionalism, since in hisdiscussion of the anthropological problem (_corporis et animae conjunctio_)he merely develops the Cartesian position, and does not go beyond it. Heemploys the expression _occasio_, it is true, but not in the sense of theoccasionalists. According to Clauberg the bodily phenomenon becomes thestimulus or "occasion" (not for God, but) for the soul to produce fromitself the corresponding mental phenomenon. ]

Geulincx himself, besides two inaugural addresses at Leyden (as Lector in1662, Professor Extraordinary in 1665), published the following treatises:_Quaestiones Quodlibeticae_ (in the second edition, 1665, entitled_Saturnalia_) with an important introductory discourse; _Logica FundamentisSuis Restituta_, 1662; _Methodus Inveniendi Argumenta_ (new edition byBontekoe, 1675); and the first part of his Ethics--_De Virtute et Primisejus Proprietatibus, quae vulgo Virtutes Cardinales Vocantur, TractatusEthicus Primus_, 1665. This chief work was issued complete in all six partswith the title, _[Greek: Gnothi seauton] sive Ethica_, 1675, by Bontekoe, under the pseudonym Philaretus. The _Physics_, 1688, the _Metaphysics_, 1691, and the _Annotata Majora in Cartesii Principia Philosophiae_, 1691, were also posthumous publications, from the notes of his pupils. In view ofthe rarity of these volumes, and the importance of the philosopher, it iswelcome news that J. P. N. Land has undertaken an edition of the collectedworks, in three volumes, of which the first two have already appeared. [1]The Hague, 1891-92. [2]

[Footnote 1: On vol. I. Cf. Eucken, _Philosophische Monatshefte_, vol. Xxviii. , 1892, p, 200 _seq_. ]

[Footnote 2: On Geulincx see V. Van der Haeghen, _Geulincx, Étude sur saVie, sa Philosophie, et ses Ouvrages_, Ghent, 1886, including a completebibliography; and Land in vol. Iv. Of the _Archiv für Geschichte derPhilosophie_, 1890. [English translation, _Mind_, vol. Xvi. P. 223 _seq_. ]]

Geulincx bases the _occasionalistic_ position on the principle, _quodnescis, quomodo fiat, id non facis_. Unless I know how an event happens, Iam not its cause. Since I have no consciousness how my decision to speak orto walk is followed by the movement of my tongue or limbs, I am not the onewho effects these. Since I am just as ignorant how the sensation in my mindcomes to pass as a sequel to the motion in the sense-organ; since, further, the body as an unconscious and non-rational being can effect nothing, it isneither I nor the body that causes the sensation. Both the bodily movementand the sense-impression are, rather, the effects of a higher power, of theinfinite spirit. The act of my will and the sense-stimulus are only _causaeoccasionales_ for the divine will, in an incomprehensible way, to effect, in the one case, the execution of the movement of the limbs resolved upon, and, in the other, the origin of the perception; they are (unsuitable)instruments, effective only in the hand of God; he brings it to pass thatmy will goes out beyond my soul, and that corporeal motion has results init. The meaning of this doctrine is misapprehended when it is assumed, --anassumption to which the Leibnitzian account of occasionalism may misleadone, --that in it the continuity of events, alike in the material and thepsychical world, is interrupted by frequent scattered interferences fromwithout, and all becoming transformed into a series of disconnectedmiracles. An order of nature such as would be destroyed by God's actiondoes not exist; God brings everything to pass; even the passage of motionfrom one body to another is his work. Further, Geulincx expressly says thatGod has imposed such _laws_ on motion that it harmonizes with the soul'sfree volition, of which, however, it is entirely independent (similarstatements occur also in De la Forge). And with this our thinkerappears--as Pfleiderer[1] emphasizes--closely to approach thepre-established harmony of Leibnitz. The occasionalistic theory certainlyconstitutes the preliminary step to the Leibnitzian; but an essentialdifference separates the two. The advance does not consist in thesubstitution by Leibnitz of one single miracle at creation for a number ofisolated and continually recurring ones, but (as Leibnitz himself remarks, in reply to the objection expressed by Father Lami, that a perpetualmiracle is no miracle) in the exchange of the immediate causality of Godfor natural causation. With Geulincx mind and body act on each other, butnot by their own power; with Leibnitz the monads do not act on one another, but they act by their own power. [2]--When Geulincx in the same connectionadvances to the statements that, in view of the limitedness and passivityof finite things, God is the only truly active, because the onlyindependent, being in the world, that all activity is his activity, thatthe human (finite) spirit is related to the divine (infinite) spirit asthe individual body to space in general, viz. , as a section of it, so that, by thinking away all limitations from our mind, we find God in us andourselves in him, it shows how nearly he verges on pantheism. 

[Footnote 1: Edm. Pfleiderer, _Geulincx, als Hauptvertreter deroccasionalistischen Metaphysik und Ethik_, Tübingen, 1882; the same, _Leibniz und Geulincx mit besonderer Beziehung auf ihr Uhrengleichnis_, Tübingen, 1884. ]

[Footnote 2: See Ed. Zeller, _Sitzungsberichte der Berliner Akademie derWissenschaften_, 1884, p. 673 _seq_. ; Eucken, _Philosophische Monatshefte_, vol. Xix. , 1893, p. 525 _seq_; vol. Xxiii. , 1887, p. 587 _seq_. ]

Geulincx's services to noëtics have been duly recognized by Ed. Grimm(Jena, 1875), although with an excessive approximation to Kant. In thisfield he advances many acute and suggestive thoughts, as the deductionwhich reappears in Lotze, that the actually existent world of figure andmotion cognized by thought, though the real world, is poorer than thewonderful world of motley sensuous appearance conjured forth in our mindson the occasion of the former, that the latter is the more beautiful andmore worthy of a divine author. Further, the conviction, also held byLotze, that the fundamental activities of the mind cannot be defined, butonly known through inner experience or immediate consciousness (hewho loves, knows what love is; it is a _per conscientiam et intimamexperientiam notissima res_); the praiseworthy attempt to give a systematicarrangement, according to their derivation from one another, to the innatemathematical concepts, which Descartes had simply co-ordinated (the conceptof surface is gained from the concept of body by abstracting from the thirddimension, thickness--the act of thus abstracting from certain parts ofthe content of thought, Geulincx terms _consideratio_ in contrast to_cogitatio_, which includes the whole content); and, finally, the stillmore important inquiry, whether it is possible for us to reach a knowledgeof things independently of the forms of the understanding, as in purethought we strip off the fetters of sense. The possibility of this isdenied; there is no higher faculty of knowledge to act as judge over theunderstanding, as the latter over the sensibility, and even the wisestman cannot free himself from the forms of thought (categories, _modicogitandi_). And yet the discussion of the question is not useless: thereason should examine into the unknowable as well as the knowable; it isonly in this way that we learn that it is unknowable. As the highest formsof thought Geulincx names subject (the empty concept of an existent, _ens_or _quod est_) and predicate _(modus entis_), and derives them from twofundamental activities of the mind, a combining function _(simulsumtio, totatio_) and an abstracting function (one which removes the _notasubjecti_). Substance and accident, substantive and adjective, areexpressions for subjective processes of thought and hence do not holdof things in themselves. With reference to the importance, nay, to theindispensability, of linguistic signs in the use of the understanding, thescience of the forms of thought is briefly termed grammar. 

The principle _ubi nihil vales, ibi nihil velis_, forms the connectionbetween the occasionalistic metaphysics and ethics, the latter deducing thepractical consequences of the former. Where thou canst do nothing, therewill nothing. Since we can effect nothing in the material world, to whichwe are related merely as spectators, we ought also not to seek in it themotives and objects of our actions. God, does not require works, butdispositions only, for the result of our volition is beyond our power. Ourmoral vocation, then, consists in renunciation of the world and retirementinto ourselves, and in patient faithfulness at the post assigned to us. Virtue is _amor dei ac rationis_, self-renouncing, active, obedient loveto God and to the reason as the image and law of God in us. The cardinalvirtues are _diligentia_, sedulous listening for the commands of thereason; _obedientia_, the execution of these _justitia_, the conforming ofthe whole life to what is perceived to be right; finally, _humilitas_, the recognition of our impotency and self-renunciation (_inspectio_ and_despectio_, or _derelictio, neglectus, contemptus, incuria sui_). Thehighest of these is humility, pious submission to the divine order ofthings; its condition, the self-knowledge commended in the title of theEthics; the primal evil, self-love (_Philautia_--_ipsissimum peccatum_). Man is unhappy because he seeks happiness. Happiness is like our shadows;it shuns us when we pursue it, it follows us when we flee from it. The joyswhich spring from virtue are an adornment of it, not an enticement to it;they are its result, not its aim. The ethics of Geulincx, which we cannotfurther trace out here, surprises one by its approximation to the views ofSpinoza and of Kant. With the former it has in common the principle of lovetoward God, as well as numerous details; with the latter, the absolutenessof the moral law (_in rebus moralibus absolute praecipit ratio aut vetat, nulla interposita conditione_); with both the depreciation of sympathy, onthe ground that it is a concealed egoistic motive. 

The denial of substantiality to individual things, brought in by theoccasionalists, is completed by Spinoza, who boldly and logically proclaimspantheism on the basis of Cartesianism and gives to the divine All-one anaturalistic instead of a theological character. 

%2. Spinoza. %

Benedictus (originally Baruch) de Spinoza sprang from a Jewish family ofPortugal or Spain, which had fled to Holland to escape persecution at home. He was born in Amsterdam in 1632; taught by the Rabbin Morteira, and, in Latin, by Van den Ende, a free-thinking physician who had enjoyed aphilological training; and expelled by anathema from the Jewish communion, 1656, on account of heretical views. During the next four years he foundrefuge at a friend's house in the country near Amsterdam, after which helived in Rhynsburg, and from 1664 in Voorburg, moving thence, in 1669, toThe Hague, where he died in 1677. Spinoza lived in retirement and had fewwants; he supported himself by grinding optical glasses; and, in 1673, declined the professorship at Heidelberg offered him by Karl Ludwig, theElector Palatine, because of his love of quiet, and on account of theuncertainty of the freedom of thought which the Elector had assured him. Spinoza himself made but two treatises public: his dictations on the firstand second parts of Descartes's _Principia Philosophiae_, which had beencomposed for a private pupil, with an appendix, _Cogitata Metaphysica_, 1663, and the _Tractatus Theologico-Politicus_, published anonymouslyin 1670, in defense of liberty of thought and the right to unprejudicedcriticism of the biblical writings. The principles expressed in the latterwork were condemned by all parties as sacrilegious and atheistic, andawakened concern even in the minds of his friends. When, in 1675, Spinozajourneyed to Amsterdam with the intention of giving his chief work, the_Ethics_, to the press, the clergy and the followers of Descartes appliedto the government to forbid its issue. Soon after Spinoza's death it waspublished in the _Opera Posthuma_, 1677, which were issued under the careof Hermann Schuller, [1] with a preface by Spinoza's friend, the physicianLudwig Meyer, and which contained, besides the chief work, three incompletetreatises (_Tractatus Politicus, Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione, Compendium Grammatices Linguae Hebraeae_) and a collection of Letters byand to Spinoza. The _Ethica Ordine Geometrico Demonstrata_, in five parts, treats (1) of God, (2) of the nature and origin of the mind, (3) of thenature and origin of the emotions, (4) of human bondage or the strengthof the passions, (5) of the power of the reason or human freedom. It hasbecome known within recent times that Spinoza made a very early sketchof the system developed in the _Ethics_, the _Tractatus Brevis de Deo etHomine ejusque Felicitate_, of which a Dutch translation in two copies wasdiscovered, though not the original Latin text. This treatise was publishedby Böhmer, 1852, in excerpts, and complete by Van Vloten, 1862, and bySchaarschmidt, 1869. It was not until our own century, and after Jacobi's_Ueber die Lehre des Spinoza in Briefen an Moses Mendelssohn_ (1785)had aroused the long slumbering interest in this much misunderstoodphilosopher, who has been oftener despised than studied, that completeeditions of his works were prepared, by Paulus 1802-03; Gfrörer, 1830;Bruder, 1843-46; Ginsberg (in Kirchmann's _Philosophische Bibliothek_, 4 vols. ), 1875-82; and Van Vloten and Land, [2] 2 vols. , 1882-83. B. Auerbach has worked Spinoza's life into a romantic novel, _Spinoza, einDenkerleben_, 1837; 2d ed. , 1855 [English translation by C. T. Brooks, 1882. ]

[Footnote 1: See L. Stein in the _Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie_, vol. I. , 1888, p. 554 _seq_. ]

[Footnote 2: For the literature on Spinoza the reader is referred toUeberweg and to Van der Linde's _B. Spinoza, Bibliografie_, 1871; whileamong recent works we shall mention only Camerer's _Die Lehre Spinozas_, Stuttgart, 1877. An English translation of _The Chief Works of Spinoza_ hasbeen given by Elwes, 1883-84; a translation of the _Ethics_ by White, 1883; and one of selections from the _Ethics_, with notes, by Fullerton inSneath's Modern Philosophers, 1892. Among the various works on Spinoza, thereader may be referred to Pollock's _Spinoza, His Life and Times_, 1880(with bibliography to same year); Martineau's _Study of Spinoza_, 1883; andJ. Caird's _Spinoza_, Blackwood's Philosophical Classics, 1888. --TR. ]

We shall consider Spinoza's system as a completed whole as it is given inthe _Ethics_; for although it is interesting for the investigator to traceout the development of his thinking by comparing this chief work with itsforerunner (that _Tractatus Brevis_ "concerning God, man, and the happinessof the latter, " whose dialogistical portions we may surmise to have beenthe earliest sketch of the Spinozistic position, and which was followed bythe _Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione_) such a procedure is not equallyvaluable for the student. In regard to Spinoza's relations to otherthinkers it cannot be doubted, since Freudenthal's[1] proof, that he wasdependent to a large degree on the predominant philosophy of the schools, _i. E. _ on the later Scholasticism (Suarez[2]), especially on its Protestantside (Jacob Martini, Combachius, Scheibler, Burgersdijck, Heereboord);Descartes, it is true, felt the same influence. Joël, [3]: Schaarschmidt, Sigwart, [4] R. Avenarius, [5] and Böhmer[6] = have advanced the view thatthe sources of Spinoza's philosophy are not to be sought exclusively inCartesianism, but rather that essential elements were taken from theCabala, from the Jewish Scholasticism (Maimonides, 1190; Gersonides, died1344; Chasdai Crescas, 1410), and from Giordano Bruno. In oppositionto this Kuno Fischer has defended, and in the main successfully, theproposition that Spinoza reached, and must have reached, his fundamentalpantheism by his own reflection as a development of Descartes's principles. The traces of his early Talmudic education, which have been noticed inSpinoza's works, prove no dependence of his leading ideas on Jewishtheology. His pantheism is distinguished from that of the Cabalists byits rejection of the doctrine of emanation, and from Bruno's, whichnevertheless may have influenced him, by its anti-teleological character. When with Greek philosophers, Jewish theologians, and the Apostle Paulhe teaches the immanence of God (_Epist. 21_), when with Maimonides andCrescas he teaches love to God as the principal of morality, and with thelatter of these, determinism also, it is not a necessary consequence thathe derived these theories from them. That which most of all separates himfrom the mediaeval scholastics of his own people, is his rationalisticconviction that God can be known. His agreement with them comes out mostclearly in the _Tractatus Theologico-Politicus_. But even here it holdsonly in regard to undertaking a general criticism of the Scriptures and totheir figurative interpretation, while, on the other hand, the demand fora special historical criticism, and the object which with Spinoza wasthe basis of the investigation as a whole, were foreign to mediaevalJudaism--in fact, entirely modern and original. This object was to makescience independent of religion, whose records and doctrines are to edifythe mind and to improve the character, not to instruct the understanding. "Spinoza could not have learned the complete separation of religion andscience from Jewish literature; this was a tendency which sprang from thespirit of his own time" (Windelband, _Geschichte der neueren Philosophie_, vol. I. P. 194). 

[Footnote 1: J. Freudenthal, _Spinoza und die Scholastik_ in the_Philosophische Aufsätze, Zeller zum 50-Jährigen Doktorjubiläum gewidmet_, Leipsic, 1887, p. 85 _seq_. Freudenthal's proof covers the _CogitataMetaphysica_ and many of the principal propositions of the _Ethics_. ]

[Footnote 2: The Spanish Jesuit, Francis Suarez, lived 1548-1617. _Works_, Venice, 1714 Cf. Karl Werner, _Suarez und die Scholastik der letztenJahrhunderte_, Regensburg, 1861. ]

[Footnote 3: M. Joël, _Don Chasdai Crescas' religions-philosophische Lehrenin ihrem geschichtlichen Einfluss_, 1866; _Spinozas Theo. -pel. Traktatauf seine Quellen geprüft_, 1870; _Zur Genesis der Lehre Spinozas mitbesonderer Berücksichtigung des kurzen Traktats_, 1871. ]

[Footnote 4: _Spinozas neu entdeckter Traktat eläutert u. S. W_. , 1866;_Spinozas kurzer Traktat übersetzt mit Einleitungen und Erläuterungen_, 1870. ]

[Footnote 5: _Ueber die beiden ersten Phasen des SpinozistischenPantheismus und das Verhältniss der zweiten zur dritten Phase_, 1868. ]

[Footnote 6: _Spinozana_ in Fichte's _Zeitschrift für Philosophie_ vols. Xxxvi. , xlii. , lvii. , 1860-70. ]

The logical presuppositions of Spinoza's philosophy lie in the fundamentalideas of Descartes, which Spinoza accentuates, transforms, and adopts. Three pairs of thoughts captivate him and incite him to think them through:first, the rationalistic belief in the power of the human spirit to possessitself of the truth by pure thought, together with confidence in theomnipotence of the mathematical method; second, the concept of substance, together with the dualism of extension and thought; finally, thefundamental mechanical position, together with the impossibilityof interaction between matter and spirit, held in common with theoccasionalists, but reached independently of them. Whatever new elementsare added (_e. G_. , the transformation of the Deity from a mere aid toknowledge into its most important, nay, its only object; as, also, theenthusiastic, directly mystical devotion to the all-embracing world-ground)are of an essentially emotional nature, and to be referred less tohistorical influences than to the individuality of the thinker. Thedivergences from his predecessors, however, especially the extension ofmechanism to mental phenomena and the denial of the freedom of the will, inseparable from this, result simply from the more consistent applicationof Cartesian principles. Spinoza is not an inventive, impulsive spirit, like Descartes and Leibnitz, but a systematic one; his strength does notlie in brilliant inspirations, but in the power of resolutely thinking athing through; not in flashes of thought, but in strictly closed circles ofthought. He develops, but with genius, and to the end. Nevertheless thisconsecutiveness of Spinoza, the praises of which have been unceasingly sungby generations since his day, has its limits. It holds for the unwaveringdevelopment of certain principles derived from Descartes, but not withequal strictness for the inter-connection of the several lines of thoughtfollowed out separately. His very custom of developing a principle straighton to its ultimate consequences, without regard to the needs of the heartor to logical demands from other directions, make it impossible for theresults of the various lines of thought to be themselves in harmony; hisvertical consistency prevents horizontal consistency. If the originaltendencies come into conflict (the consciously held theoretical principlesinto conflict with one another, or with hidden aesthetic or moralprinciples), either one gains the victory over the other or both insiston their claims; thus we have inconsistencies in the one case, andcontradictions in the other (examples of which have been shown by Volkeltin his maiden work, _Pantheismus und Individualismus im Systeme Spinozas_, 1872). Science demands unified comprehension of the given, and seeks thesmallest number of principles possible; but her concepts prove too narrowvessels for the rich plenitude of reality. He who asks from philosophy morethan mere special inquiries finds himself confronted by two possibilities:first, starting from one standpoint, or a few such, he may follow a directcourse without looking to right or left, at the risk that in histhought-calculus great spheres of life will be wholly left out of view, or, at least, will not receive due consideration; or, second, beginning frommany points of departure and ascending along converging lines, he may seeka unifying conclusion. In Spinoza we possess the most brilliant example ofthe former one-sided, logically consecutive power of (also, no doubt, violence in) thought, while Leibnitz furnishes the type of the many-sided, harmonistic thinking. The fact that even the rigorous Spinoza is notinfrequently forced out of the strict line of consistency, proves that theman was more many-sided than the thinker would have allowed himself to be. 

To begin with the formal side of Spinozism: the rationalism of Descartesis heightened by Spinoza into the imposing confidence that absolutelyeverything is cognizable by the reason, that the intellect is able by itspure concepts and intuitions entirely to exhaust the multiform world ofreality, to follow it with its light into its last refuge. [1] Spinoza isjust as much in earnest in regard to the typical character of mathematics. Descartes (with the exception of an example asked for in the second of theObjections, and given as an appendix to the _Meditations_, in which heendeavors to demonstrate the existence of God and the distinction of bodyand spirit on the synthetic Euclidean method), had availed himself of theanalytic form of presentation, on the ground that, though less cogent, itis more suited for instruction since it shows the way by which the matterhas been discovered. Spinoza, on the other hand, rigorously carried out thegeometrical method, even in externals. He begins with definitions, adds tothese axioms (or postulates), follows with propositions or theorems as thechief thing, finally with demonstrations or proofs, which derive the laterpropositions from the earlier, and these in turn from the self-evidentaxioms. To these four principal parts are further added as less essential, deductions or corollaries immediately resulting from the theorems, and themore detailed expositions of the demonstrations or scholia. Besides these, some longer discussions are given in the form of remarks, introductions, and appendices. 

[Footnote 1: Heussler's objections (_Der Rationalismus des_ 17_Jahrhunderts_, 1885, pp. 82-85) to this characterization of Kuno Fischer'sare not convincing. The question is not so much about a principledemonstrable by definite citations as about an unconscious motive inSpinoza's thinking. Fischer's views on this point seem to us correct. Spinoza's mode of thinking is, in fact, saturated with this strongconfidence in the omnipotence of the reason and the rational constitutionof true reality. ]

If everything is to be cognizable through mathematics, then everything musttake place necessarily; even the thoughts, resolutions, and actions of mancannot be free in the sense that they might have happened otherwise. Thusthere is an evident methodological motive at work for the extensionof mechanism to all becoming, even spiritual becoming. But there aremetaphysical reasons also. Descartes had naïvely solved the anthropologicalproblem by the answer that the interaction of mind and body isincomprehensible but actual. The occasionalists had hesitatingly questionedthese conclusions a little, the incomprehensibility as well as theactuality, only at last to leave them intact. For the explanation thatthere is a real influence of body on mind and _vice versa_, though notan immediate but an occasional one, one mediated by the divine will, isscarcely more than a confession that the matter is inexplicable. Spinoza, who admits neither the incognizability of anything real, nor anysupernatural interferences, roundly denies both. There is no intercoursebetween body and soul; yet that which is erroneously considered suchis both actually present and explicable. The assumed interaction is asunnecessary as it is impossible. Body and soul do not need to act on oneanother, because they are not two in kind at all, but constitute one beingwhich may be looked at from two different sides. This is called body whenconsidered under its attribute of extension, and spirit when consideredunder its attribute of thought. It is quite impossible for two substancesto affect each other, because by their reciprocal influence, nay, by theirvery duality, they would lose their independence, and, with this, theirsubstantiality. There is no plurality of substances, but only one, theinfinite, the divine substance. Here we reach the center of the system. There is but one becoming and but one independent, substantial being. Material and spiritual becoming form merely the two sides of one and thesame necessary world-process; particular extended beings and particularthinking beings are nothing but the changeable and transitory states_(modi)_ of the enduring, eternal, unified world-ground. "Necessity inbecoming and unity of being, " mechanism and pantheism--these are thecontrolling conceptions in Spinoza's doctrine. Multiplicity, theself-dependence of particular things, free choice, ends, development, allthis is illusion and error. 

%(a) Substance, Attributes, and Modes%. --There is but one substance, andthis is infinite (I. _prop_. 10, _schol; prop_. 14, _cor_. 1). Why, then, only one and why infinite? With Spinoza as with Descartes independence isthe essence of substantiality. This is expressed in the third definition:"By substance I understand that which is in itself and is conceived bymeans of itself, _i. E. _, that the conception of which can be formed withoutthe aid of the conception of any other thing. " _Per substantiam intelligoid, quod in se est et per se concipitur; hoc est id, cujus conceptusnon indiget conceptu alterius rei, a quo formari debeat_. An absolutelyself-dependent being can neither be limited (since, in respect to itslimits, it would be dependent on the limiting being), nor occur more thanonce in the world. Infinity follows from its self-dependence, and itsuniqueness from its infinity. 

Substance is the being which is dependent on nothing and on whicheverything depends; which, itself uncaused, effects all else; whichpresupposes nothing, but itself constitutes the presupposition of all thatis: it is pure being, primal being, the cause of itself and of all. Thus inSpinoza the being which is without presuppositions is brought into the mostintimate relation with the fullness of multiform existence, not coldly andabstractly exalted above it, as by the ancient Eleatics. Substance is thebeing in (not above) things, that in them which constitutes their reality, which supports and produces them. As the cause of all things Spinoza callsit God, although he is conscious that he understands by the term somethingquite different from the Christians. God does not mean for him atranscendent, personal spirit, but only the _ens absolute infinitum (def. Sexta)_, the essential heart of things: _Deus sive substantia_. 

How do things proceed from God? Neither by creation nor by emanation. Hedoes not put them forth from himself, they do not tear themselves free fromhim, but they follow out of the necessary nature of God, as it follows fromthe nature of the triangle that the sum of its angles is equal to two rightangles (I. _prop_. 17, _schol_. ). They do not come out from him, but remainin him; just this fact that they are in another, in God, constitutes theirlack of self-dependence (I. _prop_. 18, _dem. : nulla res, quae extra Deumin se sit_). God is their inner, indwelling cause (_causa immanens, nonvero transiens_. --I. _prop_. 18), is not a transcendent creator, but_natura naturans_, over against the sum of finite beings, _natura naturata_(I. _prop_. 29, _schol_. ): _Deus sive natura_. 

Since nothing exists out of God, his actions do not follow from externalnecessity, are not constrained, but he is free cause, free in the sensethat he does nothing except that toward which his own nature impels him, that he acts in accordance with the laws of his being (_def. Septima: eares libera dicitur, quae ex sola suae naturae necessitate existit et a sesola ad agendum determinatur; Epist_. 26). This inner necessitation isso little a defect that its direct opposite, undetermined choice andinconstancy, must rather be excluded from God as an imperfection. Freedomand (inner) necessity are identical; and antithetical, on the one side, toundetermined choice and, on the other, to (external) compulsion. Action inview of ends must also be denied of the infinite; to think of God as actingin order to the good is to make him dependent on something external to him(an aim) and lacking in that which is to be attained by the action. WithGod the ground of his action is the same as the ground of his existence;God's power and his essence coincide (I. _prop_. 34: _Dei potentia est ipsaipsius essentia_). He is the cause of himself (_def. Prima: per causam suiintelligo id, cujus essentia involvit existentiam, sive id, cujus naturanon potest concipi nisi existens_); it would be a contradiction to holdthat being was not, that God, or substance, did not exist; he cannot bethought otherwise than as existing; his concept includes his existence. Tobe self-caused means to exist necessarily (I. _prop_. 7). The same thingis denoted by the predicate eternal, which, according to the eighthdefinition, denotes "existence itself, in so far as it is conceived tofollow necessarily from the mere definition of the eternal thing. "

The infinite substance stands related to finite, individual things, notonly as the independent to the dependent, as the cause to the caused, asthe one to the many, and the whole to the parts, but also as the universalto the particular, the indeterminate to the determinate. From infinitebeing as pure affirmation (I. _prop_. 8, _schol_. I: _absoluta affirmatio_)everything which contains a limitation or negation, and this includes everyparticular determination, must be kept at a distance: _determinatio negatioest (Epist_. 50 and 41: a determination denotes nothing positive, but adeprivation, a lack of existence; relates not to the being but to thenon-being of the thing). A determination states that which distinguishesone thing from another, hence what it is _not_, expresses a limitation ofit. Consequently God, who is free from every negation and limitation, is tobe conceived as the absolutely indeterminate. The results thus far reachedrun: _Substantia una infinita--Deus sive natura--causa sui (aeterna) etrerum (immanens)--libera necessitas--non determinata_. Or more briefly:Substance = God = nature. The equation of God and substance had beenannounced by Descartes, but not adhered to, while Bruno had approached theequation of God and nature--Spinoza decisively completes both and combinesthem. 

A further remark may be added concerning the relation of God and the world. In calling the infinite at once the permanent essence of things and theirproducing cause, Spinoza raises a demand which it is not easy to fulfill, the demand to think the existence of things in substance as a followingfrom substance, and their procession from God as a remaining in him. Herefers us to mathematics: the things which make up the world are related toGod as the properties of a geometrical figure to its concepts, as theoremsto the axiom, as the deduction to the principle, which from eternitycontains all that follows from it and retains this even while puttingit forth. It cannot be doubted that such a view of causality containserror, --it has been characterized as a confusion of _ratio_ and _causa_, of logical ground and real cause, --but it is just as certain that Spinozacommitted it. He not only compares the dependence of the effect on itscause to the dependence of a derivative principle on that from which it isderived, but fully equates the two; he thinks that in logico-mathematical"consequences" he has grasped the essence of real "effects": for him thetype of all legality, as also of real becoming, was the necessity whichgoverns the sequence of mathematical truths, and which, on the one hand, iseven and still, needing no special exertion of volitional energy, while, onthe other, it is rigid and unyielding, exalted above all choice. Philosophyhad sought the assistance of mathematics because of the clearness andcertainty which distinguish the conclusions of the latter, and which shewished to obtain for her own. In excess of zeal she was not content withstriving after this ideal of indefectible certitude, but, forgetting thediversity of the two fields, strove to imitate other qualities whichare not transferable; instead of learning from mathematics she becamesubservient to it. 

Substance does not affect us by its mere existence, but through an_Attribute_. By attribute is meant, according to the fourth definition, "that which the understanding perceives of substance as constituting theessence of it" _(quod intellectus de substantia percipit, tanquam ejusdemessentiam constituens)_. The more reality a substance contains, the moreattributes it has; consequently infinite substance possesses an infinitenumber, each of which gives expression to its essence, but of which twoonly fall within our knowledge. Among the innumerable divine attributesthe human mind knows those only which it finds in itself, thought andextension. Although man beholds God only as thinking and extendedsubstance, he yet has a clear and complete; an adequate--idea of God. Sinceeach of the two attributes is conceived without the other, hence in itself(_per se_), they are distinct from each other _realiter_, and independent. God is absolutely infinite, the attributes only in their kind (_in suogenere_). 

How can the indeterminate possess properties? Are the attributes merelyascribed to substance by the understanding, or do they possess realityapart from the knowing subject? This question has given rise to muchdebate. According to Hegel and Ed. Erdmann the attributes are somethingexternal to substance, something brought into it by the understanding, forms of knowledge present in the beholder alone; substance itself isneither extended nor cogitative, but merely appears to the understandingunder these determinations, without which the latter would be unable tocognize it. This "formalistic" interpretation, which, relying on a passagein a letter to De Vries (_Epist_. 27), explains the attributes as meremodes of intellectual apprehension, numbers Kuno Fischer among itsopponents. As the one party holds to the first half of the definition, theother places the emphasis on the second half ("that which the_understanding_ perceives--as constituting the _essence_ of substance"). The attributes are more than mere modes of representation--they are realproperties, which substance possesses even apart from an observer, nay, inwhich it consists; in Spinoza, moreover, "must be conceived" is theequivalent of "to be. " Although this latter "realistic" party undoubtedlyhas the advantage over the former, which reads into Spinoza a subjectivismforeign to his system, they ought not to forget that the difference ininterpretation has for its basis a conflict among the motives which controlSpinoza's thinking. The reference of the attributes to the understanding, given in the definition, is not without significance. It sprang from thewish not to mar the indeterminateness of the absolute by the opposition ofthe attributes, while, on the other hand, an equally pressing need for theconservation of the immanence of substance forbade a bold transfer of theattributes to the observer. The real opinion of Spinoza is neither soclear and free from contradictions, nor so one-sided, as that which hisinterpreters ascribe to him. Fischer's further interpretation of theattributes of God as his "powers" is tenable, so long as by _causa_ and_potentia_ we understand nothing more than the irresistible, butnon-kinetic, force with which an original truth establishes or effectsthose which follow from it. 

As the dualism of extension and thought is reduced from a substantial toan attributive distinction, so individual bodies and minds, motions andthoughts, are degraded a stage further. Individual things lack independenceof every sort. The individual is, as a determinate finite thing, burdenedwith negation and limitation, for every determination includes a negation;that which is truly real in the individual is God. Finite things are_modi_ of the infinite substance, mere states, variable states, of God. Bythemselves they are nothing, since out of God nothing exists. They possessexistence only in so far as they are conceived in their connection with theinfinite, that is, as transitory forms of the unchangeable substance. Theyare not in themselves, but in another, in God, and are conceived onlyin God. They are mere affections of the divine attributes, and must beconsidered as such. 

To the two attributes correspond two classes of modes. The most importantmodifications of extension are rest and motion. Among the modes of thoughtare understanding and will. These belong in the sphere of determinate andtransitory being and do not hold of the _natura naturans_: God is exaltedabove all modality, above will and understanding, as above motion and rest. We must not assert of the _natura naturata_ (the world as the sum of allmodes), as of the _natura naturans_, that its essence involves existence(I. _prop_. 24): we can conceive finite things as non-existent, as well asexistent (_Epist_. 29). This constitutes their "contingency, " which mustby no means be interpreted as lawlessness. On the contrary, all that takesplace in the world is most rigorously determined; every individual, finite, determinate thing and event is determined to its existence and action byanother similarly finite and determinate thing or event, and this cause is, in turn, determined in its existence and action by a further finite mode, and so on to infinity (I. _prop_. 28). Because of this endlessness in theseries there is no first or ultimate cause in the phenomenal world; allfinite causes are second causes; the primary cause lies within the sphereof the infinite and is God himself. The modes are all subject to theconstraint of an unbroken and endless nexus of efficient causes, whichleaves room neither for chance, nor choice, nor ends. Nothing can be orhappen otherwise than as it is and happens (I. _prop_. 29, 33). 

The causal chain appears in two forms: a mode of extension has itsproducing ground in a second mode of extension; a mode of thought can becaused only by another mode of thought--each individual thing is determinedby one of its own kind. The two series proceed side by side, without amember of either ever being able to interfere in the other or to effectanything in it--a motion can never produce anything but other motions, anidea can result only in other ideas; the body can never determine the mindto an idea, nor the soul the body to a movement. Since, however, extensionand thought are not two substances, but attributes of one substance, this apparently double causal nexus of two series proceeding in exactcorrespondence is, in reality, but a single one. (III. _prop_. 2, _schol_. )viewed from different sides. That which represents a chain of motions whenseen from the side of extension, bears the aspect of a series of ideas fromthe side of thought. _Modus extensionis et idea illius modi una cademqueest res, sed duobus modis expressa_ (II. _prop_. 7, _schol_. ; cf. III. _prop_. 2, _schol_. ). The soul is nothing but the idea of an actual body, body or motion nothing but the object or event in the sphere of extendedactuality corresponding to an idea. No idea exists without somethingcorporeal corresponding to it, no body, without at the same time existingas idea, or being conceived; in other words, everything is both body andspirit, all things are animated (II. _prop_. 13, _schol_. ). Thus the famousproposition results; _Ordo et connexio idearum idem est ac ordo et connexiorerum (sive corporum; II. Prop_. 7), and in application to man, "the orderof the actions and passions of our body is simultaneous in nature with theorder of the actions and passions of the mind" (III. _prop. 2, schol_. ). 

The attempt to solve the problem of the relation between the material andthe mental worlds by asserting their thoroughgoing correspondence andsubstantial identity, was philosophically justifiable and important, though many evident objections obtrude themselves upon us. The requiredassumption, that there is a mental event corresponding to _every_ bodilyone, and _vice versa_, meets with involuntary and easily supportedopposition, which Spinoza did nothing to remove. Similarly he omittedto explain how body is related to motion, mind to ideas, and both toactuality. The ascription of a materialistic tendency to Spinoza is notwithout foundation. Corporeality and reality appear well-nigh identical forhim, --the expressions _corpora_ and _res_ are used synonymously, --so thatthere remains for minds and ideas only an existence as reflections ofthe real in the sphere of [an] ideality (whose degree of actuality it isdifficult to determine). Moreover, individualistic impulses have beenpointed out, which, in part, conflict with the monism which he consciouslyfollows, and, in part, subserve its interests. An example of this is givenin the relation of mind and idea: Spinoza treats the soul as a sum ofideas, as consisting in them. An (at least apparently substantial) bondamong ideas, an ego, which possesses them, does not exist for him: theCartesian _cogito_ has become an impersonal _cogitatur_ or a _Deuscogitat_. In order to the unique substantiality of the infinite, thesubstantiality of individual spirits must disappear. That which argues forthe latter is their I-ness (_Ichheit_), the unity of self-consciousness;it is destroyed, if the mind is a congeries of ideas, a composite of them. Thus in order to relieve itself from the self-dependence of the individualmind, monism allies itself with a spiritual atomism, the most extreme whichcan be conceived. The mind is resolved into a mass of individual ideas. 

Mention may be made in passing, also, of a strange conception, whichis somewhat out of harmony with the rest of the system, and of which, moreover, little use is made. This is the conception of _infinite modes_. As such are cited, _facies totius mundi, motus et quies, intellectusabsolute infinitus_. Kuno Fischer's interpretation of this difficultconception may be accepted. It denotes, according to him, the connected sumof the modes, the itself non-finite sum total of the finite--the universemeaning the totality of individual things in general (without reference totheir nature as extended or cogitative); rest and motion, the totality ofmaterial being; the absolutely infinite understanding, the totality ofspiritual being or the ideas. Individual spirits together constitute, asit were, the infinite intellect; our mind is a part of the divineunderstanding, yet not in such a sense that the whole consists of theparts, but that the part exists only through the whole. When we say, thehuman mind perceives this or that, it is equivalent to saying that God--notin so far as he is infinite, but as he expresses himself in this humanmind and constitutes its essence--has this or that idea (II. _prop_. II, _coroll_). 

The discussion of these three fundamental concepts exhausts all the chiefpoints in Spinoza's doctrine of God. Passing over his doctrine of body (II. Between _prop_. 13 and _prop_. 14) we turn at once to his discussion ofmind and man. 

%(b) Anthropology: Cognition and the Passions. %--Each thing is at once mindand body, representation and that which is represented, idea and ideate(object). Body and soul are the same being, only considered under differentattributes. The human mind is the idea of the human body; it cognizesitself in perceiving the affections of its body; it represents all thattakes place in the body, though not all adequately. As man's body iscomposed of very many bodies, so his soul is composed of very many ideas. To judge of the relation of the human mind to the mind of lower beings, wemust consider the superiority of man's body to other bodies; the morecomplex a body is, and the greater the variety of the affections ofwhich it is capable, the better and more adapted for adequate cognition, the accompanying mind. --A result of the identity of soul and body isthat the acts of our will are not free (_Epist_. 62): they are, in fact, determinations of our body, only considered under the attribute of thought, and no more free than this from the constraint of the causal law (III. _prop_. 2, _schol_. ). --Since the mind does nothing without at the same timeknowing that it does it--since, in other words, its activity is a consciousactivity, it is not merely _idea corporis humani_, but also _idea ideaecorporis_ or _idea mentis_. 

All adherents of the Eleatic separation of the one pure being from themanifold and changing world of appearance are compelled to make alike distinction between two kinds and two organs of _knowledge_. Therepresentation of the empirical manifold of separately existing individualthings, together with the organ thereof, Spinoza terms _imaginatio_; thefaculty of cognizing the true reality, the one, all-embracing substance, hecalls _intellectus. Imaginatio_ (imagination, sensuous representation)is the faculty of inadequate, confused ideas, among which are includedabstract conceptions, as well as sensations and memory-images. The objectsof perception are the affections of our body; and our perceptions, therefore, are not clear and distinct, because we are not completelyacquainted with their causes. In the merely perceptual stage, the mindgains only a confused and mutilated idea of external objects, of the body, and of itself; it is unable to separate that in the perception (_e. G. _, heat) which is due to the external body from that which is due to its ownbody. An inadequate idea, however, is not in itself an error; it becomessuch only when, unconscious of its defectiveness, we take it for completeand true. Prominent examples of erroneous ideas are furnished by generalconcepts, by the idea of ends, and the idea of the freedom of the will. Themore general and abstract an idea, the more inadequate and indistinct itbecomes; and this shows the lack of value in generic concepts, which areformed by the omission of differences. All cognition which is carried on byuniversals and their symbols, words, yields opinion and imagination merelyinstead of truth. Quite as valueless and harmful is the idea of ends, withits accompaniments. We think that nature has typical forms hovering beforeit, which it is seeking to actualize in things; when this intention isapparently fulfilled we speak of things as perfect and beautiful; when itfails, of imperfect and ugly things. Such concepts of value belong in thesphere of fictions. The same is true of the idea of the freedom of thewill, which depends on our ignorance of that which constrains us. Apartfrom the consideration that "the will, " the general conception of whichcomes under the rubric of unreal abstractions, is in fact merely the sum ofthe particular volitions, the illusion of freedom, _e. G. _, that we willand act without a cause, arises from the fact that we are conscious ofour action (and also of its proximate motives), but not of its (remoter)determining causes. Thus the thirsty child believes it desires its milk ofits own free will, and the timid one, that it freely chooses to run away(_Ethica, III. Prop_. 2, _schol_. ; I. _app_. ) If the falling stone wereconscious, it would, likewise, consider itself free, and its fall theresult of an undetermined decision. 

Two degrees are to be distinguished in the true or adequate knowledgeof the intellect: rational knowledge attained through inference, andintuitive, self-evident knowledge; the latter has principles for itsobject, the former that which follows from them. Instead of operating withabstract concepts the reason uses common notions, _notiones communes_. Genera do not exist, but, no doubt, something common to all things. Allbodies agree in being extended; all minds and ideas in being modes ofthought; all beings whatever in the fact that they are modes of the divinesubstance and its attributes; "that which is common to all things, andwhich is equally in the part and in the whole, cannot but be adequatelyconceived. " The ideas of extension, of thought, and of the eternal andinfinite essence of God are adequate ideas. The adequate idea of eachindividual actual object involves the idea of God, since it can neitherexist nor be conceived apart from God, and "all ideas, in so far asthey are referred to God, are true. " The ideas of substance and of theattributes are conceived through themselves, or immediately (intuitively)cognized; they are underivative, original, self-evident ideas. 

There are thus three kinds, degrees, or faculties of cognition--sensuous orimaginative representation, reason, and immediate intuition. Knowledge ofthe second and third degrees is necessarily true, and our only meansof distinguishing the true from the false. As light reveals itself anddarkness, so the truth is the criterion of itself and of error. Everytruth is accompanied by certainty, and is its own witness (II. _prop_. 43, _schol_. ). --Adequate knowledge does not consider things as individuals, but in their necessary connection and as eternal sequences from theworld-ground. The reason perceives things under the form of eternity: _subspecie aeternitatis_ (II. _prop_. 44, _cor_. 2). 

In his theory of the _emotions_, Spinoza is more dependent on Descartesthan anywhere else; but even here he is guided by a successful endeavorafter greater rigor and simplicity. He holds his predecessor's falseconcept of freedom responsible for the failure of his very acute inquiry. All previous writers on the passions have either derided, or bewailed, orcondemned them, instead of investigating their nature. Spinoza willneither denounce nor ridicule human actions and appetites, but endeavorto comprehend them on the basis of natural laws, and to consider them asthough the question concerned lines, surfaces, and bodies. He aims notto look on hate, anger, and the rest as flaws, but as necessary, thoughtroublesome, properties of human nature, for which, as really as for heatand cold, thunder and lightning, a causal explanation is requisite. --As adeterminate, finite being the mind is dependent in its existence and itsactivity on other finite things, and is incomprehensible without them;from its involution in the general course of nature the inadequate ideasinevitably follow, and from these the passive states or emotions; thepassions thus belong to human nature, as one subject to limitation andnegation. --The destruction of contingent and perishable things is effectedby external causes; no one is destroyed by itself; so far as in it lieseverything strives to persist in its being (III. _prop_. 4 and 6). Thefundamental endeavor after self-preservation constitutes the essence ofeach thing (III. _prop_. 7). This endeavor _(conatus)_ is termed will_(voluntas)_ or desire _(cupiditas)_ when it is referred to the mind alone, and appetite _(appetitus)_ when referred to the mind and body together;desire or volition is conscious appetite (III. _prop_. 9, _schol_. ). Wecall a thing good because we desire it, not desire a thing because we holdit good (cf. Hobbes, p. 75). To desire two further fundamental forms of theemotions are added, pleasure and pain. If a thing increases the power ofour body to act, the idea of it increases the power of our soul to think, and is gladly imagined by it. Pleasure (_laetitia_) is the transition ofa man to a greater, and pain (_tristitia_) his transition to a lesserperfection. 

All other emotions are modifications or combinations of the three originalones, to which Spinoza reduces the six of Descartes (cf. P. 105). Inthe deduction and description of them his procedure is sometimes aridlysystematic, sometimes even forced and artificial, but for the most partingenious, appropriate, and psychologically acute. Whatever gives uspleasure augments our being, and whatever pains us diminishes it; hence weseek to preserve the causes of pleasurable emotions, and love them, to doaway with the causes of painful ones, and hate them. "Love is pleasureaccompanied by the idea of an external cause; hate is pain accompanied bythe idea of an external cause. " Since all that furthers or diminishes thebeing of (the cause of our pleasure) the object of our love, exercisesat the same time a like influence on us, we love that which rejoices theobject of our love and hate that which disturbs it; its happiness andsuffering become ours also. The converse is true of the object of our hate:its good fortune provokes us and its ill fortune pleases us. If we arefilled with no emotion toward things like ourselves, we sympathize in theirsad or joyous feelings by involuntary imitation. Pity, from which westrive to free ourselves as from every painful affection, inclines us tobenevolence or to assistance in the removal of the cause of the misery ofothers. Envy of those who are fortunate, and commiseration of those who arein trouble, are alike rooted in emulation. Man is by nature inclinedto envy and malevolence. Hate easily leads to underestimation, love tooverestimation, of the object, and self-love to pride or self-satisfaction, which are much more frequently met with than unfeigned humility. Immoderatedesire for honor is termed ambition; if the desire to please others is keptwithin due bounds it is praised as unpretentiousness, courtesy, modesty(_modestia_). Ambition, luxury, drunkenness, avarice, and lust have nocontraries, for temperance, sobriety, and chastity are not emotions(passive states), but denote the power of the soul by which the formerare moderated, and which is discussed later under the name _fortitudo_. Self-abasement or humility is a feeling of pain arising from theconsideration of our weakness and impotency; its opposite isself-complacency. Either of these may be accompanied by the (erroneous)belief that we have done the saddening or gladdening act of our own freewill; in this case the former affection is termed repentance. Hope and fearare inconstant pleasure and pain, arising from the idea of something pastor to come, concerning whose coming and whose issue we are still in doubt. There is no hope unmingled with fear, and no fear without hope; for he whostill doubts imagines something which excludes the existence of that whichis expected. If the cause of doubt is removed, hope is transformed into afeeling of confidence and fear into despair. There are as many kinds ofemotions as there are classes among their objects or causes. 

Besides the emotions to be termed "passions" in the strict sense, statesof passivity, Spinoza recognizes others which relate to us as active. Onlythose which are of the nature of pleasure or desire belong to this classof _active_ emotions; the painful affections are entirely excluded, sincewithout exception they diminish or arrest the mind's power to think. Thetotality of these nobler impulses is called _fortitudo_ (fortitude), anda distinction is made among them between _animositas_ (vigor of soul) and_generositas_ (magnanimity, noble-mindedness), according as rationaldesire is directed to the preservation of our own being or to aiding ourfellow-men. Presence of mind and temperance are examples of the former, modesty and clemency of the latter. By this bridge, the idea of the activeemotions, we may follow Spinoza into the field of ethics. 

%(c) Practical Philosophy. %--Spinoza's theory of ethics is based on theequation of the three concepts, perfection, reality, activity (V. _prop_. 40, _dem_. ). The more active a thing is, the more perfect it is and themore reality it possesses. It is active, however, when it is the completeor adequate cause of that which takes place within it or without it;passive when it is not at all the cause of this, or the cause only in part. A cause is termed adequate, when its effect can be clearly and distinctlyperceived from it alone. The human mind, as a _modus_ of thought, is activewhen it has adequate ideas; all its passion consists in confused ideas, among which belong the affections produced by external objects. The essenceof the mind is thought; volition is not only dependent on cognition, but atbottom identical with it. 

Descartes had already made the will the power of affirmation and negation. Spinoza advances a step further: the affirmation cannot be separated fromthe idea affirmed, it is impossible to conceive a truth without in thesame act affirming it, the idea involves its own affirmation. "Will andunderstanding are one and the same" (II. _prop_. 49, _cor_. ). For Spinozamoral activity is entirely resolved into cognitive activity. To the twostages of knowing, _imaginatio_ and _intellectus_, correspond two stagesof willing--desire, which is ruled by imagination, and volition, which isguided by reason. The passive emotions of sensuous desire are directed toperishable objects, the active, which spring from reason, have an eternalobject--the knowledge of the truth, the intuition of God. For reason thereare no distinctions of persons, --she brings men into concord and gives thema common end (IV. _prop_. 35-37, 40), --and no distinctions of time (IV. _prop_. 62, 66), and in the active emotions, which are always good, noexcess (IV. _prop_. 61). The passive emotions arise from confused ideas. They cease to be passions, when the confused ideas of the modifications ofthe body are transformed into clear ones; as soon as we have clear ideas, we become active and cease to be slaves of desire. We master the emotionsby gaining a clear knowledge of them. Now, an idea is clear when we cognizeits object not as an individual thing, but in its connection, as a link inthe causal chain, as necessary, and as a mode of God. The more the mindconceives things in their necessity, and the emotions in their reference toGod, the less it is passively subject to the emotions, the more power itattains over them: "Virtue is power" (IV. _def_. 8; _prop_. 20, _dem_. ). Itis true, indeed, that one emotion can be conquered only by another strongerone, a passive emotion only by an active one. The active emotion by whichknowledge gains this victory over the passions is the joyous consciousnessof our power (III. _prop_. 58, 59). Adequate ideas conceive their objectsin union with God; thus the pleasure which proceeds from knowledge of, and victory over, the passions is accompanied by the idea of God, and, consequently (according to the definition of love), by _love toward God_(V. _prop_. 15, 32). The knowledge and love of God, together, "intellectuallove toward God, "[1] is the highest good and the highest virtue (IV. _prop_. 28). Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself. The intellectual love of man toward God, in which the highest peace of thesoul, blessedness, and freedom consist, and in virtue of which (since it, like its object and cause, true knowledge, is eternal), the soul is notincluded in the destruction of the body (V. _prop_. 23, 33), is a part ofthe infinite love with which God loves himself, and is one and the samewith the love of God to man. The eternal part of the soul is reason, through which it is active; the perishable part is imagination or sensuousrepresentation, through which it is passively affected. We are immortalonly in adequate cognition and in love to God; more of the wise man's soulis immortal than of the fool's. 

[Footnote 1: The conception _amor Dei intellectualis_ in Spinoza isdiscussed in a dissertation by C. Lülmann, Jena, 1884. ]

Spinoza's ethics is intellectualistic--virtue is based on knowledge. [1] Itis, moreover, naturalistic--morality is a necessary sequence from humannature; it is a physical product, not a product of freedom; for the acts ofthe will are determined by ideas, which in their turn are the effectsof earlier causes. The foundation of virtue is the effort afterself-preservation: How can a man desire to act rightly unless he desires tobe (IV. _prop_. 21, 22)? Since reason never enjoins that which is contraryto nature, it of necessity requires every man to love himself, to seekthat which is truly useful to him, and to desire all that makes him moreperfect. According to the law of nature all that is useful is allowable. The useful is that which increases our power, activity, or perfection, orthat which furthers knowledge, for the life of the soul consists in thought(IV. _prop. 26; app. Cap_. 5). That alone is an evil which restrains manfrom perfecting the reason and leading a rational life. Virtuous action isequivalent to following the guidance of the reason in self-preservation(IV. _prop_. 24). --Nowhere in Spinoza are fallacies more frequent thanin his moral philosophy; nowhere is there a clearer revelation of theinsufficiency of his artificially constructed concepts, which, in theirundeviating abstractness, are at no point congruent with reality. He isas little true to his purpose to exclude the imperative element, and toconfine himself entirely to the explanation of human actions considered asfacts, as any philosopher who has adopted a similar aim. He relieves theinconsistency by clothing his injunctions under the ancient ideal of thefree wise man. This, in fact, is not the only thing in Spinoza whichreminds one of the customs of the Greek moralists. He renews the Platonicidea of a philosophical virtue, and the opinion of Socrates, that rightaction will result of itself from true insight. Arguing from himself, fromhis own pure and strong desire for knowledge, to mankind in general, hemakes reason the essence of the soul, thought the essence of reason, andholds the direction of the impulse of self-preservation to the perfectionof knowledge, which is "the better part of us, " to be the natural one. 

[Footnote 1: That virtue which springs from knowledge is alone genuine. The painful, hence unactive, emotions of pity and repentance may impel toactions whose accomplishment is better than their omission. Emotion causedby sympathy for others and contrition for one's own guilt, both of whichincrease present evil by new ones, have only the value of evils of a lesserkind. They are salutary for the irrational man, in so far as the one spurshim on to acts of assistance and the other diminishes his pride. Theyare harmful to the wise man, or, at least, useless; he is in no need ofirrational motives to rational action. Action from insight is alone truemorality. ]

All men endeavor after continuance of existence (III. _prop_. 6); why notall after virtue? If all endeavor after it, why do so few reach the goal?Whence the sadly large number of the irrational, the selfish, the vicious?Whence the evil in the world? Vice is as truly an outcome of "nature" asvirtue. Virtue is power, vice is weakness; the former is knowledge, thelatter ignorance. Whence the powerless natures? Whence defective knowledge?Whence imperfection in general?

The concept of imperfection expresses nothing positive, nothing actual, butmerely a defect, an absence of reality. It is nothing but an idea in us, a fiction which arises through the comparison of one thing with anotherpossessing greater reality, or with an abstract generic concept, a pattern, which it seems unable to attain. That concepts of value are not propertiesof things themselves, but denote only their pleasurable or painful effectson us, is evident from the fact that one and the same thing may be at thesame time good, bad, and indifferent: the music which is good for themelancholy man may be bad for the mourner, and neither good nor bad for thedeaf. Knowledge of the bad is an abstract, inadequate idea; in God there isno idea of evil. If imperfection and error were something real, it wouldhave to be conceded that God is the author of evil and sin. In realityeverything is that which it can be, hence without defect: everything actualis, in itself considered, perfect. Even the fool and the sinner cannot beotherwise than he is; he appears imperfect only when placed beside the wiseand the virtuous. Sin is thus only a lesser reality than virtue, evil alesser good; good and bad, activity and passivity, power and weaknessare merely distinctions in degree. But why is not everything absolutelyperfect? Why are there lesser degrees of reality? Two answers are given. The first is found only between the lines: the imperfections in thebeing and action of individual things are grounded in their finitude, particularly in their involution in the chain of causality, in virtue ofwhich they are acted on from without, and are determined in their actionnot by their own nature only, but also by external causes. Man sins becausehe is open to impressions from external things, and only superior naturesare strong enough to preserve their rational self-determination in spiteof this. The other answer is expressly given at the end of the first part(with an appeal to the sixteenth proposition, that everything whichthe divine understanding conceives as creatable has actually come intoexistence). "To those who ask why God did not so create all men that theyshould be governed only by reason, I reply only: because matter was notlacking to him for the creation of every degree of perfection from highestto lowest; or, more strictly, because the laws of his nature were so ampleas so suffice for the production of everything conceivable by an infiniteintellect. " All possible degrees of perfection have come into being, including sin and error, which represent the lowest grade. The universeforms a chain of degrees of perfection, of which none must be wanting:particular cases of defect are justified by the perfection of the whole, which would be incomplete without the lowest degree of perfection, viceand wickedness. Here we see Spinoza following a path which Leibnitz was tobroaden out into a highway in his _Theodicy_. Both favor the quantitativeview of the world, which softens the antitheses, and reduces distinctionsof kind to distinctions of degree. Not till Kant was the qualitative viewof the world, which had been first brought into ethics by Christianity, restored to its rights. An ethics which denies freedom and evil is nothingbut a physics of morals. 

In his _theory of the state_ Spinoza follows Hobbes pretty closely, butrejects absolutism, and declares democracy, in which each is obedient toself-imposed law, to be the form of government most in accordance withreason. (So in the _Tractatus Theologico-Politicus_, while in the later_Tractatus Politicus_ he gives the preference to aristocracy. ) Inaccordance with the supreme right of nature each man deems good, and seeksto gain, that which seems to him useful; all things belong to all, each maydestroy the objects of his hate. Conflict and insecurity prevail in thestate of nature as a result of the sensuous desires and emotions (_hominesex natura hostes_); and they can be done away with only through theestablishment of a society, which by punitive laws compels everyone to do, and leave undone, that which the general welfare demands. Strife and breachof faith become sin only in the state; before its formation that alone waswrong which no one had the desire and power to do. Besides this mission, however, of protecting selfish interests by the prevention of aggression, the civil community has a higher one, to subserve the development ofreason; it is only in the state that true morality and true freedom arepossible, and the wise man will prefer to live in the state, becausehe finds more freedom there than in isolation. Thus the dislocation ofconcepts, which is perceptible in Spinoza's ethics, repeats itself in hispolitics. First, virtue is based on the impulse of self-preservation andthe good is equated with that which is useful to the individual; then, witha transformation of mere utility into "true" utility, the rational momentis brought in (first as practical prudence, next as the impulse afterknowledge, and then, with a gradual change of meaning, as moral wisdom), until, finally, in strange contrast to the naturalistic beginning, theChristian idea of virtue as purity, self-denial, love to our neighbors andlove to God, is reached. In a similar way "Spinoza conceives the startingpoint of the state naturalistically, its culmination idealistically. "[1]

[Footnote 1: C. Schindler in his dissertation _Ueber den Begriff desGuten und Nützlichen bei Spinoza_, Jena, 1885, p. 42, a work, however, which does not penetrate to the full depth of the matter. Cf. Eucken, _Lebensanschauungen_, p. 406. ]

The fundamental ideas of the Spinozistic system, and those which renderit important, are rationalism, pantheism, the essential identity of thematerial and spiritual worlds, and the uninterrupted mechanism of becoming. Besides the twisting of ethical concepts just mentioned, we may brieflynote the most striking of the other difficulties and contradictions whichSpinoza left unexplained. There is a break between his endeavor to exaltthe absolute high above the phenomenal world of individual existence, and, at the same time, to bring the former into the closest possible conjunctionwith the latter, to make it dwell therein--a break between the transcendentand immanent conceptions of the idea of God. No light is vouchsafed on therelation between primary and secondary causes, between the immediate divinecausality and the divine causality mediated through finite causes. Theinfinity of God is in conflict with his complete cognizability on thepart of man; for how is a finite, transitory spirit able to conceivethe Infinite and Eternal? How does the human intellect rise above modallimitations to become capable and worthy of the mystical union with God?Reference has been already made to the twofold nature of the attributes (asforms of intellectual apprehension and as real properties of substance)which invites contradictory interpretations. 

3. %Pascal, Malebranche, Bayle. %

Returning from Holland to France, we find a combination of Cartesianismand mysticism similar to that which we have noticed in the former country. Under Geulincx these two forces had lived peacefully together; in Spinozathey had entered into the closest alliance; with Blaise Pascal (1623-62), the first to adopt a religious tendency, they came into a certainantithesis. Spinoza had taught: through the knowledge of God to the loveof God; in Pascal the watchword becomes, God is not conceived throughthe reason, but felt with the heart. After attacking the Jesuits in his_Provincial Letters_, and unveiling the worthlessness of their casuisticalmorality, Pascal, constrained by a genuine piety, undertook to construct aphilosophy of Christianity; but the attempt was ended by the early death ofthe author, who had always suffered under a weak constitution. Fragments ofthis work were published by his friends, the Jansenists, under the title, _Thoughts on Religion_, 1669, though not without mediating alterations. The Port-Royal _Logic (The Art of Thinking_, 1662), edited by Arnauld andNicole, was based on a treatise of Pascal. His thought, which was notdistinguished by clearness, but by depth and movement, and which, afterthe French fashion, delighted in antitheses, was influenced by Descartes, Montaigne, and Epictetus. He, too, finds in mathematics the example forall science, and holds that whatever transcends mathematics transcends thereason. By the application of mathematics to the study of nature we attaina mundane science, which is certain, no doubt, and which makes constantprogress, [1] but which does not satisfy, since it reveals nothing of theinfinite, of the whole, without which the parts remain unintelligible. Hence all natural philosophy together is not worth an hour's toil. Pascalconsoles himself for our ignorance concerning external things by thestability of ethics. 

[Footnote 1: It is this uninterrupted progress which raises the reasonabove the operations of nature and the instincts of animals. While the beesbuild their cells to-day just as they did a thousand years ago, science iscontinually developing. This guarantees to us our immortal destiny. ]

The leading principles of his ethics are as follows: In sin the love to Godcreated in us has left us and self-love has transgressed its limits; pridehas delivered us over to selfishness and misery. Our nature is corrupted, but not beyond redemption. In his actions worthless and depraved, man isseen to be exalted and incomprehensible in his ends; in reality he isworthy of abhorrence, but great in his destination. No philosophy orreligion has so taught us at once to know the greatness and the misery ofman as Christianity: this bids him recognize his low condition, but at thesame time to endeavor to become like God. We must humbly despise the worldand renounce ourselves; in order to love God, we must hate ourselves. Moralreformation is an act of divine grace, and the merit of human volitionconsists only in not resisting this. God transforms the heart by a heavenlysweetness, grants it to know that spiritual pleasure is greater than bodilypleasure, and infuses into it a disgust at the allurements of sin. Virtueis finding one's greatest happiness in God or in the eternal good. Asmorality is a matter of feeling, not of thought, so God, so even the firstprinciples on which the certitude of demonstration depends, are the object, not of reason, but of the heart. That which certifies to the highestindemonstrable principles is a feeling, a belief, an instinct of nature:_les principes se sentent_. As a defender of the needs and rights of theheart, Pascal is a forerunner of the great Rousseau. His depreciation ofthe reason to exalt faith establishes a certain relationship with theskeptics of his native land, among whom Cousin has unjustly classed him(_Études sur Pascal_, 5th ed. , 1857). [1]

[Footnote 1: Of the works on Pascal we may mention that of H. Reuchlin, 1840: Havet's edition of the _Pensées_, with notes, Paris, 1866; and the_Étude_ by Ed. Droz, Paris, 1886. ]

Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1715), a member of the Oratory of Jesus, inParis, which was opposed by the Jesuits, completed the development ofCartesianism in the religious direction adopted by Pascal. His thoughtis controlled by the endeavor to combine Cartesian metaphysics andAugustinian Christianity, those two great forces which constituted thedouble citadel of his order. His collected works appeared three yearsbefore his death; and a new edition in four volumes, prepared byJ. Simon, in 1871. His chief work, _On the Search for Truth_ (new editionby F. Bouillier, 1880), appeared in 1675, and was followed by the_Treatise on Ethics_ (new edition by H. Joly, 1882) and the _Christianand Metaphysical Meditations_ in 1684, the _Discussions on Metaphysics andon Religion_ in 1688, and various polemic treatises. The best known amongthe doctrines of Malebranche is the principle that _we see all things inGod (que nous voyons toutes choses en Dieu_. --_Recherche_, iii. 2, 6). Whatdoes this mean, and how is it established? It is intended as an answer tothe question, How is it possible for the mind to cognize the body if, asDescartes has shown, mind and body are two fundamentally distinct andreciprocally independent substances?

The seeker after truth must first understand the sources of error. Of thesethere are two, or, more exactly, five--as many as there are faculties ofthe soul. Error may spring from either the cognitive or the appetitivefaculty; in the first case, either from sense-perception, the imagination, or the pure understanding, and, in the latter, from the inclinations or thepassions. The inclinations and the passions do not reveal the nature ofthings, but only express how they affect us, of what value they are tous. Further still, the senses and the imagination only reproduce theimpressions which things make on us as feeling subjects, express only whatthey are for us, not what they are in themselves. The senses have beengiven us simply for the preservation of our body, and so long as we expectnothing further from them than practical information concerning the(useful or hurtful) relation of things to our body, there is no reason formistrusting them, --here we are not deceived by sensation, but at most bythe overhasty judgment of the will. "Consider the senses as false witnessesin regard to the truth, but as trustworthy counselors in relation to theinterests of life!"--Sensation and imagination belong to the soul in virtueof its union with the body; apart from this it is pure spirit. The essenceof the soul is thought, for this function is the only one which cannot beabstracted from it without destroying it. Hence there can be no moment inthe life of the soul when it ceases to think; it thinks always (_l'âmepense toujours_), only it does not always remember the fact. 

The kinds of knowledge differ with the classes of things cognized. God isknown immediately and intuitively. He is necessary and unlimited being, the universal, infinite being, being absolutely; he only is known throughhimself. The concept of the infinite is the presupposition of the conceptof the finite, and the former is earlier in us; we gain the conception ofa particular thing only when we omit something from the idea of "being ingeneral, " or limit it. God is cogitative, like spirits, and extended, likebodies, but in an entirely different manner from created things. We knowour own soul through consciousness or inner perception. We know itsexistence more certainly than that of bodies, but understand its natureless perfectly than theirs. To know that it is capable of sensations ofpain, of heat, of light, we must have experienced them. For knowledgeof the minds of others we are dependent upon conjecture, on analogicalinferences from ourselves. 

But how is the unextended soul capable of cognizing extended body? Onlythrough the medium of _ideas_. The ideas occupy an intermediate positionbetween objects, whose archetypes they are, and representations in thesoul, whose causes they are. The ideas, after the pattern of which Godhas created things, and the relations among them (necessary truths), areeternal, hence uncaused; they constitute the wisdom of God and are notdependent on his will. Things are in God in archetypal form, and arecognized through these their archetypes in God. Ideas are not produced bybodies, by the emission of sensuous images, [1] nor are they originated bythe soul, or possessed by it as an innate possession. But God is the causeof knowledge, although he neither imparts ideas to the soul in creation norproduces them in it on every separate occasion. The ideas or perfections ofthings are in God and are beheld by spirits, who likewise dwell in God asthe universal reason. As space is the place of bodies, so God is theplace of spirits. As bodies are modes of extension, so their ideas aremodifications of the idea of extension or of "intelligible extension. " Theprinciple stated at the beginning, that things are perceived in God, is, therefore, supported in the following way: we perceive bodies (throughideas, which ideas, and we ourselves, are) in God. 

[Footnote 1: Malebranche's refutation of the emanation hypothesis of thePeripatetics is acute and still worthy of attention. If bodies transmittedto the sense-organs forms like themselves, these copies, which wouldevidently be corporeal, must, by their departure, diminish the mass of thebody from which they came away, and also, because of their impenetrability, obstruct and interfere with one another, thus destroying the possibility ofclear impressions. A further point against the image theory is furnished bythe increase in the size of an object, when approached. And, above all, itcan never be made conceivable how motion can be transformed into sensationsor ideas. ]

As the knowledge of truth has been found to consist in seeing things as Godsees them, so morality consists in man's loving things as God loves them, or, what amounts to the same thing, in loving them to that degree whichis their due in view of their greater or less perfection. If, in the lastanalysis, all cognition is knowledge of God, so all volition is loving God;there is implanted in every creature a direction toward the Creator. God isnot only the primordial, unlimited being, he is also the highest good, the final end of all striving. As the ideas of things are imperfectparticipations in, or determinations of universal being, the absoluteperfection of God, so the particular desires, directed toward individualobjects, are limitations of the universal will toward the good. How doesit happen that the human will, so variously mistaking its fundamentaldirection toward God, attaches itself to perishable goods, and prefersworthless objects to those which have value, and earthly to heavenlypleasure? The soul is, on the one hand, united to God, on the other, unitedto the body. The possibility of error and sin rests on its union with thebody, since with the ideas (as representations of the pure understanding)are associated sensuous images, which mingle with and becloud them, andpassions with the inclinations (or the will of the soul, in so far as it ispure spirit). This gives, however, merely the possibility of the immoral, sensuous, God-estranged disposition, which becomes actual only throughman's free act, when he fails to stand the test. For sin does not consistin having passions, but in consenting to them. The passion is not caused bythe corporeal movement of which it is the sequel, but only occasioned byit; and the same is true of the movement of the limbs and the decisionof the will. The one true cause of all that happens is God. It is he whoproduces affections in the soul, and motion in the material world. For thebody possesses only the capacity of being moved; and the soul cannot be thecause of the movement, since it would then have to know how it producesthe latter. In fact those who lack a medical training have no idea of themuscular and nervous processes involved. Without God we cannot even movethe tongue. It is he who raises our arm, even when we use it contrary tohis law. 

Anxious to guard his pantheism from being identified with that of Spinoza, Malebranche points out that, according to his views, the universe is inGod, not, as with Spinoza, that God is in the universe; that he teachescreation, which Spinoza denies; that he distinguishes, which Spinoza hadnot done, between the world in God (the ideas of things) and the world ofcreated things, and between intelligible and corporeal extension. It maybe added that he maintains the freedom of God and of man, which Spinozarejects, and that he conceives God, who brings everything to pass, not asnature, but as omnipotent will. Nevertheless, as Kuno Fischer has shown, he approaches the naturalism of Spinoza more nearly than he is himselfconscious, when he explains finite things as limitations (hence as modes)of the divine existence, posits the will of God in dependence on his wisdom(the uncreated world of ideas), thus limiting it in its omnipotence, and, which is decisive, makes God the sole author of motion, _i. E. _, a naturalcause. His attempt at a Christian pantheism was consequently unsuccessful. But its failure has not shattered the well-grounded fame of its thoughtfulauthor as the second greatest metaphysician of France. 

Pierre Poiret[1] (1646-1719; for some years a preacher in Hamburg; livedlater in Rhynsburg near Leyden) was rendered hostile to Cartesianismthrough the influence of mystical writings (among others those ofAntoinette Bourignon, which he published), and through the perception ofthe results to which it had led in Spinoza. All cognition is taking up theform of the object. The perfection of man is based more on his passivecapacities than on his active reason, which is concerned with mere ideas, unreal shadows; the mathematical spirit leads to fatalism, to the denial offreedom. The passive faculties, on the contrary, are in direct intercoursewith reality, the senses with external material objects, and the arcanum ofthe mind, the basis of the soul, the intellect, with spiritual truthsand with God, whose existence is more certain than our own. Man is notunconcerned in the development of the highest power of the mind, he mustoffer himself to God in sincere humility. In subordination to the passiveintellect, the external faculty, the active reason, is also to becultivated; it deserves care, like the skin. Evil consists in the absurditythat the creature, who apart from God is nothing, ascribes to himself anindependent existence. 

[Footnote 1: Poiret: _Cogitationes Rationates de Deo, Anima, et Malo_, 1677, the later editions including a vehement attack on the atheism ofSpinoza: _L'Économie Divine_, 1682; _De Eruditione Solida, Superficiaria, et Falsa_, 1692; _Fides et Ratio Collatae_, against Locke, 1707. ]

Le Vayer and Huet, who have been already mentioned (pp. 50-51), mediate between the founders of skepticism and Bayle, its most giftedrepresentative. The latter of these two wrote a _Criticism of the CartesianPhilosophy_, 1689, besides a _Treatise on the Impotence of the Human Mind_, which did not appear until after his death. He opposes, among other things, the criterion of truth based on evidence, since there is an evidence ofthe false not to be distinguished from that of the true, as well as theposition that God becomes a deceiver in the bestowal of a weak and blindreason--for he gives us, at the same time, the power to know its deceptivecharacter. 

As the last among those influenced by Descartes but who advanced beyondhim, may be mentioned the acute Pierre Bayle (1647-1706; professor in Sedanand Rotterdam; _Works_, 1725-31[1]), who greatly excited the world ofletters by his occasional and polemic treatises, and still more by thejournal, _Nouvelles de la République des Lettres_ from 1684, and his_Historical and Critical Dictionary_, in two volumes, 1695 and 1697. Nowhere do the most opposite antitheses dwell in such close proximity asin the mind of Bayle. Along with an ever watchful doubt he harbors a mostactive zeal for knowledge, with a sincere spirit of belief (which has beenwrongly disputed by Lange, Zeller, and Pünjer) a demoniacal pleasure inbringing to light absurdities in the doctrines of faith, with absoluteconfidence in the infallibility of conscience an entirely pessimistic viewof human morality. His strength lies in criticism and polemics, his work inthe latter (aside from his hostility to fanaticism and the persecution ofthose differing in faith) being directed chiefly against optimism and thedeistic religion of reason, which holds the Christian dogmas capable ofproof, or, at least, faith and knowledge capable of reconciliation. Thedoctrines of faith are not only above reason, incomprehensible, butcontrary to reason; and it is just on this that our merit in acceptingthem depends. The mysteries of the Gospel do not seek success before thejudgment seat of thought, they demand the blind submission of the reason;nay, if they were objects of knowledge they would cease to be mysteries. Thus we must choose between religion and philosophy, for they cannot becombined. For one who is convinced of the untrustworthiness of the reasonand her lack of competence in things supernatural, it is in no wisecontradictory or impossible to receive as true things which she declaresto be false; he will thank God for the gift of a faith which is entirelyindependent of the clearness of its objects and of its agreement with theaxioms of philosophy. Even, when in purely scientific questions he callsattention to difficulties and shows contradictions on every hand, Bayle byno means intends to hold up principles with contradictory implications asfalse, but only as uncertain. [2] The reason, he says, generalizing from hisown case, is capable only of destruction, not of construction; ofdiscovering error, not of finding truth; of finding reasons andcounter-reasons, of exciting doubt and controversy, not of vouchsafingcertitude. So long as it contents itself with controverting that which isfalse, it is potent and salutary; but when, despising divine assistance, itadvances beyond this, it becomes dangerous, like a caustic drug whichattacks the healthy flesh after it has consumed that which was diseased. 

[Footnote 1: Cf. On Bayle, L. Feuerbach. 1838, 2d ed. , 1844; Eucken in the_Allgemeine Zeitung_, supplement to Nos. 251, 252, October 27, 28, 1891. ]

[Footnote 2: Thus, in regard to the problem of freedom, he finds it hardto comprehend how the creatures, who are not the authors of their ownexistence, can be the authors of their own actions, but, at the same time, inadmissible to think of God as the cause of evil. He seeks only to showthe indemonstrability and incomprehensibility of freedom, not to reject it. For he sees in it the condition of morality, and calls attention tothe fact that the difficulties in which those who deny freedom involvethemselves are far greater than those of their opponents. He shows himselfentirely averse to the determinism and pantheism of Spinoza. ]

He who seeks to refute skepticism must produce a criterion of truth. Ifsuch exists, it is certainly that advanced by Descartes, the evidence, theevident clearness of a principle. Well, then, the following principles passfor evident: That one, who does not exist, can have no responsibility foran evil action; that two things, which are identical with the same thing, are identical with each other; that I am the same man to-day that I wasyesterday. Now, the revealed doctrines of original sin and of the Trinityshow that the first and second of these axioms are false, and the Churchdoctrine of the preservation of the world as a continuous creation, thatthe last principle is uncertain. Thus if not even self-evidence furnishesus a criterion of truth, we must conclude that none whatever exists. Further, in regard to the origin of the world from a single principle, itscreation by God, we find this supported, no doubt, both by the conclusionsof the pure reason and by the consideration of nature, but controvened bythe fact of evil, by the misery and wickedness of man. Is it conceivablethat a holy and benevolent God has created so unhappy and wicked a being?

Bayle's motives in defending faith against reason were, on the one hand, his personal piety, on the other, his conviction of the unassailable purityof Christian ethics. All the sects agree in regard to moral principles, andit is this which assures us of the divinity of the Christian revelation. Nevertheless, he does not conceal from himself the fact that possession ofthe theoretical side of religion is far from being a guarantee of practicein conformity with her precepts. It is neither true that faith alone leadsto morality nor that unbelief is the cause of immorality. A state composedof atheists would be not at all impossible, if only strict punishments andstrict notions of honor were insisted upon. 

The judgments of the natural reason in moral questions are as certainand free from error as its capacity is shown to be weak and limited intheoretical science. The idea of morality never deceives anyone; the morallaw is innate in every man. Although Christianity has given the bestdevelopment of our duties, yet the moral law can be understood and followedby all men, even by heathen and atheists. We do not need to be Christiansin order to act virtuously; the knowledge given by conscience is notdependent upon revelation. From the knowledge of the good to the practiceof it is, it is true, a long step; we may be convinced of moral truthwithout loving it, and God's grace alone is able to strengthen us againstthe power of the passions, by adding to the illumination of the mind aninclination of the heart toward the good. Temperament, custom, self-lovemove the soul more strongly than general truths. As in life pleasure is faroutbalanced by pain and vexation, so far more evil acts are done than goodones: history is a collection of misdeeds, with scarcely one virtuous actfor a thousand crimes. It is not the external action that constitutes theethical character of a deed, but the motive or disposition; almsgiving frommotives of pride is a vice, and only when practiced out of love to one'sneighbors, a virtue. God looks only at the act of the will; our highestduty, and one which admits of no exceptions, is never to act contrary toconscience. 

CHAPTER IV. 

LOCKE. 

After the Cartesian philosophy had given decisive expression to thetendencies of modern thought, and had been developed through occasionalismto its completion in the system of Spinoza, the line of further progressconsisted in two factors: Descartes's principles--one-sidedly rationalisticand abstractly scientific, as they were--were, on the one hand, to besupplemented by the addition of the empirical element which Descartes hadneglected, and, on the other, to be made available for general culture byapproximation to the interests of practical life. England, with its freerand happier political conditions, was the best place for the accomplishmentof both ends, and Locke, a typically healthy and sober English thinker, with a distaste for extreme views, the best adapted mind. Descartes, therationalist, had despised experience, and Bacon, the empiricist, haddespised mathematics; but Locke aims to show that while the reason is theinstrument of science, demonstration its form, and the realm of knowledgewider than experience, yet this instrument and this form are dependent fortheir content on a supply of material from the senses. The emphasis, it istrue, falls chiefly on the latter half of this programme, and posterity, especially, has almost exclusively attended to the empirical side ofLocke's theory of knowledge in giving judgment concerning it. 

John Locke was born at Wrington, not far from Bristol, in 1632. At Oxfordhe busied himself with philosophy, natural science, and medicine, beingrepelled by the Scholastic thinkers, but strongly attracted by the writingsof Descartes. In 1665 he became secretary to the English ambassador to theCourt of Brandenburg. Returning thence to Oxford he made the acquaintanceof Lord Anthony Ashley (from 1672 Earl of Shaftesbury; died in Holland1683), who received him into his own household as a friend, physician, andtutor to his son (the father of Shaftesbury, the moral philosopher), andwith whose varying fortunes Locke's own were henceforth to be intimatelyconnected. Twice he became secretary to his patron (once in 1667--withan official secretaryship in 1672, when Shaftesbury became LordChancellor--and again in 1679, when he became President of the Council), but both times he lost his post on his friend's fall. The years 1675-79were spent in Montpellier and Paris. In 1683 he went into voluntary exilein Holland (where Shaftesbury had died in January of the same year), andremained there until 1689, when the ascension of the throne by William ofOrange made it possible for him to return to England. Here he was madeCommissioner of Appeals, and, subsequently, one of the Commissioners ofTrade and Plantations (till 1700). He died in 1704 at Gates, in Essex, atthe house of Sir Francis Masham, whose wife was the daughter of Cudworth, the philosopher. 

Locke's chief work, _An Essay concerning Human Understanding_, which hadbeen planned as early as 1670, was published in 1689-90, a short abstractof it having previously appeared in French in Le Clerc's _BibliothèqueUniverselle_, 1688. His theoretical works include, further, the twoposthumous treatises, _On the Conduct of the Understanding_ (originallyintended for incorporation in the fourth edition of the _Essay_, which, however, appeared in 1700 without this chapter, which probably had provedtoo extended) and the _Elements of Natural Philosophy_. To politicaland politico-economic questions Locke contributed the two _Treatises onGovernment_, 1690, and three essays on money and the coinage. In the year1689 appeared the first of three _Letters on Tolerance_, followed, in 1693, by _Some Thoughts on Education_, and, in 1695, by _The Reasonableness ofChristianity as delivered in the Scriptures_. The collected works appearedfor the first time in 1714, and in nine volumes in 1853; the philosophicalworks (edited by St. John) are given in Bonn's Standard Library(1867-68). [1]

[Footnote 1: Lord King and Fox Bourne have written on Locke's life, 1829and 1876. A comparison of Locke's theory of knowledge with Leibnitz'scritique was published by Hartenstein in 1865, and one by Von Benoit (prizedissertation) in 1869, and an exposition of his theory of substance by DeFries in 1879. Victor Cousin's _Philosophie de Locke_ has passed throughsix editions. [Among more recent English discussions reference may be madeto Green's Introduction to Hume's _Treatise on Human Nature_, 1874 (new ed. 1890), which is a valuable critique of the line of development, Locke, Berkeley, Hume; Fowler's _Locke_, in the English Men of Letters, 1880; andFraser's _Locke_, in Blackwood's Philosophical Classics, 1890. --TR. ]]

%(a) Theory of Knowledge. %--Locke's theory of knowledge is controlled bytwo tendencies, one native, furnished by the Baconian empiricism, and theother Continental, supplied by the Cartesian question concerning the originof ideas. Bacon had demanded the closest connection with experience asthe condition of fruitful inquiry. Locke supports this commendation ofexperience by a detailed description of the services which it renders tocognition, namely, by showing that, in simple ideas, perception suppliesthe material for complex ideas, and for all the cognitive work of theunderstanding. Descartes had divided ideas, according to their origin, intothree classes: those which are self-formed, those which come from without, and those which are innate (p. 79), and had called this third class themost valuable. Locke disputes the existence of ideas in the understandingfrom birth, and makes it receive the elements of knowledge from the senses, that is, from without. He is a representative of sensationalism, --not inthe stricter sense, first put into the term by those who subsequentlycontinued his endeavors, that thought arises from perception, that it istransformed sensation--but in the wider sense, that thought is (free)operation with ideas, which are neither created by it nor present in itfrom the first, but given to it by perception, that, consequently, thecognitive process begins with sensation and so its first attitude is apassive one. From the standpoint of the Cartesian problem, which he solvesin a sense opposite to Descartes, Locke supplements the empiricism of Baconby basing it on a psychologically developed theory of knowledge. That inthe course of the inquiry he introduces a new principle, which causes himto diverge from the true empirical path, will appear in the sequel. 

The question "How our ideas come into the mind" receives a negative answer(in the first book of the _Essay_): "There are no innate principles in themind"[1] The doctrine of the innate character of certain principles isbased on their universal acceptance. The asserted agreement of mankind inregard to the laws of thought, the principles of morality, the existenceof God, etc. , is neither cogent as an argument nor correct in fact. In thefirst place, even if there were any principles which everyone assented to, this would not prove that they had been created in the soul; the fact ofgeneral consent would admit of a different explanation. Granted that noatheists existed, yet it would not necessarily follow that the universalconviction of the existence of God is innate, for it might have beengradually reached in each case through the use of the reason--might havebeen inferred, for instance, from the perception of the purposive characterof the world. Second, the fact to which this theory of innate ideas appealsis not true. No moral rule can be cited which is respected by all nations. The idea of identity is entirely unknown to idiots and to children. Ifthe laws of identity and contradiction were innate they must appear inconsciousness prior to all other truths; but long before a child isconscious of the proposition "It is impossible for the same thing to be andnot to be, " it knows that sweet is not bitter, and that black is not white. The ideas first known are not general axioms and abstract concepts, butparticular impressions of the senses. Would nature write so illegible ahand that the mind must wait a long time before becoming able to read whathad been inscribed upon it? It is often said, however, that innate ideasand principles may be obscured and, finally, completely extinguishedby habit, education, and other extrinsic circumstances. Then, ifthey gradually become corrupted and disappear, they must at least bediscoverable in full purity where these disturbing influences have notyet acted; but it is especially vain to look for them in children and theignorant. Perhaps, however, these possess such principles unconsciously;perhaps they are imprinted on the understanding, without being attendedto? This would be a contradiction in terms. To be in the mind or theunderstanding simply means "to be understood" or to be known; no one canhave an idea without being conscious of it. Finally, if the attempt bemade to explain "originally in the mind" in so wide a sense that it wouldinclude all truths which man can ever attain or is capable of discoveringby the right use of reason, this would make not only all mathematicalprinciples, but all knowledge in general, all sciences, and all artsinnate; there would be no ground even for the exclusion of wisdom andvirtue. Therefore, either all ideas are innate or none are. This is animportant alternative. While Locke decides for the second half of theproposition, Leibnitz defends the first by a delicate application of theconcept of unconscious representation and of implicit knowledge, which hispredecessor rejects out of hand. 

[Footnote 1: According to Fox Bourne this first book was written after theothers. Geil _(Ueber die Abhängigkeit Lockes von Descartes_, Strassburg, 1887, chap, iii. ) has endeavored to prove that, since the argumentscontroverted are wanting in Descartes, the attack was not aimed atDescartes and his school, but at native defenders of innate ideas, as LordHerbert of Cherbury and the English Platonists (Cudworth, More, Parker, Gale). That along with these the Cartesian doctrine was a second andchief object of attack is shown by Benno Erdmann in his discussion of thetreatises by G. Geil and R. Sommer _(Lockes Verhältnis zu Descartes_, Berlin, 1887) in the _Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie_, ii, pp. 99-121. ]

Locke's positive answer to the question concerning the origin of ideas isgiven in his second book. Ideas are not present in the understanding fromthe beginning, nor are they originated by the understanding, but receivedthrough sensation. The understanding is like a piece of white paperon which perception inscribes its characters. All knowledge arises inexperience. This is of two kinds, derived either from the external sensesor the internal sense. The perception of external objects is termedSensation, that of internal phenomena (of the states of the mind itself)Reflection. External and internal perception are the only windowsthrough which the light of ideas penetrates into the dark chamber of theunderstanding. The two are not opened simultaneously, however, but oneafter the other; since the perceptions of the sensible qualities of bodies, unlike that of the operations of the mind itself, do not require an effortof attention, they are the earlier. The child receives ideas of sensationbefore those of reflection; internal perception presupposes externalperception. 

In this distinction between sensation and reflection, we may recognizean after-effect of the Cartesian dualism between matter and spirit. The antithesis of substances has become a duality in the faculties ofperception. But while Descartes had so far forth ascribed precedence to themind in that he held the self-certitude of the ego to be the highest andclearest of all truths and the soul to be better known than the body, inLocke the relation of the two was reversed, since he made the perceptionof self dependent on the precedent perception of external objects. Thisantithesis was made still sharper in later thinking, when Condillac madefull use of the priority of sensation, which in Locke had remained withoutmuch effect; while Berkeley, on the other hand, reduced external perceptionto internal perception. 

All original ideas are representations either of the external senses orof the internal sense, or of both. And since, in the case of ideas ofsensation, there is a distinction between those which are perceived by asingle one of the external senses and those which come from more than one, four classes of simple ideas result: (1) Those which come from one externalsense, as colors, sounds, tastes, odors, heat, solidity, and the like. (2) Those which come from more than one external sense (sight and touch), as extension, figure, and motion. (3) Reflection on the operations of ourminds yields ideas of perception or thinking (with its various modes, remembrance, judging, knowledge, faith, etc. ), and of volition or willing. (4) From both external and internal perception there come into the mind theideas of pleasure and pain, existence, power, unity, and succession. Theseare approximately our original ideas, which are related to knowledge asthe letters to written discourse; as all Homer is composed out of onlytwenty-four letters, so these few simple ideas constitute all the materialof knowledge. The mind can neither have more nor other simple ideas thanthose which are furnished to it by these two sources of experience. 

Locke differs from Descartes again in regard to extension and thought. Extension does not constitute the essence of matter, nor thought theessence of mind. Extension and body are not the same; the former ispresupposed by the latter as its necessary condition, but it is the formeralone which yields mathematical matter. The essence of physical matterconsists rather in solidity: where impenetrability is found there is body, and the converse; the two are absolutely inseparable. With space the caseis different. I cannot conceive unextended matter, indeed, but I can easilyconceive immaterial extension, an unfilled space Further, if the essenceof the soul consisted in thought, it must be always thinking. As theCartesians maintained, it must have ideas as soon as it begins to be, whichis manifestly contrary to experience. Thinking is merely an activity ofthe mind, as motion is an activity of the body, and not its essentialcharacteristic. The mind does not receive ideas until external objectsoccasion perception in it through impressions, which it is not able toavert. The understanding may be compared to a mirror, which, withoutindependent activity and without being consulted, takes up the images ofthings. Some of the simple ideas which have been mentioned above representthe properties of things as they really are, others not. The former classincludes all ideas of reflection (for we are ourselves the immediate objectof the inner sense); but among the ideas of sensation those only which comefrom different senses, hence extension, motion and rest, number, figure, and, further, solidity, are to be accounted _primary_ qualities, _i. E_. , such as are actual copies of the properties of bodies. All other ideas, onthe contrary, have no resemblance to properties of bodies; they representmerely the ways in which things act, and are not copies of things. Theideas of _secondary_ or derivative qualities (hard and soft, warm and cold, colors and sounds, tastes and odors) are in the last analysis caused--asare the primary--by motion, but not perceived as such. Yellow and warm aremerely sensations in us, which we erroneously ascribe to objects; withequal right we might ascribe to fire, as qualities inherent in it, thechanges in form and color which it produces in wax and the pain which itcauses in the finger brought into proximity with it. The warmth and thebrightness of the blaze, the redness, the pleasant taste, and the aromaticodor of the strawberry, exist in these bodies merely as the power toproduce such sensations in us by stimulation of the skin, the eye, thepalate, and the nose. If we remove the perceptions of them, they disappearas such, and their causes alone remain--the bulk, figure, number, texture, and motion of the insensible particles. The ground of the illusion lies inthe fact that such qualities as color, etc. , bear no resemblance to theircauses, in no wise point to these, and in themselves contain naught ofbulk, density, figure, and motion, and that our senses are too weakto discover the material particles and their primary qualities. --Thedistinction between qualities of the first and second order--first advancedby the ancient atomists, revived by Galileo and Descartes on the thresholdof the modern period, retained by Locke, and still customary in the naturalscience of the day--forms an important link in the transition from thepopular view of all sense-qualities as properties of things in themselvesto Kant's position, that spatial and temporal qualities also belongto phenomena alone, and are based merely on man's subjective mode ofapprehension, while the real properties of things in themselves areunknowable. 

Thus far the procedure of the understanding has been purely passive. Butbesides the capacity for passively receiving simple ideas, it possesses thefurther power of variously combining and extending these original ideaswhich have come into it from without, of working over the material givenin sensation by the combination, relation, and separation of its variouselements. In this it is active, but not creative. It is not able to formnew simple ideas (and just as little to destroy such as already exist), butonly freely to combine the elements furnished without its assistance byperception (or, following the figure mentioned above, to combine intosyllables and words the separate letters of sensation). Complex ideas arisefrom simple ideas through voluntary combination of the latter. 

Perception is the first step toward knowledge. After perception the mostindispensable faculty is retention, the prolonged consciousness of presentideas and the revival of those which have disappeared, or, as it were, havebeen put aside. For an idea to be "in the memory" means that the mindhas the capacity to reproduce it at will, whereupon it recognizes it aspreviously experienced. If our ideas are not freshened up from time to timeby new impressions of the same sort they gradually fade out, until finally(as the idea of color in one become blind in early life) they completelydisappear. Ideas impressed upon the mind by frequent repetition are rarelyentirely lost. Memory is the basis for the intellectual functions ofdiscernment and comparison, of composition, abstraction, and naming. Since, amid the innumerable multitude of ideas, it is not possible to assign toeach one a definite sign, the indispensable condition of language is foundin the power of abstraction, that is, in the power of generalizing ideas, of compounding many ideas into one, and of indicating by the names of thegeneral ideas, or of the classes and species, the particular ideas alsowhich are contained under these. Here is the great distinction betweenman and the brute. The brute lacks language because he lacks (not allunderstanding whatever, _e. G. _, not a capacity, though an imperfect one, ofcomparison and composition, but) the faculty of abstraction and of forminggeneral ideas. The object of language is simply the quick and easycommunication of our thoughts to others, not to give expression to the realessence of objects. Words are not names for particular things, but signsof general ideas; and _abstracta_ nothing more than an artifice forfacilitating intellectual intercourse. This abbreviation, which aids inthe exchange of ideas, involves the danger that the creations of the minddenoted by words will be taken for images of real general essences, ofwhich, in fact, there are none in existence, but only particular things. Inorder to prevent anyone to whom I am speaking from understanding my wordsin a different sense from the one intended, it is necessary for me todefine the complex ideas by analyzing them into their elements, and, on theother hand, to give examples in experience of the simple ideas, which donot admit of definition, or to explain them by synonyms. Thus much fromLocke's philosophy of language, to which he devotes the third book of the_Essay_. 

Complex ideas, which are very numerous, may be divided into three classes:Modes, Substances, and Relations. 

_Modes_ (states, conditions) are such combinations of simple ideas which donot "contain in them the supposition of subsisting by themselves, but areconsidered as dependencies on, or affections of substances. " They fall intotwo classes according as they are composed of the same simple ideas, orsimple ideas of various kinds; the former are called simple, the lattermixed, modes. Under the former class belong, for example, a dozen or ascore, the idea of which is composed of simple units; under the latter, running, fighting, obstinacy, printing, theft, parricide. The formation of_mixed_ modes is greatly influenced by national customs. Very complicatedtransactions (sacrilege, triumph, ostracism), if often considered anddiscussed, receive for the sake of brevity comprehensive names, whichcannot be rendered by a single expression in the language of othernations among whom the custom in question is not found. The elements mostfrequently employed in the formation of mixed modes are ideas of the twofundamental activities, thinking and motion, together with power, which istheir source. Locke discusses _simple_ modes in more detail, especiallythose derived from the ideas of space, time, unity, and power. Modifications of space are distance, figure, place, length; since anylength or measure of space can be repeated to infinity, we reach the ideaof immensity. As modes of time are enumerated succession (which we perceiveand measure only by the flow of our ideas), duration, and lengths ormeasures of duration, the endless repetition of which yields the idea ofeternity. From unity are developed the modes of numbers, and from theunlimitedness of these the idea of infinity. No idea, however, is richerin modes than the idea of power. A distinction must be made between activepower and passive power, or mere receptivity. While bodies are not capableof originating motion, but only of communicating motion received, we noticein ourselves, as spiritual beings, the capacity of originating actions andmotions. The body possesses only the passive power of being moved, the mindthe active power of producing motion. This latter is termed "will. " HereLocke discusses at length the freedom of the will, but not with entireclearness and freedom from contradictions (cf. Below). 

Modes are conditions which do not subsist of themselves, but have need ofa basis or support; they are not conceivable apart from a thing whoseproperties or states they are. We notice that certain qualities alwaysappear together, and habitually refer them to a substratum as the ground oftheir unity; in which they subsist or from which they proceed. _Substance_denotes this self-existent "we know not what, " which has or bears theattributes in itself, and which arouses the ideas of them in us. It is thecombination of a number of simple ideas which are presumed to belong to onething. From the ideas of sensation the understanding composes the idea ofbody, and from the ideas of reflection that of mind. Each of these is justas clear and just as obscure as the other; of each we know only its effectsand its sensuous properties; its essence is for us entirely unknowable. Instead of the customary names, material and immaterial substances, Locke recommends cogitative and incogitative substances, since it is notinconceivable that the Creator may have endowed some material beings withthe capacity of thought. God, --the idea of whom is attained by uniting theideas of existence, power, might, knowledge, and happiness with that ofinfinity, --is absolutely immaterial, because not passive, while finitespirits (which are both active and passive) are perhaps only bodies whichpossess the power of thinking. 

While the ideas of substances are referred to a reality without the mind astheir archetype, to which they are to conform and which they should imageand represent, _Relations_ (_e. G. _, husband, greater) are free and immanentproducts of the understanding. They are not copies of real things, butrepresent themselves alone, are their own archetypes. We do not ask whetherthey agree with things, but, conversely, whether things agree with them(Book iv. 4. 5). The mind reaches an idea of relation by placing two thingsside by side and comparing them. If it perceives that a thing, or aquality, or an idea begins to exist through the operation of some otherthing, it derives from this the idea of the causal relation, which is themost comprehensive of all relations, since all that is actual or possiblecan be brought under it. _Cause_ is that which makes another thing to beginto be; _effect_, that which had its beginning from some other thing. Theproduction of a new quality is termed alteration; of artificial things, making; of a living being, generation; of a new particle of matter, creation. Next in importance is the relation of _identity and diversity_. Since it is impossible for a thing to be in two different places at thesame time and for two things to be at the same time in the same place, everything that at a given instant is in a given place is identical withitself, and, on the other hand, distinct from everything else (no matterhow great the resemblance between them) that at the same moment exists inanother place. Space and time therefore form the _principiumindividuationis_. By what marks, however, may we recognize the identity ofan individual at different times and in different places? The identity ofinorganic matter depends on the continuity of the mass of atoms whichcompose it; that of living beings upon the permanent organization oftheir parts (different bodies are united into _one_ animal by a commonlife); personal identity consists in the unity of self-consciousness, notin the continuity of bodily existence (which is at once excluded by thechange of matter). The identity of the person or the ego must be carefullydistinguished from that of substance and of man. It would not be impossiblefor the person to remain the same in a change of substances, in so far asthe different beings (for instance, the souls of Epicurus and Gassendi)participated in the same self-consciousness; and, conversely, for a spiritto appear in two persons by losing the consciousness of its previousexistence. Consciousness is the sole condition of the self, or personalidentity. --The determinations of space and time are for the most partrelations. Our answers to the questions "When?" "How long?" "How large?"denote the distance of one point of time from another (_e. G. _, the birth ofChrist), the relation of one duration to another (of a revolution of thesun), the relation of one extension to another well-known one taken as astandard. Many apparently positive ideas and words, as young and old, largeand small, weak and strong, are in fact relative. They imply merely therelation of a given duration of life, of a given size and strength, to thatwhich has been adopted as a standard for the class of things in question. Aman of twenty is called young, but a horse of like age, old; and neither ofthese measures of time applies to stars or diamonds. Moral relations, whichare based on a comparison of man's voluntary actions with one of the threemoral laws, will be discussed below. 

The inquiry now turns from the origin of ideas to their _cognitive value_or their _validity_, beginning (in the concluding chapters of the secondbook) with the accuracy of single ideas, and advancing (in Book iv. , whichis the most important in the whole work) to the truth of judgments. An ideais real when it conforms to its archetype, whether this is a thing, realor possible, or an idea of some other thing; it is adequate when theconformity is complete. The idea of a four-sided triangle or of bravecowardice is unreal or fantastical, since it is composed of incompatibleelements, and the idea of a centaur, since it unites simple ideas in away in which they do not occur in nature. The layman's ideas of law or ofchemical substances are real, but inadequate, since they have a generalresemblance to those of experts, and a basis in reality, but yet onlyimperfectly represent their archetypes. Nay, further, our ideas ofsubstances are all inadequate, not only when they are taken forrepresentations of the inner essences of things (since we do not know theseessences), but also when they are considered merely as collections ofqualities. The copy never includes all the qualities of the thing, the lessso since the majority of these are powers, _i. E. _, consist in relations toother objects, and since it is impossible, even in the case of a singlebody, to discover all the changes which it is fitted to impart to, orto receive from, other substances. Ideas of modes and relations are alladequate, for they are their own archetypes, are not intended to representanything other than themselves, are images without originals. An idea ofthis kind, however, though perfect when originally formed, may becomeimperfect through the use of language, when it is unsuccessfully intendedto agree with the idea of some other person and denominated by a currentterm. In the case of mixed modes and their names, therefore, thecompatibility of their elements and the possible existence of their objectsare not enough to secure their reality and their complete adequacy; inorder to be adequate they must, further, exactly conform to the meaningconnected with their names by their author, or in common use. Simpleideas are best off, according to Locke, in regard both to reality and toadequacy. For the most part, it is true, they are not accurate copies ofthe real qualities, of things, but only the regular effects of the powersof things. But although real qualities are thus only the causes and notthe patterns of sensations, still simple ideas, by their constantcorrespondence with real qualities, sufficiently fulfill their divinelyordained end, to serve us as instruments of knowledge, _i. E. _, in thediscrimination of things. --An unreal and inadequate idea becomes false onlywhen it is referred to an object, whether this be the existence of a thing, or its true essence, or an idea of other things. Truth and error belongalways to affirmations or negations, that is, to (it may be, tacit)propositions. Ideas uncombined, unrelated, apart from judgments, ideas, that is, as mere phenomena in the mind, are neither true nor false. 

Knowledge is defined as the "perception of the connexion and agreement, ordisagreement and repugnancy" of two ideas; truth, as "the right joining orseparating of signs, _i. E. _, ideas or words. " The object of knowledgeis neither single ideas nor the relations of ideas to things, but the_relations of ideas among themselves_. This view was at once paradoxicaland pregnant. If all cognition, as Locke suggests in objection to his owntheory, consists in perceiving the agreement or disagreement of our ideas, are not the visions of the enthusiast and the reasonings of sober thinkersalike certain? are not the propositions, A fairy is not a centaur, and acentaur is a living being, just as true as that a circle is not a triangle, and that the sum of the angles of a triangle is equal to two right angles?The mind directly perceives nothing but its own ideas, but it seeks aknowledge of things! If this is possible it can only be indirectknowledge--the mind knows things through its ideas, and possesses criteriawhich show that its ideas agree with things. 

Two cases must be clearly distinguished, for a considerable number of ourideas, viz. , all complex ideas except those of substances, make no claimto represent things, and consequently cannot represent them falsely. Formathematical and moral ideas and principles, and the truth thereof, it isentirely immaterial whether things and conditions correspondent to themexist in nature or not. They are valid, even if nowhere actualized; theyare "eternal truths, " not in the sense that they are known from childhood, but in the sense that, as soon as known, they are immediately assentedto. [1] The case is different, however, with simple ideas and the ideas ofsubstances, which have their originals without the mind and which are tocorrespond with these. In regard to the former we may always be certainthat they agree with real things, for since the mind can neithervoluntarily originate them (_e. G. _, cannot produce sensations of colorin the dark) nor avoid having them at will, but only receive them fromwithout, they are not creatures of the fancy, but the natural and regularproductions of external things affecting us. In regard to the latter, theideas of substances, we may be certain at least when the simple ideas whichcompose them have been found so connected in experience. Perception hasan external cause, whose influence the mind is not able to withstand. Themutual corroboration furnished by the reports of the different senses, thepainfulness of certain sensations, the clear distinction between ideas fromactual perception and those from memory, the possibility of producing andpredicting new sensations of an entirely definite nature in ourselves andin others, by means of changes which we effect in the external world (e. G. By writing down a word)--these give further justification for the trustwhich we put in the senses. No one will be so skeptical as to doubt inearnest the existence of the things which he sees and touches, and todeclare his whole life to be a deceptive dream. The certitude whichperception affords concerning the existence of external objects is indeednot an absolute one, but it is sufficient for the needs of life and thegovernment of our actions; it is "as certain as our happiness or misery, beyond which we have no concernment, either of knowing or being. " In regardto the past the testimony of the senses is supplemented by memory, inwhich certainty [in regard to the continued existence of things previouslyperceived] is transformed into high probability; while in regard to theexistence of other finite spirits, numberless kinds of which may beconjectured to exist, though their existence is quite beyond our powers ofperception, certitude sinks into mere (though well-grounded) faith. 

[Footnote 1: Thus it results that knowledge, although dependent onexperience for all its materials, extends beyond experience. Theunderstanding is completely bound in the reception of simple ideas; less soin the combination of these into complex ideas; absolutely free in the actof comparison, which it can omit at will; finally, again, completely boundin its recognition of the relation in which the ideas it has chosento compare stand to one another. There is room for choice only in theintermediate stage of the cognitive process; at the beginning (in thereception of the simple ideas of perception, a, b, c, d), and at the end(in judging how the concepts a b c and a b d stand related to each other), the understanding is completely determined. ]

More certain than our _sensitive_ knowledge of the existence of externalobjects, are our immediate or _intuitive_ knowledge of our own existenceand our mediate or _demonstrative_ knowledge of the existence of God. Every idea that we have, every pain, every thought assures us of our ownexistence. The existence of God, however, as the infinite cause of allreality, endowed with intelligence, will, and supreme power, is inferredfrom the existence and constitution of the world and of ourselves. Realityexists; the real world is composed of matter in motion and thinking beings, and is harmoniously ordered. Since it is impossible for any real being tobe produced by nothing, and since we obtain no satisfactory answer to thequestion of origin until we rise to something existent from all eternity, we must assume as the cause of that which exists an Eternal Being, whichpossesses in a higher degree all the perfections which it has bestowed uponthe creatures. As the cause of matter and motion, and as the source of allpower, this Being must be omnipotent; as the cause of beauty and order inthe world, and, above all, as the creator of thinking beings, it must beomniscient. But these perfections are those which we combine in the ideaof God. 

Intuitive knowledge is the highest of the three degrees of knowledge. It isgained when the mind perceives the agreement or disagreement of two ideasat first sight, without hesitation, and without the intervention of anythird idea. This immediate knowledge is self-evident, irresistible, andexposed to no doubt. Knowledge is demonstrative when the mind perceives theagreement (or disagreement) of two ideas, not by placing them side by sideand comparing them, but through the aid of other ideas. The intermediatelinks are called proofs; their discovery is the work of the reason, andquickness in finding them out is termed sagacity. The greater the numberof the intermediate steps, the more the clearness and distinctness of theknowledge decreases, and the more the possibility of error increases. In order for an argument (_e. G_. , that a = d) to be conclusive, everyparticular step in it (a = b, b = c, c = d) must possess intuitivecertainty. Mathematics is not the only example of demonstrative knowledge, but the most perfect one, since in mathematics, by the aid of visiblesymbols, the full equality and the least differences among ideas may beexactly measured and sharply determined. 

Besides real existence Locke, unsystematically enough, enumerates threeother sorts of agreement between ideas, --in the perception of which hemakes knowledge consist, --viz. , identity or diversity (blue is not yellow), relation (when equals are added to equals the results are equal), andcoexistence or necessary connexion (gold is fixed). We are best off inregard to the knowledge of the first of these, "identity or diversity, " forhere our intuition extends as far as our ideas, since we recognize everyidea, as soon as it arises, as identical with itself and different fromothers. We are worst off in regard to "necessary connexion. " We knowsomething, indeed, concerning the incompatibility or coexistence of certainproperties (_e. G_. , that the same object cannot have two different sizesor colors at the same time; that figure cannot exist apart from extension):but it is only in regard to a few qualities and powers of bodies that weare able to discover dependence and necessary connexion by intuitive ordemonstrative thought, while in most cases we are dependent on experience, which gives us information concerning particular cases only, and affords noguarantee that things are the same beyond the sphere of our observation andexperiment. Since empirical inquiry furnishes no certain and universalknowledge, and since the assumption that like bodies will in the samecircumstances have like effects is only a conjecture from analogy, naturalscience in the strict sense does not exist. Both mathematics and ethics, however, belong in the sphere of the demonstrative knowledge of relations. The principles of ethics are as capable of exact demonstration as those ofarithmetic and geometry, although their underlying ideas are more complex, more involved, hence more exposed to misunderstanding, and lacking invisible symbols; though these defects can, and should, in part be made goodby careful and strictly consistent definitions. Such moral principles as"where there is no property there is no injustice, " or "no governmentallows absolute liberty, " are as certain as any proposition in Euclid. 

The advantage of the mathematical and moral sciences over the physicalsciences consists in the fact that, in the former, the real and nominalessences of their objects coincide, while in the latter they do not; and, further, that the real essences of substances are beyond our knowledge. Thetrue inner constitution of bodies, the root whence all their qualities, andthe coexistence of these, necessarily proceed, is completely unknown to us;so that we are unable to deduce them from it. Mathematical and moral ideas, on the other hand, and their relations, are entirely accessible, for theyare the products of our own voluntary operations. They are not copied fromthings, but are archetypal for reality and need no confirmation fromexperience. The connexion constituted by our understanding between theideas crime and punishment _(e. G_. , the proposition: crime deservespunishment) is valid, even though no crime had ever been committed, andnone ever punished. Existence is not at all involved in universalpropositions; "general knowledge lies only in our own thoughts, andconsists barely in the contemplation of our own abstract ideas" and theirrelations. The truths of mathematics and ethics are both universal andcertain, while in natural science single observations and experiments arecertain, but not general, and general propositions are only more or lessprobable. Both the particular experiments and the general conclusions areof great value under certain circumstances, but they do not meet therequirements of comprehensive and certain knowledge. 

The _extent_ of our knowledge is very limited--much less, in fact, thanthat of our ignorance. For our knowledge reaches no further than our ideas, and the possibility of perceiving their agreements. Many things exist ofwhich we have no ideas--chiefly because of the fewness of our senses andtheir lack of acuteness--and just as many of which our ideas are onlyimperfect. Moreover, we are often able neither to command the ideaswhich we really possess, or at least might attain, nor to perceive theirconnexions. The ideas which are lacking, those which are undiscoverable, those which are not combined, are the causes of the narrow limits of humanknowledge. 

There are two ways by which knowledge may be extended: by experience, onthe one hand, and, on the other, by the elevation of our ideas to a stateof clearness and distinctness, together with the discovery and systematicarrangement of those intermediate ideas which exhibit the relation of otherideas, in themselves not immediately comparable. The syllogism, as anartificial form, is of little value in the perception of the agreementsbetween these intermediate and final terms, and of none whatever in thediscovery of the former. Analytical and identical propositions which merelyexplicate the conception of the subject, but express nothing not alreadyknown, are, in spite of their indefeasible certitude, valueless for theextension of knowledge, and when taken for more than verbal explanations, mere absurdities. Even those most general propositions, those "principles"which are so much talked of in the schools, lack the utility which is socommonly ascribed to them. Maxims are, it is true, fit instruments for thecommunication of knowledge already acquired, and in learned disputationsmay perform indispensable service in silencing opponents, or in bringingthe dispute to a conclusion; but they are of little or no use in thediscovery of new truth. It is a mistake to believe that special cases (as5 = 2 + 3, or 5 = 1 + 4) are dependent on the truth of the abstract rule(the whole is equal to the sum of its parts), that they are confirmed byit and must be derived from it. The particular and concrete is not onlyas clear and certain as the general maxim, but better known than this, as well as earlier and more easily perceived. Nay, further, in caseswhere ideas are confused and the meanings of words doubtful, the use ofaxioms is dangerous, since they may easily lend the appearance of provedtruth to assertions which are really contradictory. 

Between the clear daylight of certain knowledge and the dark night ofabsolute ignorance comes the twilight of probability. We find ourselvesdependent on _opinion_ and presumption, or judgment based upon probability, when experience and demonstration leave us in the lurch and we are, nevertheless, challenged to a decision by vital needs which brook no delay. The judge and the historian must convince themselves from the reports ofwitnesses concerning events which they have not themselves observed; andeveryone is compelled by the interests of life, of duty, and of eternalsalvation to form conclusions concerning things which lie beyond the limitsof his own perception and reflective thought, nay, which transcend allhuman experience and rigorous demonstration whatever. To delay decision andaction until absolute certainty had been attained, would scarcely allowus to lift a single finger. In cases concerning events in the past, thefuture, or at a distance, we rely on the testimony of others (testing theirreports by considering their credibility as witnesses and the conformity ofthe evidence to general experience in like cases); in regard to questionsconcerning that which is absolutely beyond experience, _e. G. _, higherorders of spirits, or the ultimate causes of natural phenomena, analogy isthe only help we have. If the witnesses conflict among themselves, or withthe usual course of nature, the grounds _pro_ and _con_ must be carefullybalanced; frequently, however, the degree of probability attained is sogreat that our assent is almost equivalent to complete certainty. Noone doubts, --although it is impossible for him to "know, "--that Caesarconquered Pompey, that gold is ductile in Australia as elsewhere, that ironwill sink to-morrow as well as to-day. Thus opinion supplements the lack ofcertain knowledge, and serves as a guide for belief and action, whereverthe general lot of mankind or individual circumstances prevent absolutecertitude. 

Although in this twilight region of opinion demonstrative proofs arereplaced merely by an "occasion" for "taking" a given fact or idea "as truerather than false, " yet assent is by no means an act of choice, as theCartesians had erroneously maintained, for in knowledge it is determined byclearly discerned reasons, and in the sphere of opinion, by the balance ofprobability. The understanding is free only in combining ideas, not in itsjudgment concerning the agreement or the repugnancy of the ideas compared;it lies within its own power to decide whether it will judge at all, andwhat ideas it will compare, but it has no control over the result of thecomparison; it is impossible for it to refuse its assent to a demonstratedtruth or a preponderant probability. 

In this recognition of objective and universally valid relations existingamong ideas, which the thinking subject, through comparisons voluntarilyinstituted, discovers valid or finds given, but which it can neither alternor demur to, Locke abandons empirical ground (cf. P. 155) and approachesthe idealists of the Platonizing type. His inquiry divides into two verydissimilar parts (a psychological description of the origin of ideas and alogical determination of the possibility and the extent of knowledge), thelatter of which is, in Locke's opinion, compatible with the former, butwhich could never have been developed from it. The rationalistic edificecontradicts the sensationalistic foundation. Locke had hoped to show thevalue and the limits of knowledge by an inquiry into the origin of ideas, but his estimate of this value and these limits cannot be proved from the_a posteriori_ origin of ideas--it can only be maintained in despite ofthis, and stands in need of support from some (rationalistic) principleelsewhere obtained. Thinkers who trace back all simple ideas to outer andinner perception we expect to reject every attempt to extend knowledgebeyond the sphere of experience, to declare the combinations of ideaswhich have their origin in sensation trustworthy, and those which areformed without regard to perception, illusory; or else, with Protagoras, to limit knowledge to the individual perceiving subject, with a consequentcomplete denial of its general validity. But exactly the opposite of allthese is found in Locke. The remarkable spectacle is presented of aphilosopher who admits no other sources of ideas than perception and thevoluntary combination of perceptions, transcending the limits of experiencewith proofs of the divine existence, viewing with suspicion the ideas ofsubstance formed at the instance of experience, and reducing naturalscience to the sphere of mere opinion; while, on the other hand, heascribes reality and eternal validity to the combinations of ideas formedindependently of perception, which are employed by mathematics and ethics, and completely abandons the individualistic position in his naïve faith inthe impregnable validity of the relations of ideas, which is evident to allwho turn their attention to them. The ground for the universal validity ofthe relations among ideas as well as of our knowledge of them, naturallylies not in their empirical origin (for my experience gives information tome alone, and that only concerning the particular case in question), but inthe uniformity of man's rational constitution. If two men really have thesame ideas--not merely think they have because they use similarlanguage--it is impossible, according to Locke, that they should holddifferent opinions concerning the relation of their ideas. With thisconviction, that the universal validity of knowledge is rooted in theuniformity of man's rational constitution, and the further one, that weattain certain knowledge only when things conform to our ideas, Lockeclosely approaches Kant; while his assumption of a fixed order of relationsamong ideas, which the individual understanding cannot refuse to recognize, and the typical character assigned to mathematics, associate him withMalebranche and Spinoza. In view of these points of contact with therationalistic school and his manifold dependence on its founder, we mayventure the paradox, that Locke may not only be termed a Baconian withCartesian leanings, but (almost) a Cartesian influenced by Bacon. Thepossibility must not be forgotten, however, that rationalistic suggestionscame to him also from Galileo, Hobbes, and Newton. [1]

[Footnote 1: Cf. The article by Benno Erdmann cited p. 156, note. ]

Intermediate between knowledge and opinion stands faith as a form of assentwhich is based on testimony rather than on deductions of the reason, but whose certitude is not inferior to that of knowledge, since it is acommunication from God, who can neither deceive nor be deceived. Faithand the certainty thereof depend on reason, in so far as reason alone candetermine whether a divine revelation has really been made and the meaningof the words in which the revelation has come down to us. In determiningthe boundaries of faith and reason Locke makes use of thedistinction--which has become famous--between things above reason, according to reason, and contrary to reason. Our conviction that God existsis according to reason; the belief that there are more gods than one, orthat a body can be in two different places at the same time, contraryto reason; the former is a truth which can be demonstrated on rationalgrounds, the latter an assumption incompatible with our clear and distinctideas. In the one case revelation confirms a proposition of which wewere already certain; in the other an alleged revelation is incapableof depriving our certain knowledge of its force. Above reason are thoseprinciples whose probability and truth cannot be shown by the natural useof our faculties, as that the dead shall rise again and the account of thefall of part of the angels. Among the things which are not contrary toreason belong miracles, for they contradict opinion based on the usualcourse of nature, it is true, but not our certain knowledge; in spite oftheir supernatural character they deserve willing acceptance, and receiveit, when they are well attested, whereas principles contrary to reason mustbe unconditionally rejected as a revelation from God. Locke's demand forthe subjection of faith to rational criticism assures him an honorableplace in the history of English deism. He enriched the philosophy ofreligion by two treatises of his own: _The Reasonableness of Christianity_, 1695, and three _Letters on Tolerance_, 1689-1692. The former transfers thecenter of gravity of the Christian religion from history to the doctrine ofredemption; the _Letters_ demand religious freedom, mutual tolerance amongthe different sects, and the separation of Church and State. Those sectsalone are to receive no tolerance which themselves exercise none, and whichendanger the well-being of society; together with atheists, who areincapable of taking oaths. In other respects it is the duty of the state toprotect all confessions and to favor none. 

%(b) Practical Philosophy. %--Locke contributed to practical philosophyimportant suggestions concerning freedom, morality, politics, andeducation. Freedom is the "power to begin or forbear, continue or put anend to" actions (thoughts and motions). It is not destroyed by the factthat the will is always moved by desire, more exactly, by uneasiness underpresent circumstances, and that the decision is determined by the judgmentof the understanding. Although the result of examination is itselfdependent on the unalterable relations of ideas, it is still in our powerto decide whether we will consider at all, and what ideas we will take intoconsideration. Not the thought, not the determination of the will, is free, but the person, the mind; this has the power to suspend the prosecution ofdesire, and by its judgment to determine the will, even in oppositionto inclination. Four stages must, consequently, be distinguished in thevolitional process: desire or uneasiness; the deliberative combination ofideas; the judgment of the understanding; determination. Freedom has itsplace at the beginning of the second stage: it is open to me to decidewhether to proceed at all to consideration and final judgment concerning aproposed action; thus to prevent desire from directly issuing in movements;and, according to the result of my examination, perhaps, to substitute forthe act originally desired an opposite one. Without freedom, moral judgmentand responsibility would be impossible. The above appears to us torepresent the essence of Locke's often vacillating discussion of freedom(II. 21). Desire is directed to pleasure; the will obeys the understanding, which is exalted above motives of pleasure and the passions. Everything isphysically good which occasions and increases pleasure in us, which removesor diminishes pain, or contributes to the attainment of some other good andthe avoidance of some other evil. Actions, on the contrary, are morallygood when they conform to a rule by which they are judged. Whoeverearnestly meditates on his welfare will prefer moral or rational good tosensuous good, since the former alone vouchsafes true happiness. God hasmost intimately united virtue and general happiness, since he has made thepreservation of human society dependent on the exercise of virtue. 

The mark of a law for free beings is the fact that it apportions reward forobedience and punishment for disobedience. The laws to which an action mustconform in order to deserve the predicate "good" are three in number(II. 28): by the divine law "men judge whether their actions are sinsor duties"; by the civil law, "whether they be criminal or innocent"(deserving of punishment or not); by the law of opinion or reputation, "whether they be virtues or vices. " The first of these laws threatensimmorality with future misery; the second, with legal punishments; thethird, with the disapproval of our fellow-men. 

The third law, the law of opinion or reputation, called also philosophical, coincides on the whole, though not throughout, with the first, the divinelaw of nature, which is best expressed in Christianity, and which is thetrue touchstone of the moral character of actions. While Locke, in hispolemic against innate ideas, had emphasized the diversity of moraljudgments among individuals and nations (as a result of which an action iscondemned in one place and praised as virtuous in another), he here givesprominence to the fact of general agreement in essentials, since it is onlynatural that each should encourage by praise and esteem that which is tohis advantage, while virtue evidently conduces to the good of all whocome into contact with the virtuous. Amid the greatest diversity of moraljudgments virtue and praise, vice and blame, go together, while in generalthat is praised which is really praiseworthy--even the vicious man approvesthe right and condemns that which is faulty, at least in others. Locke wasthe first to call attention to general approval as an external mark ofmoral action, a hint which the Scottish moralists subsequently exploited. The objection that he reduced morality to the level of the conventional isunjust, for the law of opinion and reputation did not mean for him thetrue principle of morality, but only that which controls the majority ofmankind--If anyone is inclined to doubt that commendation and disgrace aresufficient motives to action, he does not understand mankind; there ishardly one in ten thousand insensible enough to endure in quiet theconstant disapproval of society. Even if the lawbreaker hopes to escapepunishment at the hands of the state, and puts out of mind the thought offuture retribution, he can never escape the disapproval of his misdeedson the part of his fellows. In entire harmony with these views is Locke'sadvice to educators, that they should early cultivate the love of esteem intheir pupils. 

Of the four principles of morals which Locke employs side by side, and inalternation, without determining their exact relations--the reason, thewill of God, the general good (and, deduced from this, the approval ofour fellow-men), self-love--the latter two possess only an accessorysignificance, while the former two co-operate in such a way that the onedetermines the content of the good and the other confirms it and givesit binding authority. The Christian religion does the reason a threefoldservice--it gives her information concerning our duty, which she could havereached herself, indeed, without the help of revelation, but not withthe same certitude and rapidity; it invests the good with the majesty ofabsolute obligation by proclaiming it as the command of God; it increasesthe motives to morality by its doctrines of immortality and futureretribution. Although Locke thus intimately joins virtue with earthly joyand eternal happiness, and although he finds in the expectation of heavenor hell a welcome support for the will in its conflict with the passions, we must remember that he values this regard for the results and rewards ofvirtue only as a subsidiary motive, and does not esteem it as in itselfethical: eternal happiness forms, as it were, the "dowry" of virtue, which adds to its true value in the eyes of fools and the weak, though itconstitutes neither its essence nor its basis. Virtue seems to the wise manbeautiful and valuable enough even without this, and yet the commendationsof philosophers gain for her but few wooers. The crowd is attracted to heronly when it is made clear to it that virtue is the "best policy. "

In politics Locke is an opponent of both forms of absolutism, the despoticabsolutism of Hobbes and the patriarchal absolutism of Filmer (died 1647;his _Patriarcha_ declared hereditary monarchy a divine institution), anda moderate exponent of the liberal tendencies of Milton (1608-74) andAlgernon Sidney (died 1683; _Discourses concerning Government_). The two_Treatises on Civil Government_, 1690, develop, the first negatively, thesecond positively, the constitutional theory with direct reference to thepolitical condition of England at the time. All men are born free and withlike capacities and rights. Each is to preserve his own interests, withoutinjuring those of others. The right to be treated by every man as arational being holds even prior to the founding of the state; but thenthere is no authoritative power to decide conflicts. The state of nature isnot in itself a state of war, but it would lead to this, if each man shouldhimself attempt to exercise the right of self-protection against injury. Inorder to prevent acts of violence there is needed a civil community, basedon a free contract, to which each individual member shall transfer hisfreedom and power. Submission to the authority of the state is a free act, and, by the contract made, natural rights are guarded, not destroyed;political freedom is obedience to self-imposed law, subordination to thecommon will expressing itself in the majority. The political power isneither tyrannical, for arbitrary rule is no better than the state ofnature, nor paternal, for rulers and subjects are on an equality in the useof the reason, which is not the case with parents and children. Thesupreme power is the legislative, intrusted by the community to its chosenrepresentatives--the laws should aim at the general good. Subordinateto the legislative power, and to be kept separate from it, come the twoexecuting powers, which are best united in a single hand (the king), viz. , the executive power (administrative and judicial), which carries the lawsinto effect, and the federative power, which defends the community againstexternal foes. The ruler is subject to the law. If the government, throughviolation of the law, has become unworthy of the power intrusted to it, andhas forfeited it, sovereign authority reverts to the source whence itwas derived, that is, to the people. The people decides whether itsrepresentatives and the monarch have deserved the confidence placed inthem, and has the right to depose them, if they exceed their authority. Asthe sworn obedience (of the subjects) is to the law alone, the ruler whoacts contrary to law has lost the right to govern, has put himself in astate of hostility to the people, and revolution becomes merely necessarydefense against aggression. 

Montesquieu made these political ideas of Locke the common property ofEurope. [1] Rousseau did a like service for Locke's pedagogical views, givenin the modest but important _Thoughts concerning Education_, 1693. Theaim of education should not be to instill anything into the pupil, but todevelop everything from him; it should guide and not master him, shoulddevelop his capacities in a natural way, should rouse him to independence, not drill him into a scholar. In order to these ends thorough andaffectionate consideration of his individuality is requisite, and privateinstruction is, therefore, to be preferred to public instruction. Since itis the business of education to make men useful members of society, it mustnot neglect their physical development. Learning through play and objectteaching make the child's task a delight; modern languages are to belearned more by practice than by systematic study. The chief differencebetween Locke and Rousseau is that the former sets great value on arousingthe sense of esteem, while the latter entirely rejects this as aneducational instrument. 

[Footnote 1: Cf. Theod. Pietsch, _Ueber das Verhältniss der politischenTheorien Lockes zu Montesquieus Lehre von der Teilung der Gewalten_ Berlindissertation, Breslau, 1887. ]

CHAPTER V. 

ENGLISH PHILOSOPHY IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

Besides the theory of knowledge, which forms the central doctrine in hissystem, Locke had discussed the remaining branches of philosophy, though inless detail, and, by his many-sided stimulation, had posited problemsfor the Illumination movement in England and in France. Now the severaldisciplines take different courses, but the after-influence of his powerfulmind is felt on every hand. The development of deism from Toland on isunder the direct influence of his "rational Christianity"; the ethics ofShaftesbury stands in polemic relation to his denial of everything innate;and while Berkeley and Hume are deducing the consequences of his theory ofknowledge, Hartley derives the impulse to a new form of psychology from hischapter on the association of ideas. 

%1. Natural Philosophy and Psychology. %

In Locke's famous countryman, Isaac Newton (1642-1727), [1] the moderninvestigation of nature attains the level toward which it had striven, atfirst by wishes and demands, gradually, also, in knowledge and achievement, since the end of the mediaeval period. Mankind was not able to discard ata stroke its accustomed Aristotelian view of nature, which animated thingswith inner, spirit-like forces. A full century intervened between Telesiusand Newton, the concept of natural law requiring so long a time to breakout of its shell. A tremendous revolution in opinion had to be effectedbefore Newton could calmly promulgate his great principle, "Abandonsubstantial forms and occult qualities and reduce natural phenomena tomathematical laws, " before he could crown the discoveries of Galileo andKepler with his own. For this successful union of Bacon's experimentalinduction with the mathematical deduction of Descartes, this combination ofthe analytic and the synthetic methods, which was shown in the demandfor, and the establishment of, mathematically formulated natural laws, presupposes that nature is deprived of all inner life [2] and allqualitative distinctions, that all that exists is compounded of uniformlyacting parts, and that all that takes place is conceived as motion. Withthis Hobbes's programme of a mechanical science of nature is fulfilled. Theheavens and the earth are made subject to the same law of gravitation. Howfar Newton himself adhered to the narrow meaning of mechanism (motion frompressure and impulse), is evident from the fact that, though he is oftenhonored as the creator of the dynamical view of nature, he rejected _actioin distans_ as absurd, and deemed it indispensable to assume some "cause"of gravity (consisting, probably, in the impact of imponderable materialparticles). It was his disciples who first ventured to proclaim gravity asthe universal force of matter, as the "primary quality of all bodies" (soRoger Cotes in the preface to the second edition of the _Principia_, 1713). 

[Footnote 1: 1669-95 professor of mathematics in Cambridge, later residentin London; 1672, member, and, 1703, president of the Royal Society. Chiefwork, _Philosophic Naturalis Principia Mathematica_, 1687. _Works_, 1779_seq_. On Newton cf. K. Snell, 1843; Durdik, _Leibniz und Newton_, 1869;Lange, _History of Materialism_, vol. I. P. 306 _seq_. ]

[Footnote 2: That the mathematical view of nature, since it leaves room forquantitative distinctions alone, is equivalent to an examination of naturehad been clearly recognized by Poiret. As he significantly remarked: Theprinciples of the Cartesian physics relate merely to the "cadaver" ofnature _(Erud_. , p. 260). ]

Newton resembles Boyle in uniting profound piety with the rigor ofscientific thought. He finds the most certain proof for the existence ofan intelligent creator in the wonderful arrangement of the world-machine, which does not need after-adjustment at the hands of its creator, and whoseadaptation he praises as enthusiastically as he unconditionally rejectsthe mingling of teleological considerations in the explanation of physicalphenomena. By this "physico-theological" argument he furnishes a welcomesupport to deism. While the finite mind perceives in the sensorium of thebrain the images of objects which come to it from the senses, God has allthings in himself, is immediately present in all, and cognizes them withoutsense-organs, the expanse of the universe forming his sensorium. 

 * * * * *

The transfer of mechanical views to psychical phenomena was alsoaccompanied by the conviction that no danger to faith in God wouldresult therefrom, but rather that it would aid in its support. The chiefrepresentatives of this movement, which followed the example of Gay, were the physician, David Hartley[1] (1704-57), and his pupil, JosephPriestley, [2] a dissenting minister and natural scientist (born 1733, diedin Philadelphia 1804; the discoverer of oxygen gas, 1774). 

The fundamental position of these psychologists is expressed in twoprinciples: (1) all cognitive and motive life is based on the mechanism ofpsychical elements, the highest and most complex inner phenomena (thoughts, feelings, volitions) are produced by the combination of simple ideas, that is, they arise through the "association of ideas "; (2) all innerphenomena, the complex as well as the simple, are accompanied by, or ratherdepend on, more or less complicated physical phenomena, viz. , nervousprocesses and brain vibrations. Although Hartley and Priestley are agreedin their demand for an associational and physiological treatment ofpsychology, and in the attempt to give one, they differ in this, thatHartley cautiously speaks only of a parallelism, a correspondence betweenmental and cerebral processes, and rejects the materialistic interpretationof inner phenomena, pointing out that the heterogeneity of motion and ideasforbids the reduction of the latter to the former, and that psychologicalanalysis never reaches corporeal but only psychical elements. Moreover, itis only with reluctance that, conscious of the critical character of theconclusion, he admits the dependence of brain vibrations on the mechanicallaws of the material world and the thoroughgoing determinateness of thehuman will, consoling himself with the belief that moral responsibilitynevertheless remains intact. Priestley, on the contrary, boldly avows thematerialistic and deterministic consequences of his position, holds thatpsychical phenomena are not merely accompanied by material motions butconsist in them (thought is a function of the brain), and makes psychology, as the physics of the nerves, a part of physiology. The denial ofimmortality and the divine origin of the world is, however, by no meansto follow from materialism. Priestley not only combated the atheism ofHolbach, but also entered the deistic ranks with works of his own onNatural Religion and the Corruptions of Christianity. 

[Footnote 1: Hartley, _Observations on Man, his Frame, his Duties, hisExpectations_. 1749. ]

[Footnote 2: Priestley, _Hartley's Theory of the Human Mind on thePrinciples of the Association of Ideas_, 1775; _Disquisitions relating toMatter and Spirit_, 1777; _The Doctrine of Philosophical Necessity_, 1777;_Free Discussions of the Doctrines of Materialism_, 1778 (against RichardPrice's _Letters on Materialism and Philosophical Necessity_). Cf. Onboth Schoenlank's dissertation, _Hartley und Priestley, die Begründer desAssoziationismus in England_, 1882. ]

As early as in Hartley[1] the principle, which is so important for ethics, appears that things and actions (_e. G. _, promotion of the good of others)which at first are sought and done because they are means to our ownenjoyment, in time come to have a direct worth of their own, apart from theoriginal egoistic end. James Mill (1829) has repeated this thought in latertimes. As fame becomes an immediate object of desire to the ambitious man, and gold to the miser, so, through association, the impulse toward thatwhich will secure approval may be transformed into the endeavor after thatwhich deserves approval. 

[Footnote 1: Cf. Jodl, _Geschichte der Ethik_, vol. I. P. 197 _seq_. ]

Among later representatives of the Associational school we may mentionErasmus Darwin _(Zoönomia, or the Laws of Organic Life_, 1794-96). 

%2. Deism%. 

As Bacon and Descartes had freed natural science, Hobbes, the state, andGrotius, law from the authority of the Church and had placed them on anindependent basis, _i. E. _, the basis of nature and reason, so deism[1]seeks to free religion from Church dogma and blind historical faith, and todeduce it from natural knowledge. In so far as deism finds both the sourceand the test of true religion in reason, it is rationalism; in so far as itappeals from the supernatural light of revelation and inspiration to thenatural light of reason, it is naturalism; in so far as revelation and itsrecords are not only not allowed to restrict rational criticism, but aremade the chief object of criticism, its adherents are freethinkers. 

[Footnote 1: Cf. Lechler's _Geschichte des Englischen Deismus_, 1841, whichis rigorously drawn from the sources. [Hunt, _History of Religious Thoughtin England_, 1871-73 [1884]; Leslie Stephen, _History of English Thought inthe Eighteenth Century_, 1876 [1880]; Cairns, _Unbelief in the EighteenthCentury_, 1881. ]]

The general principles of deism may be compressed into a few theses. Thereis a natural religion, whose essential content is morality; this comprisesnot much more than the two maxims, Believe in God and Do your duty. 

Positive religions are to be judged by this standard. The elements in themwhich are added to natural religion, or conflict with it, are superfluousand harmful additions, arbitrary decrees of men, the work of cunning rulersand deceitful priests. Christianity, which in its original form was theperfect expression of the true religion of reason, has experienced greatcorruptions in its ecclesiastical development, from which it must now bepurified. 

These principles are supported by the following arguments: Truth is oneand there is but one true religion. If the happiness of men depends on thefulfilment of her commands, these must be comprehensible to every man andmust have been communicated to him; and since a special revelation andlegislation could not come to the knowledge of all, they can be no otherthan the laws of duty inscribed on the human heart. In order to salvation, then, we need only to know God as creator and judge, and to fulfill hiscommands, _i. E. _. To live a moral life. The one true religion has beencommunicated to man in two forms, through the inner natural revelation ofreason, and the outer historical revelation of the Gospel. Since both havecome from God they cannot be contradictory. Accordingly natural religionand the true one among the positive religions do not differ in theircontent, but only in the manner of their promulgation. Reason trieshistorical religion by the standard furnished by natural religion, anddistinguishes actual from asserted revelation by the harmony of itscontents with reason: the deist believes in the Bible because of thereasonableness of its teachings; he does not hold these teachings truebecause they are found in the Bible. If a positive religion containsless than natural religion it is incomplete; if it contains more it istyrannical, since it imposes unnecessary requirements. The authority ofreason to exercise the office of a judge in regard to the credibility ofrevelation is beyond doubt; indeed, apart from it there is no means ofattaining truth, and the acceptance of an external revelation as genuine, and not merely as alleged to be such, is possible only for those who havealready been convinced of God's existence by the inner light of reason. 

To these logical considerations is added an historical position, which, though only cursorily indicated at the beginning, is evidenced inincreasing detail as the deistic movement continues on its course. Naturalreligion is always and everywhere the same, is universal and necessary, isperfect, eternal, and original. As original, it is the earliest religion, and as old as the world; as perfect, it is not capable of improvement, butonly of corruption and restoration. Twice it has existed in perfect purity, as the religion of the first men and as the religion of Christ. Twiceit has been corrupted, in the pre-Christian period by idolatry, whichproceeded from the Egyptian worship of the dead, in the period after Christby the love of miracle and blind reverence for authority. In both cases thecorruption has come from power-loving priests, who have sought to frightenand control the people by incomprehensible dogmas and ostentations, mysterious ceremonies, and found their advantage in the superstition of themultitude, --each new divinity, each new mystery meaning a gain for them. Asthey had corrupted the primitive religion into polytheism, so Christianitywas corrupted by conforming it to the prejudices of those to be converted, in whose eyes the simplicity of the new doctrine would have been norecommendation for it. The Jew sought in it an echo of the Law, the heathenlonged for his festivals and his occult philosophy; so it was burdenedwith unprofitable ceremonial observances and needless profundity, it wasJudaized and heathenized. It was inevitable that the doctrines of originalsin, of satisfaction and atonement should prove especially objectionable tothe purely rational temper of the deists. Neither the guilt of others (thesin of our ancestors) nor the atonement of others (Christ's death on thecross) can be imputed to us; Christ can be called the Savior only by way ofmetaphor, only in so far as the example of his death leads us on to faithand obedience for ourselves. The name atheism, which, it is true, orthodoxyheld ready for every belief incorrect according to its standard, was on thecontrary undeserved. The deists did not attack Christian revelation, stillless belief in God. They considered the atheist bereft of reason, and theyby no means esteemed historical revelation superfluous. The end of thelatter was to stir the mind to move men to reflection and conversion, totransform morals, and if anyone declared it unnecessary because it containsnothing but natural truths, he was referred to the works of Euclid, whichcertainly contain nothing which is not founded in the reason, but which noone but a fool will consider unnecessary in the study of mathematics. 

That which we have here summarized as the general position of deism, gainedgradual expression through the regular development and specialization ofdeistic ideas in individual representatives of the movement. The chiefpoints and epochs were marked by Toland's _Christianity not Mysterious_, 1696; Collins's _Discourse of Freethinking_, 1713; Tindal's _Christianityas Old as the Creation_, 1730; and Chubb's _True Gospel of Jesus Christ_, 1738. The first of these demands a critique of revelation, the seconddefends the right of free investigation, the third declares the religionof Christ, which is merely a revived natural religion, to be the oldestreligion, the fourth reduces it entirely to moral life. 

The deistic movement was called into life by Lord Herbert of Cherbury (pp. 79-80) and continued by Locke, in so far as the latter had intrusted toreason the discrimination of true from false revelation, and had admittedin Christianity elements above reason, though not things contrary toreason. Following Locke, John Toland (1670-1722) goes a step further withthe proof that the Gospel not only contains nothing contrary to reason, butalso nothing above reason, and that no Christian doctrine is to be calledmysterious. To the demand that we should worship what we do not comprehend, he answers that reason is the only basis of certitude, and alone decides onthe divinity of the Scriptures, by a consideration of their contents. Themotive which impels us to assent to a truth must lie in reason, not inrevelation, which, like all authority and experience, is merely the way bywhich we attain the knowledge of the truth; it is a means of instruction, not a ground of conviction. All faith has knowledge and understanding forits conditions, and is rational conviction. Before we can put our trust inthe Scriptures, we must be convinced that they were in fact written by theauthors to whom they are ascribed, and must consider whether these men, their deeds, and their works, were worthy of God. The fact that God'sinmost being is for us inscrutable does not make him a mystery, for eventhe common things of nature are known to us only by their properties. Miracles are also in themselves nothing incomprehensible; they aresimply enhancements of natural laws beyond their ordinary operations, bysupernatural assistance, which God vouchsafes but rarely and only forextraordinary ends. Toland explains the mysteries smuggled into the ethicalreligion of Christianity as due to the toleration of Jewish and heathencustoms, to the entrance of learned speculation, and to the selfishinventions of the clergy and the rulers. The Reformation itself had notentirely restored the original purity and simplicity. 

Thus far Toland the deist. In his later writings, the five _Letters toSerena_, 1704, addressed to the Prussian queen, Sophia Charlotte, andthe _Pantheisticon_ (Cosmopoli, 1720), he advances toward a hylozoisticpantheism. 

The first of the Letters discusses the prejudices of mankind; the second, the heathen doctrine of immortality; the third, the origin of idolatry;while the fourth and fifth are devoted to Spinoza, the chief defect inwhose philosophy is declared to be the absence of an explanation of motion. Motion belongs to the notion of matter as necessarily as extension andimpenetrability. Matter is always in motion; rest is only the reciprocalinterference of two moving forces. The differences of things depend on thevarious movements of the particles of matter, so that it is motion whichindividualizes matter in general into particular things. As the Lettersascribe the purposive construction of organic beings to a divine reason, sothe _Pantheisticon_ also stops short before it reaches the extreme of nakedmaterialism. Everything is from the whole; the whole is infinite, one, eternal, all-rational. God is the force of the whole, the soul ofthe world, the law of nature. The treatise includes a liturgy of thepantheistic society with many quotations from the ancient poets. 

Anthony Collins (1676-1729), in his _Discourse of Free-thinking_, showsthe right of free thought _(i. E_. , of judgment on rational grounds) ingeneral, from the principle that no truth is forbidden to us, and thatthere is no other way by which we can attain truth and free ourselves fromsuperstition, and the right to apply it to God and the Bible in particular, from the fact that the clergy differ concerning the most important matters. The fear that the differences of opinion which spring from freethinking mayendanger the peace of society lacks foundation; on the contrary, it isonly restriction of the freedom of thought which leads to disorders, byweakening moral zeal. The clergy are the only ones who condemn liberty ofthought. It is sacrilege to hold that error can be beneficial and truthharmful. As a proof that freethinking by no means corrupts character, Collins gives in conclusion a list of noble freethinkers from Socrates downto Locke and Tillotson. Among the replies to the views of Collins we maymention the calmly objective Boyle Lectures by Ibbot, and the sharp andwitty letter of Richard Bentley, the philologist. Neither of these attacksCollins's leading principle, both fully admitting the right to employ thereason, even in religious questions; but they dispute the implication thatfreethinking is equivalent to contentious opposition. On the one hand, theymaintain that Collins's thinking is too free, that is, unbridled, hasty, presumptuous, and paradoxical; on the other, that it is not free enough(from prejudice). 

After Shaftesbury had based morality on a natural instinct for thebeautiful and had made it independent of religion, as well as served thecause of free thought by a keenly ironical campaign against enthusiasm andorthodoxy, and Clarke had furnished the representatives of natural religiona useful principle of morals in the objective rationality of things, thedebate concerning prophecy and miracles[1] threatened to dissipate thedeistic movement into scattered theological skirmishes. At this junctureMatthew Tindal (1657-1733) led it back to the main question. His_Christianity as Old as the Creation_ is the doomsday book of deism. It contains all that has been given above as the core of this view ofreligion. Christ came not to bring in a new doctrine, but to exhort torepentance and atonement, and to restore the law of nature, which is as oldas the creation, as universal as reason, and as unchangeable as God, human nature, and the relations of things, which we should respect in ouractions. Religion is morality; more exactly, it is the free, constantdisposition to do as much good as possible, and thereby to promote theglory of God and our own welfare. For the harmony of our conduct withthe rules of reason constitutes our perfection, and on this depends ourhappiness. Since God is infinitely blessed and self-sufficient his purposein the moral law is man's happiness alone. Whatever a positive religioncontains beyond the moral law is superstition, which puts emphasis onworthless trivialities. The true religion occupies the happy mean betweenmiserable unfaith, on the one hand, and timorous superstition, wildfanaticism, and pietistical zeal on the other. In proclaiming thesovereignty of reason in the sphere of religion as well as elsewhere, weare only openly demanding what our opponents have tacitly acknowledged inpractice _(e. G_. > in allegorical interpretation) from time immemorial. Godhas endowed us with reason in order that we should by it distinguish truthfrom falsehood. 

[Footnote 1: The chief combatant in the conflict over the argument fromprophecy, which was called forth by Whiston's corruption hypothesis, was Collins _(A Discourse of the Grounds and Reasons of the ChristianReligion_, 1724). Christianity is based on Judaism; its fundamental articleis that Jesus is the prophesied Messiah of the Jews, its chief proof theargument from Old Testament prophecy, which, it is true, depends on thetypical or allegorical interpretation of the passages in question. Whoeverrejects this cuts away the ground from under the Christian revelation, which is only the allegorical import of the revelation of the Jews. --Thesecond proof of revelation, the argument from miracles, was shaken byThomas Woolston _(Six Discourses on the Miracles of our Saviour_, 1727-30), by his extension of the allegorical interpretation to these also. Hesupported himself in this by the authority of the Church Fathers, and, above all, by the argument that the accounts of the miracles, if takenliterally, contradict all sense and understanding. The unavoidable doubtswhich arise concerning the literal interpretation of the resurrection ofthe dead, the healing of the sick, the driving out of devils, and the othermiracles, prove that these were intended only as symbolic representationsof the mysterious and wonderful effects which Jesus was to accomplish. ThusJairus's daughter means the Jewish Church, which is to be revived at thesecond coming of Christ; Lazarus typifies humanity, which will be raisedagain at the last day; the account of the bodily resurrection of Jesus isa symbol of his spiritual resurrection from his grave in the letter ofScripture. Sherlock, whose _Trial of the Witnesses of the Resurrection ofJesus_ was long considered a cogent answer to the attacks of Woolston, was opposed by Peter Annet, who, without leaving the refuge of figurativeinterpretation open, proceeded still more regardlessly in the discovery ofcontradictory and incredible elements in the Gospel reports, and declaredall the scriptural writers together to be liars and falsifiers. If a manbelieves in miracles as supernatural interferences with the regular courseof nature (and they must be so taken if they are to certify to the divineorigin of the Scriptures), he makes God mutable, and natural laws imperfectarrangements which stand in need of correction. The truth of religion isindependent of all history. ]

Thomas Chubb (1679-1747), a man of the people (he was a glove maker andtallow-chandler), and from 1715 on a participant in deistic literature andconcerned to adapt the new ideas to the men of his class, preached in _TheTrue Gospel of Jesus Christ_ an honorable working-man's Christianity. , Faith means obedience to the law of reason inculcated by Christ, not theacceptance of the facts reported about him. The gospel of Christ waspreached to the poor before his death and his asserted resurrection andascension. It is probable that Christ really lived, because of the greateffect of his message; but he was a man like other men. His gospel is histeaching, not his history, his own teaching, not that of his followers--thereflections of the apostles are private opinions. Christ's teachingamounts, in effect, to these three fundamental principles: (1) Conformto the rational law of love to God and one's neighbor; this is the onlyground of divine acceptance. (2) After transgression of the law, repentanceand reformation are the only grounds of divine grace and forgiveness. (3)At the last day every one will be rewarded according to his works. Byproclaiming these doctrines, by carrying them out in his own pure lifeand typical death, and by founding religio-ethical associations on theprinciple of brotherly equality, Christ selected the means best fitted forthe attainment of his purpose, the salvation of human souls. His aim wasto assure men of future happiness (and of the earthly happiness connectedtherewith), and to make them worthy of it; and this happiness can only beattained when from free conviction we submit ourselves to the natural morallaw, which is grounded on the moral fitness of things. Everything whichleads to the illusion that the favor of God is attainable by any othermeans than by righteousness and repentance, is pernicious; as, also, theconfusion of Christian societies with legal and civil societies, whichpursue entirely different aims. 

Thomas Morgan _(The Moral Philosopher, a Dialogue between the ChristianDeist, Philalethes, and the Christian Jew, Theophanes, 1737 seq_. ) standson the same ground as his predecessors, by holding that the moral truth ofthings is the criterion of the divinity of a doctrine, that the Christianreligion is merely a restoration of natural religion, and that the apostleswere not infallible. Peculiar to him are the application of the first ofthese principles to the Mosaic law, with the conclusion that this was not arevelation; the complete separation of the New Testament from the Old (theChurch of Christ and the expected kingdom of the Jewish Messiah are asopposed to each other as heaven and earth); and the endeavor to give amore exact explanation of the origin of superstition, the pre-Christianmanifestations of which he traces back to the fall of the angels, and thosesince Christ to the intermixture of Jewish elements. He seeks to solve hisproblem by a detailed critique of Israelitish history, which is lacking insympathy but not in spirit, and in which, introducing modern relationsinto the earliest times, he explains the Old Testament miracles in part asmyths, in part as natural phenomena, and deprives the heroes of the Jews oftheir moral renown. The Jewish historians are ranked among the poets; theGod of Israel is reduced to a subordinate, local tutelary divinity; themoral law of Moses is characterized as a civil code limited to externalconduct, to national and mundane affairs, with merely temporal sanctions, and the ceremonial law as an act of worldly statecraft; David is declareda gifted poet, musician, hypocrite, and coward; the prophets are madeprofessors of theology and moral philosophy; and Paul is praised as thegreatest freethinker of his time, who defended reason against authorityand rejected the Jewish ritual law as indifferent. Whatever is spurious inChristianity is a remnant of Judaism, all its mysteries are misunderstoodand falsely (_i. E. _ literally) applied allegories. Out of regard for Jewishprejudices Christ's death was figuratively described as sacrificial, as inearlier times Moses had been forced to yield to the Egyptian superstitionsof his people. Morgan looks for the final victory of the rational moralityof the pure, Pauline, or deistic Christianity over the Jewish Christianityof orthodoxy. Among the works of his opponents the following deservemention: William Warburton's _Divine Legation of Moses, and_ SamuelChandler's _Vindication of the History of the Old Testament_. 

It maybe doubted whether Bolingbroke (died 1751; cf. P. 203) is to beclassed among the deists or among their opponents. On the one hand, hefinds in monotheism the original true religion, which has degeneratedinto superstition through priestly cunning and fantastical philosophy; inprimitive Christianity, the system of natural religion, which has beentransformed into a complicated and contentious science by its weak, foolish, or deceitful adherents; in theology, the corruption of religion;in Bacon, Descartes, and Locke, types of untrammeled investigation. Onthe other hand, he seeks to protect revelation from the reason whosecultivation he has just commended, and to keep faith and knowledgedistinct, while he demands that the Bible, with all the undemonstrableand absurd elements which it contains, be accepted on its own authority. Religion is an instrument indispensable to the government for keeping thepeople in subjection. Only the fear of a higher power, not the reason, holds the masses in check; and the freethinkers do wrong in taking a bitout of the mouth of the sensual multitude, when it were better to add tothose already there. 

As Hume, the skeptic, leads empiricism to its fall, so Hume, thephilosopher of religion (see below), leads deism toward dissolution. Amongthose who defended revealed Christianity against the deistical attacks wemay mention the names of Conybeare (1732) and Joseph Butler (1736). Theformer argues from the imperfection and mutability of our reason to likecharacteristics in natural religion. Butler (cf. P. 206) does not admitthat natural and revealed religion are mutually exclusive. Christianrevelation lends a higher authority to natural religion, in which she findsher foundation, and adapts it to the given relations and needs of mankind, adding, however, to the rational law of virtue new duties toward God theSon and God the Holy Ghost. It is evident that in order to be able to dealwith their opponents, the apologetes are forced to accommodate themselvesto the deistic principle of a rational criticism of revelation. 

Notwithstanding the fear which this principle inspired in the men of thetime, it soon penetrated the thought even of its opponents, and foundits way into the popular mind through the channels of the Illumination. 

Although it was often defended and applied with violence and with asuperfluous hatred of the clergy, it forms the justifiable element in theendeavors of the deists. It is a commonplace to-day that everything whichclaims to be true and valid must justify itself before the criticism ofreason; but then this principle, together with the distinction betweennatural and positive religion based upon it, exerted an enlightening andliberating influence. The real flaw in the deistical theory, which wasscarcely felt as such, even by its opponents, was its lack of religiousfeeling and all historical sense, a lack which rendered the idea acceptablethat religions could be "made, " and priestly falsehoods become world-movingforces. Hume was the first to seek to rise above this unspeakableshallowness. There was a remarkable conflict between the ascription toman, on the one hand, of an assured treasure of religious knowledge inthe reason, and the abandonment of him, on the other, to the juggling ofcunning priests and despots. Thus the deists had no sense either for thepeculiarities of an inward religious feeling, which, in happy prescience, rises above the earthly circle of moral duties to the world beyond, or forthe involuntary, historically necessary origin and growth of the particularforms of religion. Here, again, we find that turning away from will andfeeling to thought, from history to nature, from the oppressive complexityof that which has been developed to the simplicity of that which isoriginal, which we have noted as one of the most prominent characteristicsof the modern period. 

%3. Moral Philosophy. %

The watchword of deism was "independence in religion"; that of modernethical philosophy is "independence in morals. " Hobbes had given this outin opposition to the mediaeval dependence of ethics on theology; now it wasturned against himself, for he had delivered morality from ecclesiasticalbondage only to subject it to the no less oppressive and unworthy yoke ofthe civil power. Selfish consideration, so he had taught, leads men totransfer by contract all power to the ruler. Right is that which thesovereign enjoins, wrong that which he forbids. Thus morality was conceivedin a purely negative way as justice, and based on interest and agreement. Cumberland, recognizing the one-sidedness of the first of these positions, announces the principle of universal benevolence, at which Bacon had hintedbefore him, and in which he is followed by the school of Shaftesbury. Opposition to the foundation of ethics on self-love and convention, again, springs up in three forms, one idealistic, one logical, and one aesthetic. Ethical ideas have not arisen artificially through shrewd calculation andagreement, but have a natural origin. Cudworth, returning to Plato andDescartes, assumes an innate idea of the good. Clarke and Woolston basemoral distinctions on the rational order of things, and characterizethe ethically good action as a logical truth translated into practice. Shaftesbury derives ethical ideas and actions from a natural instinct forjudging the good and the beautiful. Moreover, Hobbes's ethics of interestexperiences, first, correction at the hands of Locke (who, along with acomplete recognition of the "legal" character of the good, distinguishesthe sphere of morality from that of mere law, and brings it under thelaw of "reputation, " hence of a "tacit" agreement), and then a frivolousintensification under Mandeville and Bolingbroke. A preliminary conclusionis reached in the ethical labors of Hume and Smith. 

Richard Cumberland _(De Legibus Naturae_, 1672) turns to experience withthe questions, In what does morality consist? Whence does it arise? andWhat is the nature of moral obligation? and finds these answers: Thoseactions are good, or in conformity to the moral law of nature, whichpromote the common good _(commune bonum summa lex)_. Individual welfaremust be subordinated to the good of all, of which it forms only a part. Thepsychological roots of virtuous action are the social and disinterestedaffections, which nature has implanted in all beings, especially in thoseendowed with reason. There is nothing in man more pleasing to God thanlove. We recognize our obligation to the virtue of benevolence, or that Godcommands it, from the rewards and punishments which we perceive to followthe fulfillment or non-fulfillment of the law, --the subordination ofindividual to universal good is the only means of attaining true happinessand contentment. Men are dependent on mutual benevolence. He who laborsfor the good of the whole system of rational beings furthers thereby thewelfare of the individual parts, among whom he himself is one; individualhappiness cannot be separated from general happiness. All duties areimplied in the supreme one: Give to others, and preserve thyself. Thisprinciple of benevolence, advanced by Cumberland with homely simplicity, received in the later development of English ethics, for which it pointedout the way, a more careful foundation. 

The series of emancipations of morality begins with the Intellectual Systemof Ralph Cud worth _(The Intellectual System of the Universe_, 1678; _ATreatise concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality_, 1731). Ethical ideascome neither from experience nor from civil legislation nor from the willof God, but are necessary ideas in the divine and the human reason. Becauseof their simplicity, universality, and immutability, it is impossible forthem to arise from experience, which never yields anything but that whichis particular and mutable. It is just as impossible that they should springfrom political constitutions, which have a temporal origin, which aretransitory, and which differ from one another. For if obedience to positivelaw is right and disobedience wrong, then moral distinctions must haveexisted before the law; if, on the other hand, obedience to the civil lawis morally indifferent, then more than ever is it impossible that thisshould be the basis of the moral distinctions in question. A law can bindus only in virtue of that which is necessarily, absolutely, or _per se_right; therefore the good is independent, also, of the will of God. Theabsolutely good is an eternal truth which God does not create by an act ofhis will, but which he finds present in his reason, and which, like theother ideas, he impresses on created spirits. On the _a priori_ ideasdepends the possibility of science, for knowledge is the perception ofnecessary truth. 

In agreement with Cudworth that the moral law is dependent neither on humancompact nor on the divine will, Samuel Clarke (died 1729) finds the eternalprinciples of justice, goodness, and truth, which God observes in hisgovernment of the universe, and which should also be the guide of humanaction, embodied in the nature of things or in their properties, powers, and relations, in virtue of which certain things, relations, and modesof action are suited to one another, and others not. Morality is thesubjective conformity of conduct to this objective fitness of things; thegood is the fitting. Moral rules, to which we are bound by conscience andby rational insight, are valid independently of the command of God and ofall hope or fear in reference to the life to come, although the principlesof religion furnish them an effective support, and one which is almostindispensable in view of the weakness of human nature. They are notuniversally observed, indeed, but universally acknowledged; even thevicious man cannot refrain from praising virtue in others. He who isinduced by the voice of passion to act contrary to the eternal relationsor harmony of things, contradicts his own reason in thus undertaking todisturb the order of the universe; he commits the absurdity of willing thatthings should be that which they are not. Injustice is in practice thatwhich falsity and contradiction are in theoretical affairs. In hiswell-known controversy with Leibnitz, Clarke defends the freedom of thewill against the determinism of the German philosopher. 

In William Wollaston (died 1724), with whom the logical point of viewbecomes still more apparent, Clarke found a thinker who shared hisconvictions that the subjective moral principle of interest wasinsufficient, and, hence, an objective principle to be sought; thatmorality consists in the suitableness of the action to the nature anddestination of the object, and that, in the last analysis, it is coincidentwith truth. The highest destination of man is, on the one hand, to know thetruth, and, on the other, to express it in actions. That act is good whoseexecution includes the affirmation (and its omission the negation) of atruth. According to the law of nature, a rational being ought so to conducthimself that he shall never contradict a truth by his actions, _i. E_. , totreat each thing for what it is. Every immoral action is a false judgment;the violation of a contract is a practical denial of it. The man who iscruel to animals declares by his act that the creature maltreated issomething which in fact it is not, a being devoid of feeling. The murdereracts as though he were able to restore life to his victim. He who, indisobedience toward God, deals with things in a way contrary to theirnature, behaves as though he were mightier than the author of nature. Tothis equation of truth and morality happiness is added as a third identicalmember. The truer the pleasures of a being the happier it is; and apleasure is untrue whenever more (of pain) is given for it than it isworth. A rational being contradicts itself when it pursues an irrationalpleasure. --The course of moral philosophy has passed over the logicalethics of Clarke and Wollaston as an abstract and unfruitful idiosyncrasy, and it is certain that with both of these thinkers their plans were greaterthan their performances. But the search for an ethical norm which shouldbe universally valid and superior to the individual will, did not lackjustification in contrast to the subjectivism of the other two schools ofthe time--the school of interest and the school of benevolence, which madevirtue a matter of calculation or of feeling. 

 * * * * *

The English ethics of the period culminates in Shaftesbury (1671-1713), who, reared on the principles of his grandfather's friend Locke, formedhis artistic sense on the models of classical antiquity, to recall to thememory of his age the Greek ideal of a beautiful humanity. Philosophy, as the knowledge of ourselves and that which is truly good, a guide tomorality and happiness; the world and virtue, a harmony; the good, thebeautiful as well; the whole, a controlling force in the particular--theseviews, and his tasteful style of exposition, make Shaftesbury a modernGreek; it is only his bitterness against Christianity which betrays theson of the new era. Among the studies collected under the title_Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times_, 1711, the mostimportant are those on Enthusiasm, on Wit and Humor, on Virtue and Merit, and the Moralists. [1]

[Footnote 1: Georg v. Gizycki has written on Shaftesbury's philosophy, 1876. [Cf. Fowler's _Shaftesbury and Hutchison_, English PhilosophersSeries, 1882. --TR. ]]

Shaftesbury's fundamental metaphysical concept is aesthetic: unity invariety is for him the all-pervasive law of the world. In every case whereparts work in mutual dependence toward a common result, there rules acentral unity, uniting and animating the members. The lowest of thesesubstantial unities is the ego, the common source of our thoughts andfeelings. But as the parts of the organism are governed and held togetherby the soul, so individuals are joined with one another into species andgenera by higher unities. Each individual being is a member in a system ofcreatures, which a common nature binds together. Moreover, since order andharmony are spread throughout the world, and no one thing exists out ofrelation to all others and to the whole, the universe must be conceivedas animated by a formative power which works purposively; this all-rulingunity is the soul of the world, the universal mind, the Deity. The finalityand beauty of those parts of the world which we can know justifies theinference to a like constitution of those which are unapproachable, so thatwe may be certain that the numerous evils which we find in the details, work for the good of a system superior to them, and that all apparentimperfections contribute to the perfection of the whole. As our philosophermakes use of the idea of the world-harmony to support theism and thetheodicy, so, further, he derives the content of morality from it, thusgiving ethics a natural basis independent of self-interest and conventionalfancies. 

A being is good when its impulses toward the preservation and welfare ofthe species is strong, and those directed to its own good not too strong. The virtue of a rational being is distinguished from the goodness ofa merely "sensible creature" by the fact that man not only possessesimpulses, but reflects upon them, that he approves or disapproves his ownconduct and that of others, and thus makes his affections the object of ahigher, reflective, judging affection. This faculty of moral distinctions, the sense for right and wrong, or, which amounts to the same thing, forbeauty and ugliness, is innate; we approve virtue and condemn vice bynature, not as the result of a compact, and from this natural feeling forgood and evil exercise develops a cultivated moral taste or tact. And when, further, the reason, by means of this faculty of judgment, gains controlover the passions, man becomes an ethical artist, a moral virtuoso. 

Virtue pleases by its own worth and beauty, not because of any externaladvantage. We must not corrupt the love of the good for its own sake bymixing with it the hope of future reward, which at the best is admissibleonly as a counter-weight against evil passions. When Shaftesbury speaks offuture bliss, his highest conception of the heavenly life is uninterruptedfriendship, magnanimity, and nobility, as a continual rewarding of virtueby new virtue. 

The good is the beautiful, and the beautiful is the harmonious, thesymmetrical; hence the essence of virtue consists in the balance of theaffections and passions. Of the three classes into which Shaftesburydivides the passions, one, including the "unnatural" or unsocialaffections, as malevolence, envy, and cruelty, which aim neither at thegood of the individual nor that of others, is always and entirely evil. 

The two other classes, the social (or "natural") affections and the"self-affections, " may be virtuous or vicious, according to their degree, _i. E_. , according to the relation of their strength to that of the otheraffections. In itself a benevolent impulse is never too strong; itcan become so only in comparison with self-love, or in respect to theconstitution of the individual in question, and conversely. Commonly thesocial impulses do not attain the normal standard, while the selfish exceedit; but the opposite case also occurs. Excessive parental tenderness, thepity which enervates and makes useless for aid, religious zeal for makingconverts, passionate partisanship, are examples of too violent socialaffections which interfere with the activity of the other inclinations. Just as erroneous, on the other side, is the neglect of one's own good. For although the possession of selfish inclinations does not make aman virtuous, yet the lack of them is a moral defect, since they areindispensable to the general good. No one can be useful to others whodoes not keep himself in a condition for service. The impulse to care forprivate welfare is good and necessary in so far as it comports with thegeneral welfare or contributes to this. The due proportion between thesocial passions, which constitute the direct source of good, and those ofself-love, consists in subordinating the latter to the former. The kinshipof this ethics of harmony with the ethical views of antiquity is evident. It is completed by the eudemonistic conclusion of the system. 

As the harmony of impulses constitutes the essence of virtue, so also it isthe way to true happiness. Experience shows that unsocial, unsympathetic, vicious men are miserable; that love to society is the richest sourceof happiness; that even pity for the suffering of others occasions morepleasure than pain. Virtue secures us the love and respect of others, secures us, above all, the approval of our own conscience, and truehappiness consists in satisfaction with ourselves. The search after thispure, constant, spiritual pleasure in the good, which is never accompaniedby satiety and disgust, should not be called self-seeking; he alone takespleasure in the good who is already good himself. 

Shaftesbury is not well disposed toward positive Christianity, holding thatit has made virtue mercenary by its promises of heavenly rewards, removedmoral questions entirely out of this world into the world to come, andtaught men most piously to torment one another out of pure supernaturalbrotherly love. In opposition to such transcendental positions Shaftesbury, a priest of the modern view of the world, gives virtue a home on earth, seeks the hand of Providence in the present world, and teaches men to reachfaith in God by inspiring contemplation of the well-ordered universe. Virtue without piety is possible, indeed, though not complete. But moralityis first and fixed, hence it is the condition and the criterion of genuinereligion. Revelation does not need to fear free rational criticism, for theScriptures are accredited by their contents. Besides reason, banter iswith Shaftesbury a second means for distinguishing the genuine from thespurious: ridicule is the test of truth, and wit and humor the onlycure for enthusiasm. With these he scourges the over-pious as religiousparasites, who for safety's sake prefer to believe too much rather than toolittle. 

Before Shaftesbury's theory of the moral sense and the disinterestedaffections had gained adherents and developers, the danger, which indeedhad not always been escaped, that man might content himself with thesatisfaction of possessing noble impulses, without taking much careto realize them in useful actions, called forth by way of reaction, aparadoxical attempt at an apology for vice. Mandeville, a London physicianof French extraction, and born in Holland, had aroused attention by hispoem, _The Grumbling Hive; or Knaves Turned Honest_, 1706, and in responseto vehement attacks upon his work, had added a commentary to the secondedition, _The Fable of the Bees; or Private Vices Public Benefits_, 1714. The moral of the fable is that the welfare of a society depends on theindustry of its members, and this, in turn, on their passions and vices. Greed, extravagance, envy, ambition, and rivalry are the roots ofthe acquisitive impulse, and contribute more to the public good thanbenevolence and the control of desire. Virtue is good for the individual, it is true, since it makes him contented with himself and acceptable to Godand man, but great states require stronger motives to labor and industryin order to be prosperous. A people among whom frugality, self-denial, andquietness of spirit were the rule would remain poor and ignorant. Besidesholding that virtue furthers the happiness of society, Shaftesbury makes asecond mistake in assuming that human nature includes unselfishinclinations. It is not innate love and goodness that make us social, butour passions and weaknesses (above all, fear); man is by natureself-seeking. All actions, including the so-called virtues, spring fromvanity and egoism; thus it has always been, thus it is in every grade ofsociety. In social life, indeed, we dare not display all these desiresopenly, nor satisfy them at will. Shrewd lawgivers have taught men toconceal their natural passions and to limit them by artificial ones, persuading them that renunciation is true happiness, on the ground thatthrough it we attain the supreme good--reputation among, and the esteem ofour fellows. Since then honor and shame have become the strongest motivesand have incited men to that which is called virtue, _i. E. _, to actionswhich apparently imply the sacrifice of selfish inclinations for the goodof society, while they are really done out of pride and self-love. Byconstantly feigning noble sentiments before others man comes, finally, todeceive himself, believing himself a being whose happiness consists in therenunciation of self and all that is earthly, and in the thought of hismoral excellence. --The crass assumptions in Mandeville's reasoning areevident at a glance. After analyzing virtue into the suppression of desire, after labeling the impulse after moral approbation vanity, lawful self-loveegoism, and rational acquisitiveness avarice, it was easy for him to provethat it is vice which makes the individual industrious and the stateprosperous, that virtue is seldom found, and that if it were universal itwould become injurious to society. 

With different shading and with less one-sidedness, Bolingbroke (cf. P. 193) defended the standpoint of naturalism. God has created us forhappiness in common; we are destined to assist one another. Happiness isattainable in society alone, and society cannot exist without justice andbenevolence. He who exercises virtue, _i. E. _, promotes the good of thespecies, promotes at the same time his own good. All actions spring fromself-love, which, guided at first by an immediate instinct, and later, byreason developed through experience, extends itself over ever wideningspheres. We love ourselves in our relatives, in our friends, further still, in our country, finally, in humanity, so that self-love and social lovecoincide, and we are impelled to virtue by the combined motives of interestand duty. This is an ethic of common sense from the standpoint of thecultured man of the world--which at the proper time has the right, nodoubt, to gain itself a hearing. 

Meanwhile Shaftesbury's ideas had impressed Hutcheson and Butler, accordingto the peculiarities of each. Both of these writers deem it necessary toexplain and correct the distinction between the selfish and the benevolentaffections by additions, which were of influence on the ethics of Hume;both devote their zeal to the new doctrine of feelings of reflection ormoral taste, in which the former gives more prominence to the aesthetic, merely judging factor, the latter to the active or mandatory one. 

Francis Hutcheson[1] (died 1747), professor at Glasgow, in his posthumous_System of Moral Philosophy_, 1755, which had been preceded by an _Inquiryconcerning the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue_, 1725, pursuesthe double aim of showing against Hobbes and Locke the originality anddisinterestedness both of benevolence and of moral approval. Virtue is notexercised because it brings advantage to the agent, nor approved on accountof advantage to the observer. 

[Footnote 1: Cf. Fowler's treatise, cited above--TR. ]

(1) The benevolent affections are entirely independent of self-love andregard for the rewards of God and of man, nay, independent even of thelofty satisfaction afforded by self-approbation. This last, indeed, isvouchsafed to us only when we seek the good of others without personalaims: the joy of inward approval is the result of virtue, not the motive toit. If love were in reality a concealed egoism, it would yield to controlin cases where it promises advantage, which, as experience shows, is notthe fact. Benevolence is entirely natural and as universal in the moralworld as gravitation in the corporeal; and like gravitation further inthat its intensity increases with propinquity--the nearer the persons, thegreater the love. Benevolence is more widespread than malevolence; eventhe criminal does more innocent and kind acts in his life than criminalones--the rarity of the latter is the reason why so much is said aboutthem. 

(2) Moral judgment is also entirely uninfluenced by consideration of theadvantageous or disadvantageous results for the agent or the spectator. Thebeauty of a good deed arouses immediate satisfaction. Through the moralsense we feel pleasure at observing a virtuous action, and aversion when weperceive an ignoble one, feelings which are independent of all thought ofthe rewards and punishments promised by God, as well as of the utility orharm for ourselves. Hutcheson argues a complete distinction between moralapproval and the perception of the agreeable and the useful, from the factsthat we judge a benevolent action which is forced, or done from motives ofpersonal advantage, quite differently from one inspired by love; that wepay esteem to high-minded characters whether their fortunes be good orill; and that we are moved with equal force by fictitious actions, as, forinstance, on the stage, and by those which really take place. 

(3) A few further particulars may be emphasized from the comprehensivesystematization which Hutcheson industriously and thoughtfully gave toShaftesbury's ideas. Two points reveal the forerunner of Hume. First, therôle assigned to the reason in moral affairs is merely subsidiary. Ourmotive to action is never the knowledge of a true proposition, but alwayssimply a wish, affection, or impulse. Ultimate ends are given by thefeelings alone; the reason can only discover the means thereto. Secondly, the turbulent, blind, rapidly passing passions are distinguished from thecalm, permanent affections, which are mediated by cognition. The latter arethe nobler; among them, in turn, the highest place is occupied by thoseconducive to the general good, whose worth is still further determinedby the extent of their objects. From this is derived the law that a kindaffection receives the more lively approval, the more calm and deliberateit is, the higher the degree of happiness experienced by the object of theaction, and the greater the number of persons affected by it. Patriotismand love of mankind in general are higher virtues than affection forfriends and children. As the goal of the self-regarding affections, perfection makes its appearance--for the first time in English ethics--bythe side of happiness. 

Joseph Butler[1] (1692-1752; _Sermons on Human Nature_, 1726; cf. P. 194)maintains still more strictly than Hutcheson the immediateness both of theaffections and the moral estimation of them. He declares that even theself-regarding impulses as such are un-egoistic, and makes moral judgmentleave out of view all consequences, either foreseen or present, whereas hispredecessor had resolved the goodness of the action into its advantageouseffects (not for the agent and the spectator, but for its object and) forsociety. The conscience--so Butler terms the moral sense--directly approvesor disapproves characters and actions in themselves, no matter what good orill they occasion in the world. We judge a mode of action good, not becauseit is useful to society, but because it corresponds to the demands of theconscience. This must be unconditionally obeyed, whatever be the issue. Wemust not act contrary to truth and justice, even if it should seem to bringabout more happiness than misery. --Butler, too, furnishes material for theethics of Hume, by his revival of the separation, previously defended bythe Stoics, of desire and passion from self-love or interest. Self-lovedesires a thing because it expects pleasure from it, but the naturalimpulses impel us toward their objects immediately, _i. E_. , without arepresentation of the pleasure to be gained; and repetition is necessarybefore the artificial motive of egoistic pleasure-seeking can be added tothe natural motive of inborn desire. Self-love always presupposes original, immediate affections. 

[Footnote 1: Cf. Collins's _Butler_, Blackwood's Philosophical Classics. 1881. --TR. ]

The English moral science of the century is brought to a conclusion by AdamSmith[1] (1723-90), the celebrated founder of political economy. [2] Smithnot only takes into consideration--like his greater friend, Hume--all theproblems proposed by his predecessors, but, further (in his _Theory ofMoral Sentiments_, 1759, published while he was professor at Glasgow), combines the various attempts at their solution, not by eclecticco-ordination but by working them over for himself, and arranges them on auniform principle, thus accomplishing a work which has not yet receiveddue recognition beyond the limits of his native land. He reached thiscomprehensive moral principle by recognizing the full bearing of a thoughtwhich Hume had incidentally expressed, that moral judgment depends onparticipation in the feelings of the agent, and by following out with finepsychological observation this sympathy of men into its first and lastmanifestations. In this way a twofold kind of morality was revealed to him:mere propriety of behavior and real merit in action. On the one hand, thatis, the sympathy of the spectator--as Hume has one-sidedly emphasized--isdirected to the utility of the consequences (or to the "merit") of theaction, and, on the other, to the fitness of the motives (or their"propriety"). An action is proper when the impartial spectator is able tosympathize with its motive, and meritorious if he can sympathize also withits end or effect; _i. E. _, if, in the first case, the feelings are suitableto their objects (neither too strong nor too weak), and, in the secondcase, the consequences of the act are advantageous to others. Merit =propriety + utility. The main conclusion is this: Sympathy is that bymeans of which virtue is recognized and approved, as well as that which isapproved as virtue; it is _ratio cognoscendi_ as well as _ratio essendi_, the criterion as well as the source of morality. Thus Smith endeavors tosolve the two principal problems of English ethics--the criterion and theorigin of virtue--with a common answer. 

[Footnote 1: Cf. Farrer's _Adam Smith_, English Philosophers Series, 1880. --TR. ]

[Footnote 2: The epoch-making work, with which he called economic scienceinto existence, _The Wealth of Nations_\ appeared in 1776. Cf. WilhelmHassbach, _Untersuchungen über Adam Smith_, Leipsic, 1891. ]

"Sympathy" denotes primarily nothing more than the innate and purely formalpower of imitating to a certain degree the feelings of others. From thismodest germ is developed by a progressive growth the wide-spreading tree ofmorality: moral judgment, the moral imperative with its religious sanction, and ethical character. Accordingly we may distinguish different stagesin the development of sympathy--the psychological stage of merefellow-feeling, the aesthetic stage of moral appreciation, the imperativestage of moral precepts, which further on are construed as commands ofGod (the famous Kantian definition of religion was announced in Glasgowa generation earlier than in Königsberg), finally, the concluding stagewherein these laws of duty are taken up into the disposition. Besidesthese, there results from the mechanism of the sympathetic feelings aseries of phenomena, which, although they do not entirely conform to theethical standard, yet exercise a salutary effect on the permanence ofsociety; _e. G. _, our exceptional judgment of the deeds of the great, therich, and the fortunate, as also the higher worth ascribed to good (and, conversely, the greater guilt to bad) intentions when successfully carriedout into action, in comparison with those which fall short of their result. 

The first, the purely psychological stage, includes three cases. Thespectator sympathizes (1) with the feelings of the agent; (2) with thegratitude or anger of the person affected by the action; (3) the personobserved sympathizes in return with the imitative and judging feelings ofthe spectator. 

The fundamental laws of sympathy are as follows: We are roused to imitatethe feeling of another by the perception either of its signs (its naturalconsequences or its natural expression in visible and audible motions), orof its causes (the circumstances and experiences which occasion it), thelatter exercising a more potent influence than the former. The wooden legof the beggar is more effective in exciting our pity than his anxious air;the sight of dental instruments is more eloquent than the plaints ofthe sufferer from toothache. In order to be able to imitate vividly thefeelings of a person, we must know the causes of them. --The feeling ofthe spectator is, on the average, less intense than that of the personobserved, so long as the latter does not control and repress his emotionsin view of the calmness of the former. The difference of intensity betweenthe original and the sympathetic feelings differs widely with the variousclasses of emotions. It is difficult to take part in feelings which arisefrom bodily conditions, but easy to share those in the production of whichthe imagination is concerned--hence easier to share in hope and fear thanin pleasure and pain. --We sympathize more readily with feelings which areagreeable to the observer, the observed, and other participants than withsuch as are not so; more willingly, therefore, with cheerfulness, love, benevolence than with grief, hatred, malevolence. This is not only true oftemporary affections, but especially of those general dispositions whichdepend on a more or less happy situation in life; we sympathize morevividly with the fortunes of the rich and noble, because we consider themhappier than the poor and lowly. Wealth and high rank are objects ofgeneral desire chiefly because their possessor enjoys the advantage ofknowing that whatever gives him joy or sorrow always arouses similarfeelings in countless other men. The root of all ambition is the wish torule over the hearts of our fellows by compelling them to make our feelingstheir own; the central nerve of all happiness consists in seeing our ownsensations shared by those about us and reflected back, as it were, frommanifold mirrors. Small annoyances often have a diverting effect on thespectator; great success easily excites his envy; great sorrows and minorjoys, on the contrary, are always sure of our sympathy. Hence the moroseman, to whom everything is an occasion of ill-humor, is nowhere welcome, and the man of cheerful disposition, who rejoices in each little event andwhose good spirits are contagious, everywhere. 

Not less admirable than the fine gift of observation which guides Smith inhis discovery of the primary manifestations and the laws of sympathy is theskill with which he deduces moral phenomena, from the simplest to themost complex--moral judgment, the moral law, its application to one's ownconduct, the conscience--from the interchange of sympathetic feelings. Frominvoluntary comparison of the representative feeling of the spectator withits original in the person observed arises an agreeable or disagreeablefeeling of judgment, a judgment of value, approbating or rejecting thelatter. This is approving when the intensity of the original harmonizeswith that of the copy, disapproving when the former exceeds or fails toattain the latter. In the one case the emotion is judged suitable to theobject which causes it; in the other, too violent or too weak. It is alwaysa certain mean of passion which, as "proper, " receives approval (esteem, love, or admiration). In the case of the social passions excess is morereadily condoned, in the case of the unsocial and selfish ones, defect;hence we judge the over-sensitive more leniently than the over-vengeful. Anger must be well-grounded and must express itself with great moderationto arouse in the spectator a like degree of sympathetic resentment. Forhere the sympathy of the spectator is divided between two parties, andfellow-feeling with the angry one is weakened by fear for the personmenaced by him, whereas, in the case of kind affections, sympathy isincreased by doubling. While our judgment of propriety or decorum rests onsimple participation in the sentiments of the agent, our judgment ofmerit and demerit is based, in addition, on sympathy with the feelingsof gratitude or resentment experienced by the person on whom the actionterminates. An act is meritorious if it appears to us to deserve thanksand reward, ill-deserving if it seems to merit resentment and punishment. Nature has inscribed on the heart, apart from all reflection on the utilityof punishment, an independent, immediate, and instinctive approbation ofthe sacred law of retribution. This is the point at which a hitherto purelycontemplative sympathy passes over into an active impulse, which preparesus to support the victim of attack and insult in his defense and revenge. 

This participation in the circumstances and feelings of others is areciprocal phenomenon. The spectator takes pains to share the sentiments ofthe person observed; and the latter, on his part, endeavors to reduce theemotions which move him to a degree which will render participation in thempossible for the former. In these reciprocal efforts we have the beginningsof the two classes of virtues--the gentle, amiable virtues of sympathyand sensibility, and the exalted, estimable virtues of self-denial andself-command. Both of these conditions of mind, however, are consideredvirtues only when they are manifested in unusual intensity: humanity isa remarkably delicate fellow-feeling, greatness of soul a rare degree ofself-command. (The consideration for those about one which is ethicallydemanded is given, moreover, to a certain extent involuntarily. The manin trouble and the merry man alike restrain themselves in the company ofpersons who are indifferent, or in an opposite mood, while they give reinto their emotions when with those similarly affected. Joy is enhanced bysympathy, and grief mitigated. ) Thus the perfection of human nature and thedivinely willed harmony among the feelings of men are dependent on everyman feeling little for himself and much for others; on his holding hisselfish inclinations in check and giving free course to his benevolentones. This is the injunction of Christianity as well as of nature. Andas, on the one hand, the content of the moral law is thus deduced fromsympathy, so, on the other, this yields the formal criterion of good:Look upon thy sentiments and actions in the light in which the impartialspectator would see them. Conscience is the spectator taken up into our ownbreast. It remains to consider the origin of this third, imperative stage. 

From daily experience of the fact that we judge the conduct of others, andthey ours, and from the wish to gain their approval, arises the habit ofsubjecting our own actions to criticism. We learn to look at ourselvesthrough the eyes of others, we assign the spectator and judge a place inour own heart, we make his calm objective judgment our own, and hear theman within calling to us: Thou art responsible for thy acts and intentions. In this way we are placed in a position to overcome two great delusions, one of passion, which overestimates the present at the expense of thefuture, and one of self-love, which overestimates the individual at theexpense of other men; delusions from which the impartial spectator is free, for the pleasure of the moment seems to him no more desirable than pleasureto come, and one person is just the same to him as another. Throughcomparison of like cases in the exercise of self-examination certain rulesor principles are formed concerning what is right and good. Reverence forthese general rules of living is called the sense of duty. The last step inthe process consists in our enhancement of the binding authority of moralrules by looking on them as commands of God. Here Smith adds subtlediscussions of the question, in what cases actions ought to be done simplyout of regard for these abstract maxims, and in what others we welcome theco-operation of a natural impulse or passion. We ought to be angry and topunish with reluctance, merely because reason enjoins it, but, on the otherhand, we should be benevolent and grateful from affection; she is not amodel wife who performs her duties merely from a sense of duty, and notfrom inclination also. Further, in all cases where the rules cannot beformulated with perfect exactness and definiteness (as they can in the caseof justice), and are not absolutely valid without exception, reverence forthem must be assisted by a natural taste for modifying and supplementingthe general maxims to suit particular instances. 

In this sketch of the course of Smith's moral philosophy much that is fineand much that is of importance has of necessity been passed over--hisexcellent analysis of the relations of benevolence and justice, andnumerous descriptions of traits of character, _e. G_. , his ingeniousparallel between pride and vanity. We may briefly mention, in conclusion, his observations on the irregularities of moral judgment. Prosperity andsuccess exert an influence on this, which, though hurtful to its purity, must, on the whole, be considered advantageous to mankind. Our leniencetoward the defects of princes, the great, and the rich, and our over-praisefor their excellent qualities are, from the moral standpoint, an injustice, but one which has this advantage, that it encourages ambition and industry, and maintains social distinctions intact, which without loyalty and respecttoward superiors would be broken down. For most men the road to fortunecoincides with the path to virtue. Again, it is a beneficent provision ofnature that we put a higher estimate on a successfully executed act ofbenevolence, and reward it more, than a kind intention which fails ofexecution; that we judge and punish the purposed crime which is not carriedout more leniently than the one which is completed; that we even ascribea certain degree of accountability to an unintentional act of good orevil--although in these cases the moralist is compelled to see an ethicallyunjustifiable corruption of the judgment by external success or failurebeyond the control of the agent. The first of these irregularities doesnot allow the man of good intentions to content himself with noble desiresmerely, but spurs him on to greater endeavors to carry them out--manis created for action; the second protects us from the inquisitorialquestioning of motives, for it is easy for the most innocent to fall undergrave suspicion. To this inconsistency of feeling we owe the necessarylegal principle that deeds only, not intentions, are punishable. Godhas reserved for himself judgment concerning dispositions. The thirdirregularity, that he who inflicts unintentional injury is not guilty, evenin his own eyes, but yet seems bound to make atonement and reparation, is useful in so far as it warns everyone to be prudent, while thecorresponding illusion, in virtue of which we are grateful to aninvoluntary benefactor--for instance, the bearer of good tidings--andreward him, is at least not harmful, for any reason appears sufficient forthe bestowal of kind intentions and actions. 

It is impossible to explain in brief the relation of Smith's ethicaltheory to his political economy. His merit in the former consists in hiscomprehensive and characteristic combination of the results reached by hispredecessors, and in his preparation for Kantian views, so far as thiswas possible from the empirical standpoint of the English. His impartialspectator was the forerunner of the categorical imperative. 

English ethics after Smith may, almost without exception, be termedeclecticism. This is true of Ferguson _(Institutes of Moral Philosophy_, 1769); of Paley (1785); of the Scottish School (Dugald Stewart, 1793). Bentham's utilitarianism was the first to bring in a new phase. 

%4. Theory of Knowledge. %

(a) %Berkeley%. --George Berkeley, a native of Ireland, Bishop of Cloyne(1685-1753; _An Essay toward a New Theory of Vision_, 1709; _A Treatiseconcerning the Principles of Human Knowledge_, 1710; _Three Dialoguesbetween Hylas and Philonous_, 1713; _Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher_, 1732, against the freethinkers; _Works_, 1784. Fraser's edition of theCollected Works appeared in 1871, in four volumes), [1] is related to Lockeas Spinoza to Descartes. He notices blemishes and contradictions allowed byhis predecessor to remain, and, recognizing that the difficulty is not tobe remedied by minor corrections and artificial hypotheses, goes back tothe fundamental principles, takes these more earnestly than their author, and, by carrying them out more strictly, arrives at a new view of theworld. The points in Locke's doctrines which invited a further advance werethe following: Locke proclaims that our knowledge extends no furtherthan our ideas, and that truth consists in the agreement of ideas amongthemselves, not in the agreement of ideas with things. But this principlehad scarcely been announced before it was violated. In spite of hislimitation of knowledge to ideas, Locke maintains that we know (if not theinner constitution, yet) the qualities and powers of things without us, andhave a "sensitive" certainty of their existence. Against this, it is to besaid that there are no primary qualities, that is, qualities which existwithout as well as within us. Extension, motion, solidity, which are citedas such, are just as purely subjective states in us as color, heat, andsweetness. Impenetrability is nothing more than the feeling of resistance, an idea, therefore, which self-evidently can be nowhere else than in themind experiencing it. Extension, size, distance, and motion are not evensensations (we see colors only, not quantitative determinations), butrelations which we in thinking add to the sense-qualities (secondaryqualities), and which we are not able to represent apart from them; theirrelativity alone would forbid us to consider them objective. And materialsubstances, the "support" of qualities invented by the philosophers, arenot only unknown, but entirely non-existent. Abstract matter is a phrasewithout meaning, and individual things are collections of ideas in us, nothing more. If we take away all sense-qualities from a thing, absolutelynothing remains. Our ideas are not merely the only; objects of knowledge, but also the only existing things--_nothing exists except minds andtheir ideas_. Spirits alone are active beings, they only are indivisiblesubstances, and have real existence, while the being of bodies (asdependent, inert, variable beings, which are in a constant process ofbecoming) consists alone in their appearance to spirits and their beingperceived by them. Incogitative, hence passive, beings are neithersubstances, nor capable of producing ideas in us. Those ideas which we donot ourselves produce are the effects of a spirit which is mightier thanwe. With this a second inconsistency was removed which had been overlookedby Locke, who had ascribed active power to spirits alone and denied it tomatter, but at the same time had made the former affected by the latter. Ifexternal sense is to mean the capacity for having ideas occasioned by theaction of external material things, then there is no external sense. Athird point wherein Locke had not gone far enough for his successor, concerned the favorite English doctrine of nominalism. Locke, with hispredecessors, had maintained that all reality is individual, and thatuniversals exist only in the abstracting understanding. From this pointBerkeley advances a step further, the last, indeed, which was possible inthis direction, by bringing into question the possibility even of abstractideas. As all beings are particular things, so all ideas are particularideas. 

[Footnote 1: Cf. Also Fraser's _Berkeley_ (Blackwood's PhilosophicalClassics) 1881; Eraser's _Selections from Berkeley_, 4th ed. , 1891; andKrauth's edition of the _Principles_, 1874, with notes from severalsources, especially those translated from Ueberweg. --TR. ]

Berkeley looks on the refutation of these two fundamental mistakes--theassumption of general ideas in the mind, and the belief in the existenceof a material world outside it--as his life work, holding them the chiefsources of atheism, doubt, and philosophical discord. The first of theseerrors arises from the use of language. Because we employ words whichdenote more than one object, we have believed ourselves warranted inconcluding that we have ideas which correspond to the extension of thewords in question, and which contain only those characteristics which areuniformly found in all objects so named. This, however, is not the case. [1]We speak of many things which we cannot represent: names do not alwaysstand for ideas. The definition of the word triangle as a three-sidedfigure bounded by straight lines, makes demands upon us which our facultiesof imagination are never fully able to meet; for the triangle that werepresent to ourselves is always either right-angled or oblique-angled, andnot--as we must demand from the abstract conception of the figure--both andneither at once. The name "man" includes men and women, children and theaged, but we are never able to represent a man except as an individual of adefinite age and sex. Nevertheless we are in a position to make a safeuse of these non-presentative but useful abbreviations, and by means of aparticular idea to develop truths of wider application. This takes placewhen, in the demonstration, those qualities are not considered whichdistinguish the idea from others with a like name. In this case thegiven idea stands for all others which are known by the same name; therepresentative idea is not universal, but serves as such. Thus when I havedemonstrated the proposition, the sum of all the angles of a triangle isequal to two right angles, for a given triangle, I do not need to proveit for every triangle thereafter. For not only the color and size of thetriangle are indifferent, but its other peculiarities as well; the questionwhether it is right-angled or obtuse-angled, whether it has equalsides, whether it has equal or unequal angles, is not mentioned in thedemonstration, and has no influence upon it. _Abstracta_ exist only in thissense. In considering the individual Paul I can attend exclusively to thosecharacteristics which he has in common with all men or with all livingbeings, but it is impossible for me to represent this complex of commonqualities apart from his individual peculiarities. Self-observation showsthat we have no general concepts; reason, that we can have none, for thecombination of opposite elements in one idea would be a contradiction interms. Motion in general, neither swift nor slow, extension in general, at once great and small, abstract matter without sensuousdeterminations--these can neither exist nor be perceived. 

[Footnote 1: Against the Berkeleyan denial of abstract notions the popularphilosopher, Joh. Jak. Engel, directed an essay, _Ueber die Realitätallgemeiner Begriffe_ (Engel's _Schriften_, vol. X. ), to which attentionhas been called by O. Liebmann, _Analysis tier Wirklichkeit_, 2d ed. , p. 473. ]

The "materialistic" hypothesis--so Berkeley terms the assumption that amaterial world exists apart from perceiving mind, and independently ofbeing perceived--is, first, unnecessary, for the facts which it is toexplain can be explained as well, or even better, without it; and, second, false, since it is a contradiction to suppose that an object can existunperceived, and that a sensation or idea is the copy of anything itselfnot a sensation or idea. Ideas are the only objects of the understanding. Sensible qualities (white, sweet) are subjective states of the soul; senseobjects (sugar), sensation-complexes. If sensations need a substantialsupport, this is the soul which perceives them, not an external thing whichcan neither perceive nor be perceived. Single ideas, and those combinedinto objects, can exist nowhere else than in the mind; the being of senseobjects consists in their being perceived (_esse est percipi_). I see lightand feel heat, and combine these sensations of sight and touch into thesubstance fire, because I know from experience that they constantlyaccompany and suggest each other. [1] The assumption of an "object" apartfrom the idea is as useless as its existence would be. Why should Godcreate a world of real things without the mind, when these can neitherenter into the mind, nor (because unperceived) be copied by its ideas, nor(because they themselves lack perception and power) produce ideas in it?Ideas signify nothing but themselves, _i. E_. , affections of the subject. 

[Footnote 1: The fire that I see is not the cause of the pain which Iexperience in approaching it, but the visual image of the flame is only asign which warns me not to go too near. If I look through a microscopeI see a different object from the one perceived with the naked eye. Twopersons never see the same object, they merely have like sensations. ]

The further question arises, What is the origin of ideas? Men have been ledinto this erroneous belief in the reality of the material world by thefact that certain ideas are not subject to our will, while others are. Sensations are distinguished from the ideas of imagination, which we canexcite and alter at pleasure, by their greater strength, liveliness, anddistinctness, by their steadiness, regular order, and coherence, and bythe fact that they arise without our aid and whether we will or no. Unlessthese ideas are self-originated they must have an external cause. This, however, can be nothing else than a willing, thinking Being; for withoutwill it could not be active and act upon me, and without ideas of its ownit could not communicate ideas to me. Because of the manifoldness andregularity of our sensations the Being which produces them must, further, possess infinite power and intelligence. The ideas of imagination areproduced by ourselves, real perceptions are produced by God. The connectedwhole of divinely produced ideas we call nature, and the constantregularity in their succession, the laws of nature. The invariableness ofthe divine working and the purposive harmony of creation reveal the wisdomand goodness of the Almighty more clearly than "astonishing and exceptionalevents. " When we hear a man speak we reason from this activity to hisexistence. How much less are we entitled to doubt the existence of God, whospeaks to us in the thousandfold works of nature. 

The natural or created ideas which God impresses on us are copies ofthe eternal ideas which he himself perceives, not, indeed, by passivesensation, but through his creative reason. Accordingly when it wasmaintained that things do not exist independently of perception, thereference was not to the individual spirit, but to all spirits. When Iturn my eyes away from an object it continues to exist, indeed, aftermy perception has ended--in the minds of other men and in that of theOmnipresent One. The pantheistic conclusion of these principles, in thesense of Geulincx and Malebranche, [1] which one expects, was reallysuggested by Berkeley. Everything exists only in virtue of itsparticipation in the one, permanent, all-comprehensive spirit; individualspirits are of the same nature with the universal reason, only they areless perfect, limited, and not pure activity, while God is passionlessintelligence. But if, in the last analysis, God is the cause of all, thisdoes not hold of the free actions of men, least of all of wicked ones. Thefreedom of the will must not be rejected because of the contradictionswhich its acceptance involves; motion, also, and mathematical infinityimply incomprehensible elements. In the philosophy of nature Berkeleyprefers the teleological to the mechanical view, since the latter is ableto discover the laws of phenomena only, but not their efficient andfinal causes. Sense and experience acquaint us merely with the courseof phenomenal effects; the reason, which opens up to us the realm ofcausation, of the spiritual, is the only sure guide to science and truth. The understanding does not feel, the senses do not know. We have no(sensuous) idea of other spirits, but only a notion of them; instead ofthemselves we perceive their activities merely, from which we argueto souls like ourselves, while we know our own mind by immediateself-consciousness. [2]

[Footnote 1: The example of Arthur Collier shows that the same resultswhich Berkeley reaches empirically can be obtained from the standpoint ofrationalism. Following Malebranche, and developing further the idealistictendencies of the latter, Collier had, independently of Berkeley, conceivedthe doctrine of the "non-existence or impossibility of an external world ";but had not worked it out in his _Clavis Universalis_, 1713, until afterthe appearance of Berkeley's chief work, and not without consideration ofthis. The general point of view and the arguments are the same: Existenceis equivalent to being perceived by God; the creation of a real world ofmatter apart from the ideal world in God and from sensuous perceptions inus would have been a superfluous device, etc. ]

[Footnote 2: It should be remembered, however, that this immediateknowledge of ourselves is also "not after the manner of an idea orsensation. " Our knowledge of spirits is always mediated by "notions" not by"ideas" in the strict sense, that is, not by "images. " Cf. _Principles_, §§ 27, 135 _seq_. , especially in the second edition. --TR. ]

In contrast to the fearlessness with which Berkeley propounds hisspiritualism, his anxious endeavors to take away the appearance of paradoxfrom his immaterialistic doctrine, and to show its complete agreement withcommon sense, excite surprise. Even the common man, he argues, desiresnothing more than that his perceptions be real; the distinction betweenidea and object is an invention of philosophers. Here Berkeley cannot beacquitted of a certain sophistical play upon the term "idea, " which, infact, is ambiguous. He understands by it _that which_ the soul perceives(its immediate, inner object), but the popular mind, _that through which_the soul perceives an object. The reality of an idea in us is differentfrom the idea of a real thing, or from the reality of that which isperceived without us by means of the idea, and it is just this last meaningwhich common sense affirms and Berkeley denies. In any case it was a workof great merit to have transferred the existence of objects beyond ourideas, of things-in-themselves, out of the region of the self-evident intothe region of the problematical. We never get beyond the circle of ourideas, and if we posit a thing-in-itself as the ground and object of theidea, this also is simply a thought, an idea. For us there is no beingexcept that of the perceiver and the perceived. Later we shall meet twoother forms of idealism, in Leibnitz and Fichte. Both of these agree withBerkeley that spiritual beings alone are active, and active beings alonereal, and that the being of the inactive consists in their being perceived. But while in Berkeley the objective ideas are impressed upon finite spiritsby the Infinite Spirit from without and singly, with Leibnitz they appearas a fullness of germs, which God implanted together in the monads at thebeginning, and which the individual develops into consciousness, and withFichte they become the unconscious productions of the Absolute Ego actingin the individual egos. For the two former as many worlds exist as thereare individual spirits, their harmony being guaranteed, in the one case, bythe consistency of God's working, and, in the other, by his foresight. ForFichte, on the other hand, there is but one world, for the absolute is notoutside the individual spirits, but the uniformly working force withinthem. 

(b) Hume. --David Hume was born in Edinburgh in 1711, and died in the samecity, 1776. His position as librarian, which he held in the place ofhis birth, 1752-57, gave the opportunity for his _History of England_(1754-62). His chief work, the _Treatise on Human Nature_, which, however, found few readers, was composed during his first residence in France in1734-37. Later he worked over the first book of this work into his_Enquiry concerning Human Understanding_ (1748); the second book into _ADissertation on the Passions_; and the third _into An Enquiry concerningthe Principles of Morals_. These, and others of his essays, found so muchfavor that, during his second sojourn in France, as secretary to LordHertford, in 1763-66, he was already honored as a philosopher of world-widerenown. Then, after serving for some time as Under-Secretary of State, heretired to private life at home (1769). 

The three books of the _Treatise on Human Nature_, which appeared in1739-40, are entitled _Of the Understanding, Of the Passions, Of Morals_. Of the five volumes of the Essays, the first contains the _Essays Moral, Political, and Literary_, 1741-42; the second, the _Enquiry concerningHuman Understanding_, 1748; the third, the _Enquiry concerning thePrinciples of Morals_, 1751; the fourth, the _Political Discourses_, 1752;the fifth, 1757, the _Four Dissertations_, including that _On the Passions_and the _Natural History of Religion_. After Hume's death appeared the_Autobiography_, 1777; the _Dialogues concerning Natural Religion_, 1779;and the two small essays on _Suicide_ and the _Immortality of the Soul_, 1783. [1] The _Philosophical Works_ were published in 1827, and frequentlyafterward. [2]

[Footnote 1: Or 1777, cf. Green and Grose's edition, vol. Iii. P. 67_seq_. --Tr. ]

[Footnote 2: Among the works on Hume we may mention Jodl's prize treatise, 1872, and Huxley's _Hume_ (English Men of Letters), 1879. [The reader maybe referred also to Knight's _Hume_ (Blackwood's Philosophical Classics), 1886; to T. H. Green's "Introductions" in Green and Grose's edition of thecollected works in four volumes, 1874 (new ed. 1889-90), which is nowstandard; and to Selby-Bigge's reprint of the original edition of the_Treatise_, I vol. , 1888, with a valuable Analytical Index. ]]

Hume's object, like that of Berkeley, is the improvement of Locke'sdoctrine of knowledge. In several respects he does not go so far asBerkeley, in others very much farther. In agreement with Berkeley'sultra-nominalism, which combats even the possibility of abstract ideas, heyet does not follow him to the extent of denying external reality. On theother hand, he carries out more consistently Berkeley's hint that immediatesensation includes less than is ascribed to it (_e. G. _, that by visionwe perceive colors only, and not distance, etc. ), as well as hisprinciple--destructive to the certainty of our knowledge of nature--thatthere is no causality among phenomena; and brings the question of substanceto, the negative conclusion, that there is no need whatever for a supportfor groups of qualities, and, therefore, that substantiality is to bedenied to immaterial as well as to material beings. The points in Locke'sphilosophy which seemed to Hume to need completion were different fromthose at which Berkeley had struck in. The antithesis of rational andempirical knowledge is more sharply conceived; the combination of ideas isnot left to the choice of the understanding but placed under the dominionof psychological laws; and to the distinction between outer and innerexperience (to the former of which priority is conceded, on the ground thatwe must have had an external sensation before we can, through reflection, be conscious of it as an internal phenomenon), there is added a second, asimportant as the other and crossing it, between impressions and ideas, ofwhich the former are likewise made prior to the latter. 

Everyone will acknowledge the considerable difference between a sensationactually present (of heat, for instance) and the mere idea of onepreviously experienced, or shortly to come. This consists in the greaterforce, liveliness, and vividness of the former. Although these two classesof states (the idea of a landscape described by a poet and the perceptionof a real one, anger and the thought of anger) are only quantitativelydistinct, they are scarcely ever in danger of being confused--the mostlively idea is always less so than the weakest perception. The actual, outer or inner, sensations may be termed impressions; the weaker images ofmemory or imagination, which they leave behind them, ideas. Since nothingcan gain entrance to the soul except through the two portals of outer andinner experience, there is no idea which has not arisen from an impressionor several such; every idea is the image and copy of an impression. Butas the understanding and imagination variously combine, separate, andtranspose the elements furnished by the senses and lingering in memory, thepossibility of error arises. A hidden, and, therefore more dangerous sourceof error consists in the reference of an idea to a different impressionthan the one of which it is the copy. The concepts substance and causalityare examples of such false reference. 

The combination of ideas takes place without freedom, in a purelymechanical, way according to fixed rules, which in the last analysisreduce to three fundamental laws of association: Ideas are associated(1) according to their resemblance and contrast; (2) according to theircontiguity in space and time; (3) according to their causal connection. Mathematics is based on the operation of the first of these laws, onthe immediate or mediate knowledge of the resemblance, contrariety, andquantitative relations of ideas; the descriptive and experimental part ofthe sciences of nature and of man on the second; religion, metaphysics, andthat part of physical and moral science which goes beyond mere observationon the third. The theory of knowledge has to determine the boundaries ofhuman understanding and the degree of credibility to which these sciencesare entitled. 

The objects of human thought and inquiry are either relations of ideas ormatters of fact. To the former class belong the objects of mathematics, thetruths of which, since they are analytic (_i. E_. , merely explicate in thepredicate the characteristics already contained in the subject, and addnothing new to this), and since they concern possible relations only, not reality, possess intuitive or demonstrative certainty. It is onlypropositions concerning quantity and number that are discoverable _apriori_ by the mere operation of thought, without dependence on realexistence, and that can be proved from the impossibility of theiropposites--mathematics is the only demonstrative science. 

We reach certainty in matters of fact by direct perception, or byinferences from other facts, when they transcend the testimony of oursenses and memory. These arguments from experience are of an entirelydifferent sort from the rational demonstrations of mathematics; as thecontrary of a fact is always thinkable (the proposition that the sun willnot rise to-morrow implies no logical contradiction), they yield, strictlyspeaking, probability only, no matter how strong our conviction of theiraccuracy may be. Nevertheless it is advisable to separate this species ofinferences from experience--whose certainty is not doubted except by thephilosophers--from uncertain probabilities, as a class intermediate betweenthe latter and demonstrative truth (demonstrations--proofs--probabilities). All reasonings concerning matters of fact are based on the relation ofcause and effect. Whence, then, do we obtain the knowledge of cause andeffect? Not by _a priori_ thought. Pure reason is able only to analyzeconcepts into their elements, not to connect new predicates with them. Allits judgments are analytic, while synthetic judgments rest on experience. Judgments concerning causation belong in this latter class, for effects areentirely distinct from causes; the effect is not contained in the cause, nor the latter in the former. In the case of a phenomenon previouslyunknown we cannot tell from what causes it has proceeded, nor whatits effect will be. We argue that fire will warm us, and bread affordnourishment, because we have often perceived these causal pairs closelyconnected in space and time. But even experience does not vouchsafe allthat we desire. It shows nothing more than the coexistence and successionof phenomena and events; while the judgment itself, _e. G_. , that themotion of one body stands in causal connection with that of another, asserts more than mere contiguity in space and time, it affirms not merelythat the one precedes the other, but that it produces it--not merely thatthe second follows the first, but that it results from it. The bond whichconnects the two events, the force that puts forth the second from thefirst, the necessary connection between the two is not perceived, but addedto perception by thought, construed into it. [1] What, then, is the occasionand what the warrant for transforming perceived succession in time intocausal succession, for substituting _must_ for _is_, for interpreting theobserved connection of fact into a necessary connection which always eludesobservation?

[Footnote 1: The weakness of the concept of cause had been recognizedbefore Hume by the skeptic, J. Glanvil (1636-80). Causality itself cannotbe perceived; we infer it from the constant succession of two phenomena, without being able to show warrant for the transformation of _thereafter_into _thereby_. ]

We do not causally connect every chance pair of successive events, butthose only which have been repeatedly observed together. The wonder is, then, that through oft-repeated observation of certain objects we come tobelieve that we know something about the behavior of other like objects, and the further behavior of these same ones. From the fact that I have seena given apple fall ten times to the ground, I infer that all the apples inthe world do the same when loosened, instead of flying upward, which, initself, is quite as thinkable; I infer further that this has alwaysbeen the case, and will continue to be so to all eternity. Where is theintermediate link between the proposition, "I have found that such anobject has always been attended with such an effect, " and this other, "Iforesee that other objects which are, in appearance, similar, will beattended with similar effects"? This postulate, that the future will belike the past, and that like causes will have like effects, rests on apurely psychological basis. In virtue of the laws of association the sightof an object or event vividly recalls the image of a second, often observedin connection with the former, and leads us involuntarily to expect itsappearance anew. The idea of causal connection is based on feeling (thefeeling of inner determination to pass from one idea to a second), not uponinsight; it is a product of the imagination, not of the understanding. Fromthe habitual perception of two events in connection (sunshine and heat)arises the mental determination to think of the second when we perceive thefirst, and, anticipating the senses, to count on its appearance. It is nowpossible to state of what impression the idea of the causal nexus is thecopy: the impression on which it is based is the habitual transition fromthe idea of a thing to its customary attendant. Hence the idea of causalityhas a purely subjective significance, not the objective one which weascribe to it. It is impossible to determine whether there is a realnecessity of becoming corresponding to the felt necessity of thought. In life we never doubt the fact, but for science our conviction of theuniformity of nature remains a merely probable (though a very highlyprobable) conviction. Complete certainty is vouchsafed only by rationaldemonstration and immediate experience. The necessary bond which wepostulate between cause and effect can neither be demonstrated nor felt. 

If all experiential reasonings depend on the idea of causality, and thishas no other support than subjective mental habit, it follows that allknowledge of nature which goes beyond mere observed fact is not knowledge(neither demonstrative knowledge nor knowledge of fact), but belief. [1] Theprobability of our belief in the regularity of natural phenomena increases, indeed, with every new verification of the assumptions based thereon; but, as has been shown, it never rises to absolute certainty. Neverthelessinferences from experience are trustworthy and entirely sufficient forpractical life, and the aim of the above skeptical deliverances was notto shake belief--only a fool or a lunatic can doubt in earnest theimmutability of nature--but only to make it clear that it is mere belief, and not, as hitherto held, demonstrative or factual knowledge. Our doubtis intended to define the boundary between knowledge and belief, and todestroy that absolute confidence which is a hindrance rather than a help toinvestigation. We should recognize it as a wise provision of nature thatthe regulation of our thoughts and the belief in the objective validityof our anticipation of future events have not been confided to the weak, inconstant, inert, and fallacious reason, but to a powerful instinct. Inlife and action we are governed by this natural impulse, in spite of allthe scruples of the skeptical reason. 

[Footnote 1: Hume distinguishes belief as a form of knowledge fromreligious faith, both in fact and in name. In the _Treatise_--the passageis wanting in the _Enquiry_--our conviction of the external existence ofthe objects of perception is also ascribed to the former, which laterformed Jacobi's point of departure. Religious faith is referred torevelation. ]

In Hume's earlier work his destructive critique of the idea of causeis accompanied by a deliverance in a similar strain on the concept ofsubstance, which is not included in the shorter revision. Substances arenot perceived through impressions, but only qualities and powers. Theunknown something which is supposed to have qualities, or in which theseare supposed to inhere, is an unnecessary fiction of the imagination. Apermanent similarity of attributes by no means requires a self-identicalsupport for these. A thing is nothing more than a collection of qualities, to which we give a special name because they are always found together. Theidea of substance, like the idea of cause, is founded in a subjective habitwhich we erroneously objectify. The impression from which it has arisenis our inner perception that our thought remains constant in the repeatedexperience of the same group of qualities (whenever I see sugar, _I do thesame thing_, that is, I combine the qualities white color, sweet taste, hardness, etc. , with one another), or the impression of a uniformcombination of ideas. The idea of substance becomes erroneous through thefact that we refer it not to the inner activity of representation, to whichit rightly belongs, but to the external group of qualities, and make ita real, permanent substratum for the latter. Mental substances disappearalong with material substances. The soul or mind is, in reality, nothingmore than the sum of our inner states, a collection of ideas which flowon in a continuous and regular stream; it is like a stage, across whichfeelings, perceptions, thoughts, and volitions are passing while it doesnot itself come into sight. A permanent self or ego, as a substratum ofideas, is not perceived; there is no invariable, permanent impression. Thatwhich leads to the assumption of personal identity is only the frequentrepetition of similar trains of ideas, and the gradual succession ofour ideas, which is easily confused with constancy. Thus robbed of itssubstantiality, the soul has no further claims to immateriality andimmortality, and suicide ceases to be a crime. [1]

[Footnote 1: Cf. The essays on _Suicide_ and the _Immortality of the Soul_, 1783, whose authorship by Hume, however, is not absolutely established [of. Green and Grose, as above, p. 221, note first. --TR. ]]

Is Hume roundly to be called a skeptic? [1] He never impugned the validityof mathematical reasonings, nor experimental truths concerning matters offact; in regard to the former his thought is rationalistic, in regard tothe latter it is empirical or, more accurately, sensationalistic. Hisattitude toward the empirical sciences of nature and of mind is that of asemi-skeptic or probabilist, in so far as they go beyond the establishmentof facts to the proof of connections under law and to inferences concerningthe future. Habit is for him a safe guide for life, although it does not gobeyond probabilities; absolute knowledge is unattainable for us, butnot indispensable. Toward metaphysics, as an alleged science of thesuprasensible, he takes up an entirely negative attitude. If an argumentfrom experience is to be assured of merely that degree of probability whichis sufficient for belief, it must not only have a well-established fact (animpression or memory-image) for its starting point, but, together with itsconclusion, it must keep within the limits of possible experience. Thelimits of possible experience are also the limits of the knowable;inferences to the continued existence of the soul after death and to thebeing of God are vain sophistry and illusion. According to the famousconclusion of the _Essay_, all volumes which contain anything other than"abstract reasonings concerning quantity or number" or "experimentalreasonings concerning matter of fact and existence" deserve to be committedto the flames. In view of this limitation of knowledge to that which iscapable of exact measurement and that which is present in experience, aswell of the principle that the elements added by thought are to besharply distinguished from the positively given (the immediate facts ofperception), we must agree with those who call Hume the father of modernpositivism. [2]

[Footnote 1: In the _Essay_, Hume describes his own standpoint as mitigatedor academical skepticism in antithesis to the Cartesian, which from doubtand through doubt hopes to reach the indubitable, and to the excessiveskepticism of Pyrrhonism, which cripples the impulse to inquiry. Thismoderate skepticism asks us only, after resisting the tendency tounreflecting conclusions, to make a duty of deliberation and caution injudging, and to restrain inquiry within those fields which are accessibleto our knowledge, _i. E. _, the fields of mathematics and empirical fact. Inthe _Treatise_ Hume had favored a sharper skepticism and extended his doubtmore widely, _e. G. _, even to the trustworthiness of geometry. Cf. On thispoint Ed. Grimm, _Zur Geschichte des Erkenntnissproblems_, 1890, p, 559_seq_. ]

[Footnote 2: So Volkelt, _Erfahrung und Denken_, 1886, p. 105. ]

 * * * * *

As a philosopher of religion Hume is the finisher and destroyer of deism. Of the three principles of the deists--religion, its origin and its truthare objects of scientific investigation; religion has its origin in thereason and the consciousness of duty; natural religion is the oldest, thepositive religions are degenerate or revived forms of natural religion--heaccepts the first, while rejecting the other two. Religion may correspondto reason or contradict it, but not proceed from it. Religion has its basisin human nature, yet not in its rational but its sensuous side; not inthe speculative desire for knowledge, but in practical needs; not in thecontemplation of nature, but in looking forward with fear or joy to thechanging events of human life. Anxiety and hope concerning future eventslead us to posit unseen powers as directing our destiny, and to seek theirfavor. The capriciousness of fortune points to a plurality of gods;the tendency to conceive all things like ourselves gives them humancharacteristics; the powerful impression made by all that comes within thesphere of the senses incites us to connect the divine power with visibleobjects; the allegorical laudation and deification of eminent men leads toa completed polytheism. That this and not (mono-) theism was the originalform of religion, Hume assumes to be a fact for historical times, and awell-founded conjecture for prehistoric ages. Those who hold that humanitybegan with a perfect religion find it difficult to explain the obscurationof the truth, endow immature ages with a developed use of the reason whichthey can scarcely have possessed, make error grow worse with increasingculture, and contradict the historical progress upward which is everywhereelse observed. The philosophical knowledge of God is a very late product ofmature reflection; even monotheism, as a popular religion, did not arisefrom rational reflection, although its chief principle is in agreementwith the results of philosophy, but from the same irrational motivesas polytheism. Its origin from polytheism is accomplished by thetransformation of the leading god (the king of the gods or the tutelarydeity of the nation) through the fear and emulous flattery of his votariesinto the one, infinite, spiritual ruler of the world. Amid the folly of thesuperstitious herd, however, this refined idea is not long preserved in itspurity; the more exalted the conception entertained of the supreme deity, the more imperatively the need makes itself felt for the interpolationbetween this being and mankind of mediators and demi-gods, partaking moreof the human nature of the worshipers and more familiar to them. Latera new purification takes place, so that the history of religion shows acontinuous alternation of the lower and higher forms. 

After depriving theism of its prerogative of originality, Hume furthertakes away from it its fame as in every respect the best religion. It isdisadvantageously distinguished from polytheism by the fact that it is moreintolerant, makes its followers pusillanimous, and, by its incomprehensibledogmas, puts their faith to severer tests; while it is on a level withpolytheism in that most of its adherents exalt belief in foolish mysteries, fanaticism, and the observance of useless customs above the practice ofvirtue. 

The _Natural History of Religion_, which far outbids the conclusions ofthe deists by its endeavors to explain religion, not on rational, but onhistorical and psychological grounds, and to separate it entirelyfrom knowledge by relegating it to the sphere of practice, leaves thepossibility of a philosophical knowledge of God an open question. The_Dialogues concerning Natural Religion_ greatly diminish this hope. The most cogent argument for the intelligence of the world-ground, theteleological argument, is a hypothesis which has grave weaknesses, and oneto which many other equally probable hypotheses may be opposed. The finiteworld, with its defects and abounding misery amid all its order andadaptation, can never yield an inference to an infinite, perfectunit-cause, to an all-powerful, all-wise, and benevolent deity. To thisthe eleventh section of the _Enquiry_ adds the argument, that it isinadmissible to ascribe to the inferred cause other properties than thosewhich are necessary to explain the observed effect. The tenth section ofthe same _Essay_ argues that there is no miracle supported by a sufficientnumber of witnesses credible because of their intelligence and honesty, andfree from a preponderance of contradictory experiences and testimony ofgreater probability. In short, the reason is neither capable of reachingthe existence of God by well-grounded inference nor of comprehending thetruth of the Christian religion with its accompanying miracles. That whichtranscends experience cannot be proven and known, but only believed in. Whoever is moved by faith to give assent to things which contradict allcustom and experience, is conscious of a continued miracle in his ownperson. 

Hume never denied the existence of God, never directly impugned revelation. His final word is doubt and uncertainty. It is certain that his counsel notto follow the leadership of the reason in religious matters, but to submitourselves to the power of instinct and common opinion, was less earnest andless in harmony with the nature of the philosopher than his other advice, to take refuge from the strife of the various forms of superstition in themore quiet, though dimmer regions of--naturally, the skeptical--philosophy. Hume's originality and greatness in this field consist in his genetic viewof the historical religions. They are for him errors, but natural ones, grounded in the nature of man, "sick men's dreams, " whose origin and coursehe searches out with frightful cold-bloodedness, with the dispassionateinterest of the dissector. 

 * * * * *

In his moral philosophy[1] Hume shows himself the empiricist only, not theskeptic. The laws of human nature are capable of just as exact empiricalinvestigation as those of external nature; observation and analysis promiseeven more brilliant success in this most important, and yet hitherto sobadly neglected, branch of science than in physics. As knowledge andopinion have been found reducible to the associative play of ideas, and thestore of ideas, again, to original impressions and shown derivable fromthese; so man's volition and action present themselves as results of themechanical working of the passions, which, in turn, point further back tomore primitive principles. The ultimate motives of all action are pleasureand pain, to which we owe our ideas of good and evil. The direct passions, desire and aversion, joy and sorrow, hope and fear, are the immediateeffects of these original elements. From the direct arise in certaincircumstances the indirect passions, pride and humility, love and hatred(together with respect and contempt); the first two, if the objects whichexcite feeling are immediately connected with ourselves, the latter, whenpleasure and pain are aroused by the accomplishments or the defects ofothers. While love and hate are always conjoined with a readinessfor action, with benevolence or anger, pride and humility are pure, self-centered, inactive emotions. 

[Footnote 1: Cf. G. Von Gizycki, _Die Ethik David Humes_, 1878. ]

All moral phenomena, will, moral judgment, conscience, virtue, are notsimple and original data, but of a composite or derivative nature. They arewithout exception products of the regular interaction of the passions. Withsuch views there can be, of course, no question of a freedom of the will. If anyone objects to determinism, that virtues and vices, if they areinvoluntary and necessary, are not praise-or blame-worthy, he is to bereferred to the applause paid to beauty and talent, which are consideredmeritorious, although they are not dependent upon our choice. The legalattitude of theology and law first caused all desert to be based uponfreedom, whereas the ancient philosophers spoke unhesitatingly ofintellectual virtues. 

Hume does not, like nearly all his predecessors and contemporaries, findthe determining grounds of volition in ideas, but in the feelings. Aftercurtailing the rights of the reason in the theoretical field in favor ofcustom and instinct, he dispossesses her also in the sphere of practice. Impassive reason, judging only of truth and falsehood, is an inactivefaculty, which of itself can never inspire us with inclination and desiretoward an object, can never itself become a motive. It is only capableof influencing the will indirectly, through the aid of some affection. Abstract relations of ideas, and facts as well, leave us entirelyindifferent so long as they fail to acquire an emotional value throughtheir relation to our state of mind. When we speak of a victory of reasonover passion it is nothing but a conquest of one passion by another, _i. E_. , of a violent passion by a calm one. That which is commonly calledreason here is nothing but one of those general and calm affections _(e. G_. , the love of life) which direct the will to a distant good, withoutexciting any sensible emotion in the mind; by passion we commonlyunderstand the violent passions only, which engender a marked disturbancein the soul and the production of which requires a certain propinquity ofthe object. A man is said to be industrious "from reason, " when a calmdesire for money makes him laborious. It is a mistake to consider allviolent passions powerful, and all calm ones weak. The prevalence of calmaffections constitutes the essence of strength of mind. 

As reason is thus degraded from a governor of the will to a "slave of thepassions, " so, further, judgment concerning right and wrong is taken awayfrom her. Moral distinctions are determined by our sense of the agreeableand the disagreeable. We pass an immediate judgment of taste on the actionsof our fellow-men; the good pleases, evil displeases. The sight of virtuegives us satisfaction; that of vice repels us. Accordingly an action ortrait of mind is virtuous when it calls forth in the observer an agreeable, disinterested sentiment of approbation. 

What, then, are the actions which receive such general approval, and how isthe praise to be explained which the spectator bestows on them? We approvesuch traits of character as are immediately agreeable or useful, either tothe person himself or to others. This yields four classes of praiseworthyqualities. The first class, those which are agreeable to the possessor(quite apart from any utility to himself or to others), includescheerfulness, greatness of mind, courage, tranquillity, and benevolence;the second, those immediately agreeable to others, modesty, good manners, politeness, and wit; the third, those useful to ourselves, strength ofwill, industry, frugality, strength of body, intelligence and other mentalgifts. The fourth class comprises the highest virtues, the qualities usefulto others, benevolence and justice. Pleasure and utility are in all casesthe criterion of merit. The monkish virtues of humility and mortificationof the flesh, which bring no pleasure or advantage either to theirpossessor or to society, are considered meritorious by no one whounderstands the subject. 

If the moral value of actions is thus made to depend on their effects, wecannot dispense with the assistance of reason in judging moral questions, since it alone can inform us concerning these results of action. Reason, however, is not sufficient to determine us to praise or blame. Nothing buta sentiment can induce us to give the preference to beneficial and usefultendencies over pernicious ones. This feeling is evidently no other thansatisfaction in the happiness of men and uneasiness in view of theirmisery--in short, it is sympathy. By means of the imagination we enter intothe experiences of others and participate in their joy and sorrow. Whateverdepresses or rejoices them, whatever inspires them with pride, fills uswith similar emotions. From the habit of sympathetically passing moraljudgment on the actions of others, and of seeing our own judged by them, is developed the further one of keeping a constant watch over ourselves andof considering our dispositions and deeds from the standpoint of the goodof others. This custom is called conscience. Allied to this is the love ofreputation, which continually leads us to ask, How will our behavior appearin the eyes of those with whom we associate?

Within the fourth and most important class, the social virtues, Humedistinguishes between the natural virtues of humanity and benevolence andthe artificial virtues of justice and fidelity. The former proceed from ourinborn sympathy with the good of others, while the latter, on the otherhand, are not to be derived from a natural passion, an instinctive love ofhumanity, but are the product of reflection and art, and take their originin a social convention. 

In order that an action may gain the approval of the spectator two otherthings are required besides its salutary effects: it must be a markof character, of a permanent disposition, and it must proceed fromdisinterested motives. Hume is obliged by this latter position to show thatdisinterested benevolence actually exists, that the unselfish affectionsdo not secretly spring from self-love. To cite only one of the thousandexamples of benevolence in which no discernible interest is concerned, we desire happiness for our friends even when we have no expectationof participating in it. The accounts of human selfishness are greatlyoverdrawn, and those who deduce all actions from it make the mistake oftaking the inevitable consequences of virtue--the pleasure of self-approvaland of being esteemed by others--for the only motives to virtue. Becausevirtue, in the outcome, produces inner satisfaction and is praised byothers, it does not follow that it is practiced merely for the sake ofthese agreeable consequences. Self-love is a secondary impulse, whoseappearance at all presupposes primary impulses. Only after we haveexperienced the pleasure which comes from the satisfaction of such anoriginal impulse (_e. G_. , ambition), can this become the object of aconscious reflective search after pleasure, or of egoism. Power brings noenjoyment to the man by nature devoid of ambition, and he who is naturallyambitious does not desire fame because it affords him pleasure, butconversely, fame affords him pleasure because he desires it. The naturalpropensity which terminates directly on the object, without knowledge orforesight of the pleasurable results, comes first, and egoistic reflectiondirected toward the hoped-for enjoyment can develop only after this hasbeen satisfied. The case is the same with benevolence as with the loveof fame. It is implanted in the constitution of our minds as an originalimpulse immediately directed toward the happiness of other men. Afterit has been exercised and its exercise rewarded by self-satisfaction, admiration, thanks, and reciprocation, it is indeed possible for theexpectation of such agreeable consequences to lead us to the repetition ofbeneficent acts. But the original motive is not an egoistic, regard foruseful consequences. If, from the force of the passion alone, vengeancemay be so eagerly pursued that every consideration of personal quiet andsecurity is silenced, it may also be conceded that humanity causes usto forget our own interests. Nay, further, the social affections, asShaftesbury has proven, are the strongest of all, and the man will rarelybe found in whom the sum of the benevolent impulses will not outweigh thatof the selfish ones. 

In the section on justice Hume attacks the contract theory. Law, property, and the sacredness of contracts exist first in society, but not first inthe state. The obligation to observe contracts is, indeed, made stronger bythe civil law and civil authority, but not created by them. Law arises fromconvention, _i. E_. , not from a formal contract, but a tacit agreement, asense of common interest, and this agreement, in turn, proceeds from anoriginal propensity to enter into social relations. The unsocial andlawless state of nature is a philosophical fiction which has never existed;men have always been social. They have all at least been born into thesociety of the family, and they know no-more terrible punishment thanisolation. States are not created, however, by a voluntary act, but havetheir roots in history. The question at issue between Hobbes and Hume wasthus adjusted at a later period by Kant: the state, it is true, has nothistorically arisen from a contract, yet it is allowable and useful toconsider it under the aspect of a contract as a regulative idea. 

Only once since David Hume, in Herbert Spencer, has the English nationproduced a mind of like comprehensive power. Hume and Locke form theculminating points of English thought. They are national types, in thatin them the two fundamental tendencies of English thinking, clearness ofunderstanding and practical sense, were manifested in equal force. In Lockethese worked together in harmonious co-operation. In Hume the friendlyalliance is broken, the common labor ceases; each of the two demands itsfull rights; a painful breach opens up between science and life. Reasonleads inevitably to doubt, to insight into its own weakness, while lifedemands conviction. The doubter cannot act, the agent cannot know. It istrue that a substitute is found for defective knowledge in belief basedupon instinct and custom; but this is a makeshift, not a solution of theproblem, an acknowledgment of the evil, not a cure for it. Further, Hume'sgreatness does not consist in the fact that he preached modesty to thecontending parties, that he banished the doubting reason into the studyand restricted life to belief in probabilities, but in the mental strengthwhich enabled him to endure sharp contradictions, and, instead of anoverhasty and easy reconciliation, to suspend the one impulse until theother had made its demands thoroughly, completely, and regardlessly heard. Though he is distinguished from other skeptics by the fact that he notonly shows the fundamental conceptions of our knowledge of nature and theprinciples of religion uncertain and erroneous, but finds _necessary_errors in them and acutely uncovers their origin in the lawful workingsof our inner life, yet his historical influence essentially rests on hisskepticism. In his own country it roused in the "Scottish School" thereaction of common sense, while in Germany it helped to wake a kindred butgreater spirit from the bonds of his dogmatic slumbers, and to fortify himfor his critical achievements. 

(c) %The Scottish School%. --Priestley's associational psychology, Berkeley's idealism, and Hume's skepticism are legitimate deductions fromLocke's assumption that the immediate objects of thought are not things butideas, and that judgment or knowledge arises from the combination of ideasoriginally separate. The absurdity of the consequences shows the falsity ofthe premises. The true philosophy must not contradict common sense. Itis not correct to look upon the mind as a sheet of white paper on whichexperience inscribes single characters, and then to make the understandingcombine these originally disconnected elements into judgments by means ofcomparison, and the belief in the existence of the object come in as alater result added to the ideas by reflection. It is rather true that theelements discovered by the analysis of the cognitive processes are far frombeing the originals from which these arise. It is not isolated ideas thatcome first, but judgments, self-evident axioms of the understanding, whichform part of the mental constitution with which God has endowed us; andsensation is accompanied by an immediate belief in the reality of theobject. Sensation guarantees the presence of an external thing possessing acertain character, although it is not an image of this property, but merelya sign for something in no wise resembling itself. 

This is the standpoint of the founder[1] of the Scottish School, ThomasReid (1710-96, professor in Aberdeen and Glasgow; _An Inquiry into theHuman Mind on the Principles of Common Sense_, 1764; _Essays on theIntellectual Powers of Man_, 1785, _Essays on the Active Powers_, 1788, together under the title, _Essays on the Powers of the Human Mind. Collected Works_, 1804, and often since, especially the edition byHamilton, with valuable notes and dissertations, 7th ed. , 2 vols. , 1872). We may recognize in it a revival of the common notions of Herbert, as wellas a transfer of the innate faculty of judgment inculcated by the ethicaland aesthetic writers from the practical to the theoretical field; the"common sense" of Reid is an original sense for truth, as the "taste"of Shaftesbury and Hutcheson was a natural sense for the good and thebeautiful. Like Jacobi at a later period, Reid points out that mediate, reasoned knowledge presupposes a knowledge which is immediate, and allinference and demonstration, fixed, undemonstrable, immediately certainfundamental truths. The fundamental judgments or principles of commonsense, which are true for us, even if [possibly] not true in themselves, are discoverable by observation (empirical rationalism). In the enumerationof them two dangers are to be avoided: we must neither raise contingentprinciples to the position of axioms, nor, from an exaggerated endeavorafter unity, underestimate the number of these self-evident principles. Reid himself is always more sparing with them than his disciples. Hedistinguishes two classes: first principles of necessary truth, and firstprinciples of contingent truth or truth of fact. As first principles ofnecessary truth he cites, besides the axioms of logic and mathematics, grammatical, aesthetic, moral, and metaphysical principles (among the lastbelong the principles: "That the qualities which we perceive by our sensesmust have a subject, which we call body, and that the thoughts we areconscious of must have a subject, which we call mind"; "that whateverbegins to exist, must have a cause which produced it"). He lays down twelveprinciples as the basis of our knowledge of matters of fact, in which hisreference to the doubt of Berkeley and Hume is evident. The most importantof these are: "The existence of everything of which I am conscious"; "thatthe thoughts of which I am conscious, are the thoughts of a being which Icall myself, my mind, my person"; "our own personal identity and continuedexistence, as far back as we remember anything distinctly"; "that thosethings do really exist which we distinctly perceive by our senses, and arewhat we perceive them to be"; "that we have some degree of power over ouractions, and the determinations of our will"; "that there is life andintelligence in our fellow-men"; "that there is a certain regard due. . . Tohuman authority in matters of opinion"; "that, in the phenomena ofnature, what is to be, will probably be like what has been in similarcircumstances. "

[Footnote 1: In the sense of "chief founder"; cf. McCosh's _ScottishPhilosophy_, 1875, pp. 36, 68 _seq_. , which is the standard authority onthe school as a whole. --TR. ]

The widespread and lasting favor experienced by this theory, with itsinvitation to forget all earnest work in the problems of philosophyby taking refuge in common sense, shows that a general relaxation hadsucceeded the energetic endeavors which Hume had demanded of himself andof his readers. With this declaration of the infallibility of commonconsciousness, the theory of knowledge, which had been so successfullybegun, was incontinently thrust aside, although, indeed, empiricalpsychology gained by the industrious investigation of the inner life bymeans of self-observation. James Beattie continued the attack on Humein his _Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth in Opposition toSophistry and Skepticism_, 1770, on the principle that wisdom must nevercontradict nature, and that whatever our nature compels us to believe, hence whatever all agree in, is true. In his briefer dissertations Beattiediscussed Memory and Imagination, Fable and Romance, the Effects of

Poetry and Music, Laughter, the Sublime, etc. While Beattie had given thepreference to psychological and aesthetic questions, James Oswald (1772)appealed to common sense in matters of religion, describing it as aninstinctive faculty of judgment concerning truth and falsehood. The mosteminent among the followers of Reid was Dugald Stewart (professor inEdinburgh; _Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind_, 1792-1827;_Collected Works_, edited by Hamilton, 1854-58), who developed thedoctrines of the master and in some points modified them. ThomasBrown (1778-1820), who is highly esteemed by Mill, Spencer, and Bain, approximated the teachings of Reid and Stewart to those of Hume. Thephilosophy of the Scottish School was long in favor both in England and inFrance, where it was employed as a weapon against materialism. 

By way of appendix we may mention the beginnings of a psychologicalaesthetics in Henry Home (Lord Kames, 1696-1782), and Edmund Burke(1728-97). [1] Home, in ethics a follower of Hutcheson, is fond ofsupporting his aesthetic views by examples from Shakespeare. Beauty (chap. Iii. ) appears to belong to the object itself, but in reality it is only aneffect, a "secondary quality, " of the object; like color, it is nothing butan idea in the mind, "for an object is said to be beautiful for no otherreason but that it appears so to the spectator. " It arises from regularity, proportion, order, simplicity--properties which belong to sublimity as well(chap, iv. ), but to which they are by no means so essential, since it issatisfied with a less degree of them. While the beautiful excites emotionsof sweetness and gayety, the sublime rouses feelings which are agreeable, it is true, but which are not sweet and gay, but strong and more serious. Burke's explanation goes deeper. He derives the antithesis of the sublimeand the beautiful from the two fundamental impulses of human nature, theinstinct of self-preservation and the social impulse. Whatever is contraryto the former makes a strong and terrible impression on the soul; whateverfavors the latter makes a weak but agreeable one. The terrible delights us(first depressing and then exalting us), when we merely contemplate it, without being ourselves affected by the danger or the pain--this is thesublime. On the other hand, that is beautiful which inspires us withtenderness and affection without our desiring to possess it. Sublimityimplies a certain greatness, beauty, a certain smallness. Delight in bothis based on bodily phenomena. Terror moderated exercises a beneficentinfluence on the nerves by stimulating them and giving them tension;the gentle impression of beauty exerts a quieting effect upon them. Thedisturbances caused by the former, and the recovery induced by the latter, are both conducive to health, and hence, experienced as pleasures. 

[Footnote 1: Home, _Elements of Criticism_, 1762. Burke, _A PhilosophicalInquiry info the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful_, 1756. ]

CHAPTER VI. 

THE FRENCH ILLUMINATION. 

In the last decade of the seventeenth century France had yielded theleadership in philosophy to England. Whereas Hobbes had in Paris imbibedthe spirit of the Galilean and Cartesian inquiry, while Bacon, Locke, andeven Hume had also visited France with advantage, now French thinkers takethe watchword from the English. Montesquieu and Voltaire, returning fromEngland in the same year (1729), acquaint their countrymen with the ideasof Locke and his contemporaries. These are eagerly caught up; are, stepby step, and with the logical courage characteristic of the French mind, developed to their extreme conclusions; and, at the same time, spreadabroad in this heightened form among the people beyond the circles of thelearned, nay, even beyond the educated classes. The English temperament isfavorable neither to this advance to extreme revolutionary inferences norto this propagandist tendency. Locke combines a rationalistic ethics withhis semi-sensational theory of knowledge; Newton is far from finding in hismechanical physics a danger for religious beliefs; the deists treat theadditions of positive religion rather as superfluous ballast than ashateful unreason; Bolingbroke wishes at least to conceal from the peoplethe illuminating principles which he offers to the higher classes. Suchhalting where farther progress threatens to become dangerous to moralinterests does more honor to the moral, than to the logical, character ofthe philosopher. But with the transfer of these ideas to France, the wallof separation is broken down between the theory of knowledge and the theoryof ethics, between natural philosophy and the philosophy of religion;sensationalism forces its way from the region of theory into the sphereof practice, and the mechanical theory is transformed from a principalof physical interpretation into a metaphysical view of the world of anatheistical character. Naturalism is everywhere determined to have itsown: if knowledge comes from the senses, then morality must be rootedin self-interest; whoever confines natural science to the search formechanical causes must not postulate an intelligent Power working fromdesign, even to explain the origin of things and the beginning ofmotion--has no right to speak of a free will, an immortal soul, and a deitywho has created the world. Further, as Bayle's proof that the dogmas ofthe Church were in all points contradictory to reason had, contrary to itsauthor's own wishes, exerted an influence hostile to religion, and as, moreover, the political and social conditions of the time incited to revoltand to a break with all existing institutions, the philosophical ideas fromover the Channel and the condition of things at home alike pressed towarda revolutionary intensification of modern principles, which foundcomprehensive expression in the atheists' Bible, the _System of Nature_ ofBaron Holbach, 1770. The movement begins in the middle of the thirties, when Montesquieu commences to naturalize Locke's political views in France, and Voltaire does the same service for Locke's theory of knowledge, and Newton's natural philosophy, which had already been commended byMaupertuis. The year 1748, the year also of Hume's _Essay_, bringsMontesquieu's chief work and La Mettrie's _Man a Machine_. While the_Encyclopedia_, the herald of the Illumination, begun in 1751, is advancingto its completion (1772, or rather 1780), Condillac (1754) and Bonnet(1755) develop theoretical sensationalism, and Helvetius (_On Mind_, 1758; in the same year, D'Alembert's _Elements of Philosophy_) practicalsensationalism. Rousseau, engaged in authorship from 1751 and a contributorto the _Encyclopedia_ until 1757 comes into prominence, 1762, with his twochief works, _Emile_ and the _Social Contract_. Parallel with these wefind interesting phenomena in the field of political economy: Morelly'scommunistic _Code of Nature_ (1755), the works of Quesnay (1758), theleader of the physiocrats, and those of Turgot, 1774. 

Our discussion takes up, first, the introduction and popularization ofEnglish ideas; then, the further development of these into a consistentsensationalism, into the morality of interest, and into materialism;finally, the reaction against the illumination of the understanding inRousseau's philosophy of feeling. [1]

[Footnote 1: On the whole chapter cf. Damiron, _Mémoires pour Servir àl'Histoire de la Philosophie au XVIII. Siécle_, 3 vols. , 1858-64; andJohn Morley's _Voltaire_, 1872 [1886], _Rousseau_, 1873 [1886], and_Diderot and the Encyclopedists_, 1878 [new ed. , 1886]. ]

1. %The Entrance of English Doctrines%. 

Montesquieu[1] (1689-1755) made Locke's doctrine of constitutionalmonarchy and the division of powers (pp. 179-180), with which he joins thehistorical point of view of Bodin and the naturalistic positions of thetime, the common property of the cultivated world. Laws must be adapted tothe character and spirit of the nation; the spirit of the people, again, is the result of nature, of the past, of manners, of religion, and ofpolitical institutions. Nature has bestowed many gifts on the Southernpeoples, but few on those of the North; hence the latter need freedom, while the former readily dispense with it. Warm climates produce greatersensibility and passionateness, cold ones, muscular vigor and industry; inthe temperate zones nations are less constant in their habits, their vices, and their virtues. The laws of religion concern man as man, those of thestate concern him as a citizen; the former have for their object the moralgood of the individual, the latter, the welfare of society; the first aimat immutable, the second at mutable good. Laws and manners are closelyinterrelated. Right is older than the state, and the law of justice holdseven in the state of nature; but in order to assure peace positive right isrequired in three forms, international, political, and civil. 

[Footnote 1: Montesquieu, _Persian Letters_, 1721; _Considerations onthe Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and of their Decadence_, 1734;_Spirit of Laws_, 1748. ]

Each of the four political forms has a passion for its underlyingprinciple: despotism has fear; monarchy, honor (personal and classprejudice); aristocracy, the moderation of the nobility; democracy, political virtue, which subordinates personal to general welfare, andespecially the inclination to equality and frugality. While republics aredestroyed by extravagance, lust, and self-seeking, a monarchy can dispensewith civil virtue, patriotism, and moral disinterestedness, since in itfalse honor, luxury, and wantonness subserve the public good. Great statestend toward despotism; smaller ones toward aristocracy, or a democraticrepublicanism; for those of medium size monarchy, which is intermediatebetween the two former, is the best form of constitution. AlthoughMontesquieu, in his _Lettres Persanes_, shows himself enthusiastic for thefederal republics of Switzerland and the Netherlands, his opinions aredifferent after his return from England, and in his _Esprit des Lois_ hepraises the English form of government as the ideal of civil liberty. 

Political freedom consists in liberty to do (not what we wish, but) whatwe ought, or in doing that which the laws allow. Such lawful freedom ispossible only where the constitution of the state and criminal legislationinspire the citizen with a sense of security. In order to prevent misuse ofthe supreme power, the different authorities in the state must be dividedso that they shall hold one another in check. In particular Montesquieudemands for the judicial power absolute independence of the executive power(which Locke had termed the federative) as well as of the legislativepower. The last belongs to parliament, which includes in its two houses anaristocratic and a democratic element. 

Voltaire[1] (1694-1778)--he himself had made this anagram from his name, Arouet l(e) j(eune)--seemed by his many-sided receptivity almost made to bethe interpreter of English ideas; in the words of Windelband, he "combinesNewton's mechanical philosophy of nature, Locke's noëtical empiricism, andShaftesbury's moral philosophy under the deistic point of view. " Thesame qualities which made him the first journalist, enabled him to freephilosophy from its scholastic garb, and, by concentrating it on theproblems which press most upon the lay mind (God, freedom, immortality), to make it a living force among the people. His superficiality, as Erdmannacutely remarks, was his strength. True religion, so reason teaches us, consists in loving God and in being just and forbearing to our fellow-menas to our brothers; morality is so natural and necessary that it is nowonder that all philosophers since Zoroaster have inculcated the sameprinciples. The less of dogma the better the religion; atheism is notso bad as superstition, which teaches men to commit crimes with an easyconscience. He considered it the chief mission of his life to destroy thesetwo miserable errors. He endeavored to controvert atheism by rationalarguments, while with passionate hatred and contemptuous wit he attackedpositive Christianity and his persecutors, the priesthood. The existenceof God is for him not merely a moral postulate, but a result of scientificreasoning. One of his famous sayings was: "If God did not exist it would benecessary to invent him; but all nature cries out to us that he exists. " Hedefends immortality in spite of theoretical difficulties, because of itspractical necessity; his attitude toward the freedom of the will, whichhe had energetically defended in the beginning, grows constantly moreskeptical with increasing age. His position in regard to the questionof evil experiences a similar change--the Lisbon earthquake made him anopponent of optimism, though he had previously favored it. 

[Footnote 1: David Friedrich Strauss, _Voltaire, sechs Vorträge_, 1870. ]

%2. Theoretical and Practical Sensationalism. %

We turn next from the popular introduction and dissemination of Locke'sdoctrines, which left their contents unchanged, to their principiantdevelopment by the French sensationalists. Condillac (1715-80) alwaysthinks of his work as a completion of Locke's, whose _Essay_ he held not tohave gone down to the final root of the cognitive process. Locke did notgo far enough, Condillac thinks, in his rejection of innate elements; hefailed to trace out the origin of perception, reflection, cognition, andvolition, as also the relation between the external senses, the internalsense, and the combining intellect, which he discussed as separate sources, the two former of particular, and the last of complex, ideas; in short, he omitted to inquire into the origin of the first function of the soul. Berkeley was right in feeling that a simplification was needed here; but byerroneously reducing outer perception to inner perception, he reached theabsurd conclusion of denying the external world. The true course is justthe opposite of this--the one already taken by the Bishop of Cork, PeterBrowne (died 1735; _The Procedure, Extent, and Limits of the HumanUnderstanding_, 1728): understanding and reflection must be reduced tosensation. All psychical functions are transformed sensations. The soul hasonly one original faculty, that of sensation; all the others, theoreticaland practical alike, are acquired, _i. E. _, they have gradually developedfrom the former. Condillac is related to Locke as Fichte to Kant; inthe former case the transition is mediated by Browne, in the latterby Reinhold. Each crowns the work of his predecessor with a unifyingconclusion; each demands and offers a genetic psychology which finds theorigin of all the spiritual functions--from sensation and feelings ofpleasure and pain up to rational cognition and moral will--in a singlefundamental power of the soul. But there is a great difference, materiallyas well as formally, between these kindred undertakings, a differencecorresponding to that between Locke's empiricism and Kant's idealism. The idea of ends, which controls the course of thought in Fichte as inLeibnitz, is entirely lacking in Condillac; that which is first in time, sensation, is for the Science of Knowledge and the Monadology only thebeginning, not the essence, of psychical activity, while Condillac makesno distinction between beginning and ground, but expressly identifies_principe_ and _commencement_. With Fichte and Leibnitz sensation isimmature thought, with Condillac thought is refined sensation. The formerteach a teleological, the latter a mechanical mono-dynamism. The Scienceof Knowledge, moreover, makes a very serious task of the deduction of theparticular psychical functions from the original power, while Condillactakes it extraordinarily easy. Good illustrations of his way of effacingdistinctions instead of explaining them are given by such monotonouslyrecurring phrases as memory is "nothing but" modified sensation; comparisonand simultaneous attention to two ideas "are the same thing"; sensation"gradually becomes" comparison and judgment; reflection is "in its origin"attention itself; speech, thought, and the formation of general notionsare "at bottom the same"; the passions are "only" various kinds of desire;understanding and will spring "from one root, " etc. 

The demand for a single fundamental psychical power comes from Descartes, and Condillac does not hesitate to retain the word _penser_ itself as ageneral designation for all mental functions. Similarly he holds fast tothe dualism between extension and sensation as reciprocally incompatibleproperties, opposes the soul as the "simple" subject of thought to"divisible" matter, and sees in the affections of the bodily organs merelythe "occasions" on which the soul of itself alone exercises its sensitiveactivity. Even freedom--the supremacy of thought over the passions--ismaintained, in striking contrast to the whole tendency of his doctrine andto the openly announced principle, that pleasure controls the attention andgoverns all our actions. He has just as little intention of doubting theexistence of God. All is dependent on God. He is our lawgiver; it is invirtue of his wisdom that from small beginnings--perception and need--themost splendid results, science and morality, are developed under the handsof man. Whoever undertakes to complain that He has concealed from us thenature of things and granted us to know relations alone, forgets that weneed no more than this. We do not exist in order to know; to live is toenjoy. 

The theme of the _Treatise on the Sensations_, 1754, is: Memory, comparison, judgment, abstraction, and reflection (in a word, cognition)are nothing but different forms of attention; similarly the emotions, theappetites, and the will, nothing but modifications of desire; while bothalike take their origin in sensation. Sensation is the sole source and thesole content of the life of the mind as a whole. To prove these positionsCondillac makes use of the fiction of a statue, in which one sense awakesafter another, first the lowest of the senses, smell, and last the mostvaluable, the sense of touch, which compels us (by its perception ofdensity or resistance) to project our sensations, and thus wakes in us theidea of an external world. In themselves sensations are merely subjectivestates, modes of our own being; without the sense of touch we would ascribeodor, sound, and color to ourselves. Condillac distinguishes betweensensation and _ideas_ in a twofold sense, as mere ideas (the memory orimagination of something not present), and as ideas of objective things(the image, representative of a body); this latter sense is meant when hesays, touch sensations only are also ideas. 

For the details of the deduction, which often makes very happy use of arich store of psychological material, the reader must be referred to themore extended expositions. Here we can only cite as examples the chiefamong the genetic definitions. Perceptions (impressions) and consciousnessare the same thing under different names. A lively sensation, in which themind is entirely occupied, becomes attention, without the necessity ofassuming an additional special faculty in the mind. Attention, by itsretentive effect on the sensation, becomes memory. Double attention--toa new sensation, and to the lingering trace of the previous one--iscomparison; the recognition of a relation (resemblance or difference)between two ideas is judgment; the separation of an idea from anothernaturally connected with it, by the aid of voluntary linguistic symbols, is abstraction; a series of judgments is reflection; and the sum total ofinner phenomena, that wherein ideas succeed one another, the ego or person. All truths concern relations among ideas. The tactual idea of solidityaccustoms us to project the sensations of the other senses also, totransfer them thither where they are not; hence arise the ideas of ourbody, of external objects, and of space. If we perceive several suchprojected qualities together, we refer them to a substratum--substance, which we know to exist, although not what it is. By force we mean theunknown, but indubitably existent, cause of motion. 

There are no indifferent mental states; every sensation is accompanied bypleasure or pain. Joy and pain give the determining law for the operationof our faculties. The soul dwells longer on agreeable sensations; withoutinterest, ideas would pass away like shadows. The remembrance of pastimpressions more agreeable than the present ones is need; from thissprings desire (_désir_) then the emotions of love, hate, hope, fear, andastonishment; finally, the will as an unconditional desire accompanied bythe thought of its possible fulfillment. All inclinations, good and badalike, spring from self-love. The predicates "good" and "beautiful"denote the pleasure-giving qualities of things, the former, that which isagreeable to smell and taste (and the passions), the latter, that whichpleases sight, hearing, feeling (and the intellect). Morality is theconformity of our actions to laws, which men have established by conventionwith mutual obligations. In this way the good, which at first was theservant of the passions, becomes their lord. 

Man's superiority to the brute depends on the greater perfection of hissense of touch; on the greater variety of his wants and his associationsof ideas; on the idea of death, which leads him to seek not merely theavoidance of pain but also self-preservation; and the possession oflanguage. Without denomination no abstractions, no thought, no handingdown of knowledge. Although all that is mental has its origin, in the lastanalysis, in simple sensations, its development requires emancipation fromthe sensuous, and language is the means for freeing ourselves from thepressure of sensations by the generalization and combination of ideas. 

A more moderate representative of sensationalism was Charles Bonnet, wholater exercised a considerable influence in Germany, especially untilTetens (1720-93; _Essay in Psychology, or Considerations on the Operationsof the Soul_, 1755; _Analytical Essay on the Faculties of the Soul_, 1760;_Philosophical Palingenesis, or Ideas on the Past and the Future of LivingBeings_, 1769, including a defense of Christianity; _Collected Works_, 1779). Sensations, to which he, too, reduces all mental life, are, in hisview, reactions of the immaterial soul to sense stimuli, which operatemerely as occasional causes. On the other hand, he emphasizes more stronglythan Condillac the dependence of psychical phenomena on physiologicalconditions, and endeavors to show definite brain vibrations as the basisnot only of habit, memory, and the association of ideas, but also ofthe higher mental operations. In harmony with these views he adheres todeterminism, and finds the motive of all endeavor: in self-love, andits ultimate aim in happiness. To the latter the hope of immortality isindispensable. The link between Bonnet's theory of the thoroughgoingdependence of the soul on the body and his orthodox convictions, is formedby his idea of an imperishable ethereal body, which enables the soul in thelife to come to remember its life on earth and, after the dissolution ofthe present material body, to acquire a new one. Animals as well as menshare in the continuance of existence and the transition to a higher stage. 

The material earnestness of these thinkers is in sharp contrast to thesuperficial and frivolous manner in which Helvetius (1715-71) carries outsensationalism in the sphere of ethics. His chief work, _On Mind_, came outin 1758; and a year after his death, the work _On Man, his IntellectualFaculties and his Education_. The search for pleasure or self-love is, asHelvetius thinks he has discovered for the first time, [1] the only motiveof action; the laws of interest reign in the moral world as the laws ofmotion in the physical world; justice and love for our neighbors arebased on utility; we seek friends in order to be amused, aided, and, inmisfortune, compassionated by them; the philanthropist and the monster bothseek only their own pleasure. 

[Footnote 1: In reality not only English moralists, but also some among hiscountrymen, had anticipated him in the position that all actions proceedfrom selfishness, and that virtue is merely a refined egoism. Thus LaRochefoucauld in his _Maxims (Réflexions, ou Sentences et Maximes Morales_, 1665), La Bruyère _(Les Charactères et les Moeurs de ce Siécle_, 1687), andLa Mettrie (of. Pp, 251-253). ]

Helvetius draws the proof for these positions from Condillac. Recollectionand judgment are sensation. The soul is originally nothing more than thecapacity for sensation; it receives the stimulus to its development fromself-love, _i. E. _, from powerful passions such as the love of fame, on theone hand, and, on the other, from hatred of _ennui_, which induces man toovercome the indolence natural to him and to submit himself to the irksomeeffort of attention--without passion he would remain stupid. The sum ofideas collected in him is called intellect. All distinctions among menare acquired, and concern the intellect only, not the soul: that which isinnate--sensibility and self-love--is the same in all; differences ariseonly through external circumstances, through education. Man is the pupil ofall that environs him, of his situation and his chance experience. The mostimportant instrument in education is the law; the function of the lawgiveris to connect public and personal welfare by means of rewards andpunishments, and thus to elevate morality. A man is called virtuous whenhis stronger passions harmonize with the general interest. Unfortunatelythe virtues of prejudice, which do not contribute to the public good, aremore honored among most nations than the political virtues, to which alonereal merit belongs. And self-interest is always the one motive to just andgenerous action; we serve only our own interests in furthering the welfareof the community. As the promulgator of these doctrines was himself a kindand generous man, Rousseau could make to him the apt reply: You endeavor invain to degrade yourself below your own level; your spirit gives evidenceagainst your principles; your benevolent heart discredits your doctrines. 

The morality of enlightened self-love or "intelligent self-interest"appears in a milder form in Maupertuis (_Works_, 1752), and Frederick theGreat, [1] to the latter of whom D'Alembert objected by letter that interestcould never generate the sense of duty and reverence for the law. 

[Footnote 1: _Essay on Self-love as a Principle of Morals_, 1770, printedin the proceedings of the Academy of Sciences. Cf. On Frederick, Ed. Zeller, 1886. ]

%3. Skepticism and Materialism. %

The ideas thus far developed move in a direction whose further pursuitinevitably issues in materialism. Diderot, the editor of the _Encyclopediaof the Sciences, Arts, and Trades_ (1751-72), which gathered all thecurrents of the Illumination into one great stream and carried them to theopen sea of popular culture, reflects in his intellectual developmentthe dialectical movement from deism through skepticism to atheism andmaterialism, and was a co-laborer in the work which brought the wholemovement to a conclusion, Holbach's _System of Nature_. Two decades, however, before the latter work, the outcome of a long development ofthought, appeared, the physician La Mettrie[1] (1709-51) had promulgatedmaterialism, though rather in an anthropological form than as aworld-system, and with cynical satisfaction in the violation of traditionalbeliefs--in his _Natural History of the Soul_, 1745, in a disguised form, and, undisguised, in his _Man a Machine_, 1748--and at the same time(_Anti-Seneca, or Discourse on Happiness_, 1748) had sketched out forHelvetius the outlines of the sensationalistic morality of interest. Whileill with a violent fever he observed the influence of the heightenedcirculation of the blood on his mental tone, and inferred that thought isthe result of the bodily organization. The soul can only be known from thebody. The senses, the best philosophers, teach us that matter is neverwithout form and motion; and whether all matter is sentient or not, certainly all that is sentient is material, and every part of the organismcontains a vital principle (the heart of a frog beats for an hour afterits removal from the body; the parts of cut-up polyps grow into perfectanimals). All ideas come from without, from the senses; withoutsense-impressions no ideas, without education, few ideas, the mind of a mangrown up in isolation remains entirely undeveloped; and since the soul isentirely dependent on the bodily organs, along with which it originates, grows, and declines, it is subject to mortality. Not only animals, asDescartes has shown, but men, who differ from the brutes only in degree, are mere machines; by the soul we mean that part of the body which thinks, and the brain has fine muscles for thinking as the leg its coarse ones forwalking. 

[Footnote 1: La Mettrie was born at St. Malo, and educated in Paris, and inLeyden under Boerhave; he died in Berlin, whither Frederick the Greathad called him after he had been driven out of his native land and fromHolland. On La Mettrie cf. Lange, _History of Materialism_, vol. Ii. Pp. 49-91; and DuBois-Reymond's Address, 1875. ]

If man is nothing but body, there is no other pleasure than that of thebody. There is a difference, however, between sensuous pleasure, which isintense and brief, and intellectual pleasure, which is calm and lasting. The educated man will prefer the latter, and find in it a higher and morenoble happiness; but nature has been just enough to grant the commonmultitude, in the coarser pleasures, a more easily attainable happiness. Enjoy the moment, till the farce of life is ended! Virtue exists only insociety, which restrains from evil by its laws, and incites to good byrousing the love of honor. The good man, who subordinates his own welfareto that of society, acts under the same necessity as the evil-doer; hencerepentance and pangs of conscience, which increase the amount of painin the world, but are incapable of effecting amendment, are useless andreprehensible: the criminal is an ill man, and must not be more harshlypunished than the safety of society requires. Materialism humanizes andexercises a tranquilizing influence on the mind, as the religious view ofthe world, with its incitement to hatred, disturbs it; materialism freesus from the sense of guilt and responsibility, and from the fear of futuresuffering. A state composed of atheists, is not only possible, as Bayleargued, but it would be the happiest of all states. 

Among the editors of the _Encyclopedia_, the mathematician D'Alembert_(Elements of Philosophy_, 1758) remained loyal to skeptical views. Neithermatter nor spirit is in its essence knowable; the world is probably quitedifferent from our sensuous conception of it. As Diderot (1713-84), andthe _Encyclopedia_ with him, advanced from skepticism to materialism, D'Alembert retired from the editorial board (1757), after Rousseau, also, had separated himself from the Encyclopedists. Diderot[1] was the leadingspirit in the second half of the eighteenth century, as Voltaire in thefirst half. His lively and many-sided receptivity, active industry, cleverand combative eloquence, and enthusiastic disposition qualified him forthis rôle beyond all his contemporaries, who testify that they owe evenmore to his stimulating conversation than to his writings. He commenced bybringing Shaftesbury's _Inquiry into Virtue and Merit_ to the notice ofhis countrymen; and then turned his sword, on the one hand, against theatheists, to refute whom, he thought, a single glance into the microscopewas sufficient, and, on the other, against the traditional belief in aGod of anger and revenge, who takes pleasure in bathing in the tears ofmankind. Then followed a period of skepticism, which is well illustrated bythe prayer in the _Thoughts on the Interpretation of Nature_, 1754: O God!I do not know whether thou art, but I will guide my thoughts and actionsas though thou didst see me think and act, etc. Under the influenceof Holbach's circle he finally reached (in the _Conversation betweenD'Alembert and Diderot_, and _D'Alembert's Dream_, written in 1769, but notpublished until 1830, in vol. Iv. Of the _Mémoires, Correspondance, etOuvrages Inédits de Diderot_) the position of naturalistic monism--thereexists but one great individual, the All. Though he had formerlydistinguished thinking substance from material substance, and had based theimmortality of the soul on the unity of sensation and the unity of the ego, he now makes sensation a universal and essential property of matter(_la pierre sent_), declares the talk about the simplicity of thesoul metaphysico-theological nonsense, calls the brain a self-playinginstrument, ridicules self-esteem, shame, and repentance as the absurdfolly of a being that imputes to itself merit or demerit for necessaryactions, and recognizes no other immortality than that of posthumous fame. But even amid these extreme conclusions, his enthusiasm for virtue remainstoo intense to allow him to assent to the audacious theories of La Mettrieand Helvetius. 

[Footnote 1: _Works_ in twenty-two vols. , Paris, Brière, 1821; latestedition, 1875 _seq_. Cf. On Diderot the fine work by Karl Rosenkranz, _Diderots Leben und Werke_, 1866. ]

French natural science also tended toward materialism. Buffon _(NaturalHistory_, 1749 _seq_) endeavors to facilitate the mechanical explanationof the phenomena of life by the assumption of living molecules, fromwhich visible organisms are built up. Robinet (_On Nature_, 1761 _seq_. ), availing himself of Spinozistic and Leibnitzian conceptions, goes stillfurther, in that he endows every particle of matter with sensation, lookson the whole world as a succession of living beings with increasingmentality, and subjects the interaction of the material and psychical sidesof the individual, as well as the relation of pleasure and pain in theuniverse, to a law of harmonious compensation. 

The _System of Nature_, 1770, which bore on its title page the name ofMirabaud, who had died 1760, proceeded from the company of freethinkersaccustomed to meet in the hospitable house of Baron von Holbach (died1789), a native of the Palatinate. Its real author was Holbach himself, although his friends Diderot, Naigeon, Lagrange, the mathematician, and theclever Grimm (died 1807) seem to have co-operated in the preparationof certain sections. The cumbrous seriousness and the dry tone of thissystematic combination of the radical ideas which the century had produced, were no doubt the chief causes of its unsympathetic reception by thepublic. Similarly unsuccessful was the popular account of materialism withwhich Holbach followed it, in 1772, and Helvetius's excerpts from the_System of Nature_, 1774. 

Holbach applies himself to the despiritualization of nature and thedestruction of religious prejudices with sincere faith in the sacredmission of unbelief--the happiness of humanity depends on atheism. "ONature, sovereign of all beings, and ye her daughters, Virtue, Reason, andTruth, be forever our only divinities. " What has made virtue so difficultand so rare? Religion, which divides men instead of uniting them. What hasso long delayed the illumination of the reason, and the discovery of truth?Religion with its mischievous errors, God, spirit, freedom, immortality. Immortality exists only in the memory of later generations; man is thecreature of a day; nothing is permanent but the great whole of nature andthe eternal law of universal change. Can a clock broken into a thousandpieces continue to mark the hours? The senseless doctrine of freedom wasinvented only to solve the senseless problem of the justification of God inview of the existence of evil. Man is at every moment of his life a passiveinstrument in the hands of necessity; the universe is an immeasurableand uninterrupted chain of actions and reactions, an eternal round ofinterchanging motions, ruled by laws, a change in which would at once alterthe nature of all things. The most fatal error is the idea of human anddivine spirits, which has been advanced by philosophers and adopted withapplause by fools. The opinion that man is divided into two substances isbased on the fact that, of the changes in our body, we directly perceiveonly the external molar movements, while, on the other hand, the innermotions of the invisible molecules are known only by their effects. Theselatter have been ascribed to the mind, which, moreover, we have adornedwith properties whose emptiness is manifested by the fact that they are allmere negations of that which we know. Experience reveals to us only theextended, the corporeal, the divisible--but the mind is to be the oppositeof all three, yet at the same time to possess the power (how, no man cantell) of acting on that which is material and of being acted upon by it. In thus dividing himself into body and soul, man has in reality onlydistinguished between his brain and himself. Man is a purely physicalbeing. All so-called spiritual phenomena are functions of the brain, special cases of the operation of the universal forces of nature. Thoughtand volition are sensation, sensation is motion. The moving forces in themoral world are the same as those in the physical world; in the latter theyare called attraction and repulsion, in the former, love and hate;that which the moralist terms self-love is the same instinct ofself-preservation which is familiar in physics as the force of inertia. 

As man has doubled himself, so also he has doubled nature. Evil gave thefirst impulse to the formation of the idea of God, pain and ignorance havebeen the parents of superstition; our sufferings were ascribed to unknownpowers, of which we were in fear, but which, at the same time, we hoped topropitiate by prayer and sacrifice. The wise turned with their worship andreverence toward a more worthy object, to the great All; and, in fact, ifwe seek to give the word God a tenable meaning, it signifies active nature. The error lay in the dualistic view, in the distinction between nature anditself, _i. E. _ its activity, and in the belief that the explanation ofmotion required a separate immaterial Mover. This assumption is, in thefirst place, false, for since the All is the complex of all that existsthere can be nothing outside it; motion follows from the existence of theuniverse as necessarily as its other properties; the world does not receiveit from without, but imparts it to itself by its own power. In the secondplace the assumption is useless; it explains nothing, but confuses theproblems of natural science to the point of insolubility. In the thirdplace it is self-contradictory, for after theology has removed the Deityas far away from man as possible, by means of the negative metaphysicalpredicates, it finds itself necessitated to bring the two together againthrough the moral attributes--which are neither compatible with one anothernor with the meta-physical--and crowns the absurdity by the assurance thatwe can please God by believing that which is incomprehensible. Finally, theassumption is dangerous; it draws men away from the present, disturbs theirpeace and enjoyment, stirs up hatred, and thus makes happiness and moralityimpossible. If, then, utility is the criterion of truth, theism--even inthe mild form of deism--is proven erroneous by its disastrous consequences. All error is bane. 

Matter and motion are alike eternal. Nature is an active, self-moving, living whole, an endless chain of causes and effects. All is in unceasingmotion, all is cause (nothing is dead, nothing rests), all is effect (thereis no spontaneous motion, none directed to an end). Order and disorder arenot in nature, but only in our understanding; they are abstract ideas todenote that which is conformable to our nature and that which is contraryto it. The end of the All is itself alone, is life, activity; the universalgoal of particular beings, like that of the universe, is the conservationof being. 

Anthropology is for Holbach essentially reduced to two problems, thededuction of thought from motion, and of morality from the physicaltendency to self-preservation. The forces of the soul are no other thanthose of the body. All mental faculties develop from sensation; sensationsare motions in the brain which reveal to us motions without the brain. Allthe passions may be reduced to love and hate, desire and aversion, anddepend upon temperament, on the individual mixture of the fluid parts. Virtue is the equilibrium of the fluids. All human actions proceed frominterest. Good and bad men are distinguished only by their organizations, and by the ideas they form concerning happiness. With the same necessityas that of the act itself, follow the love or contempt of fellow-men, the pleasure of self-esteem and the pain of repentance (regret for evilconsequences, hence no evidence of freedom). Neither responsibility norpunishment is done away with by this necessity--have we not the right toprotect ourselves against the stream which damages our fields, by buildingdikes and altering its course? The end of endeavor is permanent happiness, and this can be attained through virtue alone. The passions which areuseful to society compel the affection and approval of our fellows. Inorder to interest others in our welfare we must interest ourselves intheirs--nothing is more indispensable to man than man. The clever man actsmorally, interest binds us to the good; love for others means love for themeans to our own happiness. Virtue is the art of making ourselves happythrough the happiness of others. Nature itself chastises immorality, sinceshe makes the intemperate unhappy. Religion has hindered the recognition ofthese rules, has misunderstood the diseases of the soul, and applied falseand ineffective remedies; the renunciation which she requires is opposed tohuman nature. The true moralist recognizes in medicine the key to the humanheart; he will cure the mind through the body, control the passions andhold them in check by other passions instead of by sermons, and will teachmen that the surest road to personal ends is to labor for the public good. Illumination is the way to virtue and to happiness. 

Volney (Chasseboeuf, died 1820; _Catechism of the French Citizen_, 1793, later under the title _Natural Law or Physical Principles of Morals deducedfront the Organization of Man and of the Universe_; further, _The Ruins;Complete Works_, 1821) belongs among the moralists of self-love, although, besides the egoistic interests, he takes account of the natural sympatheticimpulses also. This is still more the case with Condorcet (_Sketch ofan Historical View of the Progress of the Human Mind_, 1794), who wasinfluenced alike by Condillac and by Turgot, and who defends a tendencytoward universal perfection both in the individual and in the race. Besidesthe selfish affections, which are directed as much to the injury as to thesupport of others, there lies in the organization of man a force whichsteadily tends toward the good, in the form of underived feelings ofsympathy and benevolence, from which moral self-judgment is developed bythe aid of reflection. The aim of true ethics and social art is not to makethe "great" virtues universal, but to make them needless; the nearer thenations approximate to mental and moral perfection, the less they stand inneed of these--happy the people in which good deeds are so customary thatscarcely an opportunity is left for heroism. The chief instrument for themoral cultivation of the people is the development of the reason, theconscience, and the benevolent affections. Habituation to deeds of kindnessis a source of pure and inexhaustible happiness. Sympathy with the good ofothers must be so cultivated that the sacrifice of personal enjoyment willbe a sweeter joy than the pleasure itself. Let the child early learn toenjoy the delight of loving and of being loved. We must, finally, strivetoward the gradual diminution of the inequalities of capacity, of property, and between ruler and ruled, for to abolish them is impossible. 

Of the remaining philosophers of the revolutionary period mention may bemade of the physician Cabanis _(Relations of the Physical and the Moral inMan, 1799)_, and Destutt de Tracy _(Elements of Ideology, 1801 seq. )_. Theformer is a materialist in psychology (the nerves are the man, ideas aresecretions of the brain), considers consciousness a property of organicmatter (the soul is not a being, but a faculty), and makes moral sympathydevelop out of the animal instincts of preservation and nourishment. De Tracy, also, derives all psychical activity from organization andsensation. His doctrine of the will, though but briefly sketched, isinteresting. The desires have a passive and an active side (correspondingto the twofold action of the nerves, on themselves and on the muscles); onthe one hand, they are feelings of pleasure or pain, and on the other, theylead us to action--will is need, and, at the same time, the source ofthe means for satisfying this need. Both these feelings and the externalmovements are probably based upon unconscious organic motions. The will isrightly identified with the personality, it is the ego itself, the totalityof the physico-psychical life of man attaining to self-consciousness. Theinner or organic life consists in the self-preserving functions of theindividual, the outer or animal life, in the functions of relation (ofsense, of motion, of speech, of reproduction); individual interests arerooted in the former, sympathy in the latter. The primal good is freedom, or the power to do what we will; the highest thing in life is love. Inorder to be happy we must avoid punishment, blame, and pangs of conscience. 

%4. Rousseau's Conflict with the Illumination. %

The Genevese, Jean Jacques Rousseau[1] (1712-78), stands in a similarrelation of opposition to the French Illumination as the Scottish School tothe English, and Herder and Jacobi to the German. He points us away fromthe cold sophistical inferences of the understanding to the immediateconviction of feeling; from the imaginations of science to the unerringvoice of the heart and the conscience; from the artificial conditions ofculture to healthy nature. The vaunted Illumination is not the lever ofprogress, but the source of all degeneration; morality does not rest on theshrewd calculation of self-interest, but on original social and sympatheticinstincts (love for the good is just as natural to the human heart asself-love; enthusiasm for virtue has nothing to do with our interest; whatwould it mean to give up one's life for the sake of advantage?); the truthsof religion are not objects of thought, but of pious feeling. 

[Footnote 1: Cf. Brockerhoff, Leipsic, 1863-74; L. Moreau, Paris, 1870. ]

Rousseau commenced his career as an author with the _Discourse on theSciences and the Arts_, 1750 (the discussion of a prize question, crownedby the Academy of Dijon), which he describes as entirely pernicious, andthe _Discourse on the Origin and the Bases of the Inequality among Men_, 1753. By nature man is innocent and good, becoming evil only in society. Reflection, civilization, and egoism are unnatural. In the happy state ofnature pity and innocent self-love (_amour de soi_) ruled, and thelatter was first corrupted by the reason into the artificial feeling ofselfishness (_amour propre_) in the course of social development--thinkingman is a degenerate animal. Property has divided men into rich and poor;the magistracy, into strong and weak; arbitrary power, into masters andslaves. Wealth generated luxury with its artificial delights of science andthe theater, which make us more unhappy and evil than we otherwise are;science, the child of vice, becomes in turn the mother of new vices. Allnature, all that is characteristic, all that is good, has disappeared withadvancing culture; the only relief from the universal degeneracy is to behoped for from a return to nature on the part of the individual and societyalike--from education and a state conformed to nature. The novel _Emile_ isdevoted to the pedagogical, and the _Social Contract, or the Principles ofPolitical Law_, to the political problem. Both appeared in 1762, followedtwo years later by the _Letters from the Mountain_, a defense against theattacks of the clergy. In these later writings Rousseau's naturalistichatred of reason appears essentially softened. 

Social order is a sacred right, which forms the basis of all others. Itdoes not proceed, however, from nature--no man has natural power over hisfellows, and might confers no right--consequently it rests on a contract. Not, however, on a contract between ruler and people. The act by which thepeople chooses a king is preceded by the act in virtue of which it is apeople. In the social contract each devotes himself with his powers and hisgoods to the community, in order to gain the protection of the latter. With this act the spiritual body politic comes into being, and attains itsunity, its ego, its will. The sum of the members is called the people; eachmember, as a participant in the sovereignty, citizen, and, as bound toobedience to the law, subject. The individual loses his natural freedom, receiving in exchange the liberty of a citizen, which is limited by thegeneral will, and, in addition, property rights in all that he possesses, equality before the law, and moral freedom, which first really makes himmaster of himself. The impulse of mere desire is slavery, obedience toself-imposed law, freedom. The sovereign is the people, law the generalpopular will directed to the common good, the supreme goods, "freedom andequality, " the chief objects of legislation. The lawgiving power is themoral will of the body politic, the government (magistracy, prince) itsexecutive physical power; the former is its heart, the latter its brain. Rousseau calls the government the middle term between the head of the stateand the individual, or between the citizen as lawgiver and as subject--thesovereign (the people) commands, the government executes, the subjectobeys. The act by which the people submits itself to its head is not acontract, but merely a mandate; whenever it chooses it can limit, alter, orentirely recall the delegated power. In order to security against illegalencroachments on the part of the government, Rousseau recommends regularassemblies of the people, in which, under suspension of governmentalauthority, the confirmation, abrogation, or alteration of the constitutionshall be determined upon. Even the establishment of the articles of socialbelief falls to the sovereign people. The essential difference betweenRousseau's theory of the state and that of Locke and Montesquieu consistsin his rejection of the division of powers and of representation bydelegates, hence in its unlimited democratic character. A generation afterit was given to the world, the French Revolution made the attempt totranslate it into practice. "The masses carried out what Rousseau himselfhad thought, it is true, but never willed" (Windelband). 

Rousseau's theory of education is closely allied to Locke's (cf. Above), whose leading idea--the development of individuality--was entirely inharmony with the subjectivism of the philosopher of feeling. Posterity hasnot found it a difficult task to free the sound kernel therein from thehusks of exaggeration and idiosyncrasy which surrounded it. Among thelatter belong the preference of bodily over intellectual development, andthe unlimited faith in the goodness of human nature. Exercise the body, theorgans, the senses of the pupil, and keep his soul unemployed as long aspossible; for the first, take care only that his mind be kept free fromerror and his heart from vice. In order to secure complete freedom fromdisturbance in this development, it is advisable to isolate the child fromsociety, nay, even from the family, and to bring him up in retirement underthe guidance of a private tutor. 

As the Swiss republican spoke in Rousseau's politics, so his religioustheories[1] betray the Genevan Calvinist. "The Savoyard Vicar's Professionof Faith" (in _Emile_) proclaims deism as a religion of feeling. Therational proofs brought forward for the existence of God--from the motionof matter in itself at rest, and from the finality of the world--are onlydesigned, as he declares by letter, to confute the materialists, and derivetheir impregnability entirely from the inner evidence of feeling, whichamid the vacillation of the reason _pro_ and _con_ gives the finaldecision. 

[Footnote 1: Cf. Ch. Borgeaud, _Rousseaus Religionsphilosophie_, Geneva andLeipsic, 1883. ]

If we limit our inquiry to that which is alone of importance for us, andrely on the evidence of feeling, it cannot be doubted that I myself existand feel; that there exists an external world which affects me; thatthought, comparison or judgment concerning relations is different fromsensation or the perception of objects--for the latter is a passive, but the former an active process; that I myself produce the activity ofattention or consideration; that, consequently, I am not merely a sensitiveor passive, but also an active or intelligent being. The freedom of mythought and action guarantees to me the immateriality of my soul, and isthat which distinguishes me from the brute. The life of the soul afterthe decay of the body is assured to me by the fact that in this world thewicked triumphs, while the good are oppressed. The favored position whichman occupies in the scale of beings--he is able to look over the universeand to reverence its author, to recognize order and beauty, to love thegood and to do it; and shall he, then, compare himself to the brute?--fillsme with emotion and gratitude to the benevolent Creator, who existed beforeall things, and who will exist when they all shall have vanished away, to whom all truths are one single idea, all places a point, all times amoment. The _how_ of freedom, of eternity, of creation, of the action ofmy will upon matter, etc. , is, indeed, incomprehensible to me, but _that_these are so, my feeling makes me certain. The worthiest employment ofmy reason is to annihilate itself before God. "The more I strive tocontemplate his infinite essence the less do I conceive it. But it is, andthat suffices me. The less I conceive it, the more I adore. "

In the depths of my heart I find the rules for my conduct engraved bynature in ineffaceable characters. Everything is good that I feel to be so. The conscience is the most enlightened of all philosophers, and as safea guide for the soul as instinct for the body. The infallibility of itsjudgment is evidenced by the agreement of different peoples; amid thesurprising differences of manners you will everywhere find the same ideasof justice, the same notions of good and evil. Show me a land where it isa crime to keep one's word, to be merciful, benevolent, magnanimous, wherethe upright man is despised and the faithless honored! Conscience enjoinsthe limitation of our desires to the degree to which we are capable ofsatisfying them, but not their complete suppression--all passions are goodwhen we control them, all evil when they control us. 

In the second part of the "Profession du Foi du Vicaire Savoyard" Rousseauturns from his attacks on sensationalism, materialism, atheism, and themorality of interest, to the criticism of revelation. Why, in addition tonatural religion, with its three fundamental doctrines, God, freedom, andimmortality, should other special doctrines be necessary, which ratherconfuse than clear up our ideas of the Great Being, which exact from usthe acceptance of absurdities, and make men proud, intolerant, andcruel--whereas God requires from us no other service than that of theheart? Every religion is good in which men serve God in a befitting manner. If God had prescribed one single religion for us, he would have providedit with infallible marks of its unique authenticity. The authority of thefathers and the priesthood is not decisive, for every religion claims to berevealed and alone true; the Mohammedan has the same right as the Christianto adhere to the religion of his fathers. Since all revelation comes downto us by human tradition, reason alone can be the judge of its divinity. The careful examination of the documents, which are written in ancientlanguages, would require an amount of learning which could not possibly bea condition of salvation and acceptance with God. Miracles and prophecy arenot conclusive, for how are we to distinguish the true among them fromthe false? If we turn from the external to the internal criteria of thedoctrines themselves, even here no decision can be reached between thereasons _pro_ and _con_ (the author puts the former into the mouth of abeliever, and the latter into that of a rationalist); even if the formeroutweighed the latter, the difficulty would still remain of reconciling itwith God's goodness and justice that the gospel has not reached so many ofmankind, and of explaining how those to whom the divinity of Christ isnow proclaimed can convince themselves of it, while his contemporariesmisjudged and crucified him. In my opinion, I am incapable of fathoming thetruth of the Christian religion and its value to those who confess it. Theinvestigation of the reason ends in "reverential doubt": I neither acceptrevelation nor reject it, but I reject the obligation to accept it. Myheart, however, judges otherwise than the reflection of my intellect; forthis the sacred majesty and exalted simplicity of the Scriptures are a mostcogent proof that they are more than human, and that He whose history theycontain is more than man. The touching grace and profound wisdom of hiswords, the gentleness of his conduct, the loftiness of his maxims, hismastery over his passions, abundantly prove that he was neither anenthusiast nor an ambitious sectary. Socrates lived and died like aphilosopher, Jesus like a God. The virtues of justice, patriotism, andmoderation taught by Socrates, had been exercised by the great men ofGreece before he inculcated them. But whence could Jesus derive in his timeand country that lofty morality which he alone taught and exemplified?Things of this sort are not invented. The inventor of such deeds wouldbe more wonderful than the doer of them. Thus again, in the question ofrevealed religion, the voice of the heart triumphs over the doubts of thereason, as, in the question of natural religion, it had done over theobjections of opponents. It is true, however, that this enthusiasm ispaid not to the current Christianity of the priests, but to I the realChristianity of the gospel. 

Rousseau was the conscience of France, which rebelled against the negationsand the bald emptiness of the materialistic and atheistic doctrines. Byvindicating with fervid eloquence the participation of the whole man inthe highest questions, in opposition to the one-sided illumination of theunderstanding, he became a pre-Kantian defender of the faith of practicalreason. His emphatic summons aroused a loud and lasting echo, especially inGermany, in the hearts of Goethe, Kant, and Fichte. 

CHAPTER VII. 

LEIBNITZ. 

In the contemporaries Spinoza and Locke, the two schools of modernphilosophy, the Continental, starting from Descartes, and the English, which followed Bacon, had reached the extreme of divergence and opposition, Spinoza was a rationalistic pantheist, Locke, an empirical individualist. With Leibnitz a twofold approximation begins. As a rationalist he sideswith Spinoza against Locke, as an individualist with Locke against Spinoza. But he not only separated rationalism from pantheism, but also qualifiedit by the recognition (which his historical tendencies had of themselvessuggested to him) of a relative justification for empiricism, since hedistinguished the factual truths of experience from the necessary truths ofreason, gave to the former a noëtical principle of their own, the principleof sufficient reason, and made sensation an indispensable step to thought. 

To the tendencies thus manifested toward a just estimation and peacefulreconciliation of opposing standpoints, Leibnitz remained true in all thefields to which he devoted his activity. Thus, in the sphere of religion, he took an active part in the negotiations looking toward the reunion ofthe Protestant and Catholic Churches, as well as in those concerning theunion of the Lutheran and the Reformed. Himself a stimulating man, he yetneeded stimulation from without. He was an astonishingly wide reader, anddeclared that he had never found a book that did not contain somethingof value. With a ready adaptability to the ideas of others he combined aremarkable power of transformative appropriation; he read into books morethan stood written in them. The versatility of his genius was unlimited:jurist, historian, diplomat, mathematician, physical scientist, andphilosopher, and in addition almost a theologian and a philologist--he isnot only at home in all these departments, because versed in them, buteverywhere contributes to their advancement by original ideas and plans. Insuch a combination of productive genius and wealth of knowledge Aristotleand Leibnitz are unapproached. 

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz was born in 1646 at Leipsic, where his father(Friederich Leibnitz, died 1652) was professor of moral philosophy; in hisfifteenth year he entered the university of his native city, with law ashis principal subject. Besides law, he devoted himself with quite as muchof ardor to philosophy under Jacob Thomasius (died 1684, the father ofChristian Thomasius), and to mathematics under E. Weigel in Jena. In 1663(with a dissertation entitled _De Principio Individui_) he became Bachelor, in 1664 Master of Philosophy, and in 1666, at Altdorf, Doctor of Laws, andthen declined the professorship extraordinary offered him in the latterplace. Having made the acquaintance of the former minister of the Electorof Mayence, Freiherr von Boineburg, in Nuremberg, he went, after a shortstay at Frankfort-on-the-Main, to the court of the Elector at Mayence, atwhose request he devoted himself to the reform of legal procedure, besideswriting, while there, on the most diverse subjects. In 1672 he went toParis, where he remained during four years with the exception of a shortstay in London. The special purpose of the journey to Paris--to persuadeLouis XIV to undertake a campaign in Egypt, in order to divert him from hisdesigns upon Germany--was not successful; but Leibnitz was captivatedby the society of the Parisian scholars, among them the mathematician, Huygens. From the end of 1676 until his death in 1716 Leibnitz livedin Hanover, whither he had been called by Johann Friedrich, as courtcouncillor and librarian. The successor of this prince, Ernst August, who, with his wife Sophie, and his daughter Sophie Charlotte, showed greatkindness to the philosopher, wished him to write a history of the princelyhouse of Brunswick; and a journey which he made in order to study for thispurpose was extended as far as Vienna and Rome. Upon his return he tookcharge of the Wolfenbüttel library in addition to his other engagements. 

The marriage of the Princess Sophie Charlotte with Frederick ofBrandenburg, the first king of Prussia, brought Leibnitz into closerelations with Berlin. At his suggestion the Academy (Society) of Scienceswas founded there in 1700, and he himself became its first president. InCharlottenburg he worked on his principal work, the _New Essays concerningthe Human Understanding_, which was aimed at Locke, but the publication ofwhich was deferred on account of the death of the latter in the interim(1704), and did not take place until 1765, in Raspe's collective edition. The death of the Prussian queen in 1705 interrupted for several years the_Theodicy_, which had been undertaken at her request, and which did notappear until 1710. In Vienna, where he resided in 1713-14, Leibnitzcomposed a short statement of his system for Prince Eugen; this, accordingto Gerhardt, was not the sketch in ninety paragraphs, familiar under thetitle _Monadology_, which was first published in the original by J. E. Erdmann in his excellent _Complete Edition of the Philosophical Worksof Leibnitz_, 1840, but the _Principles of Nature and of Grace_, whichappeared two years after the author's death in _L'Europe Savante_. While Ernst August, as well as the German emperor and Peter the Great, distinguished the philosopher, who was not indifferent to such honors, bythe bestowal of titles and preferments, his relations with the Hanoveriancourt, which until then had been so cordial, grew cold after the ElectorGeorg Ludwig ascended the English throne as George I. The letterswhich Leibnitz interchanged with his daughter-in-law, gave rise to thecorrespondence, continued to his death, with Clarke, who defended thetheology of Newton against him. The contest for priority between Leibnitzand Newton concerning the invention of the differential calculus was latersettled by the decision that Newton invented his method of fluxions first, but that Leibnitz published his differential calculus earlier and in a moreperfect form. The variety of pursuits in which Leibnitz was engaged wasunfavorable to the development and influence of his philosophy, in that ithindered him from working out his original ideas in systematic form, andleft him leisure only for the composition of shorter essays. Besides thetwo larger works mentioned above, the _New Essays_ and the _Theodicy_, wehave of philosophical works by Leibnitz only a series of private letters, and articles for the scientific journals (the _Journal des Savants_ inParis, and the _Acta Eruditorum_ in Leipsic, etc. ), among which may bementioned as specially important the _New System of Nature, and of theInteraction of Substances as well as of the Union which exists between theSoul and the Body_, 1695, which was followed during the next year by threeexplanations of it, and the paper _De Ipsa Natura_, 1698. Previous toErdmann (1840) the following had deserved credit for their editions ofLeibnitz: Feller, Kortholt, Gruber, Raspe, Dutens, Feder, Guhrauer (theGerman works), and since Erdmann, Pertz, Foucher de Careil, Onno Klopp, andespecially J. C. Gerhardt. The last named published the mathematicalworks in seven volumes in 1849-63, and recently, Berlin, 1875-90, thephilosophical treatises, also in seven volumes. [1] In our account of thephilosophy of Leibnitz we begin with the fundamental metaphysical concepts, pass next to his theory of living beings and of man (theory of knowledgeand ethics), and close with his inquiries into the philosophy of religion. 

[Footnote 1: We have a life of Leibnitz by G. E. Guhrauer, jubilee edition, Breslau, 1846 [Mackie's _Life_, Boston, 1845 is based on Guhrauer]. Amongrecent works on Leibnitz, we note the little work by Merz, Blackwood'sPhilosophical Classics, 1884, and Ludwig Stein's _Leibniz und Spinoza_, Berlin, 1890, in which with the aid of previously unedited material therelations of Leibnitz to Spinoza (whom he visited at The Hague on hisreturn journey from Paris) are discussed, and the attempt is made to tracethe development of the theory of monads, down to 1697. The new expositionof the Leibnitzian monadology by Ed. Dillman, which has just appeared, we have not yet been able to examine [The English reader may be referredfurther to Dewey's _Leibniz_ in Griggs's Philosophical Classics, 1888, andDuncan's _Philosophical Works of Leibnitz_ (selections translated, with notes), New Haven, 1890, as well as to the work of Merz alreadymentioned. --TR. ]]

%1. Metaphysics: the Monads, Representation, the Pre-established Harmony;the Laws of Thought and of the World. %

Leibnitz develops his new concept of substance, the monad, [1] inconjunction with, yet in opposition to, the Cartesian and the atomisticconceptions. The Cartesians are right when they make the concept ofsubstance the cardinal point in metaphysics and explain it by the conceptof independence. But they are wrong in their further definition of thissecond concept. If we take independence in the sense of unlimitedness andaseity, we can speak, as the example of Spinoza shows, of only one, thedivine substance. If the Spinozistic result is to be avoided, we mustsubstitute independent action for independent existence, self-activityfor self-existence. Substance is not that which exists through itself(otherwise there would be no finite substances), but that which actsthrough itself, or that which contains in itself the ground of its changingstates. Substance is to be defined by active force, [2] by which we meansomething different from and better than the bare possibility or capacityof the Scholastics. The _potentia sive facultas_, in order to issue intoaction, requires positive stimulation from without, while the _vis activa_(like an elastic body) sets itself in motion whenever no external hindranceopposes. Substance is a being capable of action (_la substance est un êtrecapable d'action_). With the equation of activity and existence (_quod nonagit, non existit_) the substantiality which Spinoza had taken away fromindividual things is restored to them: they are active, consequently, inspite of their limitedness, substantial beings (_quod agit, est substantiasingularis_). Because of its inner activity every existing thing is adeterminate individual, and different from every other being. Substance isan individual being endowed with force. 

[Footnote 1: According to L. Stein's conjecture, Leibnitz took theexpression Monad, which he employs after 1696, from the younger (Franc. Mercurius) van Helmont. ]

[Footnote 2: Francis Glisson (1596-1677, professor of medicine in Cambridgeand London) had as early as 1671, conceived substances as forces in histreatise _De Natura Substantiae Energetica_. That Glisson influencedLeibnitz, as maintained by H. Marion (Paris, 1880), has not been proven;cf. L. Stein, p. 184. ]

The atomists are right when they postulate for the explanation ofphenomenal bodies simple, indivisible, eternal units, for every compositeconsists of simple parts. But they are wrong when they regard theseinvisible, minute corpuscles, which are intended to subserve this purposeas indivisible: everything that is material, however small it be, isdivisible to infinity, nay, is in fact endlessly divided. If we are to findindivisible units, we must pass over into the realm of the immaterial andcome to the conclusion that bodies are composed of immaterial constituents. Physical points, the atoms, are physical, but not points; mathematicalpoints are indivisible, but not real; metaphysical or substantialpoints, the incorporeal, soul-like units, alone combine in themselvesindivisibility and reality--the monads are the true atoms. Together withindivisibility they possess immortality; as it is impossible for them toarise and perish through the combination and separation of parts, theycannot come into being or pass out of it in any natural way whatever, butonly by creation or annihilation. Their non-spatial or punctual characterimplies the impossibility of all external influence, the monad develops itsstates from its own inner nature, has need of no other thing, is sufficientunto itself, and therefore deserves the Aristotelian name, entelechy. 

Thus two lines of thought combine in the concept of the monad. Gratefullyrecognizing the suggestions from both sides, Leibnitz called Cartesianismthe antechamber of the true philosophy, and atomism the preparation forthe theory of monads. From the first it followed that the substances wereself-acting forces; from the second, that they were immaterial units. Through the combination of both determinations we gain informationconcerning the kind of force or activity which constitutes the being of themonad: the monads are representative forces. There is nothing truly real inthe world save the monads and their representations [ideas, perceptions]. 

In discussing the representation in which the being and activity of themonads consist, we must not think directly of the conscious activity ofthe human soul. Representation has in Leibnitz a wider meaning than thatusually associated with the word. The distinction, which has become of thefirst importance for psychology, between mere representation and consciousrepresentation, or between perception and apperception, may be bestexplained by the example of the sound of the waves. The roar which weperceive in the vicinity of the sea-beach is composed of the numeroussounds of the single waves. Each single sound is of itself too small to beheard; nevertheless it must make an impression on us, if only a small one, since otherwise their total--as a sum of mere nothings--could not beheard. The sensation which the motion of the single wave causes is a weak, confused, unconscious, infinitesimal perception (_petite, insensibleperception_), which must be combined with many similar minute sensationsin order to become strong and distinct, or to rise above the threshold ofconsciousness. The sound of the single wave is felt, but not distinguished, is perceived, but not apperceived. These obscure states of unconsciousrepresentation, which are present in the mind of man along with states ofclear consciousness, make up, in the lowest grade of existence, the wholelife of the monad. There are beings which never rise above the condition ofdeep sleep or stupor. 

In conformity with this more inclusive meaning, perception is defined asthe representation of the external in the internal, of multiplicity inunity _(representatio multitudinis in unitate_). The representing being, without prejudice to its simplicity, bears in itself a multitude ofrelations to external things. What now is the manifold, which is expressed, perceived, or represented, in the unit, the monad? It is the whole world. Every monad represents all others in itself, is a concentrated all, theuniverse in miniature. Each individual contains an infinity in itself_(substantia infinitas actiones simul exercet_) and a supreme intelligence, for which every obscure idea would at once become distinct, would be ableto read in a single monad the whole universe and its history--all that is, has been, or will be; for the past has left its traces behind it, andthe future will bring nothing not founded in the present: the monad isfreighted with the past and bears the future in its bosom. Every monad isthus a mirror of the universe, [1] but a living mirror (_miror vivant del'univers_), which generates the images of things by its own activityor develops them from inner germs, without experiencing influences fromwithout. The monad has no windows through which anything could pass in orout, but in its action is dependent only on God and on itself. 

[Footnote 1: The objection has been made against Leibnitz, and not withoutreason, that strictly speaking there is no content for the representationof the monads, although he appears to offer them the richest of allcontents, the whole world. The "All" which he makes them represent isitself nothing but a sum of beings, also representative. The objects ofrepresentation are merely representing subjects; the monad A represents themonads from B to Z, while these in turn do nothing more than represent oneanother. The monad mirrors mirrors--where is the thing that is mirrored?The essence of substance consists in being related to others, whichthemselves are only points of relation; amid mere relativities we neverreach a real. That which prevented Leibnitz himself from recognizing thisempty formalism was, no doubt, the fact that for him the mere form ofrepresentation was at once filled with a manifold experiential content, with the whole wealth of spiritual life, and that the quantitativedifferences in representation, which for him meant also degrees of feeling, desire, action, and progress, imperceptibly took on the qualitativevividness of individual characteristics. Moreover, it must not beoverlooked that the spiritual beings represent not merely the universe butthe Deity as well, hence a very rich object. ]

All monads represent the same universe, but each one represents itdifferently, that is, from its particular point of view--represents thatwhich is near at hand distinctly, and that which is distant confusedly. Since they all reflect the same content or object, their differenceconsists only in the energy or degree of clearness in theirrepresentations. So far then, as their action consists in representation, distinct representation evidently coincides with complete, unhinderedactivity, confused representation with arrested activity, or passivity. The clearer the representations of a monad the more active it is. To haveclear and distinct perceptions only is the prerogative of God; to theOmnipresent everything is alike near. He alone is pure activity; allfinite beings are passive as well, that is, so far as their perceptions arenot clear and distinct. Retaining the Aristotelian-Scholastic terminology, Leibnitz calls the active principle form, the passive matter, and makes themonad, since it is not, like God, _purus actus_ and pure form, consist ofform (entelechy, soul) and matter. This matter, as a constituent of themonad, does not mean corporeality, but only the ground for the arrest ofits activity. The _materia prima_ (the principle of passivity in the monad)is the ground, the _materia secunda_ (the phenomenon of corporeal mass) theresult of the indistinctness of the representations. For a group of monadsappears as a body when it is indistinctly perceived. Whoever deprives themonad of activity falls into the error of Spinoza; whoever takes awayits passivity or matter falls into the opposite error, for he deifiesindividual beings. 

No monad represents the common universe and its individual parts just aswell as the others, but either better or worse. There are as manydifferent degrees of clearness and distinctness as there are monads. 

Nevertheless certain classes may be distinguished. By distinguishingbetween clear and obscure perceptions, and in the former class betweendistinct and confused ones--a perception is clear when it is sufficientlydistinguished from others, distinct when its component parts are thusdistinguished--Leibnitz reaches three principal grades. Lowest stand thesimple or naked monads, which never rise above obscure and unconsciousperception and, so to speak, pass their lives in a swoon or sleep. Ifperception rises into conscious feeling, accompanied by memory, thenthe monad deserves the name of soul. And if the soul rises toself-consciousness and to reason or the knowledge of universal truth, itis called spirit. Each higher stage comprehends the lower, since even inspirits many perceptions remain obscure and confused. Hence it was an errorwhen the Cartesians made thought or conscious activity--by which, it istrue, the spirit is differentiated from the lower beings--to such a degreethe essence of spirit that they believed it necessary to deny to it allunconscious perceptions. 

From perception arises appetition, not as independent activity, but as amodification of perception; it is nothing but the tendency to pass from oneperception to another (_l'appetit est la tendance d'une perception àune autre_); impulse is perception in process of becoming. Where theperceptions are conscious and rational appetition rises into will. Allmonads are self-active or act spontaneously, but only the thinking ones arefree. Freedom is the spontaneity of spirits. Freedom does not consist inundetermined choice, but in action without external compulsion according tothe laws of one's own being. The monad develops its representations out ofitself, from the germs which form its nature. The correspondence ofthe different pictures of the world, however, is grounded in a divinearrangement, through which the natures of the monads have from thebeginning been so adapted to one another that the changes in their states, although they take place in each according to immanent laws and withoutexternal influence, follow an exactly parallel course, and the result isthe same as though there were a constant mutual interaction. This generalidea of a _pre-established harmony_ finds special application in theproblem of the interaction between body and soul. Body and soul are liketwo clocks so excellently constructed that, without needing to be regulatedby each other, they show exactly the same time. Over the numberless lessermiracles with which occasionalism burdened the Deity, the one great miracleof the pre-established harmony has an undeniable advantage. As one greatmiracle it is more worthy of the divine wisdom than the many lesser ones, nay, it is really no miracle at all, since the harmony does not interferewith natural laws, but yields them. This idea may even be freed from itstheological investiture and reduced to the purely metaphysical expression, that the natures of the monads, by which the succession of theirrepresentations is determined in conformity with law, consist in nothingelse than the sum of relations in which this individual thing stands to allother parts of the world, wherein each member takes account of all othersand at the same time is considered by them, and thus exerts influenceas well as suffers it. In this way the external idea of an artificialadaptation is avoided. The essence of each thing is simply the positionwhich it occupies in the organic whole of the universe; each member isrelated to every other and shares actively and passively in the life ofall the rest. The history of the universe is a single great process innumberless reflections. 

The metaphysics of Leibnitz begins with the concept of representationand ends with the harmony of the universe. The representations weremultiplicity (the endless plurality of the represented) in unity (the unityof the representing monad); the harmony is unity (order, congruity of theworld-image) in multiplicity (the infinitely manifold degrees of clearnessin the representations). All monads represent the same universe; each onemirrors it differently. The unity, as well as the difference, could not begreater than it is; every possible degree of distinctness of representationis present in each single monad, and yet there is a single harmonic accordin which the unnumbered tones unite. Now order amid diversity, unity invariety make up the concept of beauty and perfection. If, then, this worldshows, as it does, the greatest unity in the greatest multiplicity, so thatthere is nothing wanting and nothing superfluous, it is the most perfect, the best of all possible worlds. Even the lowest grades contribute to theperfection of the whole; their disappearance would mean a hiatus; and ifthe unclear and confused representations appear imperfect when consideredin themselves, yet they are not so in reference to the whole; for just onthis fact, that the monad is arrested in its representation or is passive, _i. E. _, conforms itself to the others and subordinates itself to them, restthe order and connection of the world. Thus the idea of harmony forms thebridge between the Monadology and optimism. 

As in regard to the harmony of the universe we found it possible todistinguish between a half-mythical, narrative form of presentation and apurely abstract conception, so we may make a similar distinction in thedoctrine of creation. This actual world has been chosen by God as the bestamong many other conceivable worlds. Through the will of God the monads ofwhich the world consists attained their reality; as possibilities orideas they were present in the mind of God (as it were, prior to theiractualization), present, too, with all the distinctive properties andperfections that they now exhibit in a state of realization, so that theirmerely possible or conceivable being had the same content as their actualbeing, and their essence is not altered or increased by their existence. Now, since the impulse toward actualization dwells in every possibleessence, and is the more justifiable the more perfect the essence, acompetition goes on before God, in which, first, those monod-possibilitiesunite which are mutually compatible or compossible, and, then, among thedifferent conceivable combinations of monads or worlds that one is ordainedfor entrance into existence which shows the greatest possible sum ofperfection. It was, therefore, not the perfection of the single monad, butthe perfection of the system of which it forms a necessary part, that wasdecisive as to its admission into existence. The best world was knownthrough God's wisdom, chosen through his goodness, and realized through hispower. [1] The choice was by no means arbitrary, but wholly determined bythe law of fitness or of the best (_principe du meilleur_); God's will mustrealize that which his understanding recognizes as most perfect. It is atonce evident that in the competition of the possible worlds the victory ofthe best was assured by the _lex melioris_, apart from the divine decision. 

[Footnote 1: In regard to the dependence of the world on God, there is acertain conflict noticeable in Leibnitz between the metaphysical interestsinvolved in the substantiality of individual beings, together with themoral interests involved in guarding against fatalism, and the opposinginterests of religion. On the one side, creation is for him only anactualization of finished, unchangeable possibilities, on the other, heteaches with the mediaeval philosophers that this was not accomplished by asingle act of realization, that the world has need of conservation, _i. E. _, of continuous creation. ]

This law is the special expression of a more general one, the principleof sufficient reason, which Leibnitz added, as of equal authority, to theAristotelian laws of thought. Things or events are real (and assertionstrue) when there is a sufficient reason for their existence, and for theirdeterminate existence. The _principium rationis sufficientis_ governs ourempirical knowledge of contingent truths or truths of fact, while, onthe other hand, the pure rational knowledge of necessary or eternal(mathematical and metaphysical) truths rests on the _principiumcontradictionis_. The principle of contradiction asserts, that is, whatevercontains a contradiction is false or impossible; whatever contains nocontradiction is possible; that whose opposite contains a contradictionis necessary. Or positively formulated as the principle of identity, everything and every representative content is identical with itself. [2]Upon this antithesis between the rational laws of contradiction andsufficient reason--which, however, is such only for us men, while thedivine spirit, which cognizes all things _a priori_, is able to reduce eventhe truths of fact to the eternal truths--Leibnitz bases his distinctionbetween two kinds of necessity. That is metaphysically necessary whoseopposite involves a contradiction; that is morally necessary or contingentwhich, on account of its fitness, is preferred by God to its (equallyconceivable) opposite. To the latter class belongs, further, the physicallynecessary: the necessity of the laws of nature is only a conditionalnecessity (conditioned by the choice of the best); they are contingenttruths or truths of fact. The principle of sufficient reason holds forefficient as well as for final causes, and between the two realms there is, according to Leibnitz, the most complete correspondence. In the materialworld every particular must be explained in a purely mechanical way, butthe totality of the laws of nature, the universal mechanism itself, cannotin turn be mechanically explained, but only on the basis of finality, sothat the mechanical point of view is comprehended in, and subordinatedto, the teleological. Thus it becomes clear how Leibnitz in the _ratiosufficiens_ has final causes chiefly in mind. 

[Footnote 2: Within the knowledge of reason, as well as in experientialknowledge, a further distinction is made between primary truths (whichneed no proof) and derived truths. The highest truths of reason are theidentical principles, which are self-evident; from these intuitive truthsall others are to be derived by demonstration--proof is analysis and, asfree from contradictions, demonstration. The primitive truths of experienceare the immediate facts of consciousness; whatever is inferred from them isless certain than demonstrative knowledge. Nevertheless experience is notto be estimated at a low value; it is through it alone that we can assureourselves of the reality of the objects of thought, while necessary truthsguarantee only that a predicate must be ascribed to a subject (_e. G. _, acircle), but make no deliverance as to whether this subject exists or not. ]

To the broad and comprehensive tendency which is characteristic ofLeibnitz's thinking, philosophy owes a further series of general laws, which all stand in the closest relation to one another and to hismonadological and harmonistic principles, viz. , the law of continuity, thelaw of analogy, the law of the universal dissimilarity of things or of theidentity of indiscernibles, and, finally, the law of the conservation offorce. 

The most fundamental of these laws is the _lex continui_. On the one hand, it forbids every leap, on the other, all repetition in the series of beingsand the series of events. Member must follow member without a break andwithout superfluous duplication; in the scale of creatures, as in thecourse of events, absolute continuity is the rule. Just as in the monad onestate continually develops from another, the present one giving birthto the future, as it has itself grown out of the past, just as nothingpersists, as nothing makes its entrance suddenly or without the way beingprepared for it, and as all extremes are bound together by connectinglinks and gradual transitions, --so the monad itself stands in a continuousgradation of beings, each of which is related to and different from each. Since the beings and events form a single uninterrupted series, there areno distinctions of kind in the world, but only distinctions in degree. Restand motion are not opposites, for rest may be considered as infinitelyminute motion; the ellipse and the parabola are not qualitativelydifferent, for the laws which hold for the one may be applied to the other. Likeness is vanishing unlikeness, passivity arrested activity, evil alesser good, confused ideas simply less distinct ones, animals men withinfinitely little reason, plants animals with vanishing consciousness, fluidity a lower degree of solidity, etc. In the whole world similarityand correspondence rule, and it is everywhere the same as here--betweenapparent opposites there is a distinction in degree merely, and hence, analogy. In the macrocosm of the universe things go on as in the microcosmof the monad; every later state of the world is prefigured in the earlier, etc. If, on the one side, the law of analogy follows as a consequence fromthe law of continuity, on the other, we have the _principium (identitatis)indiscernibilium_. As nature abhors gaps, so also it avoids thesuperfluous. Every grade in the series must be represented, but none morethan once. There are no two things, no two events which are entirely alike. If they were exactly alike they would not be two, but one. The distinctionbetween them is never merely numerical, nor merely local and temporal, butalways an intrinsic difference: each thing is distinguished from everyother by its peculiar nature. This law holds both for the truly real (themonads) and for the phenomenal world--you will never find two leavesexactly alike. By the law of the conservation of force, Leibnitz correctsthe Cartesian doctrine of the conservation of motion, and approaches thepoint of view of the present day. According to Descartes it is the sum ofactual motions, which remains constant; according to Leibnitz, the sum ofthe active forces; while, according to the modern theory, it is the sum ofthe active and the latent or potential forces--a distinction, moreover, ofwhich Leibnitz himself made use. 

We now turn from the formal framework of general laws, to the actual, tothat which, obeying these laws, constitutes the living content of theworld. 

%2. The Organic World. %

A living being is a machine composed of an infinite number of organs. Thenatural machines formed by God differ from the artificial machines made bythe hand of man, in that, down to their smallest parts, they consist ofmachines. Organisms are complexes of monads, of which one, the soul, issupreme, while the rest, which serve it, form its body. The dominant monadis distinguished from those which surround it as its body by the greaterdistinctness of its ideas. The supremacy of the soul-monad consists in thisone superior quality, that it is more active and more perfect, and clearlyreflects that which the body-monads represent but obscurely. A directinteraction between soul and body does not take place; there is only acomplete correspondence, instituted by God. He foresaw that the soul atsuch and such a moment would have the sensation of warmth, or would wish anarm-motion executed, and has so ordered the development of the body-monadsthat, at the same instant, they appear to cause this sensation and toobey this impulse to move. Now, since God in this foreknowledge andaccommodation naturally paid more regard to the perfect beings, to the moreactive and more distinctly perceiving monads than to the less perfect ones, and subordinated the latter, as means and conditions, to the formeras ends, the soul, prior to creation, actually exercised an idealinfluence--through the mind of God--upon its body. Its activity is thereason why in less perfect monads a definite change, a passion takes place, since the action was attainable only in this way, "compossible" with thisalone. [1] The monads which constitute the body are the first and directobject of the soul; it perceives them more distinctly than it perceives, through them, the rest of the external world. In view of the closeconnection of the elements of the organism thus postulated, Leibnitz, inthe discussions with Father Des Bosses concerning the compatibility ofthe Monadology with the doctrine of the Church, especially with the realpresence of the body of Christ in the Supper, consented, in favor ofthe dogma, to depart from the assumption that the simple alone could besubstantial and to admit the possibility of composite substances, and of a"substantial bond" connecting the parts of living beings. It appears leastin contradiction with the other principles of the philosopher to assign therôle of this _vinculum substantiate_ to the soul or central monad itself. 

[Footnote 1: Cf. Gustav Class, _Die metaphysischen Voraussetzungen desLeibnizischen Determinismus_, Tübingen, 1874. ]

Everything in nature is organized; there are no soulless bodies, no deadmatter. The smallest particle of dust is peopled with a multitude of livingbeings and the tiniest drop of water swarms with organisms: every portionof matter may be compared to a pond filled with fish or a garden full ofplants. This denial of the inorganic does not release our philosopher fromthe duty of explaining its apparent existence. If we thoughtfully considerbodies, we perceive that there is nothing lifeless and non-representative. But the phenomenon of extended mass arises for our confused sensuousperception, which perceives the monads composing a body together andregards them as a continuous unity. Body exists only as a confused ideain the feeling subject; since, nevertheless, a reality without the mind, namely, an immaterial monad-aggregate, corresponds to it, the phenomenonof body is a well-founded one _(phenomenon bene fundatum)_. As matter ismerely something present in sensation or confused representation, so spaceand time are also nothing real, neither substances nor properties, but onlyideal things--the former the order of coexistences, the latter the order ofsuccessions. 

If there are no soulless bodies, there are also no bodiless souls; the soulis always joined with an aggregate of subordinate monads, though not alwayswith the same ones. Single monads are constantly passing into its body, or into its service, while others are passing out; it is involved in acontinuous process of bodily transformation. Usually the change goes onslowly and with a constant replacement of the parts thrown off. If it takesplace quickly men call it birth or death. Actual death there is as littleas there is an actual genesis; not the soul only, but every living thingis imperishable. Death is decrease and involution, birth increase andevolution. The dying creature loses only a portion of its bodily machineand so returns to the slumberous or germinal condition of "involution", in which it existed before birth, and from which it was aroused throughconception to development. Pre-existence as well as post-existence mustbe conceded both to animals and to men. Leuwenhoek's discovery of thespermatozoa furnished a welcome confirmation for this doctrine, that allindividuals have existed since the beginning of the world, at least aspreformed germs. The immortality of man, conformably to his superiordignity, differs from the continued existence of all monads, in that afterhis death he retains memory and the consciousness of his moral personality. 

%3. Man: Cognition and Volition. %

In reason man possesses reflection or self-consciousness as well as theknowledge of God, of the universal, and of the eternal truths or _a priori_knowledge, while the animal is limited in its perception to experience, and in its reasoning to the connection of perceptions in accordance withmemory. Man differs from higher beings in that the majority of hisideas are confused. Under confused ideas Leibnitz includes bothsense-perceptions--anyone who has distinct ideas alone, as God, has nosense-perceptions--and the feelings which mediate between the former andthe perfectly distinct ideas of rational thought. The delight of musicdepends, in his opinion, on an unconscious numbering and measuring ofthe harmonic and rhythmic relations of tones, aesthetic enjoyment ofthe beautiful in general, and even sensuous pleasure, on the confusedperception of a perfection, order, or harmony. 

The application of the _lex continui_ to the inner life has a very widerange. The principal results are: (1) the mind always thinks; (2) everypresent idea postulates a previous one from which it has arisen; (3)sensation and thought differ only in degree; (4) in the order of time, theideas of sense precede those of reason. We are never wholly without ideas, only we are often not conscious of them. If thought ceased in deep sleep, we could have no ideas on awakening, since every representation proceedsfrom a preceding one, even though it be unconscious. 

In the thoughtful _New Essays concerning the Human Understanding_ Leibnitzdevelops his theory of knowledge in the form of a polemical commentaryto Locke's chief work. [1] According to Descartes some ideas (the pureconcepts) are innate, according to Locke none, according to Leibnitz all. Or: according to Descartes some ideas (sensuous perceptions) come fromwithout, according to Locke all do so, according to Leibnitz none. Leibnitz agrees with Descartes against Locke in the position that the mindoriginally possesses ideas; he agrees with Locke against Descartes, thatthought is later than sensation and the knowledge of universals laterthan that of particulars. The originality which Leibnitz attributes tointellectual ideas is different from that which Descartes had ascribed andLocke denied to them. They are original in that they do not come into thesoul and are not impressed upon it from without; they are not original inthat they can develop only from previously given sense-ideas; again, theyare original in that they can be developed from confused ideas only becausethey are contained in them _implicite_ or as pre-dispositions. Thus Leibnitz is able to agree with both his predecessors up to a certainpoint: with the one, that the pure concepts have their origin within themind; with the other, that they are not the earliest knowledge, but areconditioned by sensations. This synthesis, however, was possible onlybecause Leibnitz looked on sensation differently from both the others. Ifsensation is to be the mother of thought, and the latter at the same timeto preserve its character as original, _i. E. _, as something not obtainedfrom without, sensation must, first, include an unconscious thinking initself, and, secondly, must itself receive a title to originality andspontaneity. As the Catholic dogma added the immaculate conception of themother to that of the Son, so Leibnitz transfers the (virginal) origin ofrational concepts, independent of external influence, to sensations. Themonad has no windows. It bears germinally in itself all that it is toexperience, and nothing is impressed on it from without. The intellectshould not be compared to a blank tablet, but to a block of marble in whoseveins the outlines of the statue are prefigured. Ideas can only arise fromideas, never from external impressions or movements of corporeal parts. Thus _all_ ideas are innate in the sense that they grow from inner germs;we possess them from the beginning, not developed (_explicite_), butpotentially, that is, we have the capacity to produce them. The oldScholastic principle that "there is nothing in the understanding which wasnot previously in sense" is entirely correct, only one must add, except theunderstanding itself, that is, the faculty of developing our knowledgeout of ourselves. Thought lies already dormant in perception. With themechanical position (sensuous representation precedes and conditionsrational thought) is joined the teleological position (sensuousrepresentations exist, in order to render the origin of thoughts possible), and with this purposive determination, sensation attains a higher dignity:it is more than has been seen in it before, for it includes in itself thefuture concept of the understanding in an unconscious form, nay, it isitself an imperfect thought, a thought in process of becoming. Sensationand thought are not different in kind, and if the former is called apassive state, still passivity is nothing other than diminished activity. Both are spontaneous; thought is merely spontaneous in a higher degree. 

[Footnote 1: A careful comparison of Locke's theory of knowledge withthat of Leibnitz is given by G. Hartenstein, _Abhandlungen der k. Sächs. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften_, Leipsic, 1865, included in Hartenstein's_Historisch-philosophische Abhandlungen_, 1870. ]

By making sensation and feeling the preliminary step to thought, Leibnitzbecame the founder of that intellectualism which, in the system of Hegel, extended itself far beyond the psychological into the cosmical field, andendeavored to conceive not only all psychical phenomena but all realitywhatsoever as a development of the Idea toward itself. This conception, which may be characterized as intellectualistic in its content, presentsitself on its formal side as a quantitative way of looking at the world, which sacrifices all qualitative antitheses in order to arrange thetotality of being and becoming in a single series with no distinctions butthose of degree. If Leibnitz here appears as the representative of a viewof the world which found in Kant a powerful and victorious opponent, yet, on the other hand, he prepared the way by his conception of innate ideasfor the Critique of Reason. By his theory of knowledge he forms thetransition link between Descartes and Kant, since he interprets necessarytruths not as dwelling in the mind complete and explicit from the start, but as produced or raised into consciousness only on the occasion ofsensuous experience. It must be admitted, moreover, that this in realitywas only a restoration of Descartes's original position, _i. E. _, adeliverance of it from the misinterpretations and perversions which ithad suffered at the hands of adherents and opponents alike, but whichDescartes, it is true, had failed to render impossible from the start byconclusive explanations. The author of the theory of innate ideas certainlydid not mean what Locke foists upon him, that the child in the cradlealready possesses the ideas of God, of thought, and of extension in fullclearness. But whether Leibnitz improved or only restored Descartes, it wasin any case an important advance when experience and thought were broughtinto more definite relation, and the productive force in rational conceptswas secured to the latter and the occasion of their production to theformer. 

The unconscious or minute ideas, which in noëtics had served to break theforce of Locke's objections against the innateness of the principles ofreason, are in ethics brought into the field against indeterminism. Theyare involved whenever we believe ourselves to act without cause, from purechoice, or contrary to the motives present. In this last case, a motivewhich is very strong in itself is overcome by the united power of many inthemselves weaken The will is always determined, and that by an idea (ofends), which generally is of a very complex nature, and in which thestronger side decides the issue. An absolute equilibrium of motives isimpossible: the world cannot be divided into two entirely similar parts(this in opposition to "Buridan's ass"). A spirit capable of looking usthrough and through would be able to calculate all our volitions andactions beforehand. 

In spite of this admitted inevitableness of our resolutions and actions, the predicate of freedom really belongs to them, and this on two grounds. First, they are only physically or morally, not metaphysically, necessary;as a matter of fact, it is true, they cannot happen otherwise, but theiropposite involves no logical contradiction and remains conceivable. Toexpress this thought the formula, often repeated since, that ourmotives only impel, incite, or stimulate the will, but do not compel it(_inclinant, non necessitant_), was chosen, but not very happily. Secondly, the determination of the will is an inner necessitation, grounded in thebeing's own nature, not an external compulsion. The agent determineshimself in accordance with his own nature, and for this each bears theresponsibility himself, for God, when he brought the monads out ofpossibility into actuality, left their natures as they had existed beforethe creation in the form of eternal ideas in His understanding. ThoughLeibnitz thus draws a distinction between his deterministic doctrine andthe "fatalism" of Spinoza, he recognizes a second concept of freedom, whichcompletely corresponds to Spinoza's. A decision is the more free the moredistinct the ideas which determine it, and a man the more free the more hewithdraws his will from the influence of the passions, _i. E. _, confusedideas, and subordinates it to that of reason. God alone is absolutely free, because he has no ideas which are not distinct. The bridge between thetwo conceptions of freedom is established by the principle that reasonconstitutes the peculiar nature of man in a higher degree than the sum ofhis ideas; for it is reason which distinguishes him from the lower beings. According to the first meaning of freedom man is free, according to thesecond, which coincides with activity, perfection, and morality, he shouldbecome free. 

Morality is the result of the natural development of the individual. Everybeing strives after perfection or increased activity, _i. E. _, after moredistinct ideas. Parallel to this theoretical advance runs a practicaladvance in a twofold form: the increasing distinctness of ideas, orenlightenment, or wisdom, raises the impulse to transitory, sensuouspleasure into an impulse to permanent delight in our spiritual perfection, or toward happiness, while, further, it opens up an insight into theconnection of all beings and the harmony of the world, in virtue of whichthe virtuous man will seek to promote the perfection and happiness ofothers as well as his own, _i. E. _, will _love_ them, for to love is to findpleasure in the happiness of others. To promote the good of all, again, is the same as to contribute one's share to the world-harmony and toco-operate in the fulfillment of God's purposes. Probity and piety are thesame. They form the highest of the three grades of natural right, whichLeibnitz distinguishes as _jus strictum_ (mere right, with the principle:Injure no one), _aequitas_ (equity or charity, with the maxim: To eachhis due), and _probitas sive pietas_ (honorableness joined with religion, according to the command: Lead an upright and morally pure life). They mayalso be designated as commutative, distributive, and universal justice. Belief in God and immortality is a condition of the last. 

%4. Theology and Theodicy. %

God is the ground and the end of the world. All beings strive toward him, as all came out from him. In man the general striving toward the mostperfect Being rises into conscious love to God, which is conditioned by theknowledge of God and produces virtuous action as its effect. Enlightenmentand virtue are the essential constituents of religion; all else, as cultusand dogma, have only a derivative value. Religious ceremonies are animperfect expression of the practical element in piety, as the doctrines offaith are a weak imitation of the theoretical. It is a direct contradictionof the intention of the Divine Teacher when occult formulas and ceremonies, which have no connection with virtue, are made the chief thing. The pointsin which the creeds agree are more important than those by which they aredifferentiated. Natural religion has found its most perfect expression inChristianity, although paganism and Judaism had also grasped portions ofthe truth. Salvation is not denied to the heathen, for moral purity issufficient to make one a partaker of the grace of God. The religion of theJews elevated monotheism, which, it is true, made its appearance among theheathen in isolated philosophers, but was never the popular religion, intoa law; but it lacked the belief in immortality. Christianity made thereligion of the sage the religion of the people. 

Whatever of positive doctrine revelation has added to natural religiontranscends the reason, it is true, but does not contradict it. It containsno principles contrary to reason (whose opposite can be proved), but, nodoubt, principles above reason, _i. E. _, such as the reason could not havefound without help from without, and which it cannot fully comprehend, though it is able approximately to understand them and to defend themagainst objections. Hence Leibnitz defended the Trinity, which heinterpreted as God's power, understanding, and will, the eternity of thetorments of hell (which brought him the commendation of Lessing), and otherdogmas. Miracles also belong among the things the how and why of which weare not in a position to comprehend, but only the that and what. Since thelaws of nature are only physically or conditionally necessary, _i. E. _ havebeen enacted only because of their fitness for the purposes of God, theymay be suspended in special cases when a higher end requires it. 

While the positive doctrines of faith cannot be proved--as, on the otherhand, they cannot be refuted--the principles of natural religion admit ofstrict demonstration. The usual arguments for the existence of God areuseful, but need amendment. The ontological argument of Descartes, thatfrom the concept of a most perfect Being his existence follows, iscorrect so soon as the idea of God is shown to be possible or free fromcontradiction. The cosmological proof runs: Contingent beings point to anecessary, self-existent Being, the eternal truths especially presuppose aneternal intelligence in which they exist. If we ask why anything whatever, or why just this world exists, this ultimate ground of things cannot befound within the world. Every contingent thing or event has its cause inanother. However far we follow out the series of conditions, we never reachan ultimate, unconditioned cause. Consequently the sufficient reason forthe series must be situated without the world, and, as is evident from theharmony of things, can only be an infinitely wise and good Being. Here theteleological proof comes in: From the finality of the world we reason tothe existence of a Being, as the author of the world, who works in viewof ends and who wills and carries out that which is best, --to the supremeintelligence, goodness, and power of the Creator. A special inferentialvalue accrues to this position from the system of pre-establishedharmony--it is manifest that the complete correspondence of the manifoldsubstances in the world, which are not connected with one another by anydirect interaction, can proceed only from a common cause endowed withinfinite intelligence and power. 

The possibility of proving the existence of one omnipotent andall-beneficent God, and the impossibility of refuting the positivedogmas, save the harmony of faith and reason, which Bayle had denied. The conclusion of the _New Essays_ and the opening of the _Theodicy_ aredevoted to this theme. The second part gives, also against Bayle, thejustification of God in view of the evil in the world. _Si Deus est, undemalum_? Optimism has to reckon with the facts of experience, and to showthat this world, in spite of its undeniable imperfections, is still thebest world. God could certainly have brought into actuality a world inwhich there would have been less imperfection than in ours, but it would atthe same time have contained fewer perfections. No world whatever can existentirely free from evil, entirely without limitation--whoever forbids Godto create imperfect beings forbids him to create a world at all. Certainevils--in general terms, the evil of finitude--are entirely inseparablefrom the concept of created beings; imperfection attaches to every createdthing as such. Other evils God has permitted because it was only throughthem that certain higher goods, which ought not to be renounced, could bebrought to pass. Think of the lofty feelings, noble resolves, and greatdeeds which war occasions, think of national enthusiasm, readiness forsacrifice, and defiance of death--all these would be given over, if warshould be taken out of the world on account of the suffering which it alsobrings in its train. 

If we turn from the general principles to their application in detail, wefind a separate proof for the inevitableness or salutary nature of each ofthe three kinds of evil--the metaphysical evil of created existence, thephysical evil of suffering (and punishment), and the moral evil of sin. Metaphysical evil is absolutely unavoidable, if a world is to exist at all;created beings without imperfection, finiteness, limitation, are entirelyinconceivable--something besides gods must exist. The physical evil ofmisery finds its justification in that it makes for good. First of all, theamount of suffering is not so great as it appears to discontented spiritsto be. Life is usually quite tolerable, and vouchsafes more joy andpleasure than grief and hardship; in balancing the good and the evil wemust especially remember to reckon on the positive side the goods ofactivity, of health, and all that which affords us, perchance, noperceptible pleasure, but the removal of which would be felt as an evil(_Theodicy_, ii. § 251). Most evils serve to secure us a much greater good, or to ward off a still greater evil. Would a brave general, if given thechoice of leaving the battle unwounded, but also without the victory, or ofwinning the victory at the cost of a wound, hesitate an instant to choosethe latter? Other troubles, again, must be regarded as punishment for sinsand as means of reformation; the man who is resigned to God's will may becertain that the sufferings which come to him will turn out for his good. 

Especially if we consider the world as a whole, it is evident that thesum of evil vanishes before the sum of good. It is wrong to look upon thehappiness of man as the end of the world. Certainly God had the happinessof rational beings in mind, but not this exclusively, for they form onlya part of the world, even if it be the highest part. God's purpose hasreference rather to the perfection of the whole system of the universe. Nowthe harmony of the universe requires that all possible grades of realitybe represented, that there should be indistinct ideas, sense, andcorporeality, not merely a realm of spirits, and with these, conditionsof imperfection, feelings of pain, and theoretical and moral errors areinevitably given. The connection and the order of the world demands amaterial element in the monad, but happiness without alloy can never be thelot of a spirit joined to a body. Thirdly, in regard to moral evil also wereceive the assurance that the sum of the bad is much less than that of thegood. Then, moral evil is connected with metaphysical evil: created beingscannot be absolutely perfect, hence, also, not morally perfect or sinless. But, in return for this, there is no being that is absolutely imperfect, none only and entirely evil. With this is joined the well-known principleof the earlier thinkers, that evil is nothing actual, but merelydeprivation, absence of good, lack of clear reason and force of will. Thatwhich is real in the evil action, the power to act, is perfect and good, and, as force, comes from God--the negative or evil element in it comesfrom the agent himself; just as in the case of two ships of the same size, but unequally laden, which drift with the current, the speed comes from thestream and the retardation from the load of the vessels themselves. Godis not responsible for sin, for he has only permitted it, not willed itdirectly, and man was already evil before he was created. The fact that Godforesaw that man would sin does not constrain the latter to commit theevil deed, but this follows from his own (eternal) being, which God leftunaltered when he granted him existence. The guilt and the responsibilityfall wholly on the sinner himself. The permission of evil is explained bythe predominantly good results which follow from it (not, as in physicalevil, for the sufferer himself, but for others)--from the crime of SextusTarquinius sprang a great kingdom with great men (of. The beautiful myth inconnection with a dialogue of Laurentius Valla, _Theodicy, _ iii. 413-416). Finally, reference is made again to the contribution which evil makes tothe perfection of the whole. Evil has the same function in the world as thediscords in a piece of music, or the shadows in a painting--the beauty isheightened by the contrast. The good needs a foil in order to come outdistinctly and to be felt in all its excellence. 

In the Leibnitzian theodicy the least satisfactory part is thejustification of moral evil. We miss the view defended in such grandoutlines by Hegel, and so ingeniously by Fechner, that the good is notthe flower of a quiet, unmolested development, but the fruit of energeticlabor; that it has need of its opposite; that it not merely must approveitself in the battle against evil without and within the acting subject, but that it is only through this conflict that it is attainable at all. Virtue implies force of will as well as purity, and force develops onlyby resistance. Although he does not appreciate the full depth of thesignificance of pain, Leibnitz's view of suffering deserves more approvalthan his questionable application to the ethical sphere of the quantitativeview of the world, with its interpretation of evil as merely undevelopedgood. But, in any case, the compassionate contempt of the pessimism of theday for the "shallow" Leibnitz is most unjustifiable. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

THE GERMAN ILLUMINATION. 

%1. The Contemporaries of Leibnitz. %

The period between Kepler and Leibnitz in Germany was very poor innoteworthy philosophical phenomena. The physicist, Christoph Sturm[1] ofAltdorf (died 1703), was a follower of Descartes, Joachim Jungius[2] (died1657) a follower of Bacon, though not denying with the latter the value ofthe mathematical method in natural science. Hieronymus Hirnhaym, Abbot atPrague (_The Plague of the Human Race, or the Vanity of Human Learning_, 1676), declared the thirst for knowledge of his age a dangerous disease, knowledge uncertain, since no reliance can be placed on sense-perceptionand the principles of thought contradict the doctrines of faith, andharmful, since it contributes nothing to salvation, but makes itspossessors proud and draws them away from piety. He maintained, further, that divine authority is the only refuge for man, and moral life the truescience. Side by side with such skepticism Hirnhaym's contemporary, thepoet Angelus Silesius (Joh. Scheffler, died 1667), defended mysticism. The teacher of natural law, Samuel Pufendorf[3] (1632-94, professor inHeidelberg and Lund, died in Berlin), aimed to mediate between Grotius andHobbes. Natural law is demonstrable, its real ground is the will of God, its noëtical ground (not revelation, but) reason and observation of the(social) nature of man, and the fundamental law the promotion of universalgood. The individual must not violate the interests of society insatisfying his impulse to self-preservation, because his own interestsrequire social existence, and, consequently, respect for its conditions. 

[Footnote 1: Chr. Sturm: _Physica Conciliatrix_, 1687; _Physica Electiva_, vol. I. 1697, vol. Ii. With preface by Chr. Wolff, 1722; _CompendiumUniversalium seu Metaphysica Euclidea_. ]

[Footnote 2: J. Jung _Logica Hamburgiensis_, 1638; cf. Guhrauer, 1859. ]

[Footnote 3: Pufendorf: _Elementa Juris Universalis_, 1660; _De StatuImperii Germanici_, 1667, under the pseudonym Monzambano; _De Jure Natureset Gentium_ 1672, and an abstract of this, _De Officio Hominis et Civis_, 1673. ]

Pufendorf was followed by Christian Thomasius[1] (1655-1728; professor oflaw at the University of Halle from its foundation in 1694). He wasthe first instructor who ventured to deliver lectures in the Germanlanguage--in Leipsic from 1687--and at the same time was the editor of thefirst learned journal in German (_Teutsche Monate, Geschichte der Weisheitund Thorheit_). In Thomasius the characteristic features of the GermanIllumination first came out in full distinctness, namely, the avoidance ofscholasticism in expression and argument, the direct relation of knowledgeto life, sober rationality in thinking, heedless eclecticism, and thedemand for religious tolerance. Philosophy must be generally intelligible, and practically useful, knowledge of the world (not of God); its form, freeand tasteful ratiocination; its object, man and morals; its first duty, culture, not learning; its highest aim, happiness; its organ and thecriterion of every truth, common sense. He alone gains true knowledge whofrees his understanding from prejudice and judges only after examining forhimself; the joy of mental peace is given to no one who does not free hisheart from foolish desires and vehement passions, and devote it to virtue, to "rational love. " The positive doctrines of Thomasius have less interestthan this general standpoint, which prefigured the succeeding period. Hedivides practical philosophy into natural law which treats of the _justum_, politics which treats of the _decorum_, and ethics which treats of the_honestum_. Justice bids us, Do not to others what you would not thatothers should do to you; decorum, Do to others as you would that theyshould do to you; and morality, Do to yourself as you would that othersshould do to themselves. The first two laws relate to external, the thirdto internal, peace; legal duties may be enforced by compulsion, moralduties not. 

[Footnote 1: Thomasius: _Institutionum Jurisprudentiae Divinae Libri Tres_, 1688; _Fundamenta Juris Naturae et Gentium_, 1705, both in Latin; inGerman, appeared in 1691-96 the _Introduction and Application of Rationaland Moral Philosophy_. ]

If Thomasius was the leader of those popular philosophers who, unconcernedabout systematic continuity, discussed every question separately beforethe tribunal of common sense, and found in their lack of allegiance toany philosophical sect a sufficient guarantee of the unprejudicednessand impartiality of their reflections, Count Walter von Tschirnhausen(1651-1708; _Medecina Mentis sive Artis Inveniendi Praecepta Generalia_, 1687), a friend of Spinoza and Leibnitz, became the prototype of anothergroup of the philosophers of the Illumination. This group favoredeclecticism of a more scientific kind, by starting from considerationsof method and seeking to overcome the antithesis between rationalism andempiricism. While fully persuaded of the validity and necessity of themathematical method in philosophical investigations, as well as elsewhere, Tschirnhausen still holds it indispensable that the deductions, on the onehand, start from empirical facts, and, on the other, that they be confirmedby experiments. Inner experience gives us four primal facts, of which thechief is the certainty of self-consciousness. The second, that many thingsaffect us agreeably and many disagreeably, is the basis of morals; thethird, that some things are comprehensible to us and others not, thebasis of logic; the fourth, that through the senses we passively receiveimpressions from without, the basis of the empirical sciences, inparticular, of physics. Consequently consciousness, will, understanding, and sensuous representation _(imaginatio)_, together with corporeality, are our fundamental concepts. Not perception _(perceptio)_, but conception_(conceptio)_ alone gives science; that which we can "conceive" is true;the understanding as such cannot err, but undoubtedly the imagination canlead us to confuse the merely perceived with that which is conceived. Themethod of science is geometrical demonstration, which starts from(genetic) definitions, and from their analysis obtains axioms, from theircombination, theorems. That which is thus proved _a priori_ must, asalready remarked, be confirmed _a posteriori_. The highest of all sciencesis natural philosophy, since it considers not sense-objects only, not (likemathematics) the objects of reason only, but the actual itself in its truecharacter. Hence it is the divine science, while the human sciences busythemselves only with our ideas or the relations of things to us. 

%2. Christian Wolff. %

Christian Wolff was born at Breslau in 1679, studied theology at Jena, andin addition mathematics and philosophy, habilitated at Leipsic in 1703, and obtained, through the instrumentality of Leibnitz, a professorship ofmathematics at Halle, in 1706. His lectures, which soon extended themselvesover all philosophical disciplines, met with great success. Thispopularity, as well as the rationalistic tendency of his thinking, arousedthe disfavor of the pietists, Francke and Lange, who succeeded, in 1723, insecuring from King Frederick William I. His removal from his chair and hisexpulsion from the kingdom. Finding a refuge in Marburg, he was called backto Halle by Frederick the Great a short time after the latter's ascensionof the throne. Here he taught and wrote zealously until his death in 1754. In his lectures, as well as in half of his writings, [1] he followed theexample of Thomasius in using the German language, which he prepared ina most praiseworthy manner for the expression of philosophical ideas andfurnished with a large part of the technical terms current to-day. Thusthe terms _Verhältniss_ (relation), _Vorstellung_ (representation, idea), _Bewusstsein_ (consciousness), _stetig (continuus)_, come from Wolff, aswell as the distinction between _Kraft_ (power) and _Vermögen_ (faculty), and between _Grund_ (ground) and _Ursache_ (cause), [2] Another greatservice consisted in the reduction of the philosophy of Leibnitz to asystematic form, by which he secured a dissemination for it which otherwiseit would scarcely have obtained. But he did not possess sufficientoriginality to contribute anything remarkable of his own, and it showedlittle self-knowledge when he became indignant at the designationLeibnitzio-Wolffian philosophy, which was first used by his pupil, Bilfinger. The alterations which he made in the doctrines of Leibnitz arefar from being improvements, and the parts which he rejected are just themost characteristic and thoughtful of all. Such at least is the opinionof thinkers to-day, though this mutilation and leveling down of the mostdaring of Leibnitz's hypotheses was perhaps entirely advantageous forWolff's impression on his contemporaries; what appeared questionable to himwould no doubt have repelled them also. Leibnitz's two leading ideas, thetheory of monads and the pre-established harmony, were most of all affectedby this process of toning down. Wolff weakens the former by attributinga representative power only to actual souls, which are capable ofconsciousness, although he holds that bodies are compounded of simplebeings and that the latter are endowed with (a not further defined) force. He limits the application of the pre-established harmony to the relation ofbody and soul, which to Leibnitz was only a case especially favorable forthe illustration of the hypothesis. By such trifling the real meaning ofboth these ideas is sacrificed and their bloom rubbed off. --While depthis lacking in Wolff's thinking, he is remarkable for his power ofsystematization, his persevering diligence, and his logical earnestness, so that the praise bestowed on him by Kant, that he was the author of thespirit of thoroughness in Germany, was well deserved. He, too, findsthe end of philosophy in the enlightenment of the understanding, theimprovement of the heart, and, ultimately, in the promotion of thehappiness of mankind. But while Thomasius demanded as a condition of suchuniversal intelligibility and usefulness that, discarding the scholasticgarb, philosophy should appear in the form of easy ratiocination, Wolff, onthe other hand, regards methodical procedure and certainty in results asindispensable to its usefulness, and, in order to this certainty, insists on distinctness of conception and cogency of proof. He demandsa _philosophia et certa et utilis_. If, finally, his methodicaldeliberateness, especially in his later works, leads him into wearisomediffuseness, this pedantry is made good by his genuinely German, honestspirit, which manifests itself agreeably in his judgment on practicalquestions. 

[Footnote 1: _Reasonable Thoughts on the Powers of the HumanUnderstanding_, 1712; _Reasonable Thoughts on God, the World, and theSoul of Man, also on All Things in General_, 1719 (_Notes_ to this 1724);_Reasonable Thoughts on the Conduct of Man_, 1720; _Reasonable Thoughts onthe Social Life of Man_, 1721; _Reasonable Thoughts on the Operations ofNature_, 1723; _Reasonable Thoughts on the Purposes of Natural Things_, 1724; _Reasonable Thoughts on the Parts of Man, Animals, and Plants_, 1725, all in German. Besides these there are extensive Latin treatises (1728-53)on Logic, Ontology, Cosmology, Empirical and Rational Psychology, NaturalTheology, and all branches of Practical Philosophy. Detailed extracts maybe found in Erdmann's _Versuch einer wissenschaftlichen Darstellung_, ii. 2. The best account of the Wolffian philosophy has been given by Zeller(pp. 211-273). ]

[Footnote 2: Eucken, _Geschichte der Terminologie_^ pp. 133-134. ]

Wolff reaches his division of the sciences by combining the twopsychological antitheses--the higher (rational) and lower (sensuous)faculties of cognition and appetition. On the first is based thedistinction between the rational and the empirical or historical method oftreatment. The latter concerns itself with the actual, the former with thepossible and necessary, or the grounds of the actual; the one observes anddescribes, the other deduces. The antithesis of cognition and appetitiongives the basis for the division into theoretical and practical philosophy. The former, called metaphysics, is divided into a general part, whichtreats of being in general whether it be of a corporeal or a spiritualnature, and three special parts, according to their principal subjects, theworld, the soul, and God, --hence into ontology, cosmology, psychology, andtheology. The science which establishes rules for action and regards man asan individual being, as a citizen, and as the head or member of a family, is divided (after Aristotle) into ethics, politics, and economics, whichare preceded by practical philosophy in general, and by natural law. Theintroduction to the two principal parts is furnished by formal logic. 

Philosophy is the science of the possible, _i. E. _, of that which containsno contradiction; it is science from concepts, its principle, the law ofidentity, its form, demonstration, and its instrument, analysis, which inthe predicate explicates the determinations contained in the concept of thesubject. In order to confirm that which has been deduced from pure conceptsby the facts of experience, _psychologia rationalis_ is supplemented by_psychologia empirica_, rational cosmology by empirical physics, andspeculative theology by an experimental doctrine of God (teleology). Wolffgives no explanation how it comes about that the deliverances of thereason agree so beautifully with the facts of experience; in his naïve, unquestioning belief in the infallibility of the reason he is a typicaldogmatist. 

A closer examination of the Wolffian philosophy seems unnecessary, sinceits most essential portions have already been discussed under Leibnitz andsince it will be necessary to recur to certain points in our chapter onKant. Therefore, referring the reader to the detailed accounts in Erdmannand Zeller, we shall only note that Wolff's ethics opposes the principleof perfection to the English principle of happiness (that is good whichperfects man's condition, and this is life in conformity with nature orreason, with which happiness is necessarily connected); that he makes thewill determined by the understanding, and assigns ignorance as the cause ofsin; that his philosophy of religion, which argues for a natural religionin addition to revealed religion (experiential and rational proofs for theexistence of God, and a deduction of his attributes), and sets up certaintests for the genuineness of revelation, favors a rationalism which wasflexible enough to allow his pupils either to take part in orthodoxmovements or to advance to a deism hostile to the Church. 

Among the followers of Wolff, Alexander Baumgarten (1714-62) deservesthe first place, as the founder of German aesthetics _(Aesthetica_, 1750_seq_. ). He perceives a gap in the system of the philosophical sciences. This contains in ethics a guide to right volition, and in logic a guideto correct thinking, but there are no directions for correct feeling, noaesthetic. The beautiful would form the subject of this discipline. For theperfection (the harmonious unity of a manifold, which is pleasant to thespectator), which manifests itself to the will as the good and to theclear thinking of the understanding as the true, appears--according toLeibnitz--to confused sensuous perception as beauty. From this on the nameaesthetics was established for the theory of the beautiful, though inKant's great work it is used in its literal meaning as the doctrine ofsense, of the faculty of sensations or intuitions. Baumgarten's pupilsand followers, the aesthetic writer G. F. Meier at Halle, Baumeister, andothers, contributed like himself to the dissemination of the Wolffiansystem by their manuals on different branches of philosophy. To this schoolbelong also the following: Thümmig (_Institutiones Philosophia Wolfianae_, 1725-26); the theologian Siegmund Baumgarten at Halle, the elder brotherof the aesthete; the mathematician Martin Knutzen, Kant's teacher;[1] theliterary historian Gottsched [2] at Leipsic; and G. Ploucquet, who inhis _Methodus Calculandi in Logicis_, with a _Commentatio de ArteCharacteristica Universali_ appended to his _Principia de Substantiis etPhaenomenis_, 1753, took up again Leibnitz's cherished plan for a logicalcalculus and a universal symbolic language. The psychologist Kasimir vonCreuz (_Essay on the Soul_, in two parts, 1753-54), and J. H. Lambert, [3]whom Kant deemed worthy of a detailed correspondence, take up a moreindependent position, both demanding that the Wolffian rationalism besupplemented by the empiricism of Locke, and the latter, moreover, inanticipation of the Critique of Reason, pointing very definitely to thedistinction between content and form as the salient point in the theory ofknowledge. 

[Footnote 1: Benno Erdmann, _M. Knutzen und seine Zeit_, 1876. ]

[Footnote 2: Th. W. Danzel, _Gottsched und seine Zeit_, 1848. ]

[Footnote 3: Lambert: _Cosmological Letters_, 1761; _New Organon_, 1764;_Groundwork of Architectonics_, 1771. Bernoulli edited some of Lambert'spapers and his correspondence. ]

Among the opponents of the Wolffian philosophy, all of whom favoreclecticism, A. Rüdiger[1] and Chr. Aug. Crusius, [2] who was influenced byRüdiger, and, like him, a professor at Leipsic, are the most important. Rüdiger divides philosophy according to its objects, "wisdom, justice, prudence, " into three parts--the science of nature (which must avoidone-sided mechanical views, and employ ether, air, and spirit as principlesof explanation); the science of duty (which, as metaphysics, treats ofduties toward God, as natural law, of duties to our neighbor, and deducesboth from the primary duty of obedience to the will of God); and thescience of the good (in which Rüdiger follows the treatise of the Spaniard, Gracian, on practical wisdom). Crusius agrees with Rüdiger that mathematicsis the science of the possible, and philosophy the science of the actual, and that the latter, instead of imitating to its own disadvantage thedeductive-analytical method of geometry, must, with the aid of experienceand with attention to the probability of its conclusions, rise to thehighest principles synthetically. Besides its deduction the determinismof the Wolffian philosophy gave offense, for it was believed to endangermorals, justice, and religion. The will, the special fundamental power ofthe soul (consisting of the impulses to perfection, love, and knowledge), is far from being determined by ideas; it is rather they which depend onthe will. The application of the principle of sufficient reason, which iswrongly held to admit of no exception, must be restricted in favor offreedom. For the rest, we may note concerning Crusius that he derives theprinciple of sufficient reason (everything which is now, and before wasnot, has a cause) and the principle of contingency from the principles ofcontradiction, inseparability, and incompatibility, and these latter fromthe principle of conceivability; that he rejects the ontological argument, and makes the ground of obligation in morality consist in obedience towardGod, and its content in perfection. Among the other opponents of theWolffian philosophy, we may mention the theologian Budde(us)[3]_(Institutiones Philosophiae Eclecticae_, 1705); Darjes (who taught in Jenaand Frankfort-on-the-Oder; _The Way to Truth_, 1755); and Crousaz (1744). 

[Footnote 1: Rüdiger: _Disputatio de eo quod Omnes Idea Oriantur aSensione_, 1704; _Philosophia Synthetica_, 1707; _Physica Divina_, 1716;_Philosophia Pragmatica_, 1723. ]

[Footnote 2: Crusius: _De Usu et Limitibus Principii Rationis_, 1743;_Directions how to Live a Rational Life_ (theory of the will and ofethics), 1744; _A Sketch of the Necessary Truths of Reason_, 1745; _Way tothe Certainty and Trustworthiness of Human Knowledge_, 1747. ]

[Footnote 3: J. J. Brucker _(Historia Critica Philosophiae_, 5 vols. , 1742-44; 2d ed. , 6 vols. , 1766-67) was a pupil of Budde. ]

%3. The Illumination as Scientific and as Popular Philosophy. %

After a demand for the union of Leibnitz and Locke, of rationalism andempiricism, had been raised within the Wolffian school itself, and stillmore directly in the camp of its opponents, under the increasing influenceof the empirical philosophy of England, [1] eclecticism in the spirit ofThomasius took full possession of the stage in the Illumination period. There was the less hesitation in combining principles derived from entirelydifferent postulates without regard to their systematic connection, asthe interest in scholastic investigation gave place more and more to theinterest in practical and reassuring results. Metaphysics, noëtics, andnatural philosophy were laid aside as useless subtleties, and, as in theperiod succeeding Aristotle, man as an individual and whatever directlyrelates to his welfare--the constitution of his inner nature, his duties, the immortality of the soul, and the existence of God--became the exclusivesubjects of reflection. The fact that, besides ethics and religion, psychology was chosen as a favorite field, is in complete harmony with thegeneral temper of an age for which self-observation and the enjoyment oftender and elevated feelings in long, delightfully friendly letters andsentimental diaries had become a favorite habit. Hand in hand with thisnarrowing of the content of philosophy went a change in the form ofpresentation. As thinkers now addressed themselves to all cultivatedpeople, intelligibility and agreeableness were made the prime requisites;the style became light and flowing, the method of treatment facile andoften superficial. This is true not only of the popular philosophersproper--who, as Windelband pertinently remarks (vol. I. P. 563), did notseek after the truth, but believed that they already possessed it, anddesired only to disseminate it; who did not aim at the promotion ofinvestigation, but the instruction of the public--but to a certain extent, also, of those who were conscious of laboring in the service of science. Among the representatives of the more polite tendency belong, MosesMendelssohn[2] (1729-86); Thomas Abbt (_On Death for the Fatherland_, 1761;_On Merit_, 1765); J. J. Engel (_The philosopher for the World_, 1775); G. S. Steinbart (_The Christian Doctrine of Happiness_, 1778); Ernst Platner(_Philosophical Aphorisms_, 1776, 1782; on Platner cf. M. Heinze, 1880);G. C. Lichtenberg (died 1799; _Miscellaneous Writings_, 1800 _seq_. ; aselection is given in _Reclam's Bibliothek_); Christian Garve (died 1798;_Essays_, 1792 _seq. ; Translations from the Ethical Works of Aristotle, Cicero, and Ferguson_); and Friedrich Nicolai[3] (died 1811). Eberhard, Feder, and Meiners will be mentioned later among the opponents of theKantian philosophy. 

[Footnote 1: The influence of the English philosophers on the Germanphilosophy of the eighteenth century is discussed by Gustav Zart, 1881. ]

[Footnote 2: Mendelssohn: _Letters on the Sensations_, 1755; _On Evidencein the Metaphysical Sciences_, a prize essay crowned by the Academy, 1764;_Phaedo, or on Immortality_, 1767; _Jerusalem_, 1783; _Morning Hours, or onthe Existence of God_, 1785; _To the Friends of Lessing_ (against Jacobi), 1786; _Works_, 1843-44. Cf. On Mendelssohn, Kayserling, 1856, 1862, 1883. ]

[Footnote 3: Nicolai: _Library of Belles Lettres_, from 1757; _Letters onthe Most Recent German Literature_, from 1759; _Universal German Library_, from 1765; _New Universal German Library_, 1793-1805. ]

Among the psychologists J. N. Tetens, whose _Philosophical Essays on HumanNature_, 1776-77, show a remarkable similarity to the views of Kant, [1]takes the first rank. The two thinkers evidently influenced each other. Thethree fold division of the activities of the soul, "knowing, feeling, and willing, " which has now become popular and which appears to usself-evident, is to be referred to Tetens, from whom Kant took it; inopposition to the twofold division of Aristotle and Wolff into "cognitionand appetition, " he established the equal rights of the faculty offeeling--which had previously been defended by Sulzer (1751), the aestheticwriter, and by Mendelssohn (1755, 1763, 1785). Besides Tetens, thefollowing should be mentioned among the psychologists: Tetens's opponent, Johann Lossius (1775), an adherent of Bonnet; D. Tiedemann (_Inquiriesconcerning Man_, from 1777), who was estimable also as a historian ofphilosophy (_Spirit of Speculative Philosophy_, 1791-97); Von Irwing(1772 _seq_. ; 2d ed. , 1777); and K. Ph. Moriz (_Magazin zurErfahrungsseelenlehre_, from 1785). Basedow (died 1790), Campe (died 1818), and J. H. Pestalozzi (1745-1827) did valuable work in pedagogics. 

[Footnote 1: Sensation gives the content, and the understandingspontaneously produces the form, of knowledge. The only objectivity ofknowledge which we can attain consists in the subjective necessity of theforms of thought or the ideas of relation. Perception enables us to cognizephenomena only, not the true essence of things and of ourselves, etc. ]

One of the clearest and most acute minds among the philosophers of theIllumination was the deist Hermann Samuel Reimarus[1] (1694-1768), from1728 professor in Hamburg. He attacks atheism, in whatever form it maypresent itself, with as much zeal and conviction as he shows in breakingdown the belief in revelation by his inexorable criticism (in his_Defense_, communicated in manuscript to a few friends only). He obtainshis weapons for this double battle from the Wolffian philosophy. Theexistence of an extramundane deity is proved by the purposive arrangementof the world, especially of organisms, which aims at the good--not merelyof man, as the majority of the physico-theologists have believed, but--ofall living creatures. To believe in a special revelation, _i. E. _, amiracle, in addition to such a revelation of God as this, which is grantedto all men, and is alone necessary to salvation, is to deny the perfectionof God, and to do violence to the immutability of his providence. To thesegeneral considerations against the credibility of positive revelationare to be added, as special arguments against the Jewish and Christianrevelations, the untrustworthiness of human testimony in general, thecontradictions in the biblical writings, the uncertainty of their meaning, and the moral character of the persons regarded as messengers of God, whoseteachings, precepts, and deeds in no wise correspond to their high mission. Jewish history is a "tissue of sheer follies, shameful deeds, deceptions, and cruelties, the chief motives of which were self-interest and lust forpower. " The New Testament is also the work of man; all talk of divineinspiration, an idle delusion, the resurrection of Christ, a fabrication ofthe disciples; and the Protestant system, with its dogmas of the Trinity, the fall of man, original sin, the incarnation, vicarious atonement, andeternal punishment, contrary to reason. The advance of Reimarus beyondWolff consists in the consistent application of the criteria for the divinecharacter of revelation, which Wolff had set up without making a positive, not to speak of a negative, use of them. His weakness[2] consists in thefact that, on the one hand, he contented himself with a rationalisticinterpretation of the biblical narratives, instead of pushing on--as Semlerdid after him at Halle (1725-91)--to a historical criticism of the sources, and, on the other, held fast to the alternative common to all the deists, "Either divine or human, either an actual event or a fabrication, " withoutany suspicion of that great intermediate region of religious myth, of theinvoluntary and pregnant inventions of the popular fancy. 

[Footnote 1: H. S. Reimarus: _Discussions on the Chief Truths of NaturalReligion_, 1754; _General Consideration of the Instincts of Animals_, 1762;_Apology or Defense for the Rational Worshipers of God_. Fragments of thelast of these works, which was kept secret during its author's life, werepublished by Lessing (the well-known "Wolffenbüttel Fragments, " from1774). A detailed table of contents is to be found in _Reimarus und seineSchutzschrift_, 1862, by D. Fr. Strauss, included in the fifth volume ofhis _Gesammelte Schriften_. ]

[Footnote 2: Cf. O. Pfleiderer, _Philosophy of Religion_, vol. I. P. 102, p. 106 _seq_. ]

The philosophico-religious standpoint of G. E. Lessing (1729-81), in whomthe Illumination reached its best fruitage, was less one-sided. Apart fromthe important aesthetic impulses which flowed from the _Laocoon_ (1766) andthe _Hamburg Dramaturgy_ (1767-69), his philosophical significance restson two ideas, which have had important consequences for the religiousconceptions of the nineteenth century: the speculative interpretation ofcertain dogmas (the Trinity, etc. ), and the application of the Leibnitzianidea of development to the history of the positive religions. By both ofthese he prepared the way for Hegel. In regard to his relation to hispredecessors, Lessing sought to mediate between the pantheism of Spinozaand the individualism of Leibnitz; and in his comprehension of the lattershowed himself far superior to the Wolffians. He can be called a Spinozistonly by those who, like Jacobi, have this title ready for everyonewho expresses himself against a transcendent, personal God, and theunconditional freedom of the will. Moreover, in view of his critical anddialectical, rather than systematic, method of thinking, we must guardagainst laying too great stress on isolated statements by him. [1]

[Footnote 1: A caution which Gideon Spicker (_Lessings Weltanschauung_, 1883) counsels us not to forget, even in view of the oft cited avowal ofdeterminism, "I thank God that I must, and that I must the best. " Among thenumerous treatises on Lessing we may note those by G. E. Schwarz (1854), andZeller (in Sybel's _Historische Zeitschrift_, 1870, incorporated in thesecond collection of Zeller's _Vorträge und Abhandlungen_, 1877); and onhis theological position, that of K. Fischer on Lessing's _Nathan derWeise_, 1864, as well as J. H. Witte's _Philosophie unserer Dichterheroen_, vol. I. _(Lessing and Herder_), 1880. [Cf. In English, Sime, 2 vols. , 1877, and _Encyclopedia Britannica_, vol. Xiv. Pp, 478-482. --TR. ]]

Lessing conceives the Deity as the supreme, all-comprehensive, livingunity, which excludes neither a certain kind of plurality nor even acertain kind of change; without life and action, without the experience ofchanging states, the life of God would be miserably wearisome. Things arenot out of, but in him; nevertheless (as "contingent") they are distinctfrom him. The Trinity must be understood in the sense of immanentdistinctions. God has conceived himself, or his perfections, in a twofoldmanner: he conceived them as united and himself as their sum, and heconceived them as single. Now God's thinking is creation, his ideasactualities. By conceiving his perfections united he created his eternalimage, the Son of God; the bond between God representing and Godrepresented, between Father and Son, is the Holy Spirit. But when heconceived his perfections singly he created the world, in which thesemanifest themselves divided among a continuous series of particular beings. Every individual is an isolated divine perfection; the things in the worldare limited gods, all living, all with souls, and of a spiritual nature, though in different degrees. Development is everywhere; at present the soulhas five senses, but very probably it once had less than five, and inthe future it will have more. At first the actions of men were guided byobscure instinct; gradually the reason obtained influence over the will, and one day will govern it completely through its clear and distinctcognitions. Thus freedom is attained in the course of history--the rationaland virtuous man consciously obeys the divine order of the world, while hewho is unfree obeys unconsciously. 

Lessing shares with the deistic Illumination the belief in a religion ofreason, whose basis and essential content are formed by morality; but herises far above this level in that he regards the religion of reason notas the beginning but as the goal of the development, and the positivereligions as necessary transition stages in its attainment. As naturalreligion differs in each individual according to his feelings and powers, without positive enactments there would be no unity and community inreligious matters. Nevertheless the statutory and historical element isnot a graft from without, but a shell organically grown around naturalreligion, indispensable for its development, and to be removed butgradually and by layers--when the inclosed kernel has become ripe and firm. The history of religions is an _education of the human race through divinerevelation_; so teaches his small but thoughtful treatise of 1780. [1] Asthe education of the individual man puts nothing extraneous into him, butonly gives him more quickly and easily that which he could have reached ofhimself, so human reason is illuminated by revelation concerning thingsto which it could have itself attained, only that without God's help theprocess would have been longer and more difficult--perhaps it would havewandered about for many millions of years in the errors of polytheism, ifGod had not been pleased by a single stroke (his revelation to Moses) togive it a better direction. And as the teacher does not impart everythingto the pupil at once, but considers the state of development reached by himat each given period, so God in his revelation observes a certain order andmeasure. To the rude Jewish people he revealed himself first as a nationalGod, as the God of their fathers; they had to wait for the Persians toteach them that the God whom they had hitherto worshiped as the mostpowerful among other gods was the only one. Although this lowest stage inthe development of religion lacked the belief in immortality, yet it mustnot be lightly valued; let us acknowledge that it was an heroic obediencefor men to observe the laws of God simply because they are the laws of God, and not because of temporal or future rewards! The first practical teacherof immortality was Christ; with him the second age of religion begins: thefirst good book of elementary instruction, the Old Testament, from whichman had hitherto learned, was followed by the second, better one, the NewTestament. As we now can dispense with the first primer in regard to thedoctrine of the unity of God, and as we gradually begin to be able todispense with the second in regard to the doctrine of the immortality ofthe soul, so this New Testament may easily contain still further truths, which for the present we wonder at as revelations, until the reason shalllearn to derive them from other truths already established. Lessing himselfmakes an attempt at a philosophical interpretation of the dogmas of theTrinity (see above), of original sin, and of atonement. Such an advancefrom faith to knowledge, such a development of revealed truths into provedtruths of reason, is absolutely necessary. We cannot dispense with thetruths of revelation, but we must not remain content with simply believingthem, but must endeavor to comprehend them; for they have been revealed inorder that they may become rational. They are, as it were, the sum whichthe teacher of arithmetic tells his pupils beforehand so that theymay guide themselves by it; but if they content themselves with thissolution--which was given merely as a guide--they would never learn tocalculate. Hand in hand with the advance of the understanding goes theprogress of the will. Future recompenses, which the New Testament promisesas rewards of virtue, are means of education, and will gradually fall intodisuse: in the highest stage, the stage of purity of heart, virtue willbe loved and practiced for its own sake, and no longer for the sake ofheavenly rewards. Slowly but surely, along devious paths which are yetsalutary, we are being led toward that great goal. It will surely come, thetime of consummation, when man will do the good because it is good, thistime of the new, eternal Gospel, this third age, this "Christianity ofreason. " Continue, Eternal Providence, thine imperceptible march; let menot despair of thee because it is imperceptible, not even when to me thysteps seem to lead backward. It is not true that the straight line isalways the shortest. 

[Footnote 1: _Die Erziehung des Menschengeschlects_. ]

With the thought that every individual must traverse the same course asthat by which the race attains its perfection, Lessing connects the ideaof the transmigration of souls. Why may not the individual man have beenpresent in this world more than once? Is this hypothesis so ridiculousbecause it is the oldest?

If Lessing abandoned the ranks of the deists by his recognition of thefact that the positive religions contain truth in a gradual process ofpurification, by his free criticism, on the other hand, he broke withthe orthodox, whose idolatrous reverence for the Bible was to him anabomination. The letter is not the spirit, the Bible is not religion, noryet its foundation, but only its records. Contingent historical truths cannever serve as a proof of the necessary truths of reason. Christianity isolder than the New Testament. 

Already, in the case of Lessing, we may doubt, in view of his historicaltemper and of certain speculative tendencies, whether he is to be includedamong the Illuminati. In the case of Kant a decided protest must beraised against such a classification. When Hegel numbers him among thephilosophers of the Illumination, on account of his lack of rationalintuition, and some theologians on account of his religious rationalism, the answer to the former is that Kant did not lack the speculative gift, but only that it was surpassed by his gift of reflection, and, to thelatter, that in regard to the positive element in religion he judged verydifferently from the deists and appreciated the historical element morejustly than they--if not to the same extent as Lessing and Herder. Wedo not need to lay great stress on the fact that Kant had a livelyconsciousness that he was making a contribution to thought, and that theIllumination contemplated this new doctrine without comprehending it, inorder to recognize that the difference between his efforts and achievementsand those of the Illumination is far greater than their kinship. Foralthough Kant is upon common ground with it, in so far as he adheres to itsmotto, "Have courage to use thine own understanding, become a man, ceaseto trust thyself to the guidance of others, and free thyself in all fieldsfrom the yoke of authority, " and, although besides such formal injunctionsto freedom of thought, he also shares in certain material tendencies andconvictions (the turning from the world to man, the attempt at a synthesisof reason and experience, and the belief in a religion of reason); yet inmethod and results, he stands like a giant among a race of dwarfs, like oneinstructed, who judges from principles, among men of opinion, who merelystick results together, a methodical systematizer among well-meaning butimpotent eclectics. The philosophy of the Illumination is related tothat of Kant as argument to science, as halting mediation to principiantresolution, as patchwork to creation out of full resources, yet at the sametime as wish to deed and as negative preparation to positive achievement. It was undeniably of great value to the Kantian criticism that theIllumination had created a point of intersection for the various tendenciesof thought, and had brought about the approximation and mutual contact ofthe opposing systems which then existed, while, at the same time, it hadcrumbled them to pieces, and thus awakened the need for a new, more firmlyand more deeply founded system. 

%4. The Faith Philosophy. %

The philosophers of feeling or faith stand in the same relation to theGerman Illumination as Rousseau to the French. Here also the rights offeeling are vindicated against those of the knowing reason. Among thedistinguished representatives of this anti-rationalistic tendency Hamannled the way, Herder was the most prolific, and Jacobi the clearest. Thatthe fountain of certitude is to be sought not in discriminating thought, but in intuition, experience, revelation, and tradition; that the highesttruths can be felt only and not proved; that all existing things areincomprehensible, because individual--these are convictions which, beforeJacobi defended them as based on scientific principles, had been vehementlyproclaimed by that singular man, J. G. Hamann (died 1788) of Königsberg. From an unprinted review by Hamann, Herder drew the objections which his"Metacritique" raises against Kant's Critique of Reason--that the divisionof matter and form, of sensibility and understanding, is inadmissible;that Kant misunderstood the significance of language, which is just wheresensibility and understanding unite, etc. 

In Herder[1] (1744-1803: after 1776 Superintendent-General in Weimar) thephilosophy of feeling gained a finer, more perspicuous and harmoniousnature, who shared Lessing's interest in history and his tendency tohold fast equally to pantheism and to individualism. God is the all-one, infinite, spiritual (non-personal) primal force, which wholly revealsitself in each thing _(God: Dialogues on the System of Spinoza_, 1787). To the life, power, wisdom, and goodness of God correspond the life andperfection of the universe and of individual creatures, each of whichpossesses its own irreplaceable value and bears in itself its future ingerm. Everywhere, one and the same life in an ascending series of powersand forms with imperceptible transitions. Always, an inner and an outertogether; no power without organ, no spirit without a body. As thought isonly a higher stage of sensation, which develops from the lower by means oflanguage--reason, like sense, is not a productive but a receptive facultyof knowing, perceiving ("_Vernehmen_")--so the free process of history isonly the continuation and completion of the nature-process (_Ideas for thePhilosophy of the History of Mankind_, 1784 _seq_. ). Man, the last child ofnature and her first freedman, is the nodal point where the physical seriesof events changes into the ethical; the last member of the organisms ofearth is at the same time the first in the spiritual development. Themission of history is the unfolding of all the powers which naturehas concentrated in man as the compendium of the world; its law, thateverywhere on our earth everything be realized that can be realized there;its end, humanity and the harmonious development of all our capacities. Asnature forms a single great organism, and from the stone to man describesa connected development, so humanity is a one great individual which passesthrough its several ages, from infancy (the Orient), through boyhood(Eygpt and Phoenicia), youth (Greece), and manhood (Rome), to old age (theChristian world). The spirit stands in the closest dependence upon nature, and nature is concerned in history throughout. The finer organization ofhis brain, the possession of hands, above all, his erect position, makeman, man and endow him with reason. Similarly it is natural conditions, climate, the character of the soil, the surrounding animal and vegetablelife, etc. , that play an essential part in determining the manners, thecharacters, and the destinies of nations. The connection of nature withhistory by means of the concept of development and through the idea thatthe two merely represent different stages of the same fundamental process, made Herder the forerunner of Schelling. 

[Footnote 1: On Herder cf. The biography by R. Haym, 2 vols. , 1877, 1885;and the work by Witte which has been referred to above (p. 306, note). ]

His polemic against Kant in the _Metacritique_, 1799 (against the _Critiqueof Pure Reason_), and the dialogue _Calligone_, 1800 (against the _Critiqueof Judgment_), is less pleasing. These are neither dignified in tone noressentially of much importance. In the former the distinction betweensensibility and reason is censured, and in the latter the separation of thebeautiful from the true and the good, but Kant's theory of aesthetics isfor the most part grossly misunderstood. The "disinterested" satisfactionHerder makes a cold satisfaction; the harmonious activity of the cognitivepowers, a tedious, apish sport; the satisfaction "without a concept, "judgment without ground or cause. The positive elements in his own viewsare more valuable. Pleasure in mere form, without a concept, and withoutthe idea of an end, is impossible. All beauty must mean or expresssomething, must be a symbol of inner life; its ground is perfection oradaptation. Beauty is that symmetrical union of the parts of a being, invirtue of which it feels well itself and gives pleasure to the observer, who sympathetically shares in this well-being. The charm and value of the_Calligone_ lie more in the warmth and clearness with which the expressivebeauty of single natural phenomena is described than in the abstractdiscussion. 

Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743-1819) gave the most detailed statement ofthe position of the philosophy of feeling, and the most careful proof ofit. He was born in Düsseldorf, the son of a manufacturer; until 1794 helived in his native place and at his country residence in Pempelfort; laterhe resided in Holstein, and, from 1805, in Munich, where, in 1807-13, hewas president of the Academy of Sciences. Of his works, collected in fivevolumes, 1812-25, we are here chiefly concerned with the letters _On theDoctrine of Spinoza_, 1785; _David Hume on Faith, or Idealism and Realism_, 1787; and the treatise _On Divine Things_, 1811, which called outSchelling's merciless response, _Memorial of Jacobi_. Besides Hume andSpinoza, the sensationalism of Bonnet and the criticism of Kant had madethe most lasting impression on Jacobi. His relation to Kant is neither thatof an opponent nor of a supporter and popularizer. He declares himself inaccord with Kant's critique of the understanding (the understanding ismerely a formal function, one which forms and combines concepts only, butdoes not guarantee reality, one to which the material of thought must begiven from elsewhere and for which the suprasensible remains unattainable);in regard to the critique of reason he raises the objection that it; makesthe Ideas mere postulates, which possess no guarantee for their reality. The critique of sensibility appears to him still more unsatisfactory, asit does not explain the origin of sensations. Without the concept of the"thing-in-itself" one cannot enter the Kantian philosophy, and with itone cannot remain there. Fichte has drawn the correct conclusion from theKantian premises; idealism is the unavoidable result of the Critique ofReason and foretold by; it as the Messiah was foretold by John the Baptist. And by the evil fruit we know the evil root: the idealistic theory isphilosophical nihilism, for it denies the reality of the external world, asthe materialism of Spinoza denies a transcendent God and the freedom ofthe will. Reality slips away from both these systems--they are the onlyconsistent ones there are--material reality escaping from the formerand suprasensible reality from the latter; and this must be so, becausereality, of whatever kind it be, cannot be known, but only believed andfelt. The actual, the existence of the noumenal as well as of the externalworld, even the existence of our own body, makes itself known to us throughrevelation alone; the understanding comprehends relations only; thecertainty that a thing exists is attained only through experience andfaith. Sense and reason are the organs of faith, and hence the truesources of knowledge; the former apprehends the natural, the latter, thesupernatural, while for the understanding is left only the analysis andcombination of given intuitions. 

Philosophy as a science from concepts must necessarily prove atheistic andfatalistic. Conception and proof mean deduction from conditions. How shallthat which has no cause from which to explain it, the unconditioned, God, and freedom, be comprehended and proved? Demonstration rises along thechain of causes to the universe alone, not to a transcendent Creator;mediate knowledge is confined to the sphere of conditioned being andmechanical becoming. The intuitive knowledge of feeling alone leads usbeyond this, and along with the wonderful, the inconceivable power offreedom in ourselves, which is above all nature, shows us the primal sourceof all wonders, the transcendent God above us. The inference from ourown spiritual, self-conscious, free personality to that of God is nounauthorized anthropomorphism--in the knowledge of God we may fearlesslydeify our human existence, because God, when he created man, gave hisdivine nature human form. Reason and freedom are the same: the formeris theoretical, the latter practical elevation to the suprasensible. Nevertheless virtue is not based upon an inflexible, despotic, abstractly, formal law, but upon an instinct, which, however, does not aim athappiness. Thus Jacobi attempts to mediate between the ethics of theIllumination and the ethics of Kant, by agreeing with the former in regardto the origin of virtue (it arises from a natural impulse), and with thelatter in regard to its nature (it consists in disinterestedness). Hencewith the Illumination he rejects the imperative form, and with Kant theeudemonistic end. At the same time he endeavors to introduce Herder's ideaof individuality into ethics, by demanding that morality assume a specialform in each man. Schiller and the romantic school take from Jacobi theirideal of the "beautiful soul, " which from natural impulse realizes in itsaction, and still more in its being, the good in an individual way. 

%PART II. FROM KANT TO THE PRESENT TIME. %

CHAPTER IX. 

KANT. 

The suit between empiricism and rationalism had continued for centuries, but still awaited final decision. Are all our ideas the result ofexperience, or are they (wholly or in part) an original possession of themind? Are they received from without (by perception), or produced fromwithin (by self-activity)? Is knowledge a product of sensation or of purethought? All who had thus far taken part in this discussion had resembledpartisans or advocates rather than disinterested judges. They had givenless attention to investigation than to the defense of the traditionaltheses of their schools; they had not endeavored to obtain results, butto establish results already determined; and, along with real arguments, popular appeals had not been despised. Each of the opposing schools hadgiven variations on a definite theme, and whenever timid attempts had beenmade to bring the two melodies into harmony they had met with no approval. The proceedings thus far had at least made it evident to the unbiasedhearer that each of the two parties made extravagant claims, and, in theend, fell into self-contradiction. If the claim of empiricism is true, thatall our concepts arise from perception, then not only the science of thesuprasensible, which it denies, but also the science of the objects ofexperience, about which it concerns itself, is impossible. For perceptioninforms us concerning single cases merely, it can never comprehend allcases, it yields no necessary and universal truth; but knowledge which isnot apodictically valid for every reasoning being and for all cases isnot worthy the name. The very reasons which were intended to prove thepossibility of knowledge give a direct inference to its impossibility. Theempirical philosophy destroys itself, ending with Hume in skepticism andprobabilism. Rationalism is overtaken by a different, and yet an analogousfate--it breaks up into a popular eclecticism. It believes that ithas discovered an infallible criterion of truth in the clearness anddistinctness of ideas, and a sure example for philosophical method in themethod of mathematics. In both points it is wrong. The criterion oftruth is insufficient, for Spinoza and Leibnitz built up their opposingtheories--the pantheism of the one and the monadology of the other--fromequally clear and distinct conceptions; tried by this standardindividualism is just as true as pantheism. Mathematics, again, does notowe its unquestioned acceptance and cogent force to the clearness anddistinctness of its conceptions, but to the fact that these are capableof construction in intuition. The distinction between mathematics andmetaphysics was overlooked, namely, that mathematical thought can transformits conceptions into intuitions, can generate its objects or sensuouslypresent them, which philosophical thought is not in a position to do. Theobjects of the latter must be given to it, and to the human mind they aregiven in no other way than through sensuous intuition. Metaphysics seeksto be a science of the real, but it is impossible to conjure being out ofthought; reality cannot be proved from concepts, it can only be felt. Inmaking the unperceivable and suprasensible (the real nature of things, thetotality of the world, the Deity, and immortality) the special objectof philosophy, rationalism looked on the understanding as a faculty ofknowledge by which objects are given. In reality objects can never be giventhrough concepts; these only render it possible to think objects givenin some other way (by intuition). It is true that concepts of thesuprasensible exist, but nothing can be known through them, there isnothing intuitively given to be subsumed under them. 

With this failure to perceive the intuitive element in mathematics wasjoined the mistake of overlooking its synthetic character. The syllogisticmethod of presentation employed in the Euclidean geometry led to the beliefthat the more special theorems had been derived from the simpler ones, andthese from the axioms, by a process of conceptual analysis; while the factis that in mathematics all progress is by intuition alone, the syllogismserving merely to formulate and explain truths already attained, but not tosupply new ones. Following the example of mathematics thus misunderstood, the mission of philosophy was made to consist in the development ofthe truths slumbering in pregnant first principles by means of logicalanalysis. If only there were metaphysical axioms! If we only did notdemand, and were not compelled to demand, of true science that it increaseour knowledge, and not merely give an analytical explanation of knowledge. When once the clearness and distinctness of conceptions had been takenin so purely formal a sense, it was inevitable that in the end, asproductivity became less, the principle should be weakened down to a meredemand for the explanation and elucidation of the metaphysical ideaspresent in popular consciousness. Thus the rationalistic current lostitself in the shallow waters of the Illumination, which soon gave asready a welcome to the empirical theories--since these also were able tolegitimate themselves by clear and distinct conceptions--as it had givento the results of the rationalistic systems. 

It was thus easy to see that each of the contending parties had been guiltyof one-sidedness, and that in order to escape this a certain mean must beassumed between the two extremes; but it was a much more difficult matterto discover the due middle ground. Neither of the opposing standpoints isso correct as its defenders believe, and neither so false as its opponentsmaintain. Where, then, on either side, does the mistaken narrowness begin, and how far does the justification of each extend?

The conflict centers, first, about the question concerning the origin ofhuman knowledge and the sphere of its validity. Rationalism is justifiedwhen it asserts that some ideas do not come from the senses. If knowledgeis to be possible, some concepts cannot originate in perception, those, namely, by which knowledge is constituted, for if they should, it wouldlack universality and necessity. The sole organ of universally validknowledge is reason. Empiricism, on the other hand, is justified when itasserts that the experiential alone is knowable. Whatever is to be knowablemust be given as a real in sensuous intuition. The only organ of reality issensibility. Rationalism judges correctly concerning the origin of themost important classes of ideas; empiricism concerning the sphere of theirvalidity. The two may be thus combined: some concepts (those which produceknowledge) take their origin in reason or are _a priori_, but they arevalid for objects of experience alone. The conflict concerns, secondly, theuse of the deductive (syllogistic) or the inductive method. Empiricism, through its founder Bacon, had recommended induction in place of the barrensyllogistic method, as the only method which would lead to new discoveries. It demands, above all things, the extension of knowledge. Rationalism, onthe contrary, held fast to the deductive method, because the syllogismalone, in its view, furnishes knowledge valid for all rational beings. Itdemands, first of all, universality and necessity in knowledge. Inductionhas the advantage of increasing knowledge, but it leads only to empiricaland comparative, not to strict universality. The syllogism has theadvantage of yielding universal and necessary truth, but it can onlyexplicate and establish knowledge, not increase it. May it not be possibleso to do justice to the demands of both that the advantages which they seekshall be combined, and the disadvantages which have been feared, avoided?Are there not cognitions which increase our knowledge (are _synthetic_)without being empirical, which are universally and necessarily valid(_a priori_) without being analytic? From these considerations arises themain question of the _Critique of Pure Reason_: How are synthetic judgments_a priori_ possible?

The philosophy of experience had overestimated sense and underestimated theunderstanding, when it found the source of all knowledge in the faculty ofperception and degraded the faculty of thought to an almost wholly inactiverecipient of messages coming to it from without. From the standpoint ofempiricism concepts (Ideas) deserve confidence only in so far as they canlegitimate themselves by their origin in sensations (impressions). Itoverlooks the _active_ character of all knowing. Among the rationalists, on the other hand, we find an underestimation of the senses and anoverestimation of the understanding. They believe that sense revealsonly the deceptive exterior of things, while reason gives their truenon-sensuous essence. That which the mind perceives of things is deceptive, but that which it thinks concerning them is true. The former power is thefaculty of confused, the latter the faculty of distinct knowledge. Sense isthe enemy rather than the servant of true knowledge, which consists in thedevelopment and explication of pregnant innate conceptions and principles. These philosophers forget that we can never reach reality by conceptualanalysis; and that the senses have a far greater importance for knowledgethan merely to give it an impulse; that it is they which supply theunderstanding with real objects, and so with the content of knowledge. Beside the (formal) activity (of the understanding), cognition implies apassive factor, a reception of impressions. Neither sense alone nor theunderstanding alone produces knowledge, but both cognitive powers arenecessary, the active and the passive, the conceptual and the intuitive. Here the question arises, How do concept and intuition, sensuous andrational knowledge, differ, and what is the basis of their congruence?Notwithstanding their different points of departure and their variantresults, the two main tendencies of modern philosophy agree in certainpoints. If the conflict between the two schools and their one-sidednesssuggested the idea of supplementing the conclusions of the one by those ofthe other, the recognition of the incorrectness of their commonconvictions furnished the occasion to go beyond them and to establish anew, a higher point of view above them both, as also above the eclecticismwhich sought to unite the opposing principles. The errors common to bothconcern, in the first place, the nature of judgment and the differencebetween sensibility and understanding. Neither side had recognized thatthe peculiar character of judgment consists in _active connection_. Therationalists made judgment an active function, it is true, but a mereactivity of conscious development, of elucidation and analytical inference, which does not advance knowledge a single step. The empiricists describedit as a process of comparison and discrimination, as the mere perceptionand recognition of the relations and connections already existing betweenideas; while in reality judgment does not discover the relations andconnections of representations, but itself establishes them. In the formercase the synthetic moment is ignored, in the latter the active moment. Theimperfect view of judgment was one of the reasons for the appearance ofextreme theories concerning the origin of ideas in reason or in perception. Rationalism regards even those concepts which have a content as innate, whereas it is only formal concepts which are so. Empiricism regards all, even the highest formal concepts (the categories), as abstracted fromexperience, whereas experience furnishes only the content of knowledge, and not the synthesis which is necessary to it. On the one hand too much, and on the other too little, is regarded as the original possession of theunderstanding. The question "What concepts are innate?" can be decided onlyby answering the further question, What are the concepts through which thefaculty of judgment connects the representations obtained from experience?These connective concepts, these formal instruments of synthesis are_a priori_. The agreement of the two schools is still greater in regard tothe relation of sense and understanding, notwithstanding the apparentlysharp contrast between them. The empiricist considers thought transformed, sublimated perception, while the rationalist sees in perception onlyconfused and less distinct thought. For the former concepts are fadedimages of sensations, for the latter sensations are concepts which have notyet become clear; the difference is scarcely greater than if the one shouldcall ice frozen water, and the other should prefer to call water meltedice. Both arrange intuition and thought in a single series, and derive theone from the other by enhancement or attenuation. Both make the mistake ofrecognizing only a difference in degree where a difference in kind exists. In such a case only an energetic dualism can afford help. Sense andunderstanding are not one and the same cognitive power at different stages, but two heterogeneous faculties. Sensation and thought are not different indegree, but in kind. As Descartes began with the metaphysical dualism ofextension and thought, so Kant begins with the noëtical dualism ofintuition and thought. 

Much more serious, however, than any of the mistakes yet mentioned wasa sin of omission of which the two schools were alike guilty, and therecognition and avoidance of which constituted in Kant's own eyes thedistinctive character of his philosophy and its principiant-advance beyondpreceding systems. The pre-Kantian thinker had proceeded to the discussionof knowledge without raising _the question of the possibility ofknowledge_. He had approached things in the full confidence that the humanmind was capable of cognizing them, and with a naïve trust in the power ofreason to possess itself of the truth. His trust was naïve and ingenuous, because the idea that it could deceive him had never entered his mind. Nowno matter whether this belief in man's capacity for knowledge and in thepossibility of knowing things is justifiable or not, and no matter howfar it may be justifiable, it was in any case untested; so that when theskeptic approached with his objections the dogmatist was defenseless. All previous philosophy, so far as it had not been skeptical, had been, according to Kant's expression, dogmatic; that is, it had held as anarticle of faith, and without precedent inquiry, that we possess the powerof cognizing objects. It had not asked _how_ this is possible; it had noteven asked what knowledge is, what may and must be demanded of it, and bywhat means our reason is in a position to satisfy such demands. It had lefthuman intelligence and its extent uninvestigated. The skeptic, on the otherhand, had been no more thorough. He had doubted and denied man's capacityfor knowledge just as uncritically as the dogmatist had believed andpresupposed it. He had directed his ingenuity against the theories ofdogmatic philosophy, instead of toward the fundamental question of thepossibility of knowledge. Human intelligence, which the dogmatist hadapproached with unreasoned trust and the skeptic with just as unreasoneddistrust, is subjected, according to the plan of the critical philosopher, to a searching examination. For this reason Kant termed his standpoint"criticism, " and his undertaking a "Critique of Reason. " Instead ofasserting and denying, he investigates how knowledge arises, of whatfactors it is composed, and how far it extends. He inquires into the originand extent of knowledge, into its sources and its limits, into the groundsof its existence and of its legitimacy. The Critique of Reason finds itselfconfronted by two problems, the second of which cannot be solved untilafter the solution of the first. The investigation of the sources ofknowledge must precede the inquiry into the extent of knowledge. Only afterthe conditions of knowledge have been established can it be ascertainedwhat objects are attainable by it. Its sphere cannot be determined exceptfrom its origin. 

Whether the critical philosopher stands nearer to the skeptic or to thedogmatist is rather an idle question. He is specifically distinct fromboth, in that he summons and guides the reason to self-contemplation, toa methodical examination of its capacity for knowledge. Where the one hadblindly trusted and the other suspected and denied, he investigates; theyoverlook, he raises the question of the possibility of knowledge. Thecritical problem does not mean, Does a faculty of knowledge exist? but, Ofwhat powers is it composed? are all objects knowable which have been soregarded? Kant does not ask whether, but how and by what means, knowledgeis possible. Everyone who gives himself to scientific reflection mustpostulate that knowledge is possible, and the demand of the noëticaltheorists of the day for a philosophy absolutely without assumptions isquite incapable of fulfillment. Nay, in order to be able to begin hisinquiry at all, it was necessary for Kant to assume still more specialpostulates; for that a cognition of cognition is possible, that there is acritical, self-investigating reason could, at first, be only a matter ofbelief. This would not have excluded a supplementary detailed statementconcerning the _how_ of this self-knowledge, concerning the organ of thecritical philosophy. But Kant never gave one, and the omission subsequentlyled to a sharp debate concerning the character and method of the Critiqueof Reason. On this point, if we may so express it, Kant remained adogmatist. 

Kant felt himself to be the finisher of skepticism; but this was chieflybecause he had received the strongest impulse to the development of hiscritique of knowledge from Hume's inquiries concerning causation. Broughtup in the dogmatic rationalism of the Wolffian school, to which heremained true for a considerable period as a teacher and writer (till about1760), although at the same time he was inquiring with an independentspirit, Kant was gradually won over through the influence of the Englishphilosophy to the side of empirical skepticism. Then--as the result, nodoubt, of reading the _Nouveaux Essais_ of Leibnitz, published in1765--he returned to rationalistic principles, until finally, after arenewal of empirical influences, [1] he took the position crystallized inthe _Critique of Pure Reason_, 1781, which, however, experienced stillother, though less considerable, changes in the sequel, just as in itselfit shows the traces of previous transformations. 

[Footnote 1: Cf. H. Vaihinger's _Kommentar zu Kants Kritik der reinenVernunft_, vol. I. , 1881, pp. 48-49. This is a work marked by acuteness, great industry, and an objective point of view which merits respect. Thesecond volume, which treats of the Transcendental Aesthetic, appeared in1892. ]

It would be a most interesting task to trace in the writings which belongto Kant's pre-critical period the growth and development of the fundamentalcritical positions. Here, however, we can only mention in passing thesubjects of his reflection and some of the most striking anticipations andbeginnings of his epoch-making position. Even his maiden work, _Thoughts onthe True Estimation of Vis Viva_, 1747, betokens the mediating nature ofits author. In this it is argued that when men of profound and penetratingminds maintain exactly opposite opinions, attention must be chieflydirected to some intermediate principle to a certain degree compatible withthe correctness of both parties. The question under discussion was whetherthe measure of _vis viva_ is equal, as the Cartesians thought, to theproduct of the mass into the velocity, or, according to the Leibnitzians, to the product of the mass into the square of the velocity. Kant'sunsatisfactory solution of the problem--the law of Descartes holds fordead, and that of Leibnitz for living forces--drew upon him the derisionof Lessing, who said that he had endeavored to estimate living forceswithout having tested his own. A similar tendency toward compromise--thistime it is a synthesis of Leibnitz and Newton--is seen in his_Habilitationsschrift, Principiorum Primorum Cognitionis Metaphysicae NovaDilucidatio_, 1755, and in the dissertation _Monadologia Physica_, 1756. The former distinguishes between _ratio essendi_ and _ratio cognoscendi_, rejects the ontological argument, and defends determinism against Crusiuson Leibnitzian grounds. In the _Physical Monadology_ Kant gives hisadherence to dynamism (matter the product of attraction and repulsion), andmakes the monads or elements of body fill space without prejudice totheir simplicity. A series of treatises is devoted to subjects in naturalscience: The Effect of the Tides in retarding the Earth's Rotation; TheObsolescence of the Earth; Fire (Inaugural Dissertation), Earthquakes, andthe Theory of the Winds. The most important of these, the _General NaturalHistory and Theory of the Heavens_, 1755, which for a long time remainedunnoticed, and which was dedicated to Frederick II. , developed thehypothesis (carried out forty years later by Laplace in ignorance of Kant'swork) of the mechanical origin of the universe and of the motion of theplanets. It presupposes merely the two forces of matter, attraction andrepulsion, and its primitive chaotic condition, a world-mist with elementsof different density. It is noticeable that Kant acknowledges the failureof the mechanical theory at two points: it is brought to a halt at theorigin of the organic world and at the origin of matter. The mechanicalcosmogony is far from denying creation; on the contrary, the proof thatthis well-ordered and purposive world necessarily arose from the regularaction of material forces under law and without divine intervention, canonly serve to support our assumption of a Supreme Intelligence as theauthor of matter and its laws; the belief is necessary, just becausenature, even in its chaotic condition, can act only in an orderly andregular way. 

The empirical phase of Kant's development is represented by the writingsof the 60's. _The False Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures_, 1762, asserts that the first figure is the only natural one, and that the othersare superfluous and need reduction to the first. In the _Only PossibleFoundation for a Demonstration of the Existence of God_, 1763, which, inthe seventh Reflection of the Second Division, recapitulates the cosmogonyadvanced in the _Natural History of the Heavens_, the discussionsconcerning being ("existence" is absolute position, not a predicate whichincreases the sum of the qualities but is posited in a merely relativeway), and the conclusion, prophetical of his later point of view, "It isaltogether necessary that we should be _convinced_ of the existence of God, but not so necessary that his existence should be _demonstrated_" are morenoteworthy than the argument itself. This runs: All possibility presupposessomething actual wherein and whereby all that is conceivable is given asa determination or a consequence. That actuality the destruction of whichwould destroy all possibility is absolutely necessary. Therefore thereexists an absolutely necessary Being as the ultimate real ground of allpossibility; this Being is one, simple, unchangeable, eternal, the _ensrealissimum_ and a spirit. The _Attempt to introduce the Notion ofNegative Quantities into Philosophy_, 1763, distinguishes--contrary toCrusius--between logical opposition, contradiction or mere negation (_a_and _not-a_, pleasure and the absence of pleasure, power and lack ofpower), and real opposition, which cannot be explained by logic (+_a_ and-_a_, pleasure and pain, capital and debts, attraction and repulsion;in real opposition both determinations are positive, but in oppositedirections). Parallel with this it distinguishes, also, between logicalground and real ground. The prize essay, _Inquiry concerning the Clearness_(Evidence) _of the Principles of Natural Theology and Ethics_, 1764, drawsa sharp distinction between mathematical and metaphysical knowledge, andwarns philosophy against the hurtful imitation of the geometrical method, in place of which it should rather take as an example the method whichNewton introduced into natural science. Quantity constitutes the object ofmathematics, qualities, the object of philosophy; the former is easy andsimple, the latter difficult and complicated--how much more comprehensiblethe conception of a trillion is than the philosophical idea of freedom, which the philosophers thus far have been unable to make intelligible. In mathematics the general is considered under symbols _in concrete_, inphilosophy, by means of symbols _in abstracto_; the former constructs itsobject in sensuous intuition, while the object of the latter is givento it, and that as a confused concept to be decomposed. Mathematics, therefore, may well begin with definitions, since the conception which isto be explained is first brought into being through the definition, whilephilosophy must begin by seeking her conceptions. In the former thedefinition is first in order, and in the latter almost always last; in theone case the method is synthetic, in the other it is analytic. It is thefunction of mathematics to connect and compare clear and certain conceptsof quantity in order to draw conclusions from them; the function ofphilosophy is to analyze concepts given in a confused state, and to makethem detailed and definite. Philosophy has also this disadvantage, thatit possesses very many undecomposable concepts and undemonstrablepropositions, while mathematics has only a few such. "Philosophical truthsare like meteors, whose brightness gives no assurance of their permanence. They vanish, but mathematics remains. Metaphysics is without doubt the mostdifficult of all human sciences _(Einsichten)_, but a metaphysic hasnever yet been written"; for one cannot be so kind as to "apply the termphilosophy to all that is contained in the books which bear this title. " Inthe closing paragraphs, on the ultimate bases of ethics, the stern featuresof the categorical imperative are already seen, veiled by the Englishtheory of moral sense, while the attractive _Observations on the Feelingof the Beautiful and the Sublime_, which appeared in the same year, stillnaïvely follow the empirical road. 

The empirical phase reaches its skeptical termination in the satire _Dreamsof a Ghost-seer explained by the Dreams of Metaphysics_, 1766, which poursout its ingenious sarcasm impartially on spiritualism and on the assumedknowledge of the suprasensible. Here Kant is already clearly conscious ofhis new problem, a theory of the limits of human reason, conscious alsothat the attack on this problem is to be begun by a discussion of thequestion of space. This second question had been for many years a frequentsubject of his reflections;[1] and it was this part of the general criticalproblem that first received definitive solution. In the Latin dissertation_On the Form and Principles of the Sensible and Intelligible World_, 1770, which concludes the pre-critical period, and which was written on theoccasion of his assumption of his chair as ordinary professor, thecritique of sensibility, the new theory of space and time, is set forth inapproximately the same form as in the _Critique of Pure Reason_, while thecritique of the understanding and of reason, the theory of the categoriesand the Ideas and of the sphere of their validity, required for itscompletion the intellectual labor of several more years. For this essay, _De Mundi Sensibilis atque Intelligibilis Forma et Principiis_, leavesunchallenged the possibility of a knowledge of things in themselves and ofGod, thus showing that its author has abandoned the skepticism maintainedin the _Dreams of a Ghost-seer_, and has turned anew to dogmaticrationalism, whose final overthrow required another swing in the directionof skeptical empiricism. In regard to the progress of this latter phaseof opinion, the letters to M. Herz are almost the only, though not veryvaluable, source of information. 

[Footnote 1: _New Theory of Motion and Rest_, 1758; _On the First Ground ofthe Distinction of Positions in Space_, 1768; besides several of the worksmentioned above. ]

The _Critique of Pure Reason_ appeared in 1781, much later than Kant hadhoped when he began a work on "The Limits of Sensibility and Reason, " and asecond, altered edition in 1787. [1] After the _Prolegomena to every FutureMetaphysic which may present itself as Science_, 1783, had given a popularform to the critical doctrine of knowledge, it was followed by the criticalphilosophy of ethics in the _Foundation of the Metaphysics of Ethics_, 1785, and the _Critique of Practical Reason_, 1788; by the criticalaesthetics and teleology in the _Critique of Judgment_, 1790; and by thecritical philosophy of religion in _Religion within the Limits of ReasonOnly_, 1793[2] (consisting of four essays, of which the first, "Of RadicalEvil, " had already appeared in the _Berliner Monatsschrift_ in 1792). The_Metaphysical Elements of Natural Science_, 1786, and the _Metaphysicsof Ethics_, 1797 (in two parts, "Metaphysical Elements of the Theory ofRight, " and "Metaphysical Elements of the Theory of Virtue "), are devotedto the development of the system. The year 1798 brought two more largerworks, the _Conflict of the Faculties_ and the _Anthropology_. Of thereviews, that on Herder's _Ideen_ maybe mentioned, and among the minoressays, the following: _Idea for a Universal History in a CosmopolitanSense, Answer to the Question: What is Illumination f_ both in 1784;_What does it mean to Orient oneself in Thought_? 1786; _On the Use ofTeleological Principles in Philosophy_, 1788; _On a Discovery according towhich all Recent Criticism of Pure Reason is to be superseded by a PreviousOne_, 1790; _On the Progress of Metaphysics since the Time of Wolff; OnPhilosophy in General, The End of all Things_, 1794; _On EverlastingPeace_, 1795. Kant's _Logic_ was published by Jäsche in 1800; his _PhysicalGeography_ and his _Observations on Pedagogics_ by F. T. Rink in 1803; hislectures on the _Philosophical Theory of Religion_ (1817; 2d. Ed. , 1830)and on _Metaphysics_ (1821; cf. Benno Erdmann in the _PhilosophischeMonatshefte_, vol. Xix. 1883, p. 129 _seq_. , and vol. Xx. 1884, p. 65_seq_. ) by Pölitz. If we may judge by the specimens given by Reicke in the_Altpreussische Monatsschrift_, 1882-84, and by Krause himself, [3]the promised publication of a manuscript of Kant's last years, now inpossession of the Hamburg pastor, Albrecht Krause, and which discusses thetransition from the metaphysical elements of natural science to physics, will hardly meet the expectations which some have cherished concerning it. Benno Erdmann has issued _Nachträge zu Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft ausKants Nachlass_, 1881, and _Reflexionen Kants zur kritischen Philosophieaus handschriftlichen Aufzeichnungen_--the first volume first _Heft(Reflexionen zur Anthropologie_) appearing in 1882, the second volume_(Reflexionen zur Kritik der reinen Vernunft, aus Kants Handexemplarvon Baumgartens Metaphysica)_ in 1884. Max Müller has made an Englishtranslation of the _Critique of Pure Reason_, 2 vols. , 1881. [4]

[Footnote 1: There has been much discussion and much has been writtenconcerning the relation of the two editions. In opposition to Schopenhauerand Kuno Fischer it must be maintained that the alterations in the secondedition consist in giving greater prominence to realistic elements, whichin the first edition remained in the background, though present eventhere. ]

[Footnote 2: This publication was the occasion of a conflict between Kantand the censorship concerning the right of free religious inquiry; cf. Dilthey in the _Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie_, vol. In. 1890, pp. 418-450. ]

[Footnote 3: A. Krause: _I. Kant wider K. Fischer, zum ersten Male mitHülfe des verloren gewesenen Kantischen Hauptwerkes vertheidigt_, 1884 (inreply, K. Fischer, _Das Streber- und Gründerthum in der Litteratur_, 1884); also, _Das nachgelassene Werk I. Kants, mit Belegenpopulär-wissenschaftlich dargestellt_, 1888. ]

[Footnote 4: Besides this (centenary) translation the English reader maybe referred to the earlier version of Meiklejohn in Bonn's Library; to theversions of the _Prolegomena_ by Bax (also in Bonn's Library, and includingthe _Metaphysical Elements of Natural Science_), and Mahaffy and Bernard, new ed. , 1889; to Abbot's _Kant's Theory of Ethics_, 4th ed. , 1889, containing the _Foundation of the Metaphysics of Ethics_ and the _Critiqueof Practical Reason_ entire, with portions of the _Metaphysics of Ethics_and _Religion within the Limits of Reason Only_; to Bernard's translationof the _Kritik of Judgment_, 1892; and to Watson's _Selections from Kant_, 2d ed. , 1888 (in Sneath's Modern Philosophers, 1892). --TR. ]

The best complete edition of the works of Kant is the second edition ofHartenstein, in eight volumes, 1867-68, which is chronologically arrangedand excellently gotten up. Simultaneously with the first edition ofHartenstein in ten volumes, in 1838 _seq_. , appeared the edition in twelvevolumes by K. Rosenkranz and F. W. Schubert (containing in the last volumesa biography of Kant by Schubert, and a history of the Kantian philosophy byRosenkranz, 1842). Kehrbach's edition of the principal works in Reclam's_Universal-Bibliothek_, with the pagination of the original and collectiveeditions (1877 _seq_. ), is more valuable than Von Kirchmann's edition ofthe complete works in his _Philosophische Bibliothek_. 

Among the works on Kant those of Kuno Fischer (vols. Iii. -iv. Of the_Geschichte der neueren Philosophie_, 3d ed. , 1882; also Kant's _Leben unddie Grundlagen seiner Lehre_, 1860) take the first place. The writings ofLiebmann, Cohen, Stadler, Riehl, Volkelt, and others will be mentionedlater, in connection with the neo-Kantian movement; here we may give someof the more important monographs and essays, selected from the enormouslydeveloped Kantian literature:

Ad. Böhringer, _Kants erkenntnisstheoretischer Idealismus_, 1888;K. Dieterich, _Die Kantische Philosophie in ihrer innerenEntwickelungsgeschichte_, 2 parts, 1885 (first published separately, _Kant und Newton_, 1877; _Kant und Rousseau_, 1878); W. Dilthey, _Ausden Rostocker Kanthandschriften_ in the _Archiv für Geschichte derPhilosophie_, vols. Ii. -iii. 1889-90; M. W. Drobisch, _Kants Ding an sichund sein Erfahrungsbegriff_, 1885; B. Erdmann, _Kants Kritizismus in derI. Und II. Auflage der Kritik der reinen Vernunft_, 1878; the same, _KantsProlegomena herausgegeben und erläutert_, 1878, Introduction (in reply EmilArnoldt, _Kants Prolegomena nicht doppelt redigiert_, 1879; cf. Also H. Vaihinger, _Die Erdmann-Arnoldtsche Kontroverse_ in the _PhilosophischeMonatshefte_, vol. Xvi. 1880); Franz Erhardt, _Kritik der KantischenAntinomienlehre_, 1888; R. Eucken, _Ueber Bilder und Gleichnisse beiKant, Zeitschrift für Philosophie_, vol. Lxxxiii, 1883, reprinted in his_Beiträge zur Geschichte der neueren Philosophie_, 1886; F. Frederichs, _Der phänomenale Idealismus Berkeleys und Kants_, 1871; the same, _KantsPrinzip der Ethik_, 1879; Ed. Von Hartmann, _Das Ding an sich und seineBeschaffenheit_, 1871, in the 2d ed. , 1875, and the 3d, 1885, entitled_Kritische Grundlegung des transzendentalen Realismus_; C. Hebler, _Kantiana_, in his _Philosophische Aufsätze_, 1869; Alfred Hegler, _DiePsychologie in Kants Ethik_, 1891; A. Hölder, _Darstellung der KantischenErkenntnisstheorie_, 1873 J. Jacobson, _Die Auffindung des Apriori_, 1876;the same, _Ueber die Beziehungen zwischen Kategorien und Urtheilsformen_, 1877; Wilhelm Koppelmann, _Kants Lehre vom analytischen Urtheil, Philosoph. Monatshefte_, vol. Xxi, 1885; the same, _Lotzes Stellung zu KantsKritizismus, Zeitschrift für Philosophie_, vol. Lxxxviii, 1886; the same, _Kants Lehre vom kategorischen Imperativ_, 1888; the same, _Kant und dieGrundlagen der Christlichen Religion_, 1890; E. Laas, _Kants Analogiender Erfahrung_, 1876; the same, _Einige Bemerkungen zurTranszendentalphilosophie_, Strassburg _Abhandlungen_, 1884; J. Mainzer, _Die kritische Epoche in der Lehre von der Einbildungskraft_, 1881; J. B. Meyer, _Kants Psychologie_, 1870; F. Paulsen, _Was Kant uns sein kann, Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie_, 1881; B. Pünjer, _Die Religionslehre Kants_, 1874; R. Quaebicker, _Kants und Herbartsmetaphysische Grundansichten über das Wesen der Seele_, 1870; J. Rehmke, _Physiologie und Kantianismus_, address in Eisenach, 1883; Rud. Reicke, _Lose Blätter aus Kants Nachlass_, 1889 (on this H. Vaihinger in the_Zeitschrift für Philosophie_, vol. Xcvi. 1889); O. Riedel, _Diemonadologischen Bestimmungen in Kants Lehre vom Ding an sich_, dissertationat Kiel, 1884; O. Schneider, _Die psychologische Entwickelung des Apriori_, 1883; the same, _Transzendentalpsychologie_, 1891; F. Staudinger, _Noumena_, 1884; M. Steckelmacher, _Die formale Logik Kants_, BreslauPrize Essay, 1879; A. Stern, _Die Beziehung Garves zu Kant, nebst ungedruckten Briefen_, 1884; C. Stumpf, _Psychologie undErkenntnisstheorie, Abhandlungen der bayerischen Akademie derWissenschaften_, 1891; G. Thiele, _Kants intellectuelle Anschauung alsGrundbegriff seines Kritizismus_, 1876; the same, _Die Philosophie Kantsnach ihrem systematischen Zusammenhange und ihrer logischhistorischenEntiwickelung_, I. (1) _Kants vorkritische Naturphilosophie_, 1882; (2)_Kants vorkritische Erkenntnisstheorie_, 1887; Ad. Trendelenburg, _Uebereine Lücke in Kants Beweis von der ausschliessenden Subjectivität desRaumes and der Zeit_ in vol. Iii. Of his _Historische Beiträge zurPhilosophie_, 1867; Ueberhorst, _Kants Lehre von dem Verhältnisse derKategorien zu der Erfahrung_, 1878; H. Vaihinger, _Eine Blattversetzung inKants Prolegomena, Philosoph. Monatshefte_, vol. Xv. 1879; the same, _ZuKants Widerlegung des Idealismus_, Strassburg _Abhandlungen_, 1884; J. Walter, _Zum Gedächtniss Kants, Festrede_, 1881; Th. Weber, _Zur Kritik derKantischen Erkenntnisstheorie_ (from the _Zeitschrift für Philosophie_), 1882; W. Windelband, _Ueber die verschiedenen Phasen der Kantischen Lehrevom Ding an sich, Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie_, 1877 (cf. The same author's _Geschichte der neueren Philosophie_, § 58);J. Witte, _Beiträge zum Verständniss Kants_, 1874; the same, _KantischerKritizismus gegenüber unkritischem Dilettantismus_ (against A. Stöhr), 1885; Wohlrabe, _Kants Lehre vom Gewissen_, 1889; E. Zeller, _Ueber dasKantische Moralprinzip_, 1880; R. Zimmermann, _Ueber Kants Widerlegung desIdealismus von Berkeley_, 1871; the same, _Ueber Kants mathematischesVorurtheil und dessen Folgen_, 1871. 

Popular expositions have been given by the following: K. Fortlage (in his_Philos. Vorträge_, 1869); E. Last, _Mehr Licht! Die Haupsätze Kants undSchopenhauers_, 1879; the same, _Die realistiche und die idealistischeAnschauung entwickelt an Kants Idealität von Raum und Zeit_, 1884; H. Romundt, _Antaeus, neuer Aufbau der Lehre Kants über Seele, Freiheit, und Gott_, 1882; the same, _Grundlegung zur Reform der Philosophie, vereinfachte und erweiterte Darstellung von Kants Kritik der reinenVernunft_, 1885; the same, _Die Vollendung des Socrates, Kants Grundlegungzur Reform der Sittenlehre_; the same, _Ein neuer Paulus, Kants Grundlegungzu einer sicheren Lehre von der Religion_, 1886; the same, _Die drei FragenKants_, 1887; A. Krause, _Populäre Darstellung von Kants Kritik der reinenVernunft_, 1881; K. Lasswitz, _Die Lehre Kants von der Idealität desRaumes und der Zeit_, 1883; Wilhelm Münz, _Die Grundlagen der KantischenErkenntnisstheorie_, 2d ed. , 1885. 

Among foreigners Villers, Cousin, Nolen, Desdouits, Cantoni, E. Caird [_\ACritical Account of the Philosophy of Kant_, 1877; _The Critical Philosophyof Immanuel Kant_, 2 vols. , 1889], Adamson _[On the Philosophy of Kant_, 1879, and a valuable article in the _Encyclopedia Britannica_, 9th ed. , vol. Xiii. ], Stirling [_Text-book to Kant_, 1881], [Watson, _Kant and hisEnglish Critics_, 1881], Morris _Kant's Critique of Pure Reason_, Griggs'sPhilosophical Classics, 1882, [Wallace, _Kant_, Blackwood's PhilosophicalClassics, 1882; Porter, _Kant's Ethics_, Griggs's Philosophical Classics, 1886; Green, _Lectures_, Works, vol. Ii. , 1886. --Tr. ], have among othersmade contributions to Kantian literature. Of the older works we may mentionthe dictionaries of E. Schmid, 1788, and Mellin (in six volumes), 1797_seq_. , the critique of the Kantian philosophy in the first volume ofSchopenhauer's chief work, 1819, and the essay of C. H. Weisse, _Inwelchem Sinne hat sich die deutsche Philosophie jetzt wieder an Kant zuorientieren_, 1847. 

Kant's outward life was less eventful and less changeful than hisphilosophical development. [1] Born in Königsberg in 1724, the son of J. G. Cant, a saddler of Scottish descent, his home and school training were bothstrict and of a markedly religious type. He was educated at the universityof his native city, and for nine years, from 1746 on, filled the place ofa private tutor. In 1755 he became _Docent_, in 1770 ordinary professor inKönigsberg, serving also for six years of this time as under-librarian. Heseldom left his native city and never the province. The clearnesswhich marked his extremely popular lectures on physical geography andanthropology was due to his diligent study of works of travel, and to anunusually acute gift of observation, which enabled him to draw from hissurroundings a comprehensive knowledge of the world and of man. He ceasedlecturing in 1797, and in 1804 old age ended a life which had always, evenin minute detail, been governed by rule. A man of extreme devotion toduty, particularity, and love of truth, and an amiable, bright, and wittycompanion, Kant belongs to the acute rather than to the profound thinkers. Among his manifold endowments the tendency to combination and the facultyof intuition (as the _Critique of Judgment_ especially shows) are presentto a noticeable degree, yet not so markedly as the power of strict analysisand subtle discrimination. So that, although a mediating tendency isrightly regarded as the distinguishing characteristic of the Kantianthinking, it must also be remembered that synthesis is everywhere precededby a mighty work of analysis, and that this still exerts its power evenafter the adjustment is complete. Thus Kant became the energetic defenderof a qualitative view of the world in opposition to the quantitative viewof Leibnitz, for which antitheses (_e. G. _, sensation and thought, feelingand cognition, good and evil, duty and inclination) fade into meredifferences of degree. 

[Footnote 1: The following have done especially valuable service in theinvestigation of the development of Kant's doctrine: Paulsen (_Versucheiner Entwickelungsgeschichte der Kantischen Erkenntnisstheorie_, 1875), B. Erdmann, Vaihinger, and Windelband. Besides Hume and Leibnitz, Newton, Locke, Shaftesbury, Rousseau, and Wolff exercised an important influenceon Kant. ]

In the beginning of this chapter we have indicated how the new ideal ofknowledge, under whose banner Kant brought about a reform of philosophy, grew out of the conflict between the rationalistic (dogmatic) and theempirical (skeptical) systems. This combines the Baconian ideal of theextension of knowledge with the Cartesian ideal of certainty in knowledge. It is synthetic judgments alone which extend knowledge, while analyticjudgments are explicative merely. [1] _A priori_ judgments alone areperfectly certain, absolutely universal, and necessarily valid; while _aposteriori_ judgments are subjectively valid merely, lack necessity, and, at best, yield only relative universality. [2] All analytic judgments are _apriori_, all empirical or _a posteriori_ judgments are synthetic. Betweenthe two lies the object of Kant's search. Do _synthetic judgments a priori_exist, and how are they possible?

[Footnote 1: "All bodies are extended" is an analytic judgment; "all bodiespossess weight, " a synthetic judgment. The former explicates the conceptof the subject by bringing into notice an idea already contained in it andbelonging to the definition as a part thereof; it is based on the law ofcontradiction: an unextended body is a self-contradictory concept. Thelatter, on the contrary, goes beyond the concept of the subject and addsa predicate which had not been thought therein. It is experience whichteaches us that weight is joined to matter, a fact which cannot be derivedfrom the concept of matter. Almost all mathematical principles aresynthetic, and here, as will be shown, it is not experience but "pureintuition" which permits us to go beyond the concept and add a new markto it. ]

[Footnote 2: The Scholastics applied the term _a priori_ to knowledge fromcauses (from that which precedes), and _a posteriori_ to knowledge fromeffects. Kant, following Leibnitz and Lambert, uses the terms to designatethe antithesis, knowledge from reason and knowledge from experience. An _apriori_ judgment is a judgment obtained without the aid of experience. Whenthe principle from which it is derived is also independent of experience itis absolutely _a priori_, otherwise it is relatively _a priori_. ]

Two sciences discuss the _how_, and a third the _if_ of such judgments, which, at the same time, are ampliative and absolutely universal andnecessary. The first two sciences are pure mathematics and pure naturalscience, of which the former is protected against doubt concerning itslegitimacy by its evident character, and the latter, by the constantpossibility of verification in experience; each, moreover, can point tothe continuous course of its development. All this is absent in the thirdscience, metaphysics, as science of the suprasensible, and to its greatdisadvantage. Experiential verification is in the nature of things deniedto a presumptive knowledge of that which is beyond experience; it lacksevidence to such an extent that there is scarcely a principle to be foundto which all metaphysicians assent, much less a metaphysical text-bookto compare with Euclid; there is so little continuous advance that it israther true that the later comers are likely to overthrow all that theirpredecessors have taught. In metaphysics, therefore, which, it must beconfessed, is actual as a natural tendency, the question is not, as inthe other two sciences, concerning the grounds of its legitimacy, butconcerning this legitimacy itself. Mathematics and pure physics formsynthetic judgments _a priori_, and metaphysics does the same. But theprinciples of the two former are unchallenged, while those of the thirdare not. In the former case the subject for investigation is, Whence thisauthority? in the latter case, Is she thus authorized?

Thus the main question, How are synthetic judgments _a priori_ possible?divides into the subordinate questions, How is pure mathematics possible?How is pure natural science possible, and, How is metaphysics (in twosenses: metaphysics in general, and metaphysics as science) possible? TheTranscendental _Aesthetic_ (the critique of sensibility or the facultyof intuition) answers the first of these questions; the Transcendental_Analytic_ (the critique of the understanding), the second; and theTranscendental _Dialectic_ (the critique of "reason" in the narrower sense)and the Transcendental _Doctrine of Method (Methodenlehre)_, the third. TheAnalytic and the Dialectic are the two parts of the Transcendental "Logic"(critique of the faculty of thought), which, together with the Aesthetic, forms the Transcendental "Doctrine of Elements" _(Elementarlehre)_, incontrast to the Doctrine of Method. The _Critique of Pure Reason_ followsthis scheme of subordinate division, while the _Prolegomena_ co-ordinatesall four parts in the manner first mentioned. 

Let us anticipate the answers. Pure mathematics is possible, because thereare pure or _a priori intuitions_ (space and time), and pure naturalscience or the metaphysics of phenomena, because there are _a prioriconcepts_ (categories) _and principles_ of the pure understanding. Metaphysics as a presumptive science of the suprasensible has been possiblein the form of unsuccessful attempts, because there are _Ideas_ or conceptsof reason which point beyond experience and look as though knowable objectswere given through them; but as real science it is not possible, becausethe application of the categories is restricted to the limits ofexperience, while the objects thought through the Ideas cannot besensuously given, and all assumed knowledge of them becomes involved inirresolvable contradictions (antinomies). On the other hand, a science ispossible and necessary to teach the correct use of the categories, whichmay be applied to phenomena alone, and of the Ideas, which may be appliedonly to our knowledge of things (and our volition), and to determine theorigin and the limits of our knowledge--that is to say, a transcendentalphilosophy. In regard to metaphysics (knowledge from pure reason), then, this is the conclusion reached: Rejection of transcendent metaphysics (thatwhich goes beyond experience), recognition and development of immanentmetaphysics (that which remains within the limits of possible experience). It is not possible as a metaphysic of things in themselves; it is possibleas a metaphysic of nature (of the totality of phenomena), and as ametaphysic of knowledge (critique of reason). 

The interests of the reason are not exhausted, however, by the question, What can we know? but include two further questions, What ought we to do?and, What may we hope? Thus to the metaphysics of nature there is addeda metaphysics of morals, and to the critique of theoretical reason, acritique of practical reason or of the will, together with a critique ofreligious belief. For even if a "knowledge" of the suprasensible is deniedto us, yet "practical" grounds are not wanting for a sufficiently certain"conviction" concerning God, freedom, and immortality. 

After carrying the question of the possibility of synthetic judgments _apriori_ from the knowledge of nature over to the knowledge of our duty, Kant raises it, in the third place, in regard to our judgment concerningthe subjective and objective purposiveness of things, or concerning theirbeauty and their perfection, and adds to his critique of the intellectand the will a critique of the faculty of aesthetic and teleological_judgment_. 

The Kantian philosophy accordingly falls into three parts, one theoretical, one practical (and religious), one aesthetic and teleological. 

 * * * * *

Before advancing to our account of the first of these parts, a fewpreliminary remarks are indispensable concerning the presuppositionsinvolved in Kant's critical work and on the method which he pursues. Thepresuppositions are partly psychological, partly (as the classification ofthe forms of judgment and inference, and the twofold division of judgments)logical, either in the formal or the transcendental sense, and partlymetaphysical (as the thing in itself). Kant takes the first of these fromthe psychology of his time, by combining the Wolffian classification of thefaculties with that of Tetens, and thus obtains six different faculties:lower (sensuous) and higher (intellectual) faculties of cognition, offeeling, and of appetition; or sensibility (the capacity for receivingrepresentations through the way in which we are affected by objects), understanding (the faculty of producing representations spontaneously andof connecting them); the sensuous feelings of pleasure and pain, taste;desire, and will. The understanding in the wide sense is equivalent to thehigher faculty of cognition, and divides further into understanding in thestricter sense (faculty of concepts), judgment (faculty of judging), andreason (faculty of inference). Of these the first gives laws to the facultyof cognition or to nature, the second laws to taste, and the third laws tothe will. 

The most important of the fundamental assumptions concerns the relation, the nature, and the mission of the two faculties of cognition. These donot differ in degree, through the possession of greater or lessdistinctness--for there are sensuous representations which are distinct andintellectual ones which are not so--but specifically: Sensibility is thefaculty of intuitions, understanding the faculty of concepts. Intuitionsare particular, concepts general representations. The former relate toobjects directly, the latter only indirectly (through the mediation ofother representations). In intuition the mind is receptive, in conceptionit acts spontaneously. "Through intuitions objects are _given_ to us;through concepts they are _thought_. " It results from this that neither ofthe two faculties is of itself sufficient for the attainment of knowledge, for cognition is objective thinking, the determination of objects, theunifying combination or elaboration of a given manifold, the forming of amaterial content. Rationalists and empiricists alike have been deceivedin regard to the necessity for co-operation between the senses and theunderstanding. Sensibility furnishes the material manifold, which of itselfit is not able to form, while the understanding gives the unifying form, towhich of itself it cannot furnish a content. "Intuitions without conceptsare _blind_" (formless, unintelligible), "concepts without intuitions are_empty_" (without content). In the one case, form and order are wanting; inthe other, the material to be formed. The two faculties are thrown back oneach other, and knowledge can arise only from their union. 

A certain degree of form is attained in sense, it is true, since the chaosof sensations is ordered under the "forms of intuition, " space and time, which are an original possession of the intuiting subject, but this isnot sufficient, without the aid of the understanding, for the genesis ofknowledge. In view of the _a priori_ nature of space and time, thoughwithout detraction from their intuitive character (they are immediateparticular representations), we may assign pure sensibility to the higherfaculty of cognition and speak of an intuiting reason. 

The forms of intuition and of thought come from within, they lie ready inthe mind _a priori_, though not as completed representations. They arefunctions, necessary actions of the soul, for the execution of which astimulus from without, through sensations, is necessary, but which, whenonce this is given, the soul brings forth spontaneously. The externalimpulse merely gives the soul the occasion for such productive acts, whiletheir grounds and laws are found in its own nature. In this sense Kantterms them "originally acquired, " and in the Introduction to the _Critiqueof Pure Reason_ declares that although it is indubitable that "all ourknowledge begins _with_ experience (impressions of sense), yet it does notall arise _from_ experience. " That a representation or cognition is _apriori_[1] does not mean that it precedes experience in time, but that(apart from the merely exciting, non-productive stimulation throughimpressions already mentioned) it is independent of all experience, that itis not derived or borrowed from experience. 

[Footnote 1: The terms _a priori_ representation and pure representation(concept, intuition) are equivalent; but in judgments, on the other hand, there is a distinction. A judgment is _a priori_ when the connection takesplace independently of experience, no matter whether the concepts connectedare _a priori_ or not. If the former is the case the _a priori_ judgment ispure (mixed with nothing empirical); if the latter, it is mixed. ]

The material of intuition and thought is given to the soul, received byit; it arises through the action of objects upon the senses, and is alwaysempirical. Intuition is the only organ of reality; in sensation thepresence of a real object as the cause of the sensation is directlyrevealed. When Kant's transcendental idealism was placed by a reviewer on alevel with the empirical idealism of Berkeley, which denies the existenceof the external world, he distinctly asserted that it had never enteredhis mind to question the reality of external things. Further, after theexistence of real things affecting the senses had been transformed inhis mind from a basis of the investigation into an object of inquiry, he endeavored to defend this assumption (which at first he had naïvelyborrowed from the realism of pre-scientific thought) by arguments, butwithout any satisfactory result. [1]

[Footnote 1: The task of confirming the existence of things in themselveschanges under his hands into another, that of proving the existence ofexternal phenomena. "That external objects are real as representations"Berkeley had never disputed. ]

On the basis of the inseparability of sensibility and understanding theideal of knowledge--an extension of knowledge to be attained by _a priori_means (p. 333)--experiences a remarkable addition in the position that therational synthesis thus obtained must be a knowledge of reality, must beapplied to matter given in intuition. To the question, "How are syntheticjudgments _a priori possible_?" is joined a second equally legitimateinquiry, "How do they become _objectively valid_, or applicable to objectsof experience?" The principle from which their validity is proved--they areapplicable to objects of experience because _without them experience wouldnot be possible_, because they are _conditions of experience_--like thecriterion of apriority (strict universality and necessity), is one of thenoëtic assumptions of the critical theory. [1]

[Footnote 1: Cf. Vaihinger, _Kommentar_, i. Pp. 425-430. ]

Inasmuch as its investigation relates to the conditions of experience theKantian criticism follows a method which it itself terms _transcendental_. Heretofore, when the metaphysical method had been adopted, the object hadbeen the suprasensible; and when knowledge had been made the object ofinvestigation, the method followed had been empirical, psychological. Kanthad the right to consider himself the creator of noëtics, for he showed itthe transcendental point of view. Knowledge is an object of experience, butits conditions are not. The object is to explain knowledge, not merely todescribe it psychologically, --to establish a new science of knowledge fromprinciples, from pure reason. That which lies beyond experience issealed from our thought; that which lies on this side of it is stilluninvestigated, though capable and worthy of investigation, and inextreme need thereof. Criticism forbids the _transcendent_ use of reason(transcending experience); it permits, demands, and itself exercises the_transcendental_[1] use of it, which explains an experiential object, knowledge, from its conditions, which are not empirically given. 

[Footnote A: Kant applies the term _transcendental_ to the knowledge (thediscovery, the proof) of the _a priori_ factor and its relation to objectsof experience. Unfortunately he often uses the same word not only todesignate the _a priori_ element itself, but also as a synonym fortranscendent. In all three cases its opposite is _empirical_, namely, empirico-psychological investigation by observation in distinction fromnoëtical investigation from principles; empirical origin in distinctionfrom an origin in pure reason, and empirical use in distinction fromapplication beyond the limits of experience. ]

There is, apparently, a contradiction between the empiristic result of theCritique of Reason (the limitation of knowledge to objects of experience)and its rationalistic proofs (which proceed metaphysically, notempirically), and, in fact, a considerable degree of opposition reallyexists. Kant argues in a metaphysical way that there can be no metaphysics. This contradiction is solved by the distinction which has been mentionedbetween that which is beyond, and that which lies within, the boundary ofexperience. That metaphysic is forbidden which on the objective side soarsbeyond experience, but that pure rational knowledge is permissible andnecessary which develops from principles the grounds of experientialknowledge existing in the subject. In the Kantian school, however, thesecomplementary elements, --empirical result, transcendental or metaphysical, properly speaking, pro-physical method, --were divorced, and the oneemphasized, favored, and further developed at the expense of the other. The empiricists hold to the result, while they either weaken or completelymisunderstand the rationalism of the method: the _a priori_ factor, saysFries, was not reached by _a priori_, but by _a posteriori_, means, andthere is no other way by which it could have been reached. The constructivethinkers, Fichte and his successors, adopt and continue the metaphysicalmethod, but reject the empirical result. Fichte's aim is directed toa system of necessary, unconscious processes of reason, among which, rejecting the thing in itself, he includes sensation. According toSchelling nature itself is _a priori_, a condition of consciousness. Thisdiscrepancy between foundation and result continues in an altered form evenamong contemporary thinkers--as a discussion whether the "main purpose"of Criticism is to be found in the limitation of knowledge to possibleexperience, or the establishment of _a priori_ elements--though many, inadherence to Kant's own view, maintain that the metaphysics of knowledgeand of phenomena (immanent rationalism) is the only legitimate metaphysics. 

%1. Theory of Knowledge. 

(a) The Pure Intuitions (Transcendental Aesthetic). %--The first part of theCritique of Reason, the Transcendental Aesthetic, lays down the positionthat _space and time_ are not independent existences, not real beings, andnot properties or relations which would belong to things in themselvesthough they were not intuited, but _forms of our intuition_, which havetheir basis in the subjective constitution of our, the human, mind. If weseparate from sensuous intuition all that the understanding thinks in itthrough its concepts, and all that belongs to sensation, these two forms ofintuition remain, which may be termed pure intuitions, since they can beconsidered apart from all sensation. As subjective _conditions_ (lying inthe nature of the subject) through which alone a thing can become an objectof intuition for us, they precede all empirical intuitions or are_a priori_. 

Space and time are neither substantial receptacles which contain allthat is real nor orders inhering in things in themselves, but forms ofintuition. Now all our representations are either pure or empirical intheir origin, and either intuitive or conceptual in character. Kantadvances four proofs for the position that space and time are not empiricaland not concepts, but pure intuitions: (1) Time is not an empiricalconcept which has been abstracted from experience. For the coexistence orsuccession of phenomena, _i. E. _, their existence at the same time or atdifferent times (from which, as many believe, the representation of timeis abstracted), itself presupposes time--a coexistence or succession ispossible only in time. It is no less false that space is abstracted fromthe empirical space relations of external phenomena, their existenceoutside and beside one another, or in different places, for it isimpossible to represent relative situation except in space. Thereforeexperience does not make space and time possible; but space and time firstof all make experience possible, the one outer, the other inner experience. They are postulates of perception, not abstractions from it. (2) Time is anecessary representation _a priori_. We can easily think all phenomena awayfrom it, but we cannot remove time itself in view of phenomena in general;we can think time without phenomena, but not phenomena without time. Thesame is true of space in reference to external objects. Both are conditionsof the possibility of phenomena. (3) Time is not a discursive or generalconcept. For there is but one time. And different times do not precede theone time as the constituent parts of which it is made up, but are merelimitations of it; the part is possible only through the whole. In the sameway the various spaces are only parts of one and the same space, and canbe thought in it alone. But a representation which can be given only bya single object is a particular representation or an intuition. Because, therefore, of the oneness of space and time, the representation of eachis an intuition. The _a priori_, immediate intuition of the one space isentirely different from the empirical, general conception of space, whichis abstracted from the various spaces. (4) Determinate periods of timearise by limitation of the one, fundamental time. Consequently thisoriginal time must be unlimited or infinite, and the representation of itmust be an intuition, not a concept. Time contains in itself an endlessnumber of representations (its parts, times), but this is never thecase with a generic concept, which, indeed, is contained as a partialrepresentation in an endless number of representations (those of theindividuals having the same name), and, consequently, comprehends them allunder itself, but which never contains them in itself. The general concepthorse is contained in each particular representation of a horse as ageneral characteristic, and that of justice in each representation of adefinite just act; time, however, is not contained in the different times, but they are contained in it. Similarly the relation of infinite space tothe finite spaces is not the logical relation of a concept to examples ofit, but the intuitive relation of an unlimited whole to its limited parts. 

The _Prolegomena_ employs as a fifth proof for the intuitive character ofspace, an argument which had already appeared in the essay _On the UltimateGround of the Distinction of Positions in Space_. There are certain spatialdistinctions which can be grasped by intuition alone, and which areabsolutely incapable of comprehension through the understanding--forexample, those of right and left, above and below, before and behind. Nological marks can be given for the distinction between the object and itsimage in the mirror, or between the right ear and the left. The completedescription of a right hand must, in all respects (quality, proportionateposition of parts, size of the whole), hold for the left as well;but, despite the complete similarity, the one hand cannot be exactlysuper-imposed on the other; the glove of the one cannot be worn on theother. This difference in direction, which has significance only whenviewed from a definite point, and the impossibility mentioned of acongruence between an object (right hand) and its reflected image (lefthand) can be understood only by intuition; they must be seen and felt, andcannot be made clear through concepts, and, consequently, can never beexplained to a being which lacks the intuition of space. 

In the "transcendental" exposition of space and time Kant follows this"metaphysical" exposition, which had to prove their non-empirical, andnon-discursive, hence their _a priori_ and intuitive, character, withthe proof that only such an explanation of space and time could make itconceivable how synthetic cognitions _a priori_ can arise from them. Theprinciples of mathematics are of this kind. The synthetic character ofgeometrical truths is explained by the intuitive nature of space, theirapodictic character by its apriority, and their objective reality orapplicability to empirical objects by the fact that space is the conditionof (external) perception. The like is true of arithmetic and time. 

If space were a mere concept, no proposition could be derived from it whichshould go beyond the concept and extend our knowledge of its properties. The possibility of such extension or synthesis in mathematics depends onthe fact that spatial concepts can always be presented or "constructed" inintuition. The geometrical axiom that in the triangle the sum of two sidesis greater than the third is derived from intuition, by describing thetriangle in imagination or, actually, on the board. Here the object isgiven through the cognition and not before it. --If space and time wereempirical representations the knowledge obtained from them would lacknecessity, which, as a matter of fact, it possesses in a marked degree. While experience teaches us only that something is thus or so, and not thatit could not be otherwise, the axioms, (space has only three dimensions, time only one; only one straight line is possible between two points), nay, all the propositions of mathematics are strictly universal andapodictically certain: we are entirely relieved from the necessity ofmeasuring all triangles in the world in order to find out whether the sumof their angles is equal to two right angles, and we do not need, as in thecase of judgments of experience, to add the limitation, so far as it is yetknown there are no exceptions to this rule. The apriority is the _ratioessendi_ of the strict necessity involved in the "it must be so" _(desSoseinmüssens_), while the latter is the _ratio cognoscendi_ of the former. Now since the necessity of mathematical judgments can only be explainedthrough the ideality of space, this doctrine is perfectly certain, notmerely a probable hypothesis. --The validity of mathematical principles forall objects of perception, finally, is based on the fact that they arerules under which alone experience is possible for us. It should bementioned, further, that the conceptions of change and motion (change ofplace) are possible only through and in the representation of time. Noconcept could make intelligible the possibility of change, that is, of theconnection of contradictory predicates in one and the same thing, but theintuition of succession easily succeeds in accomplishing it. 

The argument is followed by conclusions and explanations based upon it;(1) Space is the form of the outer, time of the inner, sense. Through theouter sense external objects are given to us, and through the inner senseour own inner states. But since all representations, whether they haveexternal things for their objects or not, belong in themselves, as mentaldeterminations, to our inner state, time is the formal condition of allphenomena in general, directly of internal (psychical) phenomena, and, thereby, indirectly of external phenomena also. (2) The validity of therelations of space and time cognizable _a priori_ is established for allobjects of possible experience, but is limited to these. They are validfor _all phenomena_ (for all things which at any time may be given to oursenses), but only for these, not for things as they are _in themselves_. They have "empirical reality, but, at the same time, transcendentalideality. " As external phenomena all things are beside one another inspace, and all phenomena whatever are in time and of necessity undertemporal relations; in regard to all things which can occur in ourexperience, and in so far as they can occur, space and time areobjectively, therefore empirically, real. But they do not possess absolutereality (neither subsistent reality nor the reality of inherence); for ifwe abstract from our sensuous intuition both vanish, and, apart from thesubject (_N. B. _, the transcendental subject, concerning which more below), they are naught. It is only from man's point of view that we can speakof space, and of extended, moveable, changeable things; for we can knownothing concerning the intuitions of other thinking beings, we have nomeans of discovering whether they are bound by the same conditions whichlimit our intuitions, and which for us are universally valid. (3) Nothingwhich is intuited in space is a thing in itself. What we call externalobjects are nothing but mere representations of our sensibility, whosetrue correlative, the _thing in itself_, cannot be known by ever so deeppenetration into the phenomenon; such properties as belong to things inthemselves can never be given to us through the senses. Similarly nothingthat is intuited in time is a thing in itself, so that we intuit ourselvesonly as we appear to ourselves, and not as we are. 

The merely empirical reality of space and time, the limitation of theirvalidity to phenomena, leaves the certainty of knowledge within the limitsof experience intact; for we are equally certain of it, whether these formsnecessarily belong to things in themselves, or only to our intuitionsof things. The assertion of their absolute reality, on the other hand, involves us in sheer absurdities (that is, it necessitates the assumptionof two infinite nonentities which exist, but without being anything real, merely in order to comprehend all reality, and on one of which even our ownexistence would be dependent), in view of which the origin of so peculiara theory as the idealism of Berkeley appears intelligible. The criticaltheory of space and time is so far from being identical with, or akin to, the theory of Berkeley, that it furnishes the best and only defense againstthe latter. If anyone assumes the absolute or transcendental reality ofthese forms, it is impossible for him to prevent everything, including evenour own existence, from being changed thereby into mere illusion. Butthe critical philosopher is far from degrading bodies to mere illusion;external phenomena are just as real for him as internal phenomena, thoughonly as phenomena, it is true, as (possible) representations. 

Phenomenon and illusion are not the same. The transcendental distinctionbetween phenomena and things in themselves must not be confused with thedistinction common to ordinary life and to physics, in accordance withwhich we call the rainbow a mere appearance (better, illusion), but thecombination of sun and rain which gives rise to this illusion the thingin itself, as that which in universal experience and in all differentpositions with respect to the senses, is thus and not otherwise determinedin intuition, or that which essentially belongs to the intuition of theobject, and is valid for every human sensibility (in antithesis to thatwhich only contingently belongs to it, and is valid only for a specialposition or organization of this or that sense). Similarly an object alwaysappears to grow smaller as its distance increases, while in itself it isand remains of some fixed size. And this use of words is perfectlycorrect, in the _physical or empirical_ sense of "in itself"; but in the_transcendental_ sense the raindrops, also, together with their form andsize, are themselves mere phenomena, the "in itself" of which remainsentirely unknown to us. Kant, moreover, does not wish to see thesubjectivity of the forms of intuition placed on a level with thesubjectivity of sensations or explained by this, though he accepts it asa fact long established. The sensations of color, of tone, of temperatureare, no doubt, like the representation of space in that they belong only tothe subjective constitution of the sensibility, and can be attributed toobjects only in relation to our senses. But the great difference betweenthe two is that these sense qualities may be different in different persons(the color of the rose may seem different to each eye), or may fail toharmonize with any human sense; that they are not _a priori_ in the samestrict sense as space and time, and consequently afford no knowledge of theobjects of possible experience independently of perception; and that theyare connected with the phenomenon only as the contingently added effects ofa particular organization, while space, as the condition of externalobjects, necessarily belongs to the phenomenon or intuition of them. _It isthrough space alone that it is possible for things to be external objectsfor us_. The subjectivity of sensation is individual, while that of spaceand time is general or universal to mankind; the former is empirical, individually different, and contingent, the latter _a priori_ andnecessary. Space alone, not sensation, is a _conditio sine qua non_ ofexternal perception. Space and time are the sole _a priori_ elements ofthe sensibility; all other sensuous concepts, even motion and change, presuppose perception; the movable in space and the succession ofproperties in an existing thing are empirical data. 

In confirmation of the theory that all objects of the senses are merephenomena, the fact is adduced that (with the exception of the will and thefeelings, which are not cognitions) nothing is given us through the sensesbut representations of relations, while a thing in itself cannot be knownby mere relations. The phenomenon is a sum total of mere relations. Inregard to matter we know only extension, motion, and the laws of thismotion or forces (attraction, repulsion, impenetrability), but all theseare merely relations of the thing to something, else, that is, externalrelations. Where is the inner side which underlies this exterior, andwhich belongs to the object in itself? This is never to be found in thephenomenon, and no matter how far the observation and analysis of naturemay advance (a work with unlimited horizons!) they reach nothing butportions of space occupied by matter and effects which matter exercises, that is, nothing beyond that which is comparatively internal, and which, in its turn, consists of external relations. The absolutely inner sideof matter is a mere fancy; and if the complaint that the "inner side" ofthings is concealed from us is to mean that we do not comprehend whatthe things which appear to us may be in themselves, it is unjust andirrational, for it demands that we should be able to intuit withoutsenses, in other words, that we should be other than men. The transcendentquestions concerning the noumenon of things are unanswerable; we knowourselves, even, only as phenomena! A phenomenon consists in nothing butthe relation of something in general to the senses. 

It is indubitable _that_ something corresponds to phenomena, which, by affecting our sensibility, occasions sensations in us, and therebyphenomena. The very word, the very concept, "phenomenon", indicates arelation to something which is not phenomenon, to an object not dependenton the sensibility. _What_ this may be continues hidden from us, forknowledge is impossible without intuition. Things in themselves areunknowable. Nevertheless the idea (it must be confessed, the entirely emptyidea) of this "transcendental object", as an indeterminate somewhat = _x_which underlies phenomena, is not only allowable, but, as a limitingconcept, unavoidable in order to confine the pretensions of sense to theonly field which is accessible to it, that is, to the field of phenomena. 

The inference "space and time are nothing but representations andrepresentations are in us, therefore space and time as well as allphenomena in them, bodies with their forces and motions, are in us, " doesnot accurately express Kant's position, for he might justly reply that, according to him, bodies as phenomena are in different parts in space fromthat which we assign to ourselves, and thus without us; that space is theform of external intuition, and through it external objects arise for usfrom sensations; but that, in regard to the things in themselves whichaffect us, we are entirely ignorant whether they are within or without us. 

It can easily be shown by literal quotations that there were distincttendencies in Kant, especially in the first edition of his principalwork, toward a radical idealism which doubts or denies not merely thecognizability, but also the existence of objects external to the subjectand its representations, and which degrades the thing in itself to a merethought in us, or completely does away with it (_e. G. _, "The representationof an object as a thing in general is not only insufficient, but, . . . Independently of empirical conditions, in itself contradictory "). Butthese expressions indicate only a momentary inclination toward such a view, not a binding avowal of it, and they are outweighed by those in whichidealism is more or less energetically rejected. That which according toKant _exists outside the representation of the individual_ is twofold: (1)the unknown things in themselves with their problematical characteristics, as the ground of phenomena; (2) the phenomena "themselves" with theirknowable immanent laws, and their relations in space and time, as possiblerepresentations. When I turn my glance away from the rose its rednessvanishes, since this predicate belongs to it only in so far and so longas it acts in the light on my visual apparatus. What, then, is left? Thatthing in itself, of course, which, when it appears to me, calls forth in methe intuition of the rose. But there is still something else remaining--thephenomenon of the rose, with its size, its form, and its motion in thewind. For these are predicates which must be attributed to the phenomenonitself as the object of my representation. If the rose, as determined inspace and time, vanished when I turned my head away, it could not, unlessintuited by a subject, experience or exert effects in space and time, couldnot lose its leaves in the wind and strew the ground with its petals. Perception and thought inform me not merely concerning events of which I ama witness, but also of others which have occurred, or which will occur, inmy absence. The process of stripping the leaves from the rose has actuallytaken place as a phenomenon and does not first become real by my subsequentrepresentation of it or inference to it. The things and events of thephenomenal world exist both before and after my perception, and aresomething distinct from my subjective and momentary representations ofthem. The space and time, however, in which they exist and happen arenot furnished by the intuiting individual, but by the supra-individual, _transcendental consciousness_ or generic reason of the race. Thephenomenon thus stands midway between its objective ground (the absolutething in itself) and the subject, whose common product it is, as a relativething in itself, as a reality which is independent of the contingent andchanging representation of the individual, empirical subject, which isdependent for its form on the transcendental subject, and which is the onlyreality accessible to us, yet entirely valid for us. The phenomenal worldis not a contingent and individual phenomenon, but one necessary for allbeings organized as we are, a phenomenon for humanity. My representationsare not the phenomena themselves, but images and signs through which Icognize phenomena, _i. E. _, real things as they are for me and for every man(not as they are in themselves). The reality of phenomena consists in thefact that they can be perceived by men, and the objective validity of myknowledge of them in the fact that every man must agree in it. The lawswhich the understanding (not the individual understanding!) imposes uponnature hold for phenomena, because they hold for every man. Objectivity isuniversal validity. If the world of phenomena which is intuited and knownby us wears a different appearance from the world of things in themselves, this does not justify us in declaring it to be mere seeming and dreaming; adream which all dream together, and which all must dream, is not a dream, but reality. As we must represent the world> so it is, though for us, ofcourse, and not in itself. 

Many places in Kant's works seem to argue against the intermediate positionhere ascribed to the world of phenomena--according to which it is less thanthings in themselves and more than subjective representation--which, sincethey explain the phenomenon as a mere representation, leave room for onlytwo factors (on the one hand, the thing in itself = that in the thing whichcannot be represented; on the other, the thing for me = my representationof the thing). In fact, the distinction between the phenomenon "itself"and the representation which the individual now has of it and now does nothave, is far from being everywhere adhered to with desirable clearness; andwherever it is impossible to substitute that which has been representedand that which may be represented or possible intuitions for "mererepresentations in me, " we must acknowledge that there is a departurefrom the standpoint which is assumed in some places with the greatestdistinctness. The latter finds unequivocal expression, among other places, in the "Analogies of Experience" and the "Deduction of the Pure Conceptsof the Understanding, " § 2, No. 4 (first edition). The second of thesepassages speaks of one and the same universal experience, in which allperceptions are represented in thoroughgoing and regular connection, and ofthe thoroughgoing affinity of phenomena as the basis of the possibilityof the association of representations. This affinity is ascribed to theobjects of the senses, not to the representations, whose association israther the result of the affinity, and not to the things in themselves, inregard to which the understanding has no legislative power. 

The relation between the thing in itself and the phenomenon is alsovariable. Now they are regarded as entirely heterogeneous (that which cannever be intuited exists in a mode opposed to that of the intuited andintuitable), and now as analogous to each other (non-intuitable propertiesof the thing in itself correspond to the intuitable characteristics of thephenomenon). The former is the case when it is said that phenomena are inspace and time, while things in themselves are not; that in the first ofthese classes natural causation rules, and in the second freedom; thatin the one-conditioned existence alone is found, in the otherunconditioned. [1] But just as often things in themselves and phenomena areconceived as similar to one another, as two sides of the same object, [2]of which one, like the counter-earth of the Pythagoreans, always remainsturned away from us, while the other is turned toward us, but does notreveal the true being of the object. According to this each particularthing, state, relation, and event in the world of phenomena would have itsreal counterpart in the noumenal sphere: un-extended roses in themselveswould lie back of extended roses, certain non-temporal processes back oftheir growth and decay, intelligible relations back of their relations inspace. This is approximately the relation of the two conceptions as in parttaught by Lotze himself, in part represented by him as taught by Kant. Herbart's principle, "So much seeming, so much indication of being" (_wieviel Schein so viel Hindeutung aufs Sein_), might also be cited inthis connection. That which continually impelled Kant, in spite of hisproclamation of the unknowableness of things in themselves, to form ideasabout their character, was the moral interest, but this sometimes threw itsinfluence in favor of their commensurability with phenomena and sometimesin the opposite scale. For in his ethics Kant needs the intelligiblecharacter or man as noumenon, and must assume as many men in themselves (tobe consistent, then, in general, as many beings in themselves) as there arein the world of phenomena. But for practical reasons, again, the causalityof the man in himself must be thought of as entirely different from, andopposed to, the mechanical causality of the sense world. Kant's judgmentis, also, no more stable concerning the value of the knowledge of thesuprasensible, which is denied to us. "I do not _need_ to know whatthings in themselves may be, because a thing can never be presented to meotherwise than as a phenomenon. " And yet a natural and ineradicable need ofthe reason to obtain some conviction in regard to the other world is saidto underlie the abortive attempts of metaphysics; and Kant himself usesall his efforts to secure to the practical reason the satisfaction of thisneed, though he has denied it to the speculative reason, and to make goodthe gap in knowledge by faith. From the theoretical standpoint an extensionof knowledge beyond the limits of phenomena appears impossible, butunnecessary; from the practical standpoint it is, to a certain extent, possible and indispensable. 

[Footnote 1: Kant's conjectures concerning a common ground of material andmental phenomena, and those concerning the common root of sensibility andunderstanding, show the same tendency. On the one hand, duality, on theother, unity. ]

[Footnote 2: "Phenomenon, which always has _two sides_, the one when theobject in itself is considered (apart from the way in which it is intuited, and just because of which fact its character always remains problematical), the other when we regard the form of the intuition of this object, whichmust be sought not in the object in itself, but in the subject to whom theobject appears, while it nevertheless actually and necessarily belongsto the phenomenon of _this object_. " "This predicate "--_sc_. , spatialquality, extension--"is attributed to things only in so far as _they_appear to us. "]

There is, then, a threefold distinction to be made: (1) _Things inthemselves_, which can never be the object of our knowledge, because ourforms of intuition are not valid for them. (2) _Phenomena_, things for us, nature or the totality of that which either is or, at least, may be theobject of our knowledge (here belong the possible inhabitants of the moon, the magnetic matter which pervades all bodies, and the forces of attractionand repulsion, though the first have never been observed, and the second isnot perceptible on account of the coarseness of our senses, and thelast, because forces in general are not perceptible; nature comprehendseverything whose existence "is connected with our perceptions in a possibleexperience"[1]). (3) _Our representations_ of phenomena, _i. E. _, that ofthe latter which actually enters into the consciousness of the empiricalindividual. In the realm of things in themselves there is no motionwhatever, but at most an intelligible correlate of this relation; in theworld of phenomena, the world of physics, the earth moves around the sun;in the sphere of representation the sun moves around the earth. It is true, as has been said, that Kant sometimes ignores the distinction betweenphenomena as related to noumena and phenomena as related torepresentations; and, as a result of this, that the phenomenon is eithercompletely volatilized into the representation[2] or split up into anobjective half independent of us and a representative half dependent on us, of which the former falls into the thing in itself, [3] while the latter isresolved into subjective states of the ego. 

[Footnote 1: "Nothing is actually given to us but the perception and theempirical progress from this to other possible perceptions. " "To call aphenomenon a real thing antecedent to perception, means . . . That in the_progress of experience_ we must meet with such a perception. "]

[Footnote 2: Phenomena "are altogether in me, " "exist only in oursensibility as a modification of it. " "There is nothing in space but thatwhich is actually represented in it. " Phenomena are "mere representations, which, if they are not given in us (in perception) nowhere exist. "]

[Footnote 3: Here Kant is guilty of the fault which he himself hascensured, of confusing the physical and transcendental meanings of "initself. " He forgets that the thing, if it is momentarily not intuited orrepresented by me, and therefore is not immediately given for me as anindividual, is nevertheless still present for me as man, is mediatelygiven, that is, is discoverable by future search. That which is withoutmy present consciousness is not for this reason without all humanconsciousness. In fact, Kant often overlooks the distinction between actualand possible intuition, so that for him the "objects" of the latter slipout of space and time and into the thing in itself. To the "transcendentalobject we may ascribe the extent and connection of our possibleperceptions, and say that it is given in itself before all experience. " Init "the real things of the past are given. "]

After the possibility and the legitimacy of synthetic judgments _apriori_ have been proved for pure mathematics upon the basis of thepure intuitions, there emerges, in the second place, the problem of thepossibility of _a priori_ syntheses in pure natural science, or thequestion, Do pure concepts exist? And after this has been answered in theaffirmative, the further questions come up, Is the application of these, first, to phenomena, and second, to things in themselves, possible andlegitimate, and how far?

%(b) The Concepts and Principles of the Pure Understanding (TranscendentalAnalytic). %--Sensations, in order to become "intuition" or the perceptionof a phenomenon, needed to be ordered in space and time; in order to become"experience" or a unified knowledge of objects, intuitions need a synthesisthrough concepts. In order to objective knowledge the manifold of intuition(already ordered by its arrangement in space and time) must be connected inthe unity of the concept. Sensibility gives the manifold to be connected, the understanding the connecting unity. The former is able to intuit only, the latter only to think; knowledge can arise only as the result of theirunion. Intuitions depend on affections, concepts on functions, that is, onunifying acts of the understanding. 

To discover the pure forms of thought it is necessary to isolate theunderstanding, just as an isolation of the sensibility was necessary abovein order to the discovery of the pure forms of intuition. We obtain theelements of the pure knowledge of the understanding by rejecting all thatis intuitive and empirical. These elements must be pure, must be concepts, further, not derivative or composite, but fundamental concepts, and theirnumber must be complete. This completeness is guaranteed only when the pureconcepts or _categories_ are sought according to some common principle, which assigns to each its position in the connection of the whole, andnot (as with Aristotle) collected by occasional, unsystematic inquiriesundertaken at random. The table of the forms of judgment will serve as aguide for the discovery of the categories. Thought is knowledge throughconcepts; the understanding can make no other use of concepts than to judgeby means of them. Hence, since the understanding is the faculty of judging, the various kinds of connection in judgment must yield the various pure"connective-concepts" (_Verknüpfungsbegriffe_. --K. Fischer) or categories. 

In regard to quantity, every judgment is universal, particular, orsingular; in regard to quality, affirmative, negative, or infinite; inregard to relation, categorical, hypothetical, or disjunctive; and inregard to modality, problematical, assertory, or apodictic. To thesetwelve forms of judgment correspond as many categories, viz. , I. , Unity, Plurality, Totality; II. , Reality, Negation, Limitation; III. , Subsistenceand Inherence (Substance and Accident), Causality and Dependence (Cause andEffect), Community (Reciprocity between the Active and the Passive);IV. , Possibility--Impossibility, Existence--Non-existence, Necessity--Contingency. 

The first six of these fundamental concepts, which have no correlatives, constitute the mathematical, the second six, which appear in pairs, the dynamical categories. The former relate to objects of (pure or ofempirical) intuition, the latter to the existence of these objects (inrelation to one another or to the understanding). Although all other _apriori_ division though concepts must be dichotomous, each of the fourheads includes three categories, the third of which in each case arisesfrom the combination of the second and first, [1] but, nevertheless, is anoriginal (not a derivative) concept, since this combination requires aspecial _actus_ of the understanding. Universality or totality is pluralityregarded as unity, limitation is reality combined with negation, communityis the reciprocal causality of substances, and necessity is the actualitygiven by possibility itself. Kant omits, as unnecessary here, the useful, easy, and not unpleasant task of noting the great number of derivativeconcepts _a priori_ (predicables) which spring from the combination ofthese twelve original concepts (predicaments = categories) with oneanother, or with the modes of pure sensibility, --the concepts force, action, passion, would belong as subsumptions under causality, presenceand resistance under community, origin, extinction, and change undermodality, --since his object is not a system, but only the principles ofone. His liking or even love for this division according to quantity, quality, relation, and modality, which he always has ready as though itwere a universal key for philosophical problems, reveals a very strongarchitectonic impulse, against which even his ever active skepticaltendency is not able to keep up the battle. 

[Footnote 1: Concerning this "neat observation, " Kant remarked that itmight "perhaps have important consequences in regard to the scientific formof all knowledge of reason. " This prophecy was fulfilled, although in adifferent sense from that which floated before his mind. Fichte and Hegelcomposed their "thought-symphonies" in the three-four time given by Kant. ]

In view of the derivation of the forms of thought from the forms ofjudgment Kant does not stop to give a detailed proof that the categoriesare concepts, and that they are pure. Their discursive (not intuitive)character is evident from the fact that their reference to the object ismediate only (and not, as in the case of intuition, immediate), and their_a priori_ origin, from the necessity which they carry with them, and whichwould be impossible if their origin were empirical. Here Kant starts fromHume's criticism of the idea of cause. The Scottish skeptic had said thatthe necessary bond between cause and effect can neither be perceived norlogically demonstrated; that, therefore, the relation of causality is anidea which we--with what right?--add to perceived succession in time. Thisdoubt (without the hasty conclusions), says Kant, must be generalized, mustbe extended to the category of substance (which had been already done byHume, pp. 226-7, though the author of the Critique of Reason was not awareof the fact), and to all other pure concepts of the understanding. Then wemay hope to kindle a torch at the spark which Hume struck out. The problem"It is impossible to see why, because something exists, something else mustnecessarily exist, " is the starting point alike of Hume's skepticism andKant's criticism. The former recognized that the principle of causalityis neither empirical nor analytic, and therefore concluded that it is aninvention of reason, which confuses subjective with objective necessity. The latter shows that in spite of its subjective origin it has an objectivevalue; that it is a truth which is independent of all experience, and yetvalid for all who have experience, and for all that can be experienced. 

Of the two questions, "How can the concepts which spring from ourunderstanding possess objective validity?" and, "How (through what meansor media) does their application to objects of experience take place?"the first is answered in the Deduction of the Pure Concepts of theUnderstanding, and the second in the chapter on their Schematism. 

The _Deduction_, the most difficult portion of the Critique, shows that theobjective validity of the categories, as concepts of objects in general, depends on the fact that _through them alone experience_ as far as regardsthe form of thought _is possible, _i. E. _, it is only through them that anyobject whatever can be thought. All knowledge consists in judgments; alljudgments contain a connection of representations; all connection--whetherit be conscious or not, whether it relates to concepts or to pure orempirical intuitions--is an _act of the understanding_; it cannot be givenby objects, but only spontaneously performed by the subject itself. Wecannot represent anything as connected in the object unless we haveourselves first connected it. The connection includes three conceptions:that of the manifold to be connected (which is given by intuition), thatof the act of synthesis, and that of the unity; this last is two-fold, an objective unity (the conception of an object in general in which themanifold is united), and a subjective unity (the unity of consciousnessunder which or, rather, through which the connection is effected). Thecategories represent the different kinds of combination, each one of these, again, being completed in three stages, which are termed the Synthesis ofApprehension in Intuition, the Synthesis of Reproduction in Imagination, and the Synthesis of Recognition in Concepts. If I wish to think the timefrom one noon to the next, I must (1) grasp (apprehend) the manifoldrepresentations (portions of time) in succession; (2) retain or renew(reproduce) in thought those which have preceded in passing to those whichfollow; (3) be conscious that that which is now thought is the samewith that thought before, or know again (recognize) the reproducedrepresentation as the one previously experienced. If the mind did notexercise such synthetic activity the manifold of representation would notconstitute a whole, would lack the unity which consciousness alone canimpart to it. Without this _one_ consciousness, concepts and knowledge ofobjects would be wholly impossible. The unity of pure self-consciousnessor of "transcendental apperception" is the postulate of all use of theunderstanding. In the flux of internal phenomena there is no constantor abiding self, but the unchangeable consciousness here demanded is aprecedent condition of all experience, and gives to phenomena a connectionaccording to laws which determine an object for intuition, _i. E. _, theconception of something in which they are necessarily connected. [1]Reference to an object is nothing other than the necessary unity ofconsciousness. The connective activity of the understanding, and withit experience, is possible only through "the synthetic unity of pureapperception, " the "I think, " which must be able to accompany all myrepresentations, and through which they first become _mine_. 

[Footnote 1: Object is "that which opposes the random or arbitrarydetermination of our cognitions, " and which causes "them to be determinedin a certain way _a priori_. "]

Experience (in the strict sense) is distinguished from perception(experience in the wide sense) by its objectivity or universal validity. Ajudgment of perception (the sun shines upon the stone and the stone becomeswarm) is only subjectively valid; while, on the other hand, a judgment ofexperience (the sun warms the stone) aims to be valid not only for me andmy present condition, but always, for me and for everyone else. If theformer is to become the latter, an _a priori_ concept must be added tothe perception (in the above case, the concept of cause), under which theperception is subsumed. The category determines the perceptions in view ofthe form of the judgment, gives to the judgment its reference to an object, and thus gives to the percepts, or rather, concepts (sunshine and warmth), necessary and universally valid connection. The "reason why the judgmentsof others" must "agree with mine" is "the unity of the object to which theyall relate, with which they agree, and hence must also all agree with oneanother. "

Though the categories take their origin in the nature of the subject, theyare objective and valid for objects of experience, because experience ispossible alone through them. They are not the product, but the groundof experience. The second difficulty concerns their applicability tophenomena, which are wholly disparate. By what means is the gulf betweenthe categories, which are concepts and _a priori_, and perceptions, whichare intuitous and empirical, bridged over? The connecting link is suppliedby the imagination, as the faculty which mediates between sensibility andunderstanding to provide a concept with its image, and consists in theintuition of time, which, in common with the categories, has an _a priori_character, and, in common with perceptions, an intuitive character, so thatit is at once pure and sensuous. The subsumption of phenomena or empiricalintuitions under the category is effected through the _Schemata_[1] of theconcepts of the understanding, _i. E. _, through _a priori_ determinationsof time according to rules, which relate to time-_series_, time-_content_, time-_order_, and time-_comprehension_, and indicate whether I have toapply this or that category to a given object. 

[Footnote 1: The schema is not an empirical image, but stands midwaybetween this (the particular intuition of a definite triangle or dog) andthe unintuitable concept, as a general intuition (of a triangle or a dogin general, which holds alike for right- and oblique-angled triangles, forpoodles and pugs), or as a rule for determining our intuition in accordancewith a concept. ]

Each category has its own schema. The schema of quantity is number, ascomprehending the successive addition of homogeneous parts. Filled time(being in time) is the schema of reality, empty time (not-being in time)the schema of negation, and more or less filled time (the intensity ofsensation, indicating the degree of reality) the schema of limitation. Permanence in time is the sign for the application of the category ofsubstance;[1] regular succession, for the application of the concept ofcause; the coexistence of the determinations of one substance with those ofanother, the signal for their subsumption under the concept of reciprocity. The schemata of possibility, actuality, and necessity, finally, areexistence at any time whatever (whensoever), existence at a definite time, and existence at all times. By such schematic syntheses the pure conceptis brought near to the empirical intuition, and the way is prepared for anapplication of the former to the latter, or, what is the same thing, forthe subsumption of the latter under the former. 

[Footnote 1: This determination is important for psychology. Sincethe inner sense shows nothing constant, but everything in a continualflux, --for the permanent subject of our thoughts is an identical activityof the understanding, not an intuitable object, --the concept of substanceis not applicable to psychical phenomena. Representations of a permanent(material substances) exist, indeed, but not permanent representations. Theabiding self (ego, soul) which we posit back of internal phenomena is, asthe Dialectic will show, a mere Idea, which, or, rather, the object ofwhich, maybe "thought" as substance, it is true, but cannot be "given" inintuition, hence cannot be "known. "]

As a result of the fact that the schematism permits a presentation of thecategories in time intuition antecedent to all experience, the possibilityis given of synthetic judgments _a priori_ concerning objects of possibleexperience. Such judgments, in so far as they are not based on higherand more general cognitions, are termed "principles, " and the system ofthem--to be given, with the table of the categories as a guide, inthe _Analytic of Principles_ or the Doctrine of the Faculty ofJudgment--furnishes the outlines of "pure natural science. " When thusthe rules of the subsumption to be effected have been found in the pureconcepts, and the conditions and criteria of the subsumption in theschemata, it remains to indicate the principles which the understanding, through the aid of the schemata, actually produces _a priori_ from itsconcepts. 

The principle of quantity is the _Axiom of Intuition_, the principle ofquality the _Anticipation of Perception_; the principles of relationare termed _Analogies of Experience_, those of modality _Postulatesof Empirical Thought in General_. The first runs, "All intuitions areextensive quantities"; the second, "In all phenomena sensation, and thereal which corresponds to it in the object, has an intensive quantity, i. E. , a degree. " The principle of the "Analogies" is, "All phenomena, asfar as their existence is concerned, are subject _a priori_ to rules, determining their mutual relation in time" (in the second edition this isstated as follows: "Experience is possible only through the representationof a necessary connection of perceptions"). As there are three modes oftime, there result three "Analogies, " the principles of permanence, ofsuccession (production), and of coexistence. These are: (1) "In all changesof phenomena the substance is permanent, and its quantum is neitherincreased nor diminished in nature. " (2) "All changes take place accordingto the law of connection between cause and effect"; or, "Everything thathappens (begins to be) presupposes something on which it follows accordingto a rule. " (3) "All substances, in so far as they are coexistent, stand incomplete community, that is, reciprocity, one to another. " And, finally, the three "Postulates": "That which agrees with the formal conditions ofexperience (in intuition and in concepts) is possible, " "That which isconnected with the material conditions of experience (sensation) is actual"(perception is the only criterion of actuality). "That which, in itsconnection with the actual, is determined by universal conditions ofexperience, is (exists as) necessary. "

As the categories of substance and causality are specially preferred to theothers by Kant and the Kantians, and are even proclaimed by some as theonly fundamental concepts, so also the principles of relation have anestablished reputation for special importance. The leading ideas in theproofs of the "Analogies of Experience"--for in spite of their underivativecharacter the principles require, and are capable of, proof--may next benoted. 

The time determinations of phenomena, the knowledge of their duration, their succession, and their coexistence, form an indispensable part of ourexperience, not only of scientific experience, but of everyday experienceas well. How is the objective time-determination of things and eventspossible? If the matter in hand is the determination of the particulars ofa fight with a bloody ending, the witnesses are questioned and testify:We heard and saw how A began the quarrel by insulting B, and the latteranswered the insult with a blow, whereupon A drew his knife and wounded hisopponent. Here the succession of perceptions on the part of the personspresent is accepted as a true reproduction of the succession of the actualevents. But the succession of perceptions is not always the sure indicationof an actual succession: the trees along an avenue are perceived one afterthe other, while they are in reality coexistent. We might now propose thefollowing statement: The representation of the manifold of phenomena isalways successive, I apprehend one part after another. I can decide whetherthese parts succeed one another in the object also, or whether theyare coexistent, by the fact that, in the second case, the series ofmy perceptions is reversible, while in the first it is not. I can, if Ichoose, direct my glance along the avenue in such a way that I shall beginthe second time with the tree at which I left off the first time; if I wishto assure myself that the parts of a house are coexistent, I cause my eyeto wander from the upper to the lower portions, from the right side to theleft, and then to perform the same motions in the opposite direction. Onthe other hand, it is not left to my choice to hear the thunder eitherbefore or after I see the lightning, or to see a passing wagon now here, now there, but in these cases I am bound in the succession of my sensuousrepresentations. The possibility of interchange in the series ofperceptions proves an objective coexistence, the impossibility of this, an objective succession. But this criterion is limited to the immediatepresent, and fails us when a time relation between unobserved phenomena isto be established. If I go at evening into the dining room and see a vesselof bubbling water, which is to be used in making tea, over a burning spiritlamp, whence do I derive the knowledge that the water began, and couldbegin, to boil only after the alcohol had been lighted, and not before?Because I have often seen the flame precede the boiling of the water, andin this the irreversibility of the two perceptions has guaranteed to me thesuccession of the events perceived? Then I may only assume that it is veryprobable, not that it is certain, that in this case also the order of thetwo events has been the same as I have observed several times before. As amatter of fact, however, we all assert that the water could not have comeinto a boiling condition unless the generation of heat had preceded; thatin every case the fire must be there before the boiling of the water cancommence. Whence do we derive this _must_? Simply and alone from thethought of a causal connection between the two events. Every phenomenon_must_ follow in time that phenomenon of which it is the effect, and mustprecede that of which it is the cause. It is through the relation ofcausality, and through this alone, that the objective time relation ofphenomena is determined. If nothing preceded an event on which it mustfollow according to a rule, [1] then all succession in perception would besubjective merely, and nothing whatever would be objectively determined byit as to what was the antecedent and what the consequent in the phenomenonitself. We should then have a mere play of representations withoutsignificance for the real succession of events. Only the thought of a rule, according to which the antecedent state contains the necessary condition ofthe consequent state, justifies us in transferring the time order of ourrepresentations to phenomena. [2] Nay, even the distinction betweenthe phenomenon itself, as the object of our representations, and ourrepresentations of it, is effected only by subjecting the phenomenon tothis rule, which assigns to it its definite position in time after anotherphenomenon by which it is caused, and thus forbids the inversion of theperceptions. We can derive the rule of the understanding which produces theobjective time order of the manifold from experience, only because we haveput it into experience, and have first brought experience into being bymeans of the rule. We recapitulate in Kant's own words: The objective(time) relation of phenomena remains undetermined by mere perception (themere succession in my apprehension, if it is not determined by means of arule in relation to an antecedent, does not guarantee any succession inthe object). In order that this may be known as determined, the relationbetween the two states must be so conceived (through the understanding'sconcept of causality) that it is thereby determined with necessity which ofthem must be taken as coming first, and which second, and not conversely. Thus it is only by subjecting the succession of phenomena to the law ofcausality that empirical knowledge of them is possible. Without the conceptof cause no objective time determination, and hence, without it, noexperience. 

[Footnote 1: "A reality following on an empty time, that is, a beginning ofexistence preceded by no state of things, can as little be apprehended asempty time itself. "]

[Footnote 2: "If phenomena were things in themselves no one would be able, from the succession of the representations of their manifold, to tell howthis is connected in the object. "]

That which the relation of cause and effect does for the succession[1] ofphenomena, the relation of reciprocity does for their coexistence, and thatof substance and accident for their duration. Since absolute time is not anobject of perception, the position of phenomena in time cannot be directlydetermined, but only through a concept of the understanding. When Iconclude that two objects (the earth and the moon) must be coexistent, because perceptions of them can follow upon one another in both ways, Ido this on the presupposition that the objects themselves reciprocallydetermine their position in time, hence are not isolated, but stand incausal community or a relation of reciprocal influence. It is only on thecondition of reciprocity between phenomena, through which they form awhole, that I can represent them as coexistent. 

[Footnote 1: Against the objection that cause and effect are frequently, indeed in most cases, simultaneous (_e. G. _ the heated stove and the warmthof the room), Kant remarks that the question concerns the order of timemerely, and not the lapse of time. The ball lying on a soft cushion issimultaneous, it is true, with its effect, the depression in the cushion. "But I, nevertheless, distinguish the two by the time relation of dynamicalconnection. For if I place the ball on the cushion, its previously smoothsurface is followed by a depression, but if there is a depression in thecushion (I know not whence) a leaden ball does not follow from it. "]

Coexistence and succession can be represented only in a permanentsubstratum; they are merely the modes in which the permanent exists. Sincetime (in which all change takes place, but which itself abides and does notchange) in itself cannot be perceived, the substratum of simultaneity andsuccession must exist in phenomena themselves: the permanent in relationto which alone all the time relations of phenomena can be determined, issubstance; that which alters is its determinations, accidents, or specialmodes of existing. Alteration, _i. E. _, origin and extinction, is true ofstates only, which can begin and cease to be, and not of substances, whichchange (_sich verändern_), i. E. , pass from one mode of existence intoanother, but do not alter (_wechseln_), i. E. , pass from non-existence intoexistence, or the reverse. It is the permanent alone that changes, andits states alone that begin and cease to be. The origin and extinction ofsubstances, or the increase and diminution of their quantum, would removethe sole condition of the empirical unity of time; for the time relationsof the coexistent and the successive can be perceived only in an identicalsubstratum, in a permanent, which exists always. The law "From nothingnothing comes, and nothing can return to nothing, " is everywhere assumedand has been frequently advanced, but never yet proved, for, indeed, it isimpossible to prove it dogmatically. Here the only possible proof for it, the critical proof, is given: the principle of permanence is a necessarycondition of experience. The same argument establishes the principle ofsufficient reason, and the principle of the community of substances, together with the unity of the world to be inferred from this. The threeAnalogies together assert: "All phenomena exist in one nature and must soexist, because without such a unity _a priori_ no unity of experience, and therefore no determination of objects in experience, would bepossible. "--In connection with the Postulates the same transcendental proofis given for a series of other laws of nature _a priori_, viz. , that in thecourse of the changes in the world--for the causal principle holds only foreffects in nature, not for the existence of things as substances--therecan be neither blind chance nor a blind necessity (but only a conditional, hence an intelligible, necessity); and, further, that in the series ofphenomena, there can be neither leap, nor gap, nor break, and hence novoid--_in mundo non datur casus, non datur fatum, non datur saltus, nondatur hiatus_. 

While the dynamical principles have to do with the relation of phenomena, whether it be to one another (Analogies), or to our faculty of cognition(Postulates), the mathematical relate to the quantity of intuitions andsensations, and furnish the basis for the application of mathematicsto natural science. [1] An extensive quantity is one in which therepresentation of the parts makes the representation of the whole possible, and so precedes it. I cannot represent a line without drawing it inthought, i. E. , without producing all parts of it one after the other, starting from a point. All phenomena are intuited as aggregates or ascollections of previously given parts. That which geometry asserts ofpure intuition (i. E. , the infinite divisibility of lines) holds also ofempirical intuition. An intensive quantity is one which is apprehended onlyas unity, and in which plurality can be represented only by approximationto negation = 0. Every sensation, consequently every reality in phenomena, has a degree, which, however small it may be, is never the smallest, butcan always be still more diminished; and between reality and negation thereexists a continuous connection of possible smaller intermediate sensations, or an infinite series of ever decreasing degrees. The property ofquantities, according to which no part in them is the smallest possiblepart, and no part is simple, is termed their continuity. All phenomenaare continuous quantities, i. E. , all their parts are in turn (furtherdivisible) quantities. Hence it follows, first, that a proof for an emptyspace or empty time can never be drawn from experience, and secondly, thatall change is also continuous. "It is remarkable, " so Kant ends his proofof the Anticipation, "that of quantities in general we can know one_quality_ only _a priori_, namely, their continuity, while with regard toquality (the real of phenomena) nothing is known to us _a priori_ but theirintensive _quantity_, that is, that they must have a degree. Everythingelse is left to experience. "

[Footnote 1: In each particular science of nature, science proper (i. E. , apodictically certain science) is found only to the extent in whichmathematics can be applied therein. For this reason chemistry can neverbe anything more than a systematic art or experimental doctrine; andpsychology not even this, but only a natural history of the inner sense ornatural description of the soul. That which Kant's _Metaphysical Elementsof Natural Science_, 1786--in four chapters, Phoronomy, Dynamics, Mechanics, and Phenomenology--advances as pure physics or the metaphysicsof corporeal nature, is a doctrine of motion. The fundamental determinationof matter (of a somewhat which is to be the object of the external senses)is motion, for it is only through motion that these senses can be affected, and the understanding itself reduces all other predicates of matter tothis. The second and most valuable part of the work defines matter as themovable, that which fills space by its moving force, and recognizes twooriginal forces, repulsive, expansive superficial force or force ofcontact, by which a body resists the entrance of other bodies into its ownspace, and attractive, penetrative force or the force which works at adistance, in virtue of which all particles of matter attract one another. In order to a determinate filling of space the co-operation of bothfundamental forces is required. In opposition to the mechanical theory ofthe atomists, which explains forces from matter and makes them inhere init, Kant holds fast to the dynamical view which he had early adopted (cf. P. 324), according to which forces are the primary factor and matter isconstituted by them. ]

The outcome of the Analytic of Principles sounds bold enough. _Theunderstanding is the lawgiver of nature_: "It does not draw its laws _apriori_ from nature, but prescribes them to it"; the principles of the pureunderstanding are the most universal laws of nature, the empirical laws ofnature only particular determinations of these. All order and regularitytake their origin in the spirit, and are put into objects by this. Universal and necessary knowledge remained inexplicable so long as it wasassumed that the understanding must conform itself to objects; it is atonce explained if, conversely, we make objects conform themselves to theunderstanding. This is a reversal of philosophical opinion which may justlybe compared to the Copernican revolution in astronomy; it is just asparadoxical as the latter, but just as incontestably true, and just as richin results. The sequel will show that this strangely sounding principle, that things conform themselves to our representations and the laws ofnature are dependent on the understanding, is calculated to make us humblerather than proud. Our understanding is lawgiver within the limits of itsknowledge, no doubt, but it knows only within the limits of its legislativeauthority; nature, to which it dictates laws, is nothing but a totality ofphenomena; beyond the limits of the phenomenal, where its commands becomeof no effect, its wishes also find no hearing. 

In the second edition the Analytic of Principles contains as a supplement a"Refutation of Idealism, " which, in opposition to Descartes's position thatthe only immediate experience is inner experience, from which we reachouter experience by inference alone, argues that, conversely, it is onlythrough outer experience, which is immediate experience proper, that innerexperience--as the consciousness of my own existence in time--is possible. For all time determination presupposes something permanent in perception, and this permanent something cannot be in me (the mere representation of anexternal thing), but only actually existing things which I perceive withoutme. There is, further, a chapter on the "Ground of the Distinction of allObjects in general into Phenomena and Noumena, " with an appendix on theAmphiboly (ambiguity) of the Concepts of Reflection. The latter showsthat the concepts of comparison: identity and difference, agreement andopposition, the internal and the external, matter and form, acquireentirely different meanings when they relate to phenomena and to things inthemselves (in other words, to things in their relation to the sensibility, and in relation to the understanding merely); and further, in a criticismof the philosophy of Leibnitz, reproaches him with having intellectualizedphenomena, while Locke is said to have sensationalized the concepts of theunderstanding. 

The chapter on the distinction between phenomena and noumena very muchlessens the hopes, aroused, perchance, by the establishment of thenon-empirical origin of the categories, for an application of these notconfined to any experience. Although the categories, that is, are in theirorigin entirely independent of all experience (so much so that they firstmake experience possible), they are yet confined in their applicationwithin the bounds of possible experience. They "serve only to spellphenomena, that we may be able to read them as experience, " and whenapplied to things in themselves lose all significance. [1] Similarly theprinciples which spring from them are "nothing more than principles ofpossible experience, " and can be referred to phenomena alone, beyond whichthey are arbitrary combinations without objective reality. Things inthemselves may be thought, but they can never be known; for knowledge, besides the empty thought of an object, implies intuitions which must besubsumed under it or by which the object must be determined. In themselvesthe pure concepts relate to all that is thinkable, not merely to that whichcan be experienced, but the schemata, which assures their applicability inthe field of experience, at the same time limit them to this sphere. Theschematism makes the immanent use of the categories, and thus a metaphysicsof phenomena, possible, but the transcendent use of them, and consequentlythe metaphysics of the suprasensible, impossible. The case would bedifferent if our intuition were intellectual instead of sensuous, or, which is the same thing, if our understanding were intuitive instead ofdiscursive; then the objects which we think would not need to be given usfrom another source (through sensuous intuition), but would be themselvesproduced in the act by which we thought them. The divine spirit may be suchan archetypal, creative understanding (_intellectus archetypus_), whichgenerates objects by its thought; the human spirit is not such, andtherefore is confined, with its knowledge, within the circle of possibleperception. --The conception of "intellectual intuition" leads to adistinction in regard to things in themselves: in its negative meaningnoumenon denotes a thing in so far as it is _not_ the object of our_sensuous_ intuition, in its positive meaning a thing which is theobject of a _non-sensuous_ intuition. The positive thing in itself is aproblematical concept; its possibility depends on the existence of anintuitive understanding, something about which we are ignorant. Thenegative thing in itself cannot be known, indeed, but it can be thought;and the representation of it is a possible concept, one which is notself-contradictory[2] (a principle which is of great importance forpractical philosophy). Still further, it is an indispensable concept, whichshows that the boundary where our intuition ends is not the boundary ofthe thinkable as well; and even if it affords no positive extension ofknowledge[3] it is, nevertheless, very useful, since it sets bounds to theuse of the understanding, and thus, as it were, negatively extends ourknowledge. That which lies beyond the boundary, the "how are they possible"_(Wiemöglichkeit)_ of things in themselves is shrouded in darkness, but theboundary itself, _i. E. _, the "that they are possible" _(Dassmöglichkeit)_, of things in themselves, and the unknowableness of their nature, belongs tothat which is within the boundary and lies in the light. In this way Kantbelieved that the categories of causality and substance might be applied tothe relation of things in themselves to phenomena without offending againstthe prohibition of their transcendent use, since here the boundary appearedonly to be touched, and not overstepped. 

[Footnote 1: "A pure use of the categories is no doubt possible, that is, not self-contradictory, but it has no kind of objective validity, becauseit refers to no intuition to which it is meant to impart the unity of anobject. The categories remain forever mere functions of thought by which noobject can be given to me, but by which I can only think whatever maybe given to me in intuition" (_Critique of Pure Reason_, Max Müller'stranslation, vol. Ii. P. 220). Without the condition of sensuous intuition, for which they supply the synthesis, the categories have no relation to anydefinite object; for without this condition they contain nothing but thelogical function, or the form of the concept, by means of which alonenothing can be known and distinguished as to any object belonging to it(_Ibid_. , pp. 213, 214). ]

[Footnote 2: The thing in itself denotes the object in so far as it canbe thought by us, but not intuited, and consequently not determined byintuitions, _i. E. _, cannot be known. It is only through the schematismthat the categories are limited to phenomena. O. Liebmann (_Kant und dieEpigonen_, p. 27, and _passim_) overlooks or ignores this when he says:Kant here allows himself to "recognize an object emancipated from theforms of knowledge, therefore an irrational object, _i. E. _, to representsomething which is not representable--wooden iron. " The thing in itself isinsensible, but not irrational, and the forms of intuition and forms ofthought joined by Liebmann under the title forms of knowledge have in Kanta by no means equal rank. ]

[Footnote 3: A category by itself, freed from all conditions of intuition(_e. G. _, the representation of a substance which is thought withoutpermanence in time, or of a cause which should not act in time), can yieldno definite concept of an object. ]

Though the concepts of the understanding possess a cognitive value in thesphere of phenomena alone, the hope still remains of gaining an entranceinto the suprasensible sphere through the concepts of reason. It isindubitable that our spirit is conscious of a far higher need than that forthe mere connection of phenomena into experience; it is that which cannotbe experienced, the Ideas God, freedom, and immortality, which form thereal end of its inquiry. Can this need be satisfied, and how? Can this endbe attained, and reality be given to the Ideas? This is the third questionof the Critique of Reason. 

%(c) The Reason's Ideas of the Unconditioned (TranscendentalDialectic). %--"All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds thence tothe understanding, and ends with reason. " The understanding is thefaculty of rules, reason the faculty of principles. The categories of theunderstanding are necessary concepts which make experience possible, andwhich, therefore, can always be given in experience; the Ideas of reasonare necessary concepts to which no corresponding object can be given. Eachof the Ideas gives expression to an unconditioned. How does the concept ofthe unconditioned arise, and what service does it perform for knowledge?

As perceptions are connected by the categories in the unity of theunderstanding, and thus are elevated into experience, so the manifoldknowledge of experience needs a higher unity, the unity of reason, in orderto form a connected system. This is supplied to it by the Ideas--which, consequently, do not relate directly to the objects of intuition, but onlyto the understanding and its judgments--in order, through the conceptof the unconditioned, to give completion to the knowledge of theunderstanding, which always moves in the sphere of the conditioned, _i. E. _, to give it the greatest possible unity together with the greatest possibleextension. The concept of the absolute grows out of the logical task whichis incumbent on reason, _i. E. _, inference, and it may be best explainedfrom this as a starting point. In the syllogism the judgment asserted inthe conclusion is derived from a general rule, the major premise. Thevalidity of this general proposition is, however, itself conditional, dependent on higher conditions. Then, as reason seeks the condition foreach conditioned moment, and always commands a further advance inthe series of conditions, it acts under the Idea of _the totalityof conditions_, which, nevertheless, since it can never be given inexperience, does not denote an object, but only an heuristic maxim forknowledge, the maxim, namely, never to stop with any one condition asultimate, but always to continue the search further. The Idea of theunconditioned or of the completeness of conditions is a goal which we neverattain, but which we are continually to approach. The categories and theprinciples of the understanding were _constitutive_ principles, the Ideasare _regulative_ merely; their function is to guide the understanding, togive it a direction helpful for the connection of knowledge, not to informit concerning the actual character of things. 

Since reason is the faculty of inference (as the understanding was found tobe the faculty of judgment), the forms of the syllogism perform the sameservice for us in our search for the Ideas as the forms of judgment inthe discovery of the categories. To the categorical, hypothetical, anddisjunctive syllogisms correspond the three concepts of reason, the soul orthe thinking subject, the world or the totality of phenomena, and God, theoriginal being or the supreme condition of the possibility of all that canbe thought. By means of these we refer all inner phenomena to the ego astheir (unknown) common subject, think all beings and events in nature asordered under the comprehensive system of the (never to be experienced)universe, and regard all things as the work of a supreme (unknowable)intelligence. These Ideas are necessary concepts; not accidental productsnor mere fancies, but concepts sprung from the nature of reason; theiruse is legitimate so long as we remember that we can have a problematicalconcept of objects corresponding to them, but no knowledge of these; thatthey are problems and rules for knowledge, never objects and instruments ofit. Nevertheless the temptation to regard these regulative principles asconstitutive and these problems as knowable objects is almost irresistible;for the ground of the involuntary confusion of the required with the givenabsolute lies not so much in the carelessness of the individual as in thenature of our cognitive faculty. The Ideas carry with them an unavoidableillusion of objective reality, and the sophistical inferences which springfrom them are not sophistications of men, but of pure reason itself, arenatural misunderstandings from which even the wisest cannot free himself. At best we can succeed in avoiding the error, not in doing away with thetranscendental illusion from which it proceeds. We can see through theillusion and avoid the erroneous conclusions built upon it, not shake offthe illusion itself. 

On this erroneous objective use of the Ideas three so-called sciences arebased: speculative psychology, speculative cosmology, and speculativetheology, which, together with ontology, constitute the stately structureof the (Wolffian) metaphysics. The Critique of Reason completes its workof destruction when, as Dialectic (Logic cf. Illusion), it follows therefutation of dogmatic ontology--developed in the Analytic--whichbelieved that it knew things in themselves through the concepts ofthe understanding, with a refutation of rational psychology, rationalcosmology, and rational theology. It shows that the first is founded onparalogisms, and the second entangled in irreconcilable contradictions, while the third makes vain efforts to prove the existence of the SupremeBeing. 

(i) _The Paralogisms of Rational Psychology_. The transcendentalself-consciousness or pure ego which accompanies and connects all myrepresentations, the subject of all judgments which I form, is, as theAnalytic recognized, the presupposition of all knowing (pp. 358-359), butas such it can never become an object of knowledge. We must not makea given object out of the subject which never can be a predicate, norsubstitute a real thinking substance for the logical subject of thought, nor revamp the unity of self-consciousness into the simplicity andidentical personality of the soul. The rational psychology of the Wolffianschool is guilty of this error, and whatever of proof it advances for thesubstantiality, simplicity, and personality of the soul, and, by wayof deduction, for its immateriality and immortality as well as for itsrelation to the body, is based upon this substitution, this ambiguity ofthe middle term, and therefore upon a _quaternio terminorum_, --all itsconclusions are fallacious. It is allowable and unavoidable to add inthought an absolute subject, the unity of the ego, to inner phenomena;[1]it is inadmissible to treat the Idea of the soul as a knowable thing. Inorder to be able to apply the category of substance to it, we would have tolay hold of a permanent in intuition such as cannot be found in the innersense. Empirical psychology, then, alone remains for the extension of ourknowledge of mental life, while rational psychology shrivels up froma doctrine into a mere discipline, which watches that the limits ofexperience are not overstepped. But even as a mere limiting determinationit has great value. For, along with the hope of proving the immaterialityand immortality of the soul, the fear of seeing them _disproved_ is alsodissipated; materialism is just as unfounded as spiritualism, and if theconclusions of the latter concerning the soul as a simple, immaterialsubstance which survives the death of the body, cannot be proved, yet weneed not, for that reason, regard them as erroneous, for the opposite is aslittle susceptible of demonstration. The whole question belongs not in theforum of knowledge, but in the forum of faith, and that which we gain bythe proof that nothing can be determined concerning it by theoreticalreasoning (viz. , assurance against materialistic objections) is far morevaluable than what we lose. 

[Footnote 1: The rational concept of the soul as a simple, independentintelligence does not signify an actual being, but only expresses certainprinciples of systematic unity in the explanation of psychical phenomena, viz. , "To regard all determinations as existing in one subject, all powers, as far as possible, as derived from, one fundamental power, all changeas belonging to the states of one and the same permanent being, andto represent all phenomena in space as totally distinct from acts ofthought. "]

(2) _The Antinomies of Rational Cosmology_. If in its endeavor to spinmetaphysical knowledge concerning the nature of the spirit and theexistence of the soul after death out of the concept of the thinking egothe reason falls into the snare of an ambiguous _terminus medius_, thedifficulties which frustrate its attempts to use the Idea of the worldin the extension of its knowledge _a priori_ are of quite a differentcharacter. Here the formal correctness of the method of inference is notopen to attack. It may be proved with absolute strictness (and in theapagogical or indirect form, from the impossibility of the contrary) thatthe world has a beginning in time, and also that it is _limited_ in space;that every compound substance consists of _simple_ parts; that, besides thecausality according to the laws of nature, there is a causality through_freedom_, and that an _absolutely necessary Being_ exists, either as apart of the world or as the cause of it. But the contrary may be provedwith equal stringency (and indirectly, as before): The world is infinite inspace and time; there is nothing simple in the world; there is no freedom, but everything in the world takes place entirely according to the laws ofnature; and there exists no absolutely necessary Being either within theworld or without it. This is the famous doctrine of the conflict of thefour cosmological theses and antitheses or of the Antinomy of Pure Reason, the discovery of which indubitably exercised a determining influence uponthe whole course of the Kantian Critique of Reason, and which forms one ofits poles. The transcendental idealism, the distinction between phenomenaand noumena, and the limitation of knowledge to phenomena, all receivesignificant confirmation from the Antithetic. Without the criticalidealism (that which is intuited in space and time, and known throughthe categories, is merely the phenomenon of things, whose "in itself" isunknowable), the antinomies would be insoluble. How is reason to act inview of the conflict? The grounds for the antitheses are just as conclusiveas those for the theses; on neither side is there a preponderance whichcould decide the result. Ought reason to agree with both parties or withneither?

The solution distinguishes the first two antinomies, as the mathematical, from the second two, as the dynamical antinomies; in the former, since itis a question of the composition and division of quanta, the conditions maybe homogeneous with the conditioned, in the latter, heterogeneous. In theformer, thesis and antithesis are alike _false_, since both start fromthe inadmissible assumption that the universe (the complete series ofphenomena) is given, while in fact it is only required of us (is an Idea). The world does not exist in itself, but only in the empirical regress ofphenomenal conditions, in which we never can reach infinity and never thelimitation of the world by an empty space or an antecedent empty time, forinfinite space, like empty space (and the same holds in regard to time), isnot perceivable. Consequently the quantity of the world is neither finitenor infinite. The question of the quantity of the world is unanswerable, because the concept of a sense-world existing by itself _(before_ theregress) is self-contradictory. Similarly the problem whether the compositeconsists of simple elements is insoluble, because the assumption thatthe phenomenon of body is a thing in itself, which, antecedent to allexperience, contains all the parts that can be reached in experience--inother words, that representations exist outside of the representativefaculty--is absurd. Matter is infinitely divisible, no doubt, yet it doesnot consist of infinitely numerous parts, and just as little of a definitenumber of simple parts, but the parts exist merely in the representationof them, in the division (decomposition), and this goes as far as possibleexperience extends. The case is different with the dynamical antinomies, where thesis and antithesis can both be _true_, in so far as the formeris referred to things in themselves and the latter to phenomena. Thecontradiction vanishes if we take that which the thesis asserts and theantithesis denies in different senses. The fact that in the world ofphenomena the causal nexus proceeds without interruption and without end, so that there is no room in it either for an absolutely necessary Being orfor freedom, does not conflict with this other, that beyond the world ofsense there may exist an omnipotent, omniscient cause of the world, and anintelligible freedom as the ground of our empirically necessary actions. "May exist, " since for the critical philosopher, who has learned that everyextension of knowledge beyond the limits of experience is impossible, thequestion can concern only the conceivability of the world-ground and offreedom. This possibility is amply sufficient to give a support for faith, as, on the other hand, it is indispensable in order to satisfy at once thedemands of the understanding and of reason, especially to satisfy theirpractical interests. For if it were not possible to resolve the apparentcontradiction, and to show its members capable of reconciliation, it wouldbe all over either with the possibility of experiential knowledge or withthe basis of ethics and religion. Without unbroken causal connection, nonature; without freedom, no morality; and without a Deity, no religion. Of special interest is the solution of the third antinomy, which isaccomplished by means of the valuable (though in the form in which it isgiven by Kant, untenable) conception of the _intelligible character_. [1]Man is a citizen of two worlds. As a being of the senses (phenomenon) heis subject in his volition and action to the control of natural necessity, while as a being of reason (thing in itself) he is free. For science hisacts are the inevitable results of precedent phenomena, which, in turn, are themselves empirically caused; nevertheless moral judgment holdshim responsible for his acts. In the one case, they are referred to hisempirical character, in the other, to his intelligible character. Mancannot act otherwise than he does act, if he be what he is, but he need notbe as he is; the moral constitution of the intelligible character, whichreflects itself in the empirical character, is his own work, and itsradical transformation (moral regeneration) his duty, the fulfillment ofwhich is demanded, and, hence, of necessity possible. 

[Footnote 1: On the difficulties in the way of this theory and thepossibility of their removal cf. R. Falckenberg, _Ueber den intelligiblenCharacter, zur Kritik der Kantischen Freiheitslehre_ (from the _Zeitschriftfür Philosophie_, vol. Lxxv. ), Halle, 1879. ]

(3) _Speculative Theology_. The principle of complete determination, according to which of all the possible predicates of things, as comparedwith their opposites, one must belong to each thing, relates the thing tobe determined to the sum of all possible predicates or the _Idea of an ensrealissimum_, which, since it is the representation of a single being, maybe called the _Ideal_ of pure reason. From this prototype things, as itsimperfect copies, derive the material of their possibility; all theirmanifold determinations are simply so many modes of limiting the concept ofthe highest reality, which is their common substratum, just as all figuresare possible only as different ways of limiting infinite space. Or better:the derivative beings are not related to the ideal of the original Being aslimitations to the sum of the highest reality (on which view the SupremeBeing would be conceived as an aggregate consisting of the derivativebeings, whereas these presuppose it, and hence cannot constitute it), butas consequences to a ground. But reason does not remain content with thisentirely legitimate thought of the dependence of finite things on the idealof the Being of all beings, as a relation of concepts to the Idea, but, dazzled by an irresistible illusion, proceeds to realize, to hypostatize, and to personify this ideal, and, since she herself is dimly conscious ofthe illegitimacy of such a transformation of the mere Idea into a givenobject, devises _arguments for the existence of God_. Reason, moreover, would scarcely be induced to regard a mere creation of its thought as areal being, if it were not compelled from another direction to seek aresting place somewhere in the regress of conditions, and to think theempirical reality of the contingent world as founded upon the rock ofsomething absolutely necessary. There is no being, however, which appearsmore fit for the prerogative of absolute necessity than that one theconcept of which contains the therefore to every wherefore, and is in norespect defective; in other words, rational theology joins the rationalideal of the most perfect Being with the fourth cosmological Idea of theabsolutely necessary Being. 

The proof of the existence of God may be attempted in three ways: we mayargue the existence of a supreme cause either by starting from a definiteexperience (the special constitution and order of the sense-world, thatis, its purposiveness), or from an indefinite experience (any existencewhatever), or, finally, abstracting from all experience, from mere concepts_a priori_. But neither the empirical nor the transcendent nor theintermediate line of thought leads to the goal. The most impressive andpopular of the proofs is the _physico-theological_ argument. But even if wegratuitously admit the analogy of natural products with the works of humanart (for the argument is not able to prove that the purposive arrangementof the things in the world, which we observe with admiration, iscontingent, and could only have been produced by an ordering, rationalprinciple, not self-produced by their own nature according to generalmechanical laws), this can yield an inference only to an intelligent authorof the purposive form of the world, and not to an author of its matter, only, therefore, to a world-architect, not to a world-creator. Further, since the cause must be proportionate to the effect, this argument canprove only a very wise and wonderfully powerful, but not an omniscientand omnipotent, designer, and so cannot give any definite concept ofthe supreme cause of the world. In leaping from the contingency of thepurposive order of the world to the existence of something absolutelynecessary and thence to an all-comprehensive reality, the teleologicalargument abandons the ground of experience and passes over into the_cosmological argument_, which in its turn is merely a concealedontological argument (these two differ only in the fact that thecosmological proof argues from the antecedently given absolute necessityof a being to its unlimited reality, and the ontological, conversely, fromsupreme reality to necessary existence). The weaknesses of the cosmologicalargument in its first half consist in the fact that, in the inferencefrom the contingent to a cause for it, it oversteps the boundary of thesense-world, and, in the inference from the impossibility of an infiniteseries of conditions to a first cause, it employs the subjective principleof investigation--to assume hypothetically a necessary ultimate ground inbehalf of the systematic unity of knowledge--as an objective principleapplying to things in themselves. The _ontological argument_, finally, which the two nominally empirical arguments hoped to avoid, but in which inthe end they were forced to take refuge, goes to wreck on the impossibilityof dragging out of an idea the existence of the object corresponding to it. Existence denotes nothing further than the position of the subject with allthe marks which are thought in its concept--that is, its relation to ourknowledge, but does not itself belong to the predicates of the concept, andhence cannot be analytically derived from the latter. The content of theconcept is not enriched by the addition of being; a hundred real dollars donot contain a penny more than a hundred conceived dollars. All existentialpropositions are synthetic; hence the existence of God cannot bedemonstrated from the concept of God. It is a contradiction, to be sure, tosay that God is not almighty, just as it is a contradiction to deny thata triangle has three angles: _if_ posit the concept I must not removethe predicate which necessarily belongs to it. If I remove the subject, however, together with its predicate (the almighty God is not), nocontradiction arises, for in that case nothing remains to be contradicted. 

Thus all the proofs for the existence of a necessary being are shown to beillusory, and the basis of speculative theology uncertain. Nevertheless theidea of God retains its validity, and the perception of the inability ofreason to demonstrate its objective reality on theoretical grounds hasgreat value. For though the existence of God cannot be proved, it is true, by way of recompense, that it cannot be disproved; the same grounds whichshow us that the assertion of his existence is based on a weak foundationsuffice also to prove every contrary assertion unfounded. And shouldpractical motives present themselves to turn the scale in favor of theassumption of a supreme and all-sufficient Being, reason would be obligedto take sides and to follow these grounds, which, it is true, are notobjectively sufficient, [1] but still preponderant, and than which we knownone better. After, however, the objective reality of the idea of God isguaranteed from the standpoint of ethics, there remains for transcendentaltheology the important negative duty ("censorship, " _Censor_) of exactlydetermining the concept of the most perfect Being (as a being which throughunderstanding and freedom contains the first ground of all other things), of removing from it all impure elements, and of putting an end to allopposite assertions, whether atheistic, deistic (deism maintains thepossibility of knowing the existence of an original being, but declares allfurther determination of this being impossible), or (in the dogmaticsense) anthropomorphic. Theism is entirely possible apart from a mistakenanthropomorphism, in so far as through the predicates which we take frominner experience (understanding and will) we do not determine the conceptof God as he is in himself, but only _analogically_[2] in his relation tothe world. That concept serves only to aid us in our contemplation ofthe world, [3] not as a means of knowing the Supreme Being himself. Forspeculative purposes it remains a mere ideal, yet a perfectly faultlessone, which completes and crowns the whole of human knowledge. 

[Footnote 1: "They need favor to supply their lack of legitimate claims. "Of themselves alone, therefore, they are unable to yield any theologicalknowledge, but they are fitted to prepare the understanding for it, and togive emphasis to other possible (moral) proofs. ]

[Footnote 2: We halt _at_ the boundary of the legitimate use of reason, without overstepping it, when we limit our judgment to the relation ofthe world to the Supreme Being, and in this allow ourselves a symbolicalanthropomorphism only, which in reality has reference to our language aloneand not to the object. ]

[Footnote 3: We are compelled to _look on_ the world _as if_ it were thework of a supreme intelligence and will. "We may confidently derive thephenomena of the world and their existence from other (phenomena), as if nonecessary being existed, and yet unceasingly strive after completenessin the derivation, as though such a being were presupposed as a supremeground. " In short, physical (mechanical) _explanation_, and a theisticpoint of view or teleological _judgment_. ]

Thus the value of the Ideas is twofold. By showing the untenable ness ofatheism, fatalism, and naturalism, they I clear the way for the objects offaith. By providing natural science with the standpoint of a systematicalunity through teleological connection, they make an extension of the use ofthe understanding possible within the realm of experience, [1] though notbeyond it. The systematic development of the Kantian teleology, which ishere indicated in general outlines only, is found in the second part of the_Critique of Judgment_; while the practical philosophy, which furnishes theonly possible proof, the moral proof, for the reality of the Ideas, erectson the site left free by the removal of the airy summer-houses of dogmaticmetaphysics the solid mansion of critical metaphysics, that is, themetaphysics of duties and of hopes. "I was obliged to destroy knowledgein order to make room for faith. " The transition from the impossibletheoretical or speculative knowledge of things in themselves to thepossible "practical knowledge" of them (the belief that there is a God anda future world) is given in the _Doctrine of Method_, which is divided intofour parts (the Discipline, the Canon, the Architectonic, and the Historyof Pure Reason), in its second chapter. There, in the ideal of the _SummumBonum_, the proof is brought forward for the validity of the Ideas God, freedom, and immortality, as postulates inseparable from moral obligation;and by a cautious investigation of the three stages of assent (opinion, knowledge, and belief) both doctrinal and moral belief are assigned theirplaces in the system of the kinds of knowledge. 

[Footnote 1: The principle to regard all order in the world (_e. G. _, theshape of the earth, mountains, and seas, the members of animal bodies) asif it proceeded from the design of a supreme reason leads the investigatoron to various discoveries. ]

We may now sum up the results of the three parts of Kant's theoreticalphilosophy. The pure intuitions, the categories, and the Ideas arefunctions of the spirit, and afford non-empirical _(erfahrungsfreie)_knowledge concerning the objects of possible experience (and concerning thepossibility of knowledge). The first make universal and necessary knowledgepossible in relation to the forms under which objects can be given to us;the second make a similarly apodictic knowledge possible in relation tothe forms under which phenomena must be thought; the third make possible ajudgment of phenomena differing from this knowledge, yet not in conflictwith it. The categories and the Ideas, moreover, yield problematicalconcepts of objects which are not given to us in intuition, but which mayexist outside of space and time: things in themselves cannot be known, itis true, but they can be thought, a fact of importance in case we should beassured of their existence in some other way than by sensuous intuition. 

The determination of the limits of speculative reason is finished. All knowing and all demonstration is limited to phenomena or possibleexperience. But the boundary of that which can be experienced is not theboundary of that which is, still less of that which ought to be; theboundary of theoretical reason is not the boundary of practical reason. We_ought_ to act morally; in order to be able to do this we must ascribe toourselves the power to initiate a series of events; and, in general, we arewarranted in assuming everything the non-assumption of which makes moralaction impossible. If we were merely theoretical, merely experientialbeings, we should lack all occasion to suppose a second, intelligible worldbehind and above the world of phenomena; but we are volitional and activebeings under laws of reason, and though we are unable to know things inthemselves, yet we may and must _postulate_ them--our freedom, God, andimmortality. For not only that which is a condition of experience is trueand necessary, but that, also, which is a condition of morality. Thediscovery of the laws and conditions of morality is the mission ofpractical philosophy. 

%2. Theory of Ethics. %

The investigation now turns from the laws of nature, which express a"must, " to the laws of will, in which an "ought" is expressed, and by whichcertain actions are not compelled, but prescribed. (If we were merelyrational, and not at the same time sensuous beings, the moral law woulddetermine the will in the form of a natural law; since, however, theconstant possibility of deviation is given in the sensibility, or, rather, the moral standpoint can only be attained by conquering the sensuousimpulses, therefore the moral law speaks to us in the form of an "ought, "of an imperative. ) Among the laws of the will or imperatives, also, there are some which possess the character of absolute necessity anduniversality, and which, consequently, are _a priori_. As the understandingdictates laws to the phenomenal world, so practical reason gives a law toitself, is _autonomous_; and as the _a priori_ laws of nature relate onlyto the form of the objects of experience, so the moral law determines notthe content, but only the form of volition: "Act only on that maxim wherebythou canst at the same time will that it should become a universal law. "The law of practical reason is a "categorical imperative. " What does thisdesignation mean, and what is the basis of the formula of the moral lawwhich has just been given?

Practical principles are either subjectively valid, in which case they aretermed maxims (volitional principles of the individual), or objectivelyvalid, when they are called imperatives or precepts. The latter are eithervalid under certain conditions (If you wish to become a clergyman you muststudy theology; he who would prosper as a merchant must not cheat hiscustomers), or unconditionally valid (Thou shalt not lie). All prudentialor technical rules are hypothetical imperatives, the moral law is acategorical imperative. The injunction to be truthful is not connected withthe condition that we intend to act morally, but this general purpose, together with all the special purposes belonging to it, to avoid lying, etc. , is demanded unconditionally and of everyone--as surely as we arerational beings we are under moral obligation, not in order to reputationhere below and happiness above, but without all "ifs" and "in order to's. "Thou shalt unconditionally, whatever be the outcome. And as the moral lawis independent of every end to be attained, so it suffers neither increasenor diminution in its binding force, whether men obey it or not. It hasabsolute authority, no matter whether it is fulfilled frequently or seldom, nay, whether it is fulfilled anywhere or at any time whatsoever in theworld!

There is an important difference between the good which we are underobligation to do and the evil which we are under obligation not to do, andthe goods and ills which we seek and avoid. The goods are always relativelygood only, _good for something_--as means to ends--and a bad use can bemade of all that nature and fortune give us as well as a good one. Thatwhich duty commands is an end in itself, in itself good, absolutelyworthful, and no misuse of it is possible. It might be supposed thatpleasure, that happiness is an ultimate end. But men have very differentopinions in regard to what is pleasant, one holding one thing pleasurableand another another. It is impossible to discover by empirical methods whatduty demands of all men alike and under all circumstances; the appeal is toour reason, not to our sensibility. If happiness were the end of rationalbeings, then nature had endowed us but poorly for it, since instead of anunfailing instinct she has given us the weak and deceitful reason as aguide, which, with its train, culture, science, art, and luxury, hasbrought more trouble than satisfaction to mankind. Man has a destiny otherthan well-being, and a higher one--the formation of good dispositions: herewe have the only thing in the whole world that can never be used for evil, the only thing that does not borrow its value from a higher end, but itselforiginally and inalienably contains it, and that gives value to all elsethat merits esteem. "Nothing can possibly be conceived in the world, oreven out of it, which can be called good without qualification, except a_good will_. " Understanding, courage, moderation, and whatever other mentalgifts or praiseworthy qualities of temperament may be cited, as also thegifts of fortune, "are undoubtedly good and desirable in many respects, butthey may also become extremely evil and mischievous, if the will which isto make use of them is not good. " These are the classic words with whichKant commences the _Foundation of the Metaphysics of Ethics_. 

When does the will deserve the predicate "good"? Let us listen to thepopular moral consciousness, which distinguishes three grades of moralrecognition. He who refrains from that which is contrary to duty, no matterfrom what motives--as, for example, the shopkeeper who does not cheatbecause he knows that honesty is the best policy--receives moderatepraise for irreproachable outward behavior. We bestow warmer praise andencouragement on him whom ambition impels to industry, kind feeling tobeneficence, and pity to render assistance. But he alone earns our esteemwho does his duty for duty's sake. Only in this third case, where notmerely the external action, nor merely the impulse of a happy disposition, but the will itself, the maxim, is in harmony with the moral law, wherethe good is done for the sake of the good, do we find true morality, thatunconditioned, self-grounded worth. The man who does that which is inaccordance with duty out of reflection on its advantages, and he who doesit from immediate--always unreliable--inclination, acts _legally_; he aloneacts _morally_ who, without listening to advantage and inclination, takesup the law into his disposition, and does his duty because it is duty. Thesole moral motive is the consciousness of duty, _respect for the morallazy_[1]

[Footnote 1: The respect or reverence which the law, and, derivatively, theperson in whom it is realized, compel from us, is, as self-produced througha concept of reason and as the only feeling which can be known _a priori_, specifically different from all feelings of inclination or fear awakened bysensuous influences. As it strengthens and raises our rational nature, theconsciousness of our freedom and of our high destination, but, at the sametime, humbles our sensibility, there is mingled with the joy of exaltationa certain pain, which permits no intimate affection for the stern andsublime law. It is not quite willingly that we pay our respect--justbecause of the depressing effect which this feeling exerts on ourself-love. ]

Here Kant is threatened by a danger which he does not succeed in escaping. The moral law demands perfect purity in our maxims; only the idea of duty, not an inclination, is to determine the will. Quite right. Further, the onejudging is himself never absolutely certain, even when his own volition isconcerned, that no motives of pleasure have mingled with the feeling ofduty in contributing to the right action, unless that which was morallydemanded has been contrary to all his inclinations. When a person who isnot in need and who is free from cupidity leaves the money-box intrustedto his care untouched, or when a man who loves life overcomes thoughts ofsuicide, I may assume that the former was sufficiently protectedagainst the temptation by his moderation, and the other by his cheerfuldisposition, and I rate their behavior as merely legal. When, on the otherhand, an official inclined to extravagance faithfully manages the fundsintrusted to him, or one who is oppressed by hopeless misery preserves hislife, although he does not love it, then I may ascribe the abstinence fromwrongdoing to moral principles. This, too, may be admitted. We arecertain of the morality of a resolution only when it can be shown that noinclination was involved along with the maxim. The cases where the rightaction is performed in opposition to inclination are the only ones in whichwe may be certain that the moral quality of the action is unmixed--arethey, then, the only ones in which a moral disposition is present? Kantrightly maintains that the admixture of egoistic motives beclouds thepurity of the disposition, and consequently diminishes its moral worth. With equal correctness he draws attention to the possibility that, evenwhen we believe that we are acting from pure principles, a hidden sensuousimpulse may be involved. But he leaves unconsidered the possibility that, even when the inclinations are favorable to right action, the action may beperformed, not from inclination, but because of the consciousness of duty. Given that a man is naturally industrious, does this happy predispositionprotect him from fits of idleness? And if he resists them, must it alwaysbe his inclination to activity and never moral principle which overcomesthe temptation? In yielding to the danger of confounding the limits of ourcertain knowledge of the purity of motives with the limits of moral action, and in admitting true morality only where action proceeds from principlein opposition to the inclinations, Kant really deserves the reproach ofrigorism or exaggerated purism--sometimes groundlessly extended to thejustifiable strictness of his views--and the ridicule of the well-knownlines of Schiller ("Scruples of Conscience" and "Decision" at theconclusion of his distich-group "The Philosophers"):

"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. "

If we return from this necessary limitation of a groundless inference(that true morality is present only when duty is performed against ourinclinations, when it is difficult for us, when a conflict with sensuousmotives has preceded), to the development of the fundamental ethicalconceptions, we find that important conclusions concerning the origin andcontent of the moral law result from the principle obtained by the analysisof moral judgment: this law commands with _unconditional authority_--forevery rational being and under all circumstances--what has _unconditionedworth_--the disposition which corresponds to it. The universality andnecessity (_unconditionalness_) of the categorical imperative proves thatit springs from no other source than reason itself. Those who derivethe moral law from the will of God subject it to a condition, viz. , theimmutability of the divine will. Those who find the source of morallegislation in the pursuit of happiness make rational will dependent on anatural law of the sensibility; it would be folly to enjoin by a moral lawthat which everyone does of himself, and does superabundantly. Moreover, the theories of the social inclinations and of moral sense fail of theirpurpose, since they base morality on the uncertain ground of feeling. Eventhe principle of perfection proves insufficient, inasmuch as it limits theindividual to himself, and, in the end, like those which have preceded, amounts to a refined self-love. Theonomic ethics, egoistic ethics, theethics of sympathy, and the ethics of perfection are all eudemonistic, andhence heteronomic. The practical reason[1] receives the law neither fromthe will of God nor from natural impulse, but draws it out of its owndepths; it binds itself. 

[Footnote 1: Will and practical reason are identical. The definition runs:Will is the faculty of acting in accordance with the representation oflaws. ]

The grounds which establish the derivation of the moral law from the willor reason itself exclude at the same time every material determination ofit. If the categorical imperative posited definite ends for the will, if itprescribed a direction to definite objects, it could neither be known _apriori_ nor be valid for all rational beings: its apodictic characterforbids the admission of empirical elements of every sort. [1] If we thinkaway all content from the law we retain the form of universal legality, [2]and gain the formula: "Act so that the maxim of thy will can always atthe same time hold good as a principle of universal legislation. " Thepossibility of conceiving the principle of volition as a universal law ofnature is the criterion of morality. If you are in doubt concerning themoral character of an action or motive simply ask yourself the question, What would become of humanity if everyone were to act according to the sameprinciple? If no one could trust the word of another, or count on aid fromothers, or be sure of his property and his life, then no social life wouldbe possible. Even a band of robbers cannot exist unless certain laws arerespected as inviolable duties. 

[Footnote 1: The moral law, therefore, is independent of all experience inthree respects, as to its origin, its content, and its validity. It springsfrom reason, it contains a formal precept only, and its validity is notconcerned, whether it meets with obedience or not. It declares what oughtto be done, even though this never should be done. ]

[Footnote 2: The "formal principle" of the Kantian ethics has met veryvaried criticism. Among others Edmund Pfleiderer (_Kantischer Kritizismusund Englische Philosophie_, 1881) and Zeller express themselvesunfavorably, Fortlage and Liebmann (_Zur Analysis der Wirklichkeit_, 2ded. , 1880, p. 671) favorably. ]

It was indispensable to free the supreme formula of the moral law from allmaterial determinations, _i. E. _, limitations. This does not prevent us, however, from afterward giving the abstract outline a more concretecoloring. First of all, the concept of the dignity of persons in contrastto the utility of things offers itself as an aid to explanation andspecialization. Things are means whose worth is always relative, consistingin the useful or pleasant effects which they exercise, in the satisfactionof a need or of the taste, they can be replaced by other means, whichfulfill the same purpose, and they have a (market or fancy) _value_; whilethat which is above all value and admits of no equivalent has an ultimateworth or _dignity_, and is an object of respect. The legislation whichdetermines all worth, and with this the disposition which corresponds toit, has a dignity, an unconditioned, incomparable worth, and lends itssubjects, rational beings framed for morality, the advantage of being endsin themselves. "Therefore morality, and humanity so far as it is capable ofmorality, is that which alone possesses dignity. " Accordingly the followingformulation of the moral law may be held equivalent to the first: "So actas to treat humanity, whether in thine own person or in that of any other, in every case as an end, never as a means only. "

A further addition to the abstract formula of the categorical imperativeresults from the discussion of the question, What universal ends admit ofsubsumption under it, _i. E. _, stand the test of fitness to be principles ofa universal legislation? Here again Kant stands forth as an arbiter betweenthe contending parties, and, with a firm grasp, combines the usefulelements from both sides after winnowing them out from the worthlessprinciples. The majority of the eudemonistic systems, along with thepromotion of private welfare, prescribe the furtherance of universal goodwithout being able to indicate at what point the pursuit of personalwelfare should give way to regard for the good of others, while in theperfectionist systems the social element is wanting or retreats unduly intothe background. The principle of happiness represents moral empiricism, theprinciple of perfection moral rationalism. Kant resolves the antithesisby restricting the theses of the respective parties within their properlimits: "Make _thine own perfection_ and _the happiness of others_ the endof thy actions;" these are the only ends which are at the same time duties. The perfection of others is excluded by the fact that I cannot impartto anyone a good disposition, for everyone must acquire it for himself;personal happiness by the fact that everyone seeks it naturally. 

This antithesis (which is crossed by the further distinction betweenperfect, _i. E. _, indispensable, and imperfect duties) serves as a basis forthe division of moral duties into duties toward ourselves and duties towardother men. [1] The former enjoin the preservation and development of ournatural and moral powers, the latter are duties of obligation (of respect)or of merit (of love). Since no one can obligate me to feel, we are tounderstand by love not the pathological love of complacency, but only theactive love of benevolence or practical sympathy. Since it is just asimpossible that the increase of the evils in the world should be a duty, the enervating and useless excitation of pity, which adds to the pain ofthe sufferer the sympathetic pain of the spectator, is to be struck offthe list of virtues, and active readiness to aid put in its place. Infriendship love and respect unite in exact equipoise. Veracity is one ofthe duties toward self; lying is an abandonment of human dignity and underno conditions allowable, not even if life depends on it. 

[Footnote 1: All duties are toward men, not toward supra-human orinfra-human beings. That which we commonly term duties toward animals, likewise the so-called duties toward God, are in reality duties towardourselves. Cruelty to animals is immoral, because our sympathies areblunted by it. To have religion is a duty to ourselves, because the view ofmoral laws as laws of God is an aid to morality. ]

After it has been settled what the categorical imperative enjoins, thefurther problem awaits us of explaining how it is possible. The categoricalimperative is possible only on I the presupposition of our _freedom_. Onlya free being gives laws to itself, just as an autonomous being alone isfree. In theoretical philosophy the pure self-consciousness, the "I think, "denoted a point where the thing in itself manifests to us not its nature, indeed, but its existence. The same holds true in practical philosophy ofthe moral law. The incontestable fact of the moral law empowers me to rankmyself in a higher order of things than the merely phenomenal order, andin another causal relation than that of the merely necessary (mechanical)causation of nature, to regard myself as a legislative member of anintelligible world, and one independent of sensuous impulses--in short, toregard myself as free. Freedom is the _ratio essendi_ of the self-givenmoral law, the latter the _ratio cognoscendi_ of freedom. The law wouldhave no meaning if we did not possess the power to obey it: I can _because_I ought. It is true that freedom is a mere Idea, whose object can never begiven to me in an experience, and whose reality, consequently, cannotbe objectively known and proved, but nevertheless, is required withsatisfactory subjective necessity as the condition of the moral law and ofthe possibility of its fulfillment. I may not say it is certain, but, withsafety, I am certain that I am free. Freedom is not a dogmatic propositionof theoretical reason, but a _postulate_ of practical reason; and thelatter holds the _primacy_ over the former to this extent, that it canrequire the former to show that certain transcendent Ideas of thesuprasensible, which are most intimately connected with moral obligation, are compatible with the principles of the understanding. It was just inview of the practical interests involved in the rational concepts God, freedom, immortality, that it was so important to establish, at least, their possibility (their conceivability without contradiction). That, therefore, which the Dialectic recognized as possible is in the Ethicsshown to be real: Whoever seeks to fulfill his moral destiny--and this isthe duty of every man--must not doubt concerning the conditions of itspossible fulfillment, must, in spite of their incomprehensibility, _believe_ in freedom and a suprasensible world. They are both postulatesof practical reason, _i. E. _, assumptions concerning that which is in behalfof that which ought to be. Naturally the interests of the understandingmust not be infringed upon by those of the will. The principle of thecomplete causal determination of events retains its validity unimpeachedfor the sphere of the knowledge of the understanding, that is, for therealm of phenomena; while, on the other hand, it remains permissible forus to postulate another kind of causality for the realm of things inthemselves, although we can have no idea of its _how_, and to ascribe toourselves a free intelligible character. 

While the Idea of freedom can be derived directly from the moral law asa postulate thereof, the proof of the reality of the two other Ideas iseffected indirectly by means of the concept of the "highest good, " in whichreason conceives a union of perfect virtue and perfect happiness. Themoral law requires absolute correspondence between the disposition and thecommands of reason, or holiness of will. But besides this supreme good(_bonum supremum_) of completed morality, the highest good (_bonumconsummatum_) further contains a degree of happiness corresponding to thedegree of virtue. Everyone agrees in the judgment that, by rights, thingsshould go well with the virtuous and ill with the wicked, though this mustnot imply any deduction from the principle previously announced that theleast impulse of self-interest causes the maxim to forfeit its worth: themotive of the will must never be happiness, but always the being worthy ofhappiness. The first element in the highest good yields the argument for_immortality_, and the second the argument for the _existence of God_. (1)Perfect correspondence between the will and the law never occurs in thislife, because the sensibility never allows us to attain a permanently gooddisposition, armed against every temptation; our will can never beholy, but at best virtuous, and our lawful disposition never escape theconsciousness of a constant tendency to transgression, or at least ofimpurity. Since, nevertheless, the demands of the (Christian) moral lawcontinue in their unrelenting stringency to be the standard, we arejustified in the hope of an unlimited continuation of our existence, in order that by constant progress in goodness we may draw nearer _ininfinitum_ to the ideal of holiness. (2) The establishment of a rationalproportion between happiness and virtue is also not to be expected untilthe future life, for too often on earth it is the evil man who prospers, while the good man suffers. A justly proportioned distribution of rewardsand punishment can only be expected from an infinite power, wisdom, andgoodness, which rules the moral world even as it has created the naturalworld. Deity alone is able to bring the physical and moral realms intoharmony, and to establish the due relation between well-being and rightaction. This, the moral argument, is the only possible proof for theexistence of God. Theology is not possible as speculative, but only asmoral theology. The certitude of faith, moreover, is only different from, not less than, the certainty of knowledge, in so far as it brings with itnot an objective, but a subjective, although universally valid, necessity. Hence it is better to speak of belief in God as a need of the reason thanas a duty; while a logical error, not a moral one, should be chargedagainst the atheist. The atheist is blind to the intimate connection whichexists between the highest good and the Ideas of the reason; he does notsee that God, freedom, and immortality are the indispensable conditions ofthe realization of this ideal. 

Thus faith is based upon duty without being itself duty: ethics is the_basis of religion_, which consists in our regarding moral laws as(_instar_, as if they were) divine commands. They are not valid orobligatory because God has given them (this would be heteronomy), but theyshould be regarded as divine because they are necessary laws of reason. Religion differs from ethics only in its form, not in its content, in thatit adds to the conception of duty the idea of God as a moral lawgiver, andthus increases the influence of this conception on the will; it is simplya means for the promotion of morality. Since, however, besides naturalreligion or the pure faith of reason (the moral law and the moralpostulates), the historical religions contain statutory determinations or adoctrinal faith, it becomes the duty of the critical philosopher to inquirehow much of this positive admixture can be justified at the bar of reason. In this investigation the question of the divine revelation of dogmaand ceremonial laws is neither supra-rationalistically affirmed nornaturalistically derived, but rationalistically treated as an openquestion. 

The four essays combined under the title _Religion within the Limits ofReason Only_ treat of the Radical Evil in Human Nature, the Conflict of theGood Principle with the Evil for the Mastery over Man, the Victory of theGood Principle over the Evil and the Founding of a Kingdom of God uponEarth, and, finally, Service and False Service under the Dominion of theGood Principle, or Religion and Priestcraft; or more briefly, the fall, theatonement (the Christ-idea), the Church, and true and false service of God. 

(1) The individual evil deeds of the empirical character point to anoriginal fault of the intelligible character, a _propensity to evil_dwelling in man and not further deducible. This, although it isself-incurred, may be called natural and innate, and consists (not in thesensibility merely, but) in a freely chosen reversal of the moral orderof our maxims, in virtue of which the maxim of duty or morality issubordinated to that of well-being or self-love instead of beingplaced above it, and that which should be the supreme condition of allsatisfaction is degraded into a mere means thereto. Morality is therefore a_conversion_ from the evil to the good, and requires a complete revolutionin the disposition, the putting on of a new man, a "new birth, "which, an act out of time, can manifest itself in the temporal world ofphenomena only as a gradual transformation in conduct, as a continuousadvance, but which, we may hope, is judged by him who knows the heart, who regards the disposition instead of particular imperfect actions, as acompleted unity. 

(2) By the eternal Son of God, for whose sake God created all things, weare to understand the ideal of the perfect man, which in truth forms theend of creation, and is come down from heaven, etc. To believe in Christmeans to resolve to realize in one's self the ideal of human nature whichis well pleasing to God, or to make the divine disposition of the Son ofGod our own, not to believe that this ideal has appeared on earth as anactual man, in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. The only saving faith isthe belief of reason in the ideal which Christ represents, and not thehistorical belief in his person. The vicarious atonement of the idealman for those who believe on him is to be interpreted to mean that thesufferings and sacrifices (crucifixion of the flesh) imposed by moralconversion, which are due to the sinful man as punishment, are assumed bythe regenerate man: the new Adam bears the sufferings of the old. In thesame way as that in which Kant handles the history of Christ and thedoctrine of justification, all biblical narratives and ecclesiasticaldoctrines are in public instruction (from the pulpit) to be interpretedmorally, even where the authors themselves had no such meaning in mind. 

(3) The Church is a society based upon the laws of virtue, an ethicalcommunity or a people of God, whose members confirm each other in theperformance of duty by example and by the profession of a common moralconviction; we are all brothers, the children of one father. Ideally thereis only one (the universal, invisible) Church, and its foundation the purefaith of reason; but in consequence of a weakness peculiar to human naturethe foundation of an actual church required the addition of a statutoryhistorical faith, with claims to a divine origin, from which a multitude ofvisible churches and the antithesis of orthodox and heretics have sprung. The history of the Church since the establishment of Christianityrepresents the conflict between the historical faith and the faith ofreason; its goal is the submission of the former to the latter, as, indeed, we have already begun to perceive that God does not require a specialservice beyond the practice of virtue. 

(4) The true service of God consists in a moral disposition and itsmanifestation: "All that man supposes himself able to do in order to pleaseGod, beyond living a good life, is _false service_" False service is thefalse subordination of the pure faith of reason to the statutory faith, bywhich the attainment of the goal of religious development is hinderedand the laity are brought into dangerous dependence upon the clergy. Priestcraft, hypocrisy, and fanaticism enter in the train of fetichservice. The church-faith is destined little by little to make itselfsuperfluous. It has been necessary as a vehicle, as a means for theintroduction and extension of the pure religion of morality, and it stillremains useful for a time, until humanity shall become of age; with man'sentrance on the period of youth and manhood, however, the leading-string ofholy traditions, which in its time did good service, becomes unnecessary, nay, finally, a fetter. (This relative appreciation of the positive elementin religion, in antithesis to the unthinking rejection of it by theIllumination, resembles the view of Lessing; cf. Pp. 306-309. ) Moreover, since it is a duty to be a co-worker in the transition from the historicalto the pure religious faith, the clergy must be free as scientifictheologians, as scholars and authors to examine the doctrines of faithand to give expression to dissenting opinions, while, as preachers in thepulpit, speaking under commission, they are bound to the creeds. To decidethe articles of belief unalterable would be a crime against humannature, whose primal destination is just this--to progress. To renounceillumination means to trample upon the divine rights of reason. 

The "General Observations" appended to each division add to the fourprinciple discussions as many collateral inquiries concerning Operationsof Grace, Miracles, Mysteries, and Means of Grace, objects of transcendentideas, which do not properly belong in the sphere of religion within purereason itself, but which yet border on it. (1) We are entirely incapable ofcalling forth works of grace, nay, even of indicating the marks by whichactual divine illuminations are distinguished from imaginary ones; thesupposed experience of heavenly influences belongs in the region ofsuperstitious religious illusion. But their impossibility is just as littlesusceptible of proof as their reality. Nothing further can be said on thequestion, save that works of grace may exist, and perhaps must exist inorder to supplement our imperfect efforts after virtue; and that everyone, instead of waiting for divine assistance, should do for his own amendmentall that is in his power. (2) Kant judges more sharply in regard to thebelief in miracles, which contradict the laws of experience without in theleast furthering the performance of our duties. In practical life no oneregards miracles as possible; and their limitation to the past and to rareinstances does not make them more credible. (3) In so far as the Christianmysteries actually represent impenetrable secrets they have no bearing onmoral conduct; so far as they are morally valuable they admit of rationalinterpretation and thus cease to be mysteries. The Trinity signifies thethree moral qualities or powers united in the head of the moral state: theone God as holy lawgiver, gracious governor, and just judge. (4) Theservices of the Church have worth as ethical ceremonies, as emblems of themoral disposition (prayer) and of moral fellowship (church attendance, baptism, and the Lord's Supper); but to find in these symbolic ceremoniesmeans of grace and to seek to purchase the favor of God by them, is anerror of the same kind as sorcery and fetichism. The right way leads fromvirtue to grace, not in the opposite direction; piety without morality isworthless. 

The Kantian theory of religion is rationalistic and moralistic. The factthat religion is based on morality should never be assailed. But thefoundation is not the building, the origin not the content and essenceof the thing itself. As far as the nature of religion is concerned, the Kantian view does not exclude completion in the direction ofSchleiermacher's theory of feeling, just as by its speculativeinterpretation of the Christian dogmas and its appreciation of the historyof religion as a gradual transformation of historical faith into a faith ofreason, it points out the path afterward followed by Hegel. The philosophyof religion of the future must be, as some recent attempts aim to be (O. Pfleiderer, Biedermann, Lipsius), a synthesis of Kant, Schleiermacher, andHegel. 

While the moral law requires rightness not only of the action, but also ofthe disposition, the law of right is satisfied when the act enjoined isperformed, no matter from what motives. Legal right, as the sum of theconditions under which the will of the one can consist with the will ofothers according to a universal law, relates only to enforceable actions, without concerning itself about motives. Private right includes right inthings or property, personal right or right of contract, and real-personalright (marriage right); public right is divided into the right of states, of nations, and of citizens of the world. Kant's theory of punishment isoriginal and important. He bases it not upon prudential regard for theprotection of society, or the deterrence or reformation of the criminal, but upon the exalted idea of retaliation (_jus talionis_), which demandsthat everyone should meet with what his deeds deserve: Eye for eye, lifefor life. In _politics_ Kant favors democratic theories, though lessdecidedly than Rousseau and Fichte. As he followed with interest theefforts after freedom manifested in the American and French Revolutions, sohe opposed an hereditary nobility as a hindrance to the natural equality ofrights, and demanded freedom for the public expression of opinion as thesurest means of guarding against revolutions. The only legitimate form ofthe state is the republican, _i. E. _, that in which the executive power isseparated from the legislative power, in contrast to despotism, where theyare united in one hand. The best guaranty for just government and civilliberty is offered by constitutional monarchy, in which the people throughits representatives exercises the legislative power, the sovereign theexecutive power, and judges chosen by the people the judicial power. Thecontract from which we may conceive the state to have arisen is not to beregarded as an historical fact, but as a rational idea or rule, by whichwe may judge whether the laws are just or not: that which the people as awhole cannot prescribe for itself, this cannot be prescribed for it bythe ruler (cf. P. 235). That there is a constant progress--not only ofindividuals, but--of the race, not merely in technical and intellectual, but also in moral respects, is supported both by rational grounds (withoutfaith in such progress we could not fulfill our duty as co-laborers in it)and by experiential grounds (above all, the unselfish sympathy which allthe world gave to the French Revolution); and the never-ending complaintthat the times are growing worse proves only that mankind is continuallysetting up stricter standards for itself. The beginning of _history_ is tobe placed at the point where man passes out of the condition of innocence, in which instinct rules, and begins to subdue nature, which hitherto he hasobeyed. The goal of history, again, is the establishment of the perfectform of the state. Nature itself co-operates with freedom in the gradualtransformation of the state based on necessity _(Notstaat)_ into a rationalstate, inasmuch as selfish competition and the commercial spirit requirepeace, order, and justice for their own security and help to bring themabout. And so, further, we need not doubt that humanity will constantlydraw nearer to the ideal condition of everlasting peace among the nations(guaranteed by a league of states which shall as a mediator settle disputesbetween individual states), however impracticable the idea may at presentappear. 

If the bold declaration of Fortlage, that in Kant the system of absolutetruth appeared, is true of any one part of his philosophy, it is true ofthe practical part, in which Christian morality has found its scientificexpression. If we may justly complain that on the basis of his sharpdistinction between legality and morality, between legal duty andvirtue-duty, Kant took into account only the legal side of the institutionsof marriage and of the state, overlooking the fact that besides these theyhave a moral importance and purpose, if we may demand a social ethic as asupplement to his ethics, which is directed to the duties of the individualalone, yet these and other well-founded desiderata may be attained byslight corrections and by the addition of another story to the Kantianedifice, while the foundations are still retained. The bases are immovable. Autonomy, absolute oughtness, the formal character of the law of reason, and the incomparable worth of the pure, disinterested disposition--theseare the corner stones of the Kantian, nay, of all morals. 

%3. Theory of the Beautiful and of Ends in Nature. %

We now know the laws which the understanding imposes upon nature and thosewhich reason imposes upon the will. If there is a field in which to be(_Sein_) and ought to be (_Sollen_), nature and freedom, which we have thusfar been forced to consider antithetical, are reconciled--and that thereis such a field is already deducible from the doctrine of the religiouspostulates (as practical truths or assumptions concerning what is, inbehalf of what ought to be), and from the hints concerning a progress inhistory (in which both powers co-operate toward a common goal)--then thesource of its laws is evidently to be sought in that faculty which mediatesalike between understanding and reason and between knowing and feeling:in _Judgment_, as the higher faculty of feeling. Judgment, in the generalsense, is the faculty of thinking a particular as contained in a universal, and exercises a twofold function: as "determinant" judgment it subsumes theparticular under a given universal (a law), as "reflective" it seeks theuniversal for a given particular. Since the former coincides with theunderstanding, we are here concerned only with the reflective judgment, judgment in the narrower sense, which does not cognize objects, but judgesthem, and this according to the principle of purposiveness. [1]

[Footnote 1: The universal laws springing from the understanding, towhich every nature must conform to become an object of experience for us, determine nothing concerning the particular form of the given reality;we cannot deduce the special laws of nature from them. Nevertheless thenature of our cognitive faculty does not allow us to accept the empiricalmanifoldness of our world as contingent, but impels us to regard it aspurposive or adapted to our knowledge, and to look upon these speciallaws as if an intelligence had given them in order to make a system ofexperience possible. ]

This, in turn, is of two kinds. An object is really or _objectively_purposive (perfect) when it corresponds to its nature or its determination, formally or _subjectively_ purposive (beautiful) when it is conformed tothe nature of our cognitive faculty. The perception of purpose is alwaysaccompanied by a feeling of pleasure; in the first case, where the pleasureis based on a concept of the object, it is a logical satisfaction, in thesecond, where it springs only from the harmony of the object with ourcognitive powers, aesthetic satisfaction. The objects of the teleologicaland the aesthetic judgment, the purposive and the beautiful products ofnature and art, constitute the desired intermediate field between natureand freedom; and here again the critical question comes up, How, inrelation to these, synthetic judgments _a priori_ are possible?

%(a) Esthetic Judgment. %--The formula holds of Kant's aesthetics as well asof his theoretical and practical philosophy, that his aim is to overcomethe opposition between the empirical and the rationalistic theories, and tofind a middle course of his own between the two extremes. Neither Burkenor Baumgarten satisfied him. The English aesthetics was sensational, theGerman, _i. E. _, that of the Wolffian school, rationalistic. The formeridentified the beautiful with the agreeable, the latter identified it withthe perfect or with the conformity of the object to its concept; in the onecase, aesthetic appreciation is treated as sensuous pleasure, in the other, it is treated as a lower, confused kind of knowledge, its peculiar naturebeing in both cases overlooked. In opposition to the sensualization ofaesthetic appreciation, its character as judgment must be maintained;and in opposition to its rationalization, its character as feeling. Thisrelation of the Kantian aesthetics to that of his predecessors explainsboth its fundamental tendency and the elements in it which appear defectiveand erroneous. In any case, Kant shows himself in this field also anunapproachable master of careful analysis. 

The first task of aesthetics is the careful distinction of its object fromrelated phenomena. The beautiful has points of contact with the agreeable, the good, the perfect, the useful, and the true. It is distinguishedfrom the true by the fact that it is not an object of knowledge, butof satisfaction. If we inquire further into the difference between thesatisfaction in the beautiful and the satisfaction in the agreeable, in thegood (in itself), and in the (good for something, as a means, or in the)useful, which latter three have this in common, that they are objects ofappetition--of sensuous want, of moral will, of prudential desire--itbecomes evident that the beautiful pleases through its mere representation(that is, independently of the real existence of the object), and thatthe delight in the beautiful is a contemplative pleasure. It is forcontemplation only, not to be sensuously enjoyed nor put to practical use;and, further, its production is not a universal duty. Sensuous, prudential, or moral appetition has always an "interest" in the actual existence ofthe object; the beautiful, on the other hand, calls forth a disinterestedsatisfaction. 

According to quality the beautiful is the object of a disinterested, free(bound by no interest), and sportive satisfaction. According to quantityand modality the judgment of taste claims universal and necessary validity, without this being based upon concepts. This posits further differencesbetween the beautiful and the agreeable and the good. The good also pleasesuniversally, but it pleases through concepts; the agreeable as well as thebeautiful pleases without a concept, but it does not please universally. 

That which pleases the reason through the concept is good; that whichpleases the senses in sensation is agreeable. That which pleases_universally and necessarily without a concept_ is beautiful. Moraljudgment demands the assent of all, and its universal validity isdemonstrable. The judgment concerning the agreeable is not capable ofdemonstration, but neither does it pretend to possess universal validity;we readily acknowledge that what is pleasant to one need not be so to everyother man. In regard to the beautiful, on the contrary, we do not contentourselves with saying that tastes differ, but we expect it to please all. We expect everyone to assent to our judgment of taste, although it is ableto support itself by no proofs. 

Here there is a difficulty: since the judgment of taste does not expressa characteristic of the object, but a state of mind in the observer, afeeling, a satisfaction, it is purely subjective; and yet it puts forth aclaim to be universally communicable. The difficulty can be removed only onthe assumption of a common aesthetic sense, of a corresponding organizationof the powers of representation in all men, which yields the commonstandard for the pleasurableness of the impression. The agreeable appealsto that in man which is different in different individuals, the beautifulto that which functions alike in all; the former addresses itself tothe passive sensibility, the latter to the active judgment. Theagreeable--because of the non-calculable differences in our sensuousinclinations, which are in part conditioned by bodily states--possesses nouniversality whatever, the good possesses an objective, and the beautifula subjective universality. The judgment concerning the agreeable has anempirical, that concerning the beautiful an _a priori_, determining ground:in the former case, the judgment follows the feeling, in the latter, itprecedes it. 

An object is considered beautiful (for, strictly speaking, we may say onlythis, not that it is beautiful) when its form puts the powers of the humanmind in a state of harmony, brings the intuitive and rational facultiesinto concordant activity, and produces an agreeable proportion between theimagination and the understanding. In giving the occasion for an harmoniousplay of the cognitive activities (that is, for an easy combination of themanifold into unity) the beautiful object is purposive for us, for ourfunction of apprehension; it is--here we obtain a determination of thejudgment of taste from the standpoint of relation--_purposive without adefinite purpose_. We know perfectly well that a landscape which attractsus has not been specially arranged for the purpose of delighting us, and wedo not wish to find in a work of art anything of an intention to please. An object is perfect when it is purposive for itself (corresponds to itsconcept); useful when it is purposive for our desire (corresponds to apractical intention of man); beautiful when the arrangement of its partsis purposive for the relation between the fancy and understanding ofthe beholder (corresponds in an unusual degree to the conditions of ourapprehension). Perfection is internal (real, objective) purposiveness, andutility is external purposiveness, both for a definite purpose; beauty, on the other hand, is purposiveness without a purpose, formal, subjectivepurposiveness. The beautiful pleases by its mere form. The satisfaction inthe perfect is of a conceptual or intellectual kind, the satisfaction inthe beautiful, emotional or aesthetic in character. 

The combination of these four determinations yields an exhaustivedefinition of the beautiful: The beautiful is that which universally andnecessarily arouses disinterested satisfaction by its mere form(purposiveness without the representation of a purpose). 

Since the pleasurableness of the beautiful rests on the fact thatit establishes a pleasing harmony between the imagination and theunderstanding, hence between sensuous and intellectual apprehension, theaesthetic attitude is possible only in sensuous-rational beings. Theagreeable exists for the animal as well, and the good is an object ofapproval for pure spirits; but the beautiful exists for humanity alone. Kant succeeded in giving very delicate and felicitous verbal expressionto these distinctions: the agreeable gratifies _(vergnügt)_ and excitesinclination _(Neigung)_; the good is approved _(gebilligt)_ and arousesrespect _(Achtung)_; the beautiful "pleases" _(gefällt)_ and finds "favor"_(Gunst)_. 

In the progress of the investigation the principle that beauty depends onthe form alone, and that the concept, the purpose, the nature of theobject is not taken into account at all in aesthetic judgment, experienceslimitation. In its full strictness this applies only to a definite and, infact, a subordinate division of the beautiful, which Kant marks off underthe name of pure or _free_ beauty. With this he contrasts _adherent_beauty, as that which presupposes a generic concept to which its form mustcorrespond and which it must adequately present. Too much a purist notto mark the coming in of an intellectual pleasure as a beclouding of the"purity" of the aesthetic satisfaction, he is still just enough to admitthe higher worth of adherent beauty. For almost the whole of artificialbeauty and a considerable part of natural beauty belong to this latterdivision, which we to-day term ideal and characteristic beauty. Examples offree or purely formal beauty are tapestry patterns, arabesques, fountains, flowers, and landscapes, the pleasurableness of which rests simply on theproportion of their form and relations, and not upon their conformity to apresupposed significance and determination of the thing. A building, on thecontrary--a dwelling, a summer-house, a temple--is considered beautifulonly when we perceive in it not merely harmonious relations of the partsone to another, but also an agreement between the form and the purpose orgeneric concept: a church must not look like a chalet. Here the externalform is compared with an inner nature, and harmony is required between formand content. Adherent beauty is significant and expressive beauty, which, although the satisfaction in it is not "purely" aesthetic, neverthelessstands higher than pure beauty, because it gives to the understanding alsosomething to think, and hence busies the whole spirit. 

The analytical investigations concerning the nature of the beautifulreceive a valuable supplement in the classical definition of genius. Kantgives two definitions of productive talent, one formal and one genetic. 

Natural beauty is a beautiful thing; artificial beauty, a beautifulrepresentation of a thing. The gift of agreeably presenting a thing whichin itself, perhaps, is ugly, is called taste. To judge of the beautifulit is sufficient to possess taste, but for its production there is stillanother talent needed, spirit or genius. For an art product can fulfillthe demands of taste and yet not aesthetically satisfy; while formallyfaultless, it may be spiritless. 

While beautiful nature looks as though it were art (as though it werecalculated for our enjoyment), beautiful art should resemble nature, mustnot appear to be intentional though, no doubt, it is so, must show acareful but not an overnice adherence to rules (_i. E. _, not one whichfetters the powers of the artist). This is the case when the artist bearsthe rule in himself, that is, when he is gifted. Genius is theinnate disposition (through) which (nature) gives rules to art; itscharacteristics are originality, exemplariness, and unreflectiveness. Itdoes not produce according to definite rules which can be learned, butit is a law in itself, it is original. It creates instinctively withoutconsciousness of the rule, and cannot describe how it produces its results. It creates typical works which impel others to follow, not to imitate. Itis only in art that there are geniuses, _i. E. _, spirits who produce thatwhich absolutely cannot be learned, while the great men of science differonly in degree, not in kind, from their imitators and pupils, and thatwhich they discover can be learned by rule. 

This establishes the criteria by which genius may be recognized. If we askby what psychological factors it is produced the answer is as follows:Genius presupposes a certain favorable relation between imagination andreason. Genius is the faculty of aesthetic Ideas, but an aesthetic Idea isa representation of the imagination which animates the mind, which adds toa concept of the understanding much of ineffable thought, much that belongsto the concept but which cannot be comprehended in a definite concept. Withthe aid of this idea Kant solves the antinomy of the aesthetic judgment. The thesis is: The judgment of taste is not based upon concepts; forotherwise it would admit of controversy (would be determinable by proofs). The antithesis is: It is based upon concepts; for otherwise we could notcontend about it (endeavor to obtain assent). The two principles arereconcilable, for "concept" is understood differently in the two cases. That which the thesis rightly seeks to exclude from the judgment of beautyis the determinate concept of the understanding; that which the antithesiswith equal justice pronounces indispensable is the indeterminate concept, the aesthetic Idea. 

The freest play is afforded the imagination by poetry, the highest ofall arts, which, with rhetoric ("insidious, " on account of its earnestintention to deceive), forms the group termed arts of speech. To the classof formative arts belong architecture, sculpture, and painting as the artof design. A third group, the art of the beautiful play of sensations, includes painting as the art of color, and music, which as a "fine" art isplaced immediately after poetry, as an "agreeable" art at the very foot ofthe list, and as the play of tone in the vicinity of the entertaining playof fortune [games of chance] and the witty play of thought. The explanationof the comic (the ludicrous is based, according to Kant, on a suddentransformation of strained expectation into nothing) lays great (indeedexaggerated) weight on the resulting physiological phenomena, thebodily shock which heightens vital feeling and favors health, and whichaccompanies the alternating tension and relaxation of the mind. 

Besides free and adherent beauty, there is still a third kind of aestheticeffect, the Sublime. The beautiful pleases by its bounded form. But alsothe boundless and formless can exert aesthetic effect: that which is greatbeyond all comparison we judge sublime. Now this magnitude is eitherextensive in space and time or intensive greatness of force or power;accordingly there are two forms of the sublime. That phenomenon which mocksthe power of comprehension possessed by the human imagination or surpassesevery measure of our intuition, as the ocean and the starry heavens, ismathematically sublime. That which overcomes all conceivable resistance, as the terrible forces of nature, conflagrations, floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, thunderstorms, is dynamically sublime or mighty. The formeris relative to the cognitive, the latter to the appetitive faculty. Thebeautiful brings the imagination and the understanding into accord; bythe sublime the fancy is brought into a certain favorable relation, notdirectly to be termed harmony, with reason. In the one case there arose arestful, positively pleasurable mood; here a shock is produced, an indirectand negative pleasure proceeding from pain. Since the sublime exceeds thefunctional capability of our sensuous representations and does violence tothe imagination, we first feel small at the sight of the absolutely great, and incapable of compassing it with our sensuous glance. The sensibility isnot equal to the impression; this at first seems contrary to purpose andviolent. This humiliating impression, however, is quickly followed by areaction, and the vital forces, which were at first checked, are stimulatedto the more lively activity. Moreover, it is the sensuous part of manwhich is humbled and the spiritual part that is exalted: the overthrow ofsensibility becomes a triumph for reason. The sight of the sublime, thatis, awakens the _Idea of the unconditioned, of the infinite_. This Idea cannever be adequately presented by an intuition, but can be aroused onlyby the inadequacy of all that is sensuous to present it; the infinite ispresented through the impossibility of presenting it. We cannot intuit theinfinite, but we can think it. In comparison with reason (as the faculty ofIdeas, the faculty of thinking the infinite) even the greatest thing thatcan be given in the sense-world appears small; reason is the absolutelygreat. "That is sublime the mere ability to think which proves a facultyof the mind surpassing every standard of sense. " "That is sublime whichpleases immediately through its opposition to the interest of the senses. "The conflict between phantasy and reason, the insufficiency of the formerfor the attainment of the rational Idea, makes us conscious of thesuperiority of reason. Just because we feel small as sensuous beings wefeel great as rational beings. The pleasure (related to the moral feelingof respect and, like this, mingled with a certain pain) which accompaniesthis consciousness of inner greatness is explained by the fact that theimagination, in acknowledging reason superior, places itself in theappropriate and purposive relation of subordination. It is evident from theforegoing that the truly sublime is reason, the moral nature of man, hispredisposition and destination, which point beyond the present world. Schiller declares that "in space the sublime does not dwell, " andKant says, "Sublimity is contained in none of the things of nature, butonly in our mind, in so far as we are conscious of being superior to naturewithin us and without us. " Nevertheless, since in this contemplation we fixour thoughts entirely on the object without reflecting on ourselves, wetransfer the admiration of right due to the reason and its Idea of theinfinite by subreption to the object by which the Idea is occasioned, andcall the object itself sublime, instead of the mood which it wakes in us. 

If the sublime marks the point where the aesthetic touches on the boundaryof the moral, the beautiful is also not without some relation to the good. By showing the agreement of sensibility and reason, which is demanded bythe moral law, realized in aesthetic intuition (as a voluntary yielding ofthe imagination to the legitimacy of the understanding), it gives us theinspiring consciousness that the antithesis is reconcilable, that therational can be presented in the sensuous, and so becomes a "symbol of thegood. "

%(b) Teleological Judgment. %--Teleological judgment is not knowledge, buta way of looking at things which comes into play where the causal ormechanical explanation fails us. This is not the case if the purposivenessis external, relative to its utility for something else. The fact that thesand of the sea-shore furnishes a good soil for the pine neither furthersnor prevents a causal knowledge of it. Only inner purposiveness, as itis manifested in the products of organic nature, brings the mechanicalexplanation to a halt. Organisms are distinguished above inorganic forms bythe fact that of themselves they are at once cause and effect, that theyare self-productive and this both as a species (the oak springs from theacorn, and in its turn bears acorns) and as individuals (self-preservation, growth, and the replacement of dying parts by new ones), and also by thefact that the reciprocally productive parts are in their form and theirexistence all conditioned by the whole. This latter fact, that the whole isthe determining ground for the parts, is perfectly obvious in the productsof human art. For here it is the representation of the whole (the idea ofthe work desired) which as the ground precedes the existence and the formof the parts (of the machine). But where is the subject to constructorganisms according to its representations of ends? We may neither conceivenature itself as endowed with forces acting in view of ends, nor apraetermundane intelligence interfering in the course of nature. Either ofthese suppositions would be the death of natural philosophy: the hylozoistendows matter with a property which conflicts with its nature, and thetheist oversteps the boundary of possible experience. Above all, theanalogy of the products of organic nature with the products of humantechnique is destroyed by the fact that machines do not reproducethemselves and their parts cannot produce one another, while the organismorganizes itself. 

For our discursive understanding an interaction between the whole and theparts is completely incomprehensible. We understand when the parts precedethe whole (mechanically) or the representation of the whole precedesthe parts (teleologically); but to think the whole itself (not the Ideathereof) as the ground of the parts, which is demanded by organic life, is impossible for us. It would have been otherwise if an intuitiveunderstanding had been bestowed upon us. For a being possessingintellectual intuition the antithesis between possibility and actuality, between necessity and contingency, between mechanism and teleology, woulddisappear along with that between thought and intuition. For such a beingeverything possible (all that it thinks) would be at the same timeactual (present for intuition), and all that appears to uscontingent--intentionally selected from several possibilities and in orderto an end--would be necessary as well; with the whole would be giventhe parts corresponding thereto, and consequently natural mechanismand purposive connection would be identical, while for us, to whom theintuitive understanding is denied, the two divide. Hence the teleologicalview is a mere form of human representation, a subjective principle. We maynot say that a mechanical origin of living beings is impossible, but onlythat we are unable to understand it. If we knew how a blade of grass ora frog sprang from mechanical forces, we would also be in a position toproduce them. 

The antinomy of the teleological judgment--thesis: all production ofmaterial things and their forms must be judged to be possible according tomerely mechanical laws; antithesis: some products of material nature cannotbe judged to be possible according to merely mechanical laws, but to judgethem requires the causality of final causes--is insoluble so long as bothpropositions are taken for constitutive principles; but it is soluble whenthey are taken as regulative principles or standpoints for judgment. For itis in no wise contradictory, on the one hand, to continue the search formechanical causes as far as this is in any way possible, and, on the other, clearly to recognize that, at last, this will still leave a remainder whichwe cannot make intelligible without calling to our aid the concept of ends. Assuming that it were possible to carry the explanation of life from life, from ancestral organisms (for the _generatio aequivoca_ is an absurdtheory) so far that the whole organic world should represent one greatfamily descended from one primitive form as the common mother, eventhen the concept of final causes would only be pushed further back, noteliminated: the origin of the first organization will always resistmechanical explanation. Besides this mission of putting limits to causalderivation and of filling the gap in knowledge by a necessary, althoughsubjective, way of looking at things, the Idea of ends has still another, the direct promotion of knowledge from efficient causes through thediscovery of new causal problems. Thus, for example, physiology owes theimpulse to the discovery of previously unnoticed mechanical connections(cf. Also p. 382 note) to the question concerning the purpose of organs. As doctrines mechanism and teleology are irreconcilable and impossible;as rules or maxims of inquiry they are compatible, and the one asindispensable as the other. 

After the problem of life, which is insoluble by means of the mechanicalexplanation, has necessitated the application of the concept of ends, theteleological principle must, at least by way of experiment, be extended tothe whole of nature. This consideration culminates in the position thatman, as the subject of morality, must be held to be the final aim of theworld, for it is only in regard to a moral being that no further inquirycan be raised as to the purpose of its existence. It also repeats themoral argument for the existence of a supreme reason, thus supplementingphysico-theology, which is inadequate to the demonstration of oneabsolutely perfect Deity; so that the third _Critique_, like the twopreceding, concludes with the Idea of God as an object of practical faith. 

 * * * * *

There are three original and pregnant pairs of thoughts which cause Kant'sname to shine in the philosophical sky as a star of the first magnitude:the demand for a critique of knowledge and the proof of _a priori_ formsof knowledge; the moral autonomy and the categorical imperative; theregulative validity of the Ideas of reason and the practical knowledge ofthe transcendent world. No philosophical theory, no scientific hypothesiscan henceforth avoid the duty of examining the value and legitimacy of itsconclusions, as to whether they keep within the limits of the competency ofhuman reason; whether Kant's determination of the origin and the limits ofknowledge may count on continued favor or not, the fundamental criticalidea, that reflection upon the nature and range of our cognitive faculty isindispensable, retains its validity for all cases and makes an end of allphilosophizing at random. [1] No ethical system will with impunity pass bythe autonomous legislation of reason and the unconditional imperative (theadmonition of conscience translated into conceptual language): the natureand worth of moral will will be everywhere sought in vain if they are notrecognized where Kant has found them--in the unselfish disposition, in thatmaxim which is fitted to become a general law for all rational beings. The doctrine of the Ideas, finally, reveals to us, beyond the daylight ofphenomenal knowledge, the starlit landscape of another mode of looking atthings, [2] in which satisfaction is afforded for the hitherto unmet wishesof the heart and demands of the reason. 

[Footnote 1: "_Reason_ consists just in this, that we are able to giveaccount of all our concepts, opinions, and assertions, either on objectiveor subjective grounds. "]

[Footnote 2: Those who regard all future metaphysics as refuted by theCritique of Reason are to be referred to the positive side of the Kantiandoctrine of Ideas. Kant admits that the mechanical explanation does notsatisfy reason, and that, besides it, a judgment according to Ideas islegitimate. When, therefore, the speculation of the constructive schoolgives an ideal interpretation of the world, it may be regarded as anextended application of "regulative principles, " which exceeds itsauthority only when it professes to be "objective knowledge. "]

The effect of the three _Critiques_ upon the public was very varied. Thefirst great work excited alarm by the sharpness of its negations and itsdestruction of dogmatic metaphysics, which to its earliest readers appearedto be the core of the matter; Kant was for them the universal destroyer. Then the Science of Knowledge brought into prominence the positive, boldly conquering side, the investigation of the conditions of empiricalknowledge. In later times the endeavor has been made to do justice to bothsides, but, in opposition to the overbold procedure of the constructivethinkers, who had fallen into a revived dogmatism, more in the spirit ofcaution and resignation. The second great work aroused glowing enthusiasm:"Kant is no mundane luminary, " writes Jean Paul in regard to the _Critiqueof Practical Reason_, "but a whole solar system shining at once. "The third, because of its subject and by its purpose of syntheticreconciliation between fields heretofore sharply separated, gained thesympathy of our poet-heroes Schiller and Goethe, and awakened in a young, speculative spirit Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature. Schelling reclaimedthe intuitive understanding, which Kant had problematically attributed tothe primal spirit, as the property of the philosopher, after Fichte haddrawn attention to the fact that the consciousness of the categoricalimperative, which Kant had not thoroughly investigated, could be nothingelse than intellectual intuition, because in it knowing and doing coincide. Fichte, however, does not derive the material for his system from the_Critique of Judgment_, though he also had a high appreciation of it, butfrom the two earlier _Critiques_, the fundamental conceptions of whichhe--following the hint that practical and theoretical reason are onlydifferent applications of one and the same reason--brings into the closestconnection. He unites the central idea of the practical philosophy, thefreedom and autonomous legislation of the will, with the leading principleof the theoretical philosophy, the spontaneity of the understanding, underthe original synthesis of the pure ego, in order to deduce from theactivity of the ego not only the _a priori_ forms of knowledge, but also, rejecting the thing in itself, the whole content of empiricalconsciousness. The thought which intervenes between the Kantian Critiqueof Reason and the development of thoroughgoing idealism by Fichte, withits criticisms of and additions to the former and its preparation for thelatter, may be glanced at in a few supplementary pages. 

%4. From Kant to Fichte. %

To begin with the works which aided in the extension and recognition of theKantian philosophy, besides Kant's _Prolegomena_, the following standin the front rank: _Exposition of the Critique of Pure Reason_, by theKönigsberg court preacher, Johannes Schulz, 1784; the flowing _Lettersconcerning the Kantian Philosophy_, by K. L. Reinhold in Wieland's_Deutscher Merkur_, 1786-87; and the _Allgemeine Litteraturzeitung_, inJena, founded in 1785, and edited by the philologist Schütz and the juristHufeland, which offered itself as the organ of the new doctrine. Jenabecame the home and principal stronghold of Kantianism; while by thebeginning of the nineteenth century almost all German chairs belonged toit, and the non-philosophical sciences as well received from it stimulationand guiding ideas. 

In the camp of the enemy there was no less of activity. The Wolffian, Eberhard of Halle, founded a special journal for the purpose of opposingthe Kantian philosophy: the _Philosophisches Magazin_, 1789, continued from1792 as the _Philosophisches Archiv_. The Illumination collected its forcesin the _Philosophische Bibliothek_, edited by Feder and Meiners. Nicolaiwaved the banner of common sense in the _Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek_, and in satirical romances, and was handled as he deserved by the heroesof poetry and philosophy (cf. The _Xenien_ of Goethe and Schiller, Kant's_Letter on Bookmaking_, and Fichte's cutting disposal of him, _Nicolai'sLife and Peculiar Opinions_). The attacks of the faith-philosophers havebeen already noticed (pp. 310-314). 

The advance from Kant to Fichte was preparing alike among friends andenemies, and this in two points. The demand was in part for a formalcomplement (a first principle from which the Kantian results could bededuced, and by which the dualism of sense and understanding could beovercome), in part for material correction (the removal of the thing initself) and development (to radical idealism). Karl Leonhard Reinhold (bornat Vienna in 1758; fled from a college of the St. Barnabite order, 1783;in 1787-94 professor in Jena, and then as the successor of Tetens in Kiel, where he died in 1823) undertook the former task in his _Attempt at a NewTheory of the Human Faculty of Representation_, 1789. Kant's classicaltheory of the faculty of cognition requires for its foundation a theory ofthe faculty of representation, or an elementary philosophy, which shalltake for its object the deduction of the several functions of reason(intuition, concept, Idea) from the original activity of representation. The Kantian philosophy lacks a first principle, which, as first, cannot bedemonstrable, but only a fact immediately evident and admitted by everyone. The primal fact, which we seek, is consciousness. No one can dispute thatevery representation contains three things: the subject, the object, and, between the two, the activity of representation. Accordingly the principleof consciousness runs: "The representation is distinguished inconsciousness from the represented [object] and the representing [subject], and is referred to both. " From this first principle Reinhold endeavors todeduce the well-known principles of the material manifold given by theaction of objects, and the forms of representation spontaneously producedby the subject, which combine this manifold into unity. When, a few yearslater, Fichte's Science of Knowledge brilliantly succeeded in bridging thegap between sense and understanding by means of a first principle, thusaccomplishing what Reinhold had attempted, the latter became one of hisadherents, only to attach himself subsequently to Jacobi, and then toBardili (_Outlines of Logic_, 1800), and to end with a verbal philosophylacking both in influence and permanence. 

In Reinhold's elementary philosophy the thing in itself was changed from aproblematical, negative, merely limiting concept into a positive element ofdoctrine. Objections were raised against Kantianism, as thus dogmaticallymodified in the direction of realism, by Schulze, Maimon, and Beck--bythe first for purposes of attack, by the second in order to furtherdevelopment, and by the third with an exegetical purpose. Gottlob ErnstSchulze, professor in Helmstädt, and from 1810 in Göttingen, in his_Aenesidemus_ (1792, published anonymously), which was followed later bypsychological works, defended the skeptical position in opposition tothe Critique of Reason. Hume's skepticism remains unrefuted by Kantand Reinhold. The thing in itself, which is to produce the material ofrepresentation by affecting the senses, is a self-contradictory idea. Theapplication of the category of cause to things in themselves violatesthe doctrine that the latter are unknowable and that the use of the pureconcepts of the understanding beyond the sphere of experience isinadmissible. The transcendental philosophy has never proved that theground of the material of representation cannot, just as the form thereof, reside in the subject itself. 

Side by side with the anti-critical skepticism of Aenesidemus-Schulze, Salomon Maimon (died 1800; cf. Witte, 1876), who was highly esteemed by thegreatest philosophers of his time, represents critical skepticism. WithReinhold he holds consciousness (as the combination of a manifold intoobjective unity) to be the common root of sensibility and understanding, and with Schulze, the concept of the thing in itself to be an imaginary orirrational quantity, a thought that cannot be carried out; it is not onlyunknowable, but unthinkable. That alone is knowable which we ourselvesproduce, hence only the form of representation. The matter ofrepresentation is "given, " but this does not mean that it arises from theaction of the thing in itself, but only that we do not know its origin. Understanding and sense, or spontaneity and receptivity, do not differgenerically, but only in degree, viz. , as complete and incompleteconsciousness. Sensation is an incomplete consciousness, because we do notknow how its object arises. 

By the removal of the thing in itself Aenesidemus-Schulze sought to refutethe Kantian theory and Maimon to improve it. Sigismund Beck (1761-1840), inhis _Only Possible Standpoint from which the Critical Philosophy must beJudged_, 1796, [1] seeks by it to elucidate the Kantian theory, holding upidealism as its true meaning. In opposition to the usual opinion that arepresentation is true when it agrees with its object, he points to theimpossibility of comparing the one with the other. Of objects out ofconsciousness we can know nothing; after the removal of all that issubjective there is nothing positive left of the representation. Everythingin it is produced by us; the matter arises together with the form throughthe "original synthesis. "

[Footnote 1: This book forms the third volume of his _Expository Abridgmentof the Critical Writings of Professor Kant_; in the same year appeared the_Outlines of the Critical Philosophy_. Cf. On Beck, Dilthey in the _Archivfür Geschichte der Philosophie_, vol. Ii. , 1889, pp. 592-650. ]

The last mentioned attempts to develop the Kantian philosophy were so farsurpassed by Fichte's great achievement that they have received from theirown age and from posterity a less grateful appreciation and remembrancethan was essentially their due. A phenomenon of a different sort, which isalso to be placed at the threshold between Kant and Fichte, but which formsrather a supplement to the noëtics and ethics of the latter than a link inthe transition to them, has, on the contrary, gained an honorable positionin the memory of the German people, viz. , Schiller's aesthetics. [1] Inits center stand the Kantian antithesis of sensibility and reason andthe reconciliation of the two sides of human nature brought about by itsoccupation with the beautiful. Artistic activity or the play-impulsemediates between the lower, sensuous matter-impulse and the higher, rational form-impulse, and unites the, two in harmonious co-operation. Where appetite seeks after satisfaction, and where the strict idea of dutyrules, there only half the man is occupied; neither lust nor moral worth isbeautiful. In order that beauty and grace may arise, the matter-impulseand the form-impulse, or sensibility and reason, must manifest themselvesuniformly and in harmony. Only when he "plays" is man wholly and entirelyman; only through art is the development of humanity possible. Thediscernment of the fact that the beautiful brings into equilibrium the twofundamental impulses, one or the other of which preponderates in sensuousdesire and in moral volition, does not of itself decide the relative rankof artistic and moral activity. The recognition of this mediating positionof art may be connected with the view that it forms a transitional stagetoward and a means of education for morality, as well as with the other, that in it human nature attains its completion. Evidence of both views canbe found in Schiller's writings. At first he favors the Kantian moralism, which admits nothing higher than the good will, and sets art the taskof educating men up to morality by ennobling their natural impulses. Gradually, however, aesthetic activity changes in his view from apreparation for morality into the ultimate goal of human endeavor. Peacefulreconciliation is of more worth than the spirit's hardly gained victoryin the conflict with the sensibility; fine feeling is more than rationalvolition; the highest ideal is the beautiful soul, in which inclination notmerely obeys the command of duty, but anticipates it. 

[Footnote 1: The most important of Schiller's aesthetic essays are those_On Grace and Dignity_, 1793; _On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry_, 1795-96;and the _Letters on Aesthetic Education_, intermediate between them. Cf. Kuno Fischer, _Schiller als Philosoph_, 1858, 2d ed. (_Schillerschriften_, iii. , iv. ) 1891-92. ]

CHAPTER X. 

FICHTE. 

Fichte is a Kantian in about the same sense that Plato was a Socratic. Instead of taking up and developing particular critical problems hemakes the vivifying kernel, the soul of criticism, his own. With theself-activity of reason (as a real force and as a problem) for hisfundamental idea, he outlines with magnificent boldness a new view of theworld, in which the idealism concealed in Kant's philosophy under theshell of cautious limitations was roused into vigorous life, and the greatKönigsberger's noble words on the freedom, the position, and the power ofthe spirit translated from the language of sober foresight into that ofvigorous enthusiasm. The world can be understood only from the standpointof spirit, the spirit only from the will. The ego is pure activity, and allreality its product. Fichte's system is all life and action: its aim is notto mediate knowledge, but to summon the hearer and reader to the productionof a new and pregnant fundamental view, in which the will is as mucha participant as the understanding; it begins not with a concept or aproposition, but with a demand for action (posit thyself; do consciouslywhat thou hast done unconsciously so often as thou hast called thyself I;analyze, then, the act of self-consciousness, and cognize in their elementsthe forces from which all reality proceeds); its God is not a completedabsolute substance, but a self-realizing world-order. This inner vivacityof the Fichtean principle, which recalls the pure actuality of Aristotle's[Greek: nous] and the ceaseless becoming of Heraclitus, finds its completeparallel in the fact that, although he was wanting neither in logicalconsecutiveness nor in the talent for luminous and popular exposition, Fichte felt continually driven to express his ideas in new forms, and, justwhen he seemed to have succeeded in saying what he meant with the greatestclearness, again unsatisfied, to seek still more exact and evidentrenderings for his fundamental position, which proved so difficult toformulate. 

The author of the _Wissenschaftslehre_ was the son of a poor ribbon maker, and was born at Rammenau in Lusatia in 1762. The talents of the boy inducedthe Freiherr von Miltiz to give him the advantage of a good education. Fichte attended school in Meissen and in Pforta, and was a student oftheology at the universities of Jena and Leipsic. While a tutor in Zurichhe made the acquaintance of Lavater and Pestalozzi, as well as of hisfuture wife, Johanna Rahn, a niece of Klopstock. Returning to Leipsic, hiswhole mode of thought was revolutionized by the Kantian philosophy, inwhich it was his duty to instruct a pupil. This gives to the mind, as hisletters confess, an inconceivable elevation above all earthly things. "Ihave adopted a nobler morality, and, instead of occupying myself withthings without me, have been occupied more with myself. " "I now believewith all my heart in human freedom, and am convinced that only on thissupposition duty and virtue of any kind are possible. " "I live in a newworld since I have read the _Critique of Practical Reason_. Things whichI believed never could be proved to me, _e. G. _, the idea of an absolutefreedom and duty, have been proved, and I feel the happier for it. It isinconceivable what reverence for humanity, what power this philosophy givesus, what a blessing it is for an age in which the citadels of moralityhad been destroyed, and the idea of duty blotted out from all thedictionaries!" A journey to Warsaw, whither he had been attracted by theexpectation of securing a position as a private tutor, soon afforded himthe opportunity of visiting at Königsberg the author of the system whichhad effected so radical a transformation in his convictions. His rapidlywritten treatise, _Essay toward a Critique of All Revelation_, attained theend to which its inception was due by gaining for its author a favorablereception from the honored master. Kant secured for Fichte a tutor'sposition in Dantzic, and a publisher for his maiden work. When thisappeared, at Easter, 1792, the name of its author was by oversight omittedfrom the title page, together with the preface, which had been furnishedafter the rest of the book; and as the anonymous work was universallyascribed to Kant (whose religious philosophy was at this time eagerlylooked for), the young writer became famous at a stroke as soon as theerror was explained. A second edition was issued as early as the followingyear. 

After his marriage in Zurich, where he had completed several politicaltreatises (the address, _Reclamation of the Freedom of Thought from thePrinces of Europe, who have hitherto suppressed it, Heliopolis in the LastYear of the Old Darkness_, and the two _Hefte, Contributions toward theCorrection of the Public Judgment on the French Revolution_, 1793), Fichteaccepted, in 1794, a call to Jena, in place of Reinhold, who had gone toKiel, and whose popularity was soon exceeded by his own. The same year sawthe birth of the _Wissenschaftslehre_. His stay in Jena was embittered byconflicts with the clergy, who took offense at his ethical lectures (_Onthe Vocation of the Scholar_) held on Sunday mornings (though not at anhour which interfered with church service), and with the students, who, after they had been untrue to their decision--which they had formed as aresult of these lectures--to dissolve their societies or orders, gave ventto their spite by repeatedly smashing the windows of Fichte's residence. Accordingly he took leave of absence, and spent the summer of 1795 inOsmannstädt. The years 1796-98, in which, besides the two _Introductions tothe Science of Knowledge_, the _Natural Right_ and the _Science of Ethics_(one of the most all important works in German philosophical literature)appeared, mark the culmination of Fichte's famous labors. The so-calledatheistic controversy[1] resulted in Fichte's departure from Jena. The_Philosophisches Journal_, which since 1797 had been edited by Fichte inassociation with Niethammer, had published an article by Magister Forberg, rector at Saalfeld, entitled "The Development of the Concept of Religion, "and as a conciliating introduction to this a short essay by Fichte, "On theGround of our Belief in a Divine Government of the World. "[2] For thisit was confiscated by the Dresden government on the charge of containingatheistical matter, while other courts were summoned to take like action. In Weimar hopes were entertained of an amicable adjustment of the matter. But when Fichte, after publishing two vindications[3] couched in vehementlanguage, had in a private letter uttered the threat that he would answerwith his resignation any censure proceeding from the University Senate, notonly was censure for indiscretion actually imposed, but his (threatened)resignation accepted. 

[Footnote 1: Cf. Karl August Hase, _Jenaisches Fichtebüchlein_, 1856. ]

[Footnote 2: It is a mistake, Fichte writes here, referring to theconclusion of Forberg's article ("Is there a God? It is and remainsuncertain, " etc. ), to say that it is doubtful whether there is a God ornot. That there is a moral order of the world, which assigns to eachrational individual his determined place and counts on his work, is mostcertain, nay, it is the ground of all other certitude. The living andoperative moral order _(ordo ordinans)_ is itself God; we need no otherGod, and can conceive no other. There is no ground in reason for goingbeyond this world order to postulate a particular being as its cause. Whoever ascribes personality and consciousness to this particular beingmakes it finite; consciousness belongs only to the individual, limited ego. And it is allowable to state this frankly and to beat down the prattle ofthe schools, in order that the true religion of joyous well-doing may liftup its head. ]

[Footnote 3: _Appeal to the Public_, and _Formal Defense against the Chargeof Atheism_, 1799. The first of these maintains that Fichte's standpointand that of his opponents are related as duty and advantage, sensible andsuprasensible, and that the substantial God of his accusers, to be derivedfrom the sensibility, is, as personified fate, as the distributer of allhappiness and unhappiness to finite beings, a miserable fetich. ]

Going to Berlin, Fichte found a friendly government, a numerous public forhis lectures, and a stimulating circle of friends in the romanticists, thebrothers Schlegel, Tieck, Schleiermacher, etc. In the first years ofhis Berlin residence there appeared _The Vocation of Man. The ExclusiveCommercial State_, 1800; _The Sun-clear Report to the Larger Public on theEssential Nature of the New Philosophy_, and the _Answer to Reinhold_, 1801. Three works, which were the outcome of his lectures and werepublished in the year 1806 _(Characteristics of the Present Age, The Natureof the Scholar, Way to the Blessed Life or Doctrine of Religion)_, form aconnected whole. In the summer of 1805 Fichte filled a professorship atErlangen, and later, after the outbreak of the war, he occupied for a shorttime a chair at Königsberg, finding a permanent university position at thefoundation of the University of Berlin in 1810. His glowing _Addresses tothe German Nation_, 1808, which essentially aided in arousing the nationalspirit, have caused his name to live as one of the greatest of oratorsand most ardent of patriots in circles of the German people where hisphilosophical importance cannot be understood. His death in 1814 was also aresult of unselfish labor in the service of the Fatherland. He succumbed toa nervous fever contracted from his wife, who, with self-sacrifice equalto his own, had shared in the care of the wounded, and who had brought thecontagion back with her from the hospital. On his monument is inscribedthe beautiful text, "The teachers shall shine as the brightness of thefirmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars thatshine forever and ever. " Forberg in his journal records this estimate: Theleading trait in Fichte's character is his absolute integrity. All hiswords are weighty and important. His principles are stern and littlemodified by affability. The spirit of his philosophy is proud andcourageous, one which does not so much lead as possess us and carry usalong. His philosophemes are inquiries in which we see the truth arisebefore our eyes, and which just for this reason lay the foundations ofscience and conviction. 

The philosopher's son, Immanuel Hermann Fichte (his own name was JohannGottlieb), wrote a biography of his father (1830; 2d ed. , 1862), andsupervised the publication of both the _Posthumous Works_ (1834-35, 3vols. ) and the _Collected Works_ (1845-46, 8 vols. ). The simple andluminous _Facts of Consciousness_ of 1811, or 1817 (not the lecture of 1813with the same title), is especially valuable as an introduction to thesystem. Among the many redactions of the _Wissenschaftslehre_, theepoch-making _Foundation of the whole Science of Knowledge_, 1794, withthe two _Introductions to the Science of Knowledge_, 1797, takes the firstrank, while of the practical works the most important are the _Foundationof Natural Right according to the Principles of the Science of Knowledge_, 1796, and the _System of the Science of Ethics according to the Principlesof the_ _Science of Knowledge_, 1798, and next to these the _Lectures onthe Theory of the State_, 1820 (delivered in 1813). [1]

[Footnote 1: At the same time as J. H. Löwe's book _Die PhilosophieFichtes_, 1862, there appeared in celebration of the centenary of Fichte'sbirthyear, or birthday, a large number of minor essays and addresses byFriedrich Harms, A. L. Kym, Trendelenburg, Franz Hoffman, Karl Heyder, F. C. Lott, Karl Köstlin, J. B. Meyer, and others (cf. Reichlin-Meldegg in vol. Xlii. Of the _Zeitschrift für Philosophie_). Lasson has written, 1863, onFichte's relation to Church and state, Zeller on Fichte as a politicalthinker (_Vorträge und Abhandlungen_, 1865), and F. Zimmer on hisphilosophy of religion. Among foreign works we may note Adamson's _Fichte_, 1881, and the English translations of several of Fichte's works by Kroeger[_Science of Knowledge_, 1868; _Science of Rights_, 1869--both also, 1889]and William Smith [_Popular Writings_, 4th ed. , 1889; also Everett's_Fichte's Science of Knowledge_ (Griggs's Philosophical Classics, 1884), and several translations in the _Journal of Speculative Philosophy_, including one of _The Facts of Consciousness_. --TR. ]]

%1. The Science of Knowledge. %

%(a) The Problem. %--In Fichte's judgment Kant did not succeed in carryingthrough the transformation in thought which it was his aim to effect, because the age did not understand the spirit of his philosophy. Thisspirit, and with it the great service of Kant, consists in _transcendentalidealism_, which by the doctrine that objects conform themselves torepresentations, not representations to objects, draws philosophy away fromexternal objects and leads it back into ourselves. We have followed theletter, he thinks, instead of the spirit of Kant, and because of a fewpassages with a dogmatic ring, whose references to a given matter, thething in itself, and the like, were intended only as preliminary, haveoverlooked the numberless others in which the contrary is distinctlymaintained. Thus the interpreters of Kant, using their own prejudices as acriterion, have read into him exactly that which he sought to refute, andhave made the destroyer of all dogmatism himself a dogmatist; thus in theKantianism of the Kantians there has sprung up a marvelous combination ofcrude dogmatism and uncompromising idealism. Though such an absurdmingling of entirely heterogeneous elements may be excused in the case ofinterpreters and successors, who have had to construct for themselves theguiding principle of the whole from their study of the critical writings, yet we cannot assume it in the author of the system, unless we believe the_Critique of Pure Reason_ the result of the strangest chance, and not thework of intellect. Two men only, Beck, the teacher of the Standpoint, andJacobi, the clearest mind of the century, are to be mentioned with respectas having risen above the confusion of the time to the perception that Kantteaches idealism, that, according to him, the object is not given, butmade. 

Besides the perspicuity which would have prevented these misunderstandings, Fichte misses something further in Kant's work. Considered as a systemKant's expositions were incomplete; and, on his own confession, his aimwas not to furnish the science itself, but only the foundation and thematerials for it. Therefore, although the Kantian philosophy is establishedas far as its inner content is concerned, there is still need of earnestwork to systematize the fragments and results which he gives into a firmlyconnected and impregnable whole. The _Wissenschaftslehre_ takes thiscompletion of idealism for its mission. It cannot solve the problem by acommentary on the Kantian writings, nor by the correction and addition ofparticulars, but only by restoring the whole at a stroke. He alone findsthe truth who new creates it in himself, independently and in his own way. Thus Fichte's system contains the same view of the matter as the criticalsystem--the author is aware, runs the preface to the programme, _On theConcept of the Science of Knowledge_, 1794, "that he never will be able tosay anything at which Kant has not hinted, immediately or mediately, more or less clearly, before him, "--but in his procedure he is entirelyindependent of the Kantian exposition. We shall first raise the question, What in the Kantian philosophy is in need of completion? and, secondly, What method must be adopted in completing it?

Kant discusses the laws of intelligence when they are already applied toobjects, without enlightening us concerning the ground of these laws. Hederived the pure concepts (the laws of substantiality, of causality, etc. )from (logic, and thus mediately from) experience instead of deducingthem from the nature of intelligence; similarly he never furnishedthis deduction for the forms of intuition, space and time. In order tounderstand that intelligence, and why intelligence, must act in just thisway (must think just by means of these categories), we must prove, and notmerely, with Kant, assert, that these functions or forms are really laws ofthought--or, what amounts to the same thing, that they are conditions ofself-consciousness. Again, even if it be granted that Kant has explainedthe properties and relations of things (that they appear in space and time, and that their accidents must be referred to substances), the questionstill remains unanswered, Whence comes the matter which is taken up intothese forms? So long as the whole object is not made to arise before theeyes of the thinker, dogmatism is not driven out of its last corner. Thething in itself is, like the rest, only a thought in the ego. If thusthe antithesis between the form and the matter of cognition undergoesmodification, so, further, the allied distinction between understanding andsensibility must, as Reinhold accurately recognized, be reduced to a commonprinciple and receptivity be conceived as self-limiting spontaneity. Inhis practical philosophy also Kant left much unfinished. The categoricalimperative is susceptible of further deduction, it is not the principleitself, but a conclusion from the true principle, from the injunction toabsolute _self-dependence on the part of reason_; moreover, the nature ofour consciousness of the moral law must be more thoroughly discussed, andin order to gain a real, instead of a merely formal, ethics the relation ofthis law to natural impulse. Finally, Kant never discussed the foundationof philosophy as a whole, but always separated its theoretical from itspractical side, and Reinhold also did nothing to remove this dualism. Inshort, some things that Kant only asserted or presupposed can and must beproved, some that he kept distinct must be united. In what way are both tobe accomplished?

Since correct inferences from correct premises yield correct results, andcorrect inference is easy to secure, everything depends on the correctpoint of departure. If we neglect this and consider only the process andthe results of inference, there are two consistent systems: the dogmaticor realistic course of thought, which seeks to derive representations fromthings; and the idealistic, which, conversely, seeks to derive being fromthought. Now, no matter how consistently dogmatism may proceed (and when itdoes so it becomes, like the system of Spinoza, materialism and fatalism ordeterminism, maintaining that all is nature, and all goes on mechanically;treats the spirit as a thing among others, and denies its metaphysical andmoral independence, its immateriality and freedom), it may be shown tobe false, because it starts from a false principle. Thought can never bederived from being, because it is not contained therein; from being onlybeing can proceed, and never representation. Being, however, can be derivedfrom thought, for consciousness is also being; nay, it is more than this, it is conscious being. And as consciousness contains both being and aknowledge of this being, idealism is superior to realism, because idealismincludes the latter as a moment in itself, and hence can explain it, thoughit is not explicable by it. Dogmatism makes the mistake of going beyondconsciousness or the ego, and working with empty, merely formal concepts. Aconcept is empty when nothing actual corresponds to it, or no intuitioncan be subsumed under it (here it is to be noted that, besides sensuousintuition, there is an intellectual intuition also; an example is found inthe ego as a self-intuiting being). Philosophy, indeed, may abstract andmust abstract, must rise above that which is given--for how could sheexplain life and particular knowledge if she assumed no higher standpointthan her object?--but true abstraction is nothing other than the separationof factors which in experience always present themselves together; itanalyzes empirical consciousness in order to reconstruct it from itselements, it causes empirical consciousness to arise before our eyes, itis a pragmatic _history of consciousness_. Such abstraction, undertaken inorder to a genetic consideration of the ego, does not go beyond experience, but penetrates into the depths of experience, is not transcendent, buttranscendental, and, since it remains in close touch with that which isintuitable, yields a real philosophy in contrast to all merely formalphilosophy. 

These theoretical advantages of idealism are supplemented by momentousreasons of a practical kind, which determine the choice between the twosystems, besides which none other is possible. The moral law says: Thoushalt be self-dependent. If I ought to be so I must be able to be so; butif I were matter I would not be able. Thus idealism proves itself to be theethical mode of thought, while the opposite mode shows that those who favorit have not raised themselves to that independence of all that is externalwhich is morally enjoined, for in order to be able to know ourselves freewe must have made ourselves free. [1] Thus the philosophy which a manchooses depends on what sort of a man he is. If, on the other hand, thecategorical imperative calls for belief in the reality of the externalworld and of other minds, this is nothing against idealism. For idealismdoes not deny the realism of life, but explains it as a necessary, thoughnot a final, mode of intuition. The dogmatic mode of thought is merely anexplanation from the standpoint of common consciousness, and for idealism, as the only view which is both scientifically and practically satisfactory, this explanation itself needs explaining. Realism and idealism, likenatural impulse and moral will in the sphere of action, are both groundedin reason. But idealism is the true standpoint, because it is able tocomprehend and explain the opposing theory, while the converse is not thecase. 

[Footnote 1: Cf. O. Liebmann (_Ueber den individuellen Beweis für dieFreiheit des Willens p, 131. 1866)_ "Here we discover the noteworthy pointwhere theoretical and practical philosophy actually pass over into eachother. For this principle results: In order to carry out the individualproof for the freedom of the will, I must do my duty. "]

The nature, the goal, and the methods of the Science of Knowledge have nowbeen determined. It is genuine, thoroughgoing idealism, which raises theKantian philosophy to the rank of an evident science by deducing itspremises from a first principle which is immediately certain, and byremoving the twofold dualism of intuition and thought, of knowledge andvolition, viz. , by proving both contraries acts of one and the same ego. While Reinhold had sought a supreme truth as a fundamental principle ofunity, without which the doctrine of knowledge would lack the systematicform essential to science, while Beck had interpreted the spirit of theKantian philosophy in an idealistic sense, and Jacobi had demanded theelimination of the thing in itself, all these desires combined arefulfilled in Fichte's doctrine, and at the same time the results of theCritique of Reason are given that evidence which Aenesidemus-Schulze hadmissed in them. As an answer to the question, "How is knowledge broughtabout?" (as well the knowledge of common sense as that given in theparticular sciences), "how is experience possible?", and as a constructionof common consciousness as this manifests itself in life and in theparticular sciences, Fichteanism adopts the name _Science of Knowledge_, being distinguished from the particular sciences by the fact that theydiscuss the voluntary, and it the necessary, representations or actions ofthe spirit. (The representation of a triangle or a circle is a free one, itmay be omitted; the representation of space in general is a necessary one, from which it is impossible for us to abstract. ) How does intelligencecome to have sensations, to intuit space and time, and to form just suchcategories (thing and property, cause and effect, and not others quitedifferent)? While Kant correctly described these functions of the intuitingand thinking spirit, and showed them actual, they must further be proven, be shown necessary or deduced. Deduced whence? From the "deed-acts"(_Thathandlungen_) of the ego which lie at the basis of all consciousness, and the highest of which are formulated in three principles. 

%(b) The Three Principles. %--At the portal of the Science of Knowledge weare met not by an assertion, but by a summons--a summons toself-contemplation. Think anything whatever and observe what thou dost, and of necessity must do, in thinking. Thou wilt discover that thou dostnever think an object without thinking thyself therewith, that it isabsolutely impossible for thee to abstract from thine ego. And second, consider what thou dost when thou dost think thine "ego. " This meansto affirm or posit one's self, to be a subject-object. The nature ofself-consciousness is the identity of the representing [subject] andthe represented [object]. The pure ego is not a fact, but an originaldoing, the act of being for self (_Fürsichsein_), and the (philosophical, or--as seems to be the case according to some passages--even the common)consciousness of this doing an intellectual intuition; through this webecome conscious of the deed-act which is ever (though unconsciously)performing. This is the meaning of the first of the principles: "The _ego_posits originally and absolutely its own being, " or, more briefly: The egoposits itself; more briefly still: I am. The nature of the ego consists inpositing itself as existing. [1] Since, besides this self-cogitation ofthe ego, an op-position is found among the facts of empiricalconsciousness (think only of the principle of contradiction), and yet, besides the ego, there is nothing which could be opposed, we must assumeas a second principle: To the ego there is absolutely oppositeda _non-ego_. These two principles must be united, and this can beaccomplished only by positing the contraries (ego and non-ego), since theyare both in the ego, as reciprocally limiting or partially sublatingone another, that is, each as _divisible_ (capable of quantitativedetermination). Accordingly the third principle runs: "The ego opposes inthe ego a divisible non-ego to the divisible ego. " From these principlesFichte deduces the three laws of thought, identity, contradiction, andsufficient reason, and the three categories of quality--reality, negation, and limitation or determination. Instead of following him in these labors, we may emphasize the significance of his view of the ego as pure activitywithout an underlying substratum, with which he carries dynamism over fromthe Kantian philosophy of nature to metaphysics. We must not conceive theego as something which must exist before it can put forth its activities. Doing is not a property or consequence of being, but being is an accidentand effect of doing. All substantiality is derivative, activity is primal;_being arises from doing_. The ego is nothing more than self-position; itexists not only for itself (_für sich_), but also through itself (_durchsich_). 

[Footnote 1: The ego spoken of in the first of the principles, the ego asthe object of intellectual intuition and as the ground and creator of allbeing, is, as the second _Introduction to the Science of Knowledge_ clearlyannounces, not the individual, but the I-ness _(Ichheit)_ (which is to bepresupposed as the prius of the manifold of representation, and which isexalted above the opposition of subject and object), mentality in general, eternal reason, which is common to all and the same in all, which ispresent in all thinking and at the basis thereof, and to which particularpersons stand related merely as accidents, as instruments, as specialexpressions, destined more and more to lose themselves in the universalform of reason. But, further still, a distinction must be made between theabsolute ego as intuition (as the form of I-ness), from which the Scienceof Knowledge starts, and the ego as Idea (as the supreme goal of practicalendeavor) with which it ends. In neither is the ego conceived asindividual; in the former the I-ness is not yet determined to the point ofindividuality, in the latter individuality has disappeared, Fichte is rightwhen he thinks it remarkable that "a system whose beginning and end andwhole nature is aimed at forgetfulness of individuality in the theoreticalsphere and denial of it in the practical sphere" should be "called egoism. "And yet not only opponents, but even adherents of Fichte, as is shown by_Friedrich Schlegel's_ philosophy of genius, have, by confusing the pureand the empirical ego, been guilty of the mistake thus censured. On thephilosophy of the romanticists cf. Erdmann's _History_, vol. Ii. §§ 314, 315; Zeller, p. 562 _seq_. ; and R. Haym, _Die Romantische Schule_, 1870. ]

The actions expressed in the three principles are never found pure inexperience, nor do they represent isolated acts of the ego. Intelligencecan think nothing without thinking itself therewith; it is equallyimpossible for it to think "I am" without at the same time thinkingsomething else which is not itself; subject and object are inseparable. It is rather true that the acts of position described are one single, all-inclusive act, which forms only the first member in a connected systemof pre-conscious actions, through which consciousness is produced, and thecomplete investigation of whose members constitutes the further business ofthe Science of Knowledge as a theory of the nature of reason. In this theScience of Knowledge employs a method which, by its rhythm of analysis andsynthesis, development and reconciliation of opposites, became the model ofHegel's dialectic method. The synthesis described in the third principle, although it balances thesis and antithesis and unites them in itself, stillcontains contrary elements, in order to whose combination a new synthesismust be sought. In this, in turn, the analytic discovery and the syntheticadjustment of a contrariety is repeated, etc. , etc. The original synthesis, moreover, prescribes a division of the inquiry into two parts, onetheoretical and the other practical. For it contains the followingprinciples: The ego posits itself as limited by the non-ego--it functionscognitively; and: The ego posits itself as determining the non-ego--itfunctions volitionally and actively. 

%(c) The Theoretical Ego. %--In positing itself as determined by thenon-ego, the ego is at once passive (affected by something other thanitself) and active (it posits its own limitation). This is possible only asit posits reality in itself only in part, and transfers to the non-ego somuch as it does not posit in itself. Passivity is diminished activity, negation of the totality of reality. From reflection on this relationbetween ego and non-ego spring the categories of reciprocal determination, of causality (the non-ego as the cause of the passion of the ego), andsubstantiality (this passion merely the self-limitation of the ego). The conflict between the causality of the non-ego (by which the ego isaffected) and the substantiality of the ego (in which and the activity ofwhich all reality is contained) is resolved only by the assumption of twoactivities (or, rather, of two opposite directions of one activity) in theego, one of which (centrifugal, expansive) strives infinitely outward whilethe other (centripetal or contractile) sets a bound to the former, anddrives the ego back into itself, whereupon another excursus follows, and anew limitation and return, etc. With every repetition of this double actof production and reflection a special class of representations arises. Through the first limitation of the in itself unlimited activity"sensation" arises (as a product of the "productive imagination"). Becausethe ego produces this unconsciously, it appears to be given, brought aboutby influence from without. The second stage, "intuition, " is reached whenthe ego reflects on sensation, when it opposes to itself something foreignwhich limits it. Thirdly, by reflection on intuition an "image" of thatwhich is intuited is constructed, and, as such, distinguished from a realthing to which the image corresponds; at this point the categories and theforms of intuition, space and time, appear, which thus arise along withthe object. [1] The fourth stadium is "understanding, " which steadies thefluctuating intuition into a concept, realizes the object, and looks uponit as the cause of the intuition. Fifthly, "judgment" makes its appearanceas the faculty of free reflection and abstraction, or the power to considera definite content or to abstract from it. As judgment is itself thecondition of the bound reflection of the understanding, so it points inturn to its condition, to the sixth and highest stage of intelligence, "reason, " by means of which we are able to abstract from all objectswhatever, while reason itself, pure self-consciousness, is that fromwhich abstraction is never possible. It is only in the highest stage thatconsciousness or a representation of representation takes place. And at theculmination of the theoretical ego the point of transition to the practicalego appears. Here the ego becomes aware that in positing itself asdetermined by the non-ego it has only limited itself, and therefore isitself the ground of the whole content of consciousness; here it apprehendsitself as determining the non-ego or as acting, and recognizes as its chiefmission to impress the form of the ego as far as possible on the non-ego, and ever to extend the boundary further. 

[Footnote 1: The object is a product of the ego only for the observer, notfor the observed ego itself, to which, from this standpoint of imagination, it appears rather as a thing in itself independent of the ego and affectingit. Further, it must so appear, because the ego, in its after reflectionon its productive activity, and just by this reflection, transforms theproductive action considered into a fixed and independent product foundexisting. ]

The "deduction of representation" whose outline has just been given was thefirst example (often imitated in the school of Schelling and Hegel) of a_constructive psychology_, which, from the mission or the concept of thesoul--in this case from the nature of self-consciousness--deduces thevarious psychical functions as a system of actions, each of which is inits place implied by the rest, as it in turn presupposes them. This isdistinguished from the sensationalistic psychology, which is also genetic(cf. Pp. 245-250), as well as from the mechanical or associationalpsychology, which likewise excludes the idea of an isolated coexistence ofmental faculties, by the fact that it demands a new manifestation of thesoul-ground in order to the ascent from one member of the series tothe next higher. It is also distinguished from sensationalism by itsteleological point of view. For no matter how much Fichte, too, may speakof the mechanism of consciousness, it is plain to the reader of thetheoretical part of his system not only that he makes this mechanism workin the service of an end, but also that he finds its origin in purposiveactivity of the ego; while the practical part gives further and decisiveconfirmation of the fact. The danger and the defect of such a constructivetreatment of psychology--as we may at once remark for all laterattempts--lies in imagining that the task of mental science has beenaccomplished and all its problems solved when each particular activity ofthe ego has been assigned its mission and work for the whole, and its placein the system, without any indication of the means through which thisdestination can be fulfilled. 

%(d) The Practical Ego. %--The deduction of representation has shownhow (through what unconscious acts of the ego) the different stages ofcognition, the three sensuous and the three intellectual functions ofrepresentation, come into being. It has proved incapable, however, ofgiving any account of the way in which the ego comes at one point to arrestits activity, which tends infinitely outward, and to turn it back uponitself. We know, indeed, that this first limitation, through whichsensation arises, and on which as a basis the understanding, by continuedreflection constructs the objective world, was necessary in order thatconsciousness and knowledge might arise. If the ego did not limit itsinfinite activity neither representation nor an objective worldwould exist. But why, then, are there such things as consciousness, representation, and a world? From the standpoint of the theoretical egothis problem, "Whence the original non-ego or opposition (_Anstoss_), which impels the ego back upon itself?" cannot be solved, since it isonly through the opposition that it itself arises. The "deduction of theopposition, " which the theoretical part of the Science of Knowledge didnot furnish, is to be looked for from the practical part. The primacy ofpractical reason, already emphasized by Kant, gives us the answer: _Theego_ limits itself and _is theoretical, in order to be practical_. Thewhole machinery of representation and the represented world exists only tofurnish us the possibility of fulfilling our duty. We are intelligence inorder that we may be able to be will. 

Action, action--that is the end of our existence. Action is giving form tomatter, it is the alteration or elaboration of an object, the conquest ofan impediment, of a limitation. We cannot act unless we have somethingin, on, and against which to act. The world of sensation and intuition isnothing but a means for attaining our ethical destiny, it is "the materialof our duty under the form of sense. " The theoretical ego posits anobject (_Gegenstand_) that the practical ego may experience resistance(_Widerstand_). No action is possible without a world as the object ofaction; no world is possible without a consciousness which represents it;no consciousness possible without reflection of the ego on itself; noreflection without limitation, without an opposition or non-ego. The_Anstoss_ is deduced. The ego posits a limit (is theoretical) in order (aspractical) to overcome it. Our duty is the only _per se (Ansich)_ ofthe phenomenal world, the only truly real element in it: "Things are inthemselves that which we ought to make of them. " Objectivity exists only tobe more and more sublated, that is, to be so worked up that the activityof the ego may in it become evident. --The same ground of explanation whichreveals the necessity of an external nature enables us to understand whythe one infinite ego (the universal life or the Deity, as Fichte puts it inhis later works) divides into the many empirical egos or individuals, whyit does not carry out its plan immediately, but through finite spirits asits organs. Action is possible only under the form of the individual, onlyin individuals are consciousness and morality possible. Without resistance, no action; without conflict, no morality. Individuality, it is true, is tobe overcome and destroyed in moral endeavor; but in order to this it musthave existed. Virtue is a conquest over external _and internal_ nature. 

A gradation of practical functions corresponding to the series oftheoretical activities leads from feeling and striving (longing anddesire) through the system of impulses (the impulse to representation orreflection, to production, to satisfaction) up to moral will or the impulseto harmony with self, which stands opposed to the natural impulses as thecategorical imperative. The practical ego mediates between the theoreticaland the absolute ego. The ego ought to be infinite and self-dependent, butfinds itself finite and dependent on a non-ego--a contradiction which isresolved by the ego becoming practical, by the fact that in ever increasingmeasure it subdues nature to itself, and by such increasing extensionof the boundary draws nearer and ever nearer to the realization of itsdestination, to become absolute ego. 

%2. The Science of Ethics and of Right. %

The moral law demands the control of the sensuous impulse by the pureimpulse. If the former aims at comfortable ease and enjoyment, thelatter is directed toward satisfaction with one's self, to endeavor andself-dependence. (Enjoyment is inevitable, it is true, as satisfactionwhere any impulse whatever is carried out; only it must not form the endof action. ) Morality is activity for its own sake, the radical evil--fromwhich only a miracle can deliver us, but a miracle which we must ourselvesperform--is inertness, lack of will to rise above the naturaldeterminateness of the impulse of self-preservation to the clearconsciousness of duty and of freedom. For the moral man there is noresting; each end attained becomes for him the impulse to renewed endeavor, each task fulfilled leads him to a fresh one. Become self-dependent, actautonomously, make thyself free; let every action have a place in a series, in the continuation of which the ego must become independent. To thisformal and universal norm, again, there is added a special injunction foreach individual. Each individual spirit has its definite mission assignedto it by the world-order: each ought to do that which it alone should andcan do. Always fulfill thy moral vocation, thy special destination. [1] Orboth in popular combination: Never act contrary to conscience. 

[Footnote 1: Although Fichte was justly charged with surpassing even theabstractness of the Kantian ethics with his bald moral principle, theself-dependence of the ego, he deserves praise for having given ethics aconcrete content of indisputable soundness and utility by his introductionof Jacobi's idea of purified individuality. ]

The elevation to freedom is accomplished gradually. At first freedomconsists only in the consciousness of the natural impulse, then followsa breaking away from this by means of maxims, which in the beginningare maxims of individual happiness. Later on a blind enthusiasm forself-dependence arises and produces an heroic spirit, which would rather begenerous than just, which bestows sympathy more readily than respect; truemorality, however, does not arise until, with constant attention to the lawand continued watchfulness of self, duty is done for its own sake. No manis for a moment secure of his morality without continued endeavor. In orderto deliverance from the original sin of inertness and its train, cowardiceand falsity, men stand in need of examples, such as have been given them inthe founders of religions, to construe for them the riddle of freedom. Thenecessary enlightenment concerning moral conviction is given by the Church, whose symbols are not to be looked upon as dogmatic propositions, but onlyas means for the proclamation of the eternal verities, and which, like thestate (for both are institutions based on necessity), has for its object tomake itself unnecessary as time goes on. 

The system of duties distinguishes four classes of duties on the basisof the twofold opposition of universal (non-transferable) and particular(transferable) duties, and of unconditional duties (directed to the whole)and conditional duties (directed toward self). These four classes are theduties of self-preservation, of class, of non-interference with others, and of vocation. The lower calling includes the producers, artisans, andtradesmen, whose action terminates directly on nature; and the higher, the scholars, teachers of the people or clergy, artists, and governmentofficials, who work directly on the community of rational beings. Fichte'sthoughtful and sympathetically written discussion of marriage is inpleasant contrast to the bald, purely legal view of this relation adoptedby Kant. 

_Natural right_ is for Fichte, as for Kant, whose theory of right, moreover, appeared later than Fichte's, entirely independent of ethics, and distinguished from the latter by its exclusive reference to externalconduct instead of to the disposition and the will. The rule of right gainsfrom the moral law, it is true, new sanction for conscience, but cannot bederived from the law. --The concept of right is to be deduced as a necessaryact of the ego, _i. E. _, to be shown a condition of self-consciousness. Theego must posit itself as an individual, and can accomplish this only bypositing itself in a relation of right to other finite rational beings;without a thou, no I. A finite rational being cannot posit itself withoutascribing to itself a free activity in an external sense-world; and itcannot effect this latter unless (1) it ascribes free activity to otherbeings as well, hence not without assuming other finite rational beingsoutside itself, and positing itself as standing in _the relation of right_to them; and unless (2) it ascribes to itself a material body and positsthis as standing under the influence of a person outside it. But, further, Fichte considers it possible to deduce the particular constitution both ofthe external world and of the human body (as the sphere of all free actionspossible to the person). In the former there must be present a tough, durable matter capable of resistance, and light and air in order to thepossibility of intercourse between spirits; while the latter must be anorganized, articulated nature-product, furnished with senses, capable ofinfinite determination, and adapted to all conceivable motions. 

If a community of free beings, such as has been shown the condition ofindividual self-consciousness, is to be possible, the following must holdas the law of right: So limit thy freedom that others may be free alongwith thee. This law is conditioned on the lawful behavior of others. Wherethis is lacking, where my fellow does not recognize and treat me as a free, rational being, the right of coercion comes in; coercion, however, is notto be exercised by the individual himself--since then there would be noguaranty either for its successful exercise or for the non-violation of thelegal limit--but devolves upon the state. The state takes its origin inthe common will of all to unite for the safeguarding of their rights, anddetermines by positive laws (intermediate between the law of right andlegal judgments) what shall be considered rights. Thus there result threesubjects for natural right: original rights or the sum of that whichpertains to freedom or personality (inviolability of the body and ofproperty), the right of coercion, and political right. The aim ofpunishment is the reform of the evil doer and the deterrence of others. Fichte is in agreement with Kant concerning the principle of popularsovereignty (Rousseau) and the exercise of the political power throughrepresentatives; but not so concerning the guaranties against the violationof the fundamental law of the state. Instead of the division of powersrecommended by Kant he demands supervision of the rulers of the state byephors, who, themselves without any legislative or executive authority, shall suspend the rulers in case they violate the law, and call them toaccount before the community. Every constitution in which the rulersare not responsible is despotic. Fichte did not continue loyal to thisprinciple, that the state is merely a legal institution. He not onlydemands a state organization of labor by which everyone shall be placed ina position to live from his work, in the _Natural Right_ and the _ExclusiveCommercial State_, but, in his posthumous _Theory of Right_, 1812, he makesit the chief duty of the state to lead men, by the moral and intellectualtraining of the people, to do from insight what they have hitherto donefrom traditional belief. Through the education of the people the empiricalstate is gradually to transform itself into the rational state. 

%3. Fichte's Second Period: his View of History and his Theory ofReligion. %

Fichte's transfer to Berlin brought him into more intimate contact withthe world, and along with new experiences and new emotions gave him newproblems. While a vigorously developing religious sentiment turned hisspeculation to the relation of the individual ego to the primal source ofspiritual life, empirical reality also acquired greater significance forhim, and the intellectual, moral, and political situation of the timeespecially attracted his attention. The last required philosophicalinterpretation, demanded at once inquiry into its historical conditions anda consideration of the means by which the glaring contradiction betweenthe condition of the nation at the time and the ideals of reason could bediminished. The _Addresses to the German Nation_ outlined a plan for amoral reformation of the world, to start with the education of the Germanpeople;[1] while the _Characteristics of the Present Age_, which hadpreceded the _Addresses_, defined the place of the age in the generaldevelopment of humanity. The scheme of historical periods given inthe _Characteristics_ and similarly in the _Theory of the State_(innocence--sin--supremacy of reason, with intermediate stages between eachtwo) is interesting as a forerunner of Hegel's undertaking. 

[Footnote 1: "Among all nations you are the one in whom the germ of humanperfection is most decidedly present. " The spiritual regeneration ofmankind must proceed from the German people, for they are the one originalor primitive people of the new age, the only one which has preserved itsliving language--French is a dead tongue--and has raised itself to truecreative poetry and free science. The ground of distinction betweenGermanism and the foreign spirit lies in the question, whether we believein an original element in man, in the freedom, infinite perfectibility, andeternal progress of our race, or put no faith in all these. ]

History is produced through the interaction of the two principles, faithand understanding, which are related to each other as law and freedom, andstrives toward a condition in which these two shall be so reconciled thatfaith shall have entirely passed over into the form of understanding, shallhave been transformed into insight, and understanding shall have taken upthe content of faith into itself. History begins with the coming togetherof two original and primitive races, one of order or faith, and one offreedom or understanding, neither of which would attain to an historicaldevelopment apart from the other. From the legal race the free race learnsrespect for the law, as in turn it arouses in the former the impulse towardfreedom. The course of history divides into five periods. In the stateof "innocence" or of rational instinct that which is rational is doneunconsciously, out of natural impulse; in the state of "commencing sin" theinstinct for the good changes into an external compulsory authority, the law of reason appears as a ruling power from without, which can bedisobeyed as well as obeyed. We ourselves live in the period of "completedsinfulness, " of absolute license and indifference to all truth, ofunlimited caprice and selfishness. But however far removed from the moralideal this age appears, in which the individual, freed from all restraints, heeds naught except his egoistic desire, and in his care for his ownwelfare forgets to labor for the universal, yet this ultimate goal, thisdoing from free insight that which in the beginning was done out of blindfaith, cannot be attained unless authority shall have first been shaken offand the individual become self-dependent. A few signs already betokenthe dawn of the fourth era, that of rational science or of "commencingjustification, " in which truth shall be acknowledged supreme, and theindividual ego, at least as cognitive, shall submit itself to the genericreason. Finally, with the era of rational art, or the state of "completedjustification and sanctification, " wherein the will of the individual shallentirely merge in life for the race, the end of the life of humanityon earth--the free determination of all its relations according toreason--will be fulfilled. 

In the Jena period the religious life of the ego simply coincided forFichte with its practical life; piety coincided with moral conduct; theDeity with the absolute ego, with the moral law, with the moral order ofthe world. A change subsequently took place in his views on this point. He experienced feelings which, at least in quality, were distinct fromreadiness for moral action, no matter how intimately they are intertwinedwith this, and no matter how little they can actually be separated fromit; _religion_ is possible neither without a metaphysical belief in asuprasensible world, nor without obedience to the moral law, yet in itselfit is not that belief nor this action, but the inner spirit which pervadesand animates all our thought and action--it is life, love, blessedness. Andas quiet blessedness is here distinguished from ceaseless action, so forour thinker the inactive Deity, the self-identical life of the absolute, separates from the active universal reason, which in its individual organsadvances from task to task. The earlier undivided and unique principle, theabsolute ego, divides into the _Ichheit_ (moral law, world-order), and anabsolute as the ground thereof. "The spirit (the ego, or, as Fichte nowprefers to say, knowledge) an image of God, the world an image of thespirit. " The active order of the world (the moral law which realizesitself in individuals) the immediate, and objective reality the mediate, revelation of the absolute!

Does this view of religion, which Fichte incorporates also in the laterexpositions of the Science of Knowledge, indicate an abandonment and denialof the earlier standpoint? The philosophy of Fichte's second period is anew system--so judge the majority of the historians of philosophy. It isnot a transformation, but a completion of the earlier system; the doctrinepromulgated in Berlin continues to be idealistic, as that advanced in Jenahad itself been pantheistic--this is the opinion of Fortlage and Harms, in agreement with the philosopher himself and with his son. Kuno Fischer, also, who shows a constant advance in the development of Fichteanism, agradual transition "without a break, " may be counted among the minority whohold that throughout his life Fichte taught but one system. We believe itour duty to adhere to this latter view. The Science of Knowledge (the worlda product of the ego) enters as it is into the later form of the Fichteanphilosophy; the latter gives up none of the fundamental positions of theformer, but only adds to it a culmination, by which the appearance ofthe building is altered, it is true, but not the edifice itself. In thediscussion of the question the following three have been emphasized asthe most important points of distinction between the two periods: In theearlier system God is made equivalent to the absolute ego and the moralorder of the world, in the later he is separated from these and removedbeyond them; in the former the nature of God is described as activity, in the latter, as being; in the one, action is designated as the highestmission of man, in the other, blessed devotion to God. All three variationsof the later doctrine from the earlier may be admitted without giving upthe position that the former is only an extension of the latter and notan essential modification of it (_i. E. _, in its teachings concerning therelation of the ego and the world). Fichte experienced religious feelingsthe philosophical outcome of which he worked into his system. He now knowsa first thing (the Deity as distinct from the absolute ego) and a lastthing (the inwardness of religious devotion to the world-ground), which hehad before not overlooked, much less denied, but combined in one with thesecond (the absolute ego or the moral order of the world) and the onebefore the last (moral action). It is incorrect to say that, in his laterdoctrine, Fichte substituted the inactive absolute in place of the activeabsolute ego, and the quiet blessedness of contemplation in place ofceaseless action. Not in place of these, but beyond them, while allelse remains as it was. The categorical imperative, the absolute ego orknowledge is no longer God himself, but the first manifestation of God, though a necessary revelation of him. Religion had previously been includedfor Fichte in moral action; now fellowship with God goes beyond this, though morality remains its indispensable condition and inseparablecompanion. Finally, how to construe the previously avoided predicate, being, in relation to the Deity, is shown by the no less frequentdesignation of the absolute as the "Universal Life. " The expression being, which it must be confessed is ambiguous, here signifies in our opinion onlythe quiet, self-identical activity of the absolute, in opposition to theunresting, changeful activity of the world-order and its finite organs, notthat inert and dead being posited by the ego, the ascription of which tothe Deity Fichte had forbidden in his essay which had been charged withatheism, not to speak of the existence-mode of a particular self-consciousand personal being. Instead of speaking of a conversion of Fichte tothe position of his opponents, we might rather venture the paradoxicalassertion, that, when he characterizes the absolute as the only true being, he intends to produce the same view in the mind of the reader as in hisearlier years, when he expressed himself against the application of theconcepts existence, substance, and conscious personality to God, on theground that they are categories of sense. The chief thing, at least, remains unaltered: the opposition to a view of religion which transformsthe sublime and sacred teaching of Christianity "into an enervatingdoctrine of happiness. "

CHAPTER XI. 

SCHELLING. 

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph (von) Schelling was born January 27, 1775, atLeonberg (in Würtemberg), and died August 20, 1854, at the baths of Ragatz(in Switzerland). In 1790-95 he attended the seminary at Tübingen, incompany with Hölderlin and Hegel, who were five years older than himself;at seventeen he published a dissertation on the Fall of Man, and ayear later an essay on Religious Myths; and was called in 1798 fromLeipsic--where, after several treatises[1] in explanation of the Scienceof Knowledge, he had issued, in 1797, the _Ideas for a Philosophy ofNature_--to Jena. In the latter place he became acquainted with his futurewife, Caroline, [2] _née_ Michaëlis (1763-1809), widow of Böhmer and at thistime the brilliant wife of August Wilhelm Schlegel. From 1803 to 1806 heserved as professor in Würzburg; then followed two residences of fourteenyears each in Munich, separated by seven years in Erlangen: 1806-20 asMember of the Academy of Sciences and General Secretary of the Academy ofthe Plastic Arts (he received this latter position after delivering on theking's birthday his celebrated address on "The Relation of the PlasticArts to Nature, " 1807); and 1827-41 as professor in the newly establisheduniversity, and President of the Academy of Sciences. In 1812 Schellingmarried his second wife, Pauline Gotter. Besides various journals[3] andthe works to be noticed later, two polemic treatises should be mentioned, the _Exposition of the True Relation of the Philosophy of Nature to theImproved Doctrine of Fichte_, 1806, in which his former friend is chargedwith plagiarism, and the _Memorial of the Treatise on Divine Things by HerrJacobi_, 1812, which answers a bitter attack of Jacobi still more bitterly. From this on our philosopher, once so fond of writing, becomes silent. [4]The often promised issue of the positive philosophy, which had already beentwice commenced in print (_The Ages of the World_, 1815; _MythologicalLectures_, 1830), was both times suspended. Being called to the BerlinAcademy by Frederick William IV. , in order to counterbalance the prevailingHegelianism, Schelling delivered lectures in the university also (onMythology and Revelation), which he ceased, however, when notes taken byhis hearers were printed without his consent. [5] His collected works werepublished in fourteen volumes (1856-61) under the care of his son, K. E. A. Schelling. [6]

[Footnote 1: _On the Possibility of a Form of Philosophy in General_, _Onthe Ego as Principle of Philosophy_, both in 1795; _Letters on Dogmatismand Criticism_, 1796; _Essays in Explanation of the Science of Knowledge_, 1797. ]

[Footnote 2: _Karoline_, Letters, edited by G. Waitz, 1871. ]

[Footnote 3: _Kritisches Journal der Philosophie_ (with Hegel), 1802;_Zeitschrift für spekulative Physik_, 1800 (continued as _Neue Zeitschriftfür spekulative Physik_); _Jahrbücher der Medizin als Wissenschaft_ (withMarcus), 1806-08; _Allgemeine Zeitschrift von Deutschen für Deutsche_, 1813. ]

[Footnote 4: Besides a supplement to _Die Weltalter_ and his inaugurallecture at Berlin, he published only two prefaces, one to _Viktor Cousinüber französische und deutsche Philosophie_, done into German by HubertBeckers, 1834, and one to Steffens's _Nachgelassene Schriften_, 1846. ]

[Footnote 5: Paulus, _Die endüch offenbar gewordene positive Philosophieder Offenbarung_, 1843. Frauenstädt had previously published a sketch fromthis later doctrine, 1842. ]

[Footnote 6: On Schelling cf. The Lectures by K. Rosenkranz, 1843; thearticles by Heyder in vol. Xiii. Of Herzog's _Realencyclopädie fürprotestantische Theologie_, 1860, and Jodl in the _Allgemeine deutscheBiographie_; R. Haym, _Die romantische Schule_, 1870; _Aus SchellingsLeben, in Briefen_, edited by Plitt, 3 vols. , 1869-70. [Cf. Also Watson's_Schelling's Transcendental Idealism_ (Griggs's Philosophical Classics, 1882); and several translations from Schelling in the _Journal ofSpeculative Philosophy_. --TR. ]]

The leading motive in Schelling's thinking is an unusually powerful fancy, which gives to his philosophy a lively, stimulating, and attractivecharacter, without making it to a like degree logically satisfactory. Ifthe systems of Fichte and Hegel, which in their content are closely relatedto Schelling's, impress us by their logical severity, Schelling chains usby his lively intuition and his suggestive power of feeling his way intothe inner nature of things. With him analogies outweigh reasons; he ismore concerned about the rich content of concepts than about their sharpdefinition; and in the endeavor to show the unity of the universe, both inthe great and in the little, especially to show the unity of nature andspirit, he dwells longer on the relationship of objects than on theirantitheses, which he is glad to reduce to mere quantitative and temporarydifferences. He adds to this an astonishing mobility of thought, in virtueof which every offered suggestion is at once seized and worked into his ownsystem, though in this the previous standpoint is unconsciously exchangedfor a somewhat altered one. Schelling's philosophy is, therefore, in acontinual state of flux, nearly every work shows it in a new form, and itis always ideas from without whose incorporation has caused the transition. Besides Leibnitz, Kant, and Fichte, who were already familiar to Schellingas a pupil at Tübingen, it was first Herder, then Spinoza and Bruno, whoexerted a transforming influence on his system, to be followed later byNeoplatonism and Böhme's mysticism, and, finally, by Aristotle andthe Gnostics, not to speak of his intercourse with his contemporariesKielmeyer, Steffens, Baader, Eschenmayer, and others. Omitting his earlyadherence to Fichte, at least three periods must be distinguishedin Schelling's thinking. The first period (1797-1800) includes theepoch-making feat of his youth, the _philosophy of nature_, and, as anequally legitimate second part of his system, the philosophy of spirit or_transcendental philosophy_. The latter is a supplementary recasting ofFichte's Science of Knowledge, while in the former Schelling follows Kantand Herder. The second period, from 1801, adds to these two co-ordinateparts, the philosophy of nature and the philosophy of spirit, and as afundamental discipline, a science of the absolute, the _philosophy ofidentity_, which may be characterized as Spinozism revived on a Fichteanbasis. Besides the example of Spinoza, Giordano Bruno had most influence onthis form of Schelling's philosophy. With the year 1809, after the signs ofa new phase had become perceptible from 1804 on, his system enters on itsthird, the theosophical, period, the period of the _positive philosophy_, in which we shall distinguish a mystical and a scholastic stage. The formeris represented by the doctrine of freedom inspired by Jacob Böhme; thelatter, by the philosophy of mythology and revelation, which goes back toAristotle and the Gnostics. In the first period the absolute for Schellingis creative nature; in the second, the identity of opposites; in the thirdit is an antemundane process which advances from the not-yet-present ofthe contraries to their overcoming. In neither of these advances is itSchelling's intention to break with his previous teachings, but in eachcase only to add a supplement. That which has hitherto been the whole isretained as a part. The philosophy of nature takes its place beside thecompleted Fichtean transcendental philosophy, with equal rights, thoughwith a reversed procedure; then the theory of identity assumes a placeabove both; finally, a positive (existential) philosophy is added to theprevious negative (rational) philosophy. 

%1a. Philosophy of Nature. %

Schelling agrees with Fichte that philosophy is transcendental science, the doctrine of the conditions of consciousness, and has to answer thequestion, What must take place in order that knowledge may arise? Theyagree, further, that these conditions of knowledge are necessary acts, outgoings of an active original ground which is not yet conscious self, butseeks to become such, and that the material world is the product of theseactions. Nature exists in order that the ego may develop. But while Fichtecorrectly understood the purpose of nature, to help intelligence intobeing, he failed to recognize the dignity of nature, for he deprived it ofall self-dependence, all life of its own, all generative power, and treatedit merely as a dead tool, as a passive, merely posited non-ego. Natureis not a board which the original ego nails up before itself in order, striking against it, to be driven back upon itself, to be compelled toreflection, and thereby to become theoretical ego; in order, further, working over the non-ego, and transforming it, to exercise its practicalactivity: but it is a ladder on which spirit rises to itself. Spiritdevelops out of nature; nature itself has a spiritual element in it; itis undeveloped, slumbering, unconscious, benumbed intelligence. Bytransferring to nature the power of self-position or of being subject, Schelling exalts the drudge of the Science of Knowledge to the throne. The threefold division, "infinite original activity--nature orobject--individual ego or subject, " remains as in Fichte, only that thefirst member is not termed pure ego, but nature, yet creative nature, _natura naturans_. Schelling's aim is to show how from the object a subjectarises, from the existent something represented, from the representable arepresenter, from nature an ego. He could only hope to solve this problemif he conceived natural objects--in the highest of which, man, he makesconscious spirit break forth or nature intuit itself--as themselves theproducts of an original subject, of a creative ground striving towardconsciousness. For him also doing is more original than being. It would notbe exact, therefore, to define the difference between Fichte and Schellingby saying that, with the former, nature proceeds from the ego, and with thelatter the ego, from nature. It is rather true that with them both natureand spirit are alike the products of a third and higher term, which seeksto become spirit, and can accomplish this only by positing nature. In theScience of Knowledge, it is true, this higher ground is conceived as anethical, in the Philosophy of Nature as a physical, power, although oneframed for intelligence; in the former, moreover, the _natura naturata_appears as the position once for all of a non-spiritual, in the latter asa progressive articulated construction, with gradually increasingintelligence. In the unconscious products of nature, nature's aim toreflect upon itself, to become intelligence, fails, in man it succeeds. Nature is the embryonic life of spirit. Nature and spirit are essentiallyidentical: "That which is posited _out of_ consciousness is in its essencethe same as that which is posited _in_ consciousness also. " Therefore"the knowable must itself bear the impress of the knower. " Nature thepreliminary stage, not the antithesis, of spirit; history, a continuationof physical becoming; the parallelism between the ideal and the realdevelopment-series--these are ideas from Herder which Schelling introducesinto the transcendental philosophy. The Kantio-Fichtean moralism, withits sharp contraposition of nature and spirit, is limited in the_Naturphilosophie_ by Herder's physicism. 

"Nature _is a priori_" (everything individual in it is pre-determined bythe whole, by the Idea of a nature in general); hence the forms of naturecan be deduced from the concept of nature. The philosopher creates natureanew, he constructs it. Speculative physics considers nature as _subject_, becoming, productivity (not, like empirical science, as object, being, product), and for this purpose it needs, instead of individualizingreflection, an intuition directed to the whole. To this productive nature, as to the absolute ego of Fichte, are ascribed two opposite activities, one expansive or repulsive, and one attractive, and on these is based theuniversal law of _polarity_. The absolute productivity strives toward aninfinite product, which it never attains, because apart from arrest noproduct exists. At definite points a check must be given it in order thatsomething knowable may arise. Thus every product in nature is the resultof a positive, centrifugal, accelerating, universalizing force, and anegative, limiting, retarding, individualizing one. The endlessness of thecreative activity manifests itself in various ways: in the striving fordevelopment on the part of every product, in the preservation of the genusamid the disappearance of individuals, in the endlessness of the series ofproducts. Nature's creative impulse is inexhaustible, it transcends everyproduct. Qualities are points of arrest in the one universal force ofnature; all nature is a connected development. Because of the opposition inthe nature-ground between the stimulating and the retarding activity, thelaw of duality everywhere rules. To these two forces, however, still athird factor must be added as their copula, which determines the relationor measure of their connection. This is the source of the threefolddivision of the Philosophy of Nature. The magnet with its union of oppositepolar forces is the type of all configuration in nature. 

With Fichte's synthetic method and Herder's naturalistic principlesSchelling combines Kantian ideas, especially Kant's dynamism (matter isa force-product), [1] and his view of the organic (organisms areself-productive beings, and are regarded by us as ends in themselves, because of the interaction between their members and the whole). The threeorganic functions sensibility, irritability, and reproduction, on the otherhand, Schelling took from Kielmeyer, whose address _On the Relations ofthe Organic Forces_, 1793, excited great attention. The concept of life isdominant in Schelling's theory of nature. The organic is more original thanthe inorganic; the latter must be explained from the former; that which isdead must be considered as a product of departing life. No less erroneousthan the theory of a magic vital force is the mechanical interpretation, which looks on life merely as a chemical phenomenon. The dead, mechanicaland chemical, forces are merely the negative conditions of life; to themthere must be added as a positive force a vital stimulus external to theindividual, which continually rekindles the conflict between the opposingactivities on which the vital process depends. Life consists, that is, inthe perpetual prevention of the equilibrium which is the object of thechemical process. This constant disturbance proceeds from "universalnature, " which, as the common principle of organic and inorganic nature, asthat which determines them for each other, which founds a pre-establishedharmony between them, deserves the name of the world-soul. Schellingthus recognizes a threefold nature: organized, inorganic, and universalorganizing (according to Harms, cosmical) nature, of which the two formerarise from the third and are brought by it into connection and harmony. (AsSchelling here takes an independent middle course between the mechanicalexplanation of life and the assumption of a specific vital force, so inall the burning physical questions of the time he seeks to rise above thecontending parties by means of mediating solutions. Thus, in the questionof "single or double electricity, " he ranges himself neither on the side ofFranklin nor on that of his opponents; in regard to the problem of light, endeavors to overcome the antithesis between Newton's emanation theory andthe undulation theory of Euler; and, in his chapter on combustion, attacksthe defenders of phlogiston as well as those who deny it). 

[Footnote 1: Schelling terms his philosophy of nature dynamic atomism, since it posits pure intensities as the simple (atoms), from whichqualities are to be explained. ]

Schelling's philosophy of nature[1] proposes to itself three chiefproblems: the construction of general, indeterminate, homogeneousmatter, with differences in density alone, of determinate, qualitativelydifferentiated matter and its phenomena of motion or the dynamical process, and of the organic process. For each of these departments of nature anoriginal force in universal nature is assumed--gravity, light, and theircopula, universal life. Gravity--this does not mean that which as the forceof attraction falls within the view of sensation, for it is the union ofattraction and repulsion--is the principle of corporeality, and producesin the visible world the different conditions of aggregation in solids, fluids, and gases. Light--this, too, is not to be confounded with actuallight, of which it is the cause--is the principle of the soul (from itproceeds all intelligence, it is a spiritual potency, the "first subject"in nature), and produces in the visible world the dynamical processesmagnetism, electricity, and chemism. The higher unity of gravity andlight is the copula or life, the principle of the organic, of animatedcorporeality or the processes of growth and reproduction, irritability, and sensibility. 

[Footnote 1: This is contained in the following treatises: _Ideas for aPhilosophy of Nature, 1797; On the World-soul, 1798; First Sketch of aSystem of the Philosophy of Nature, 1799; Universal Deduction of theDynamical Process or the Categories of Physics_ (in the _Zeitschrift fürspekulative Physik_) 1800. In the above exposition, however, the modifiedphilosophy of nature of the second period has also been taken intoaccount. ]

General _matter_ or the filling of space, arises from the co-operation ofthree forces: the centrifugal, which manifests itself as repulsion (firstdimension), the centripetal, manifested as attraction (second dimension), and the synthesis of the two, manifested as gravity (third dimension). These forces are raised by light to a higher potency, and then make theirappearance as the causes of the _dynamical_ process or of the specificdifferences of matter. The linear function of magnetism is the conditionof coherence; the surface force of electricity, the basis of the qualitiesperceivable by sense; the tri-dimensional force of the chemical process, inwhich the two former are united, produces the chemical qualities. Galvanismforms the transition to living nature, in which through the operation ofthe "copula" these three dynamical categories are raised to _organic_categories. To magnetism as the most general, and hence the lowest force, corresponds reproduction (the formative impulse, as nutrition, growth, andproduction, including the artistic impulse); electricity develops intoirritability or excitability; the higher analogue to the chemical processas the most individual and highest stage is sensibility or the capacityof feeling. (Such at least is Schelling's doctrine after Steffens hadconvinced him of the higher dignity of that which is individual, whereasat first he had made sensibility parallel with magnetism, and reproductionwith chemism, because the former two appear most seldom, and the lattermost frequently. Electricity and irritability always maintained theirintermediate position. ) With the awakening of feeling nature has attainedits goal--intelligence. As inorganic substances are distinguished only byrelative degrees of repulsion and attraction, so the differentiation oforganisms is conditioned by the relation of the three vital functions: inthe lower forms reproduction predominates, then irritability graduallyincreases, while in the highest forms both of these are subordinated tosensibility. All species, however, are connected by a common life, all thestages are but arrests of the same fundamental force. This accentuationof the unity of nature, which establishes a certain kinship betweenSchelling's philosophy of nature and Darwinism, was a great idea, whichdeserves the thanks of posterity in spite of such defects as its oftensportive, often heedlessly bold reasoning in details. 

The parallelism of the potencies of nature, as we have developed it byleaving out of account the numerous differences between the variousexpositions of the _Naturphilosophie_, may be shown by a table:

I. UNIVERSAL NATURE. II. INORGANIC NATURE III. ORGANIC NATURE. (ORGANIZING) 3. Copula 3. Organization or Life. | ___^___ /Chemical \ G | /Sensi- Man. / \ |Process (3d| a | |bility. __^__ 2. Light 2. _Dynamical_|Dimen- | l | | / \ (Soul). _Process_. < sion) | v | |Irritabi- Male

b. At- \ (Determi- |Electri- | a |_|lity. (=Light)traction. | nate |city (2d Di->n |Animal. >1. Gra- matter. ) | mension. ) | i | | vity 1. Indeter- |Magnetism | s |Repro- Femalea. Re- | (Body) minate |(1st Di- | m |duction (-Gravity)pulsion / _matter_. \ mension. ) / \ Plant. 

%1b. Transcendental Philosophy. %

The philosophy of nature explained the products of nature teleologically, deduced them from the concept or the mission of nature, by ignoring themechanical origin of physical phenomena and inquiring into the significanceof each stage in nature in view of this ideal meaning of the whole. It askswhat is the outcome of the chemical process for the whole of nature, whatis given by electricity, by magnetism, etc. --what part of the general aimof nature is attained, is realized through this or that group of phenomena. The philosophy of spirit given in the _System of Transcendental Idealism_, 1800, finds itself confronted by corresponding questions concerning thephenomena of intelligence, of morals, and of art. Here again Schelling doesnot trace out the mechanics of the soul-life, but is interested only in themeaning, in the teleological significance of the psychical functions. His aim is a constructive psychology in the Fichtean sense, a history ofconsciousness, and the execution of his design as well closely follows theexample of the _Wissenschaftslehre_. 

Since truth is the agreement of thought and its object, every cognitionnecessarily implies the coming together of a subjective and an objectivefactor. The problem of this coming together may be treated in two ways. With the philosophy of nature we may start from the object and observe howintelligence is added to nature. The transcendental philosophy takes theopposite course, it takes its position with the subject, and asks, Howis there added to intelligence an object corresponding to it? Thetranscendental philosopher has need of intellectual intuition in order torecognize the original object-positing actions of the ego, which remainconcealed from common consciousness, sunk in the outcome of these acts. The_theoretical_ part of the system explains the representation of objectivereality (the feeling connected with certain representations that we arecompelled to have them), from pure self-consciousness, whose opposingmoments, a real and an ideal force, limit each other by degrees, --andfollows the development of spirit in three periods ("epochs"). The firstof these extends from sensation, in which the ego finds itself limited, toproductive intuition, in which a thing in itself is posited over againstthe ego and the phenomenon between the two; the second, from this point toreflection (feeling of self, outer and inner intuition together with spaceand time, the categories of relation as the original categories); thethird, finally, through judgment, wherein intuition and concept areseparated as well as united, up to the absolute act of will. Willing isthe continuation and completion of intuition;[1] intuition was unconsciousproduction, willing is conscious production. It is only through action thatthe world becomes objective for us, only through interaction with otheractive intelligences that the ego attains to the consciousness of a realexternal world, and to the consciousness of its freedom. The _practical_part follows the will from impulse (the feeling of contradiction betweenthe ideal and the object) through the division into moral law and resistantnatural impulse up to arbitrary will. Observations on legal order, on thestate, and on history are added as "supplements. " The law of right, bywhich unlawful action is directed against itself, is not a moral, but anatural order, which operates with blind necessity. The state, like law, isa product of the genus, and not of individuals. The ideal of a cosmopolitanlegal condition is the goal of _history_, in which caprice and conformityto law are one, in so far as the conscious free action of individualssubserves an unconscious end prescribed by the world-spirit. History is thenever completed revelation of the absolute (of the unity of the consciousand the unconscious) through human freedom. We are co-authors in thehistorical world-drama, and invent our own parts. Not until the third (thereligious) period, in which he reveals himself as "providence, " will God_be_; in the past (the tragical) period, in which the divine power was feltas "fate, " and in the present (the mechanical) period, in which he appearsas the "plan of nature, " God is not, but is only _becoming_. 

[Footnote 1: With this transformation of the antithesis between knowledgeand volition into a mere difference in degree, Schelling sinks back to thestandpoint of Leibnitz. In all the idealistic thinkers who start from Kantwe find the endeavor to overcome the Critical dualism of understanding andwill, as also that between intellect and sensibility. Schiller brings thecontrary impulses of the ego into ultimate harmonious union in artisticactivity. Fichte traces them back to a common ground; Schelling combinesboth these methods by extolling art as a restoration of the originalidentity. Hegel reduces volition to thought, Schopenhauer makes intellectproceed from will. ]

An interesting supplement to the Fichtean philosophy is furnished by thethird, the _aesthetic_, part of the transcendental idealism, which makesuse of Kant's theory of the beautiful in a way similar to that in which thephilosophy of nature had availed itself of his theory of the organic. Art is the higher third in which the opposition between theoretical andpractical action, the antithesis of subject and object, is removed; inwhich cognition and action, conscious and unconscious activity, freedom andnecessity, the impulse of genius and reflective deliberation are united. The beautiful, as the manifestation of the infinite in the finite, showsthe problem of philosophy, the identity of the real and the ideal, solvedin sensuous appearance. Art is the true organon and warrant of philosophy;she opens up to philosophy the holy of holies, is for philosophy thesupreme thing, the revelation of all mysteries. Poesy and philosophy (theaesthetic intuition of the artist and the intellectual intuition ofthe thinker) are most intimately related; they were united in the oldmythology--why should not this repeat itself in the future?

%2. System of Identity. %

The assertion which had already been made in the first period that "natureand spirit are fundamentally the same, " is intensified in the second intothe proposition, "The ground of nature and spirit, the absolute, is theidentity of the real and the ideal, " and in this form is elevated intoa principle. As the absolute is no longer employed as a mere ground ofexplanation, but is itself made the object of philosophy, the doctrine ofidentity is added to the two co-ordinate disciplines, the philosophy ofnature and the philosophy of spirit, as a higher third, which serves as abasis for them, and in Schelling's exposition of which several phases mustbe distinguished. [1]

[Footnote 1: The philosophy of identity is given in the followingtreatises: _Exposition of my System of Philosophy, 1801; FurtherExpositions of the System of Philosophy, 1802; Bruno, or on the Divine andNatural Principle of Things, 1803; Lectures on the Method of AcademicalStudy, 1803; Aphorisms by way of Introduction to the Philosophy of Nature, Aphorisms on the Philosophy of Nature_ (both in the _Jahrbücher fürMedizin), 1806_. Besides these the following also bear on this doctrine:the additions to the second edition of the _Ideas_, 1803, and the_Exposition_, against Fichte, 1806. ]

Following Spinoza, whom he at first imitated even in the geometrical methodof proof, Schelling teaches that there are two kinds of knowledge, thephilosophical knowledge of the reason and the confused knowledge ofthe imagination, and, as objects of these, two forms of existence, theinfinite, undivided existence of the absolute, and the finite existence ofindividual things, split up into multiplicity and becoming. The manifoldand self-developing things of the phenomenal world owe their existenceto isolating thought alone; they possess as such no true reality, andspeculation proves them void. While things appear particular to inadequaterepresentation, the philosopher views them _sub specie aeterni_, in their_per se_, in their totality, in the identity, as Ideas. To construe thingsis to present them as they are in God. But in God all things are one;in the absolute all is absolute, eternal, infinitude itself. (Accord-toHegel's parody, the absolute is the night, in which all cows are black. )

The world-ground appears as nature and spirit; yet in itself it is neitherthe one nor the other, but the unity of both which is raised above allcontrariety, the indifference of objective and subjective. Although amidthe finitude of the things of the world the self-identity of the absolutebreaks up into a plurality of self-developing individual existences, yeteven in the phenomenal world of individuals the unity of the ground is notentirely lost: each particular existence is a definite expression of theabsolute, and to it as such the character of identity belongs, though ina diminished degree and mingled with difference (Bruno's "monads"). Theworld-ground is absolute, the individual thing is relative, identity andtotality; nothing exists which is merely objective or merely subjective;everything is both, only that one or other of these two factors alwayspredominates. This Schelling terms quantitative difference: the phenomenaof nature, like the phenomena of spirit, are a unity of the real and theideal, only that in the former there is a preponderance of the real, in thelatter a preponderance of the ideal. 

At first Schelling, in Neoplatonic fashion, maintained the existence ofanother intermediate region between the spheres of the infinite and thefinite: absolute knowing or the self-knowledge of the identity. In this, as the "form" of the absolute, the objective and the subjective are notabsolutely one, as they are in the being or "essence" of the absolute, butideally (potentially) opposed, though one _realiter_. Later he does awaywith this distinction also, as existing for reflection alone, not forrational intuition, and outbids his earlier determinations concerning thesimplicity of the absolute with the principle, that it is not only theunity of opposites, but also the unity of the unity and the opposition orthe identity of the identity, in which fanciful description the dialogue_Bruno_ pours itself forth. A further alteration is brought in bycharacterizing the absolute as the identity of the finite and the infinite, and by equating the finite with the real or being, the infinite with theideal or knowing. With this there is joined a philosophical interpretationof the Trinity akin to Lessing's. In the absolute or eternal the finiteand the infinite are alike absolute. God the Father is the eternal, or theunity of the finite and the infinite; the Son is the finite in God (beforethe falling away); the Spirit is the infinite or the return of the finiteinto the eternal. 

In the construction of the real series Schelling proceeds still moreschematically and analogically than in the _Naturphilosophie_ of the firstperiod, the contents of which are here essentially reproduced. With this isclosely connected his endeavor, in correspondence with the principles ofthe theory of identity, to show in every phenomenon the operation ofall three moments of the absolute. In each natural product all three"potencies" or stages, gravity A(^1), light A(^2), and organization A(^3), are present, only in subordination to one of their number. Since the thirdpotency is never lacking, all is organic; that which appears to us asinorganic matter is only the residuum left over from organization, that which could become neither plant nor animal. New here is thecohesion-series of Steffens (the phenomenon of magnetism), in whichnitrogen forms the south pole, carbon the north pole, and iron the point ofindifference, while oxygen, hydrogen, and water represent the east pole, west pole, and indifference point in electrical polarity. In the organicworld plants represent the carbon pole, animals the nitrogen pole; theformer is the north pole, the latter the south. Moreover, the points ofindifference reappear: the plant corresponds to water, the animal to iron. Schelling was far outdone in fantastic analogies of this kind by hispupils, especially by Oken, who in his _Sketch of the Philosophy ofNature_, 1805, compares the sense of hearing, for example, to the parabola, to a metal, to a bone, to the bird, to the mouse, and to the horse. Asnature was the imaging of the infinite (unity or essence) into the finite(plurality or form), so spirit is the taking up of the finite into theinfinite. In the spiritual realm also all three divine original potenciesare every, where active, though in such a way that one is dominant. Inintuition (sensation, consciousness, intuition, each in turn thricedivided) the infinite and the eternal are subordinated to the finite; inthought or understanding (concept, judgment, inference, each in threekinds) the finite and the eternal are subordinated to the infinite; inreason (which comprehends all under the form of the absolute) the finiteand the infinite are subordinated to the eternal. Intuition is finitecognition, thought infinite cognition, reason eternal cognition. The formsof the understanding do not suffice for the knowledge of reason; commonlogic with its law of contradiction has no binding authority forspeculation, which starts with the equalization of opposites. In the_Aphorisms by way of Introduction_ science, religion, and art figure asstages of the ideal all, in correspondence with the potencies of the realall--matter, motion, and organization. Nature culminates in man, historyin the state. Reason, philosophy, is the re-establishment of identity, thereturn of the absolute to itself. 

Unconditioned knowledge, as Schelling maintains in his encyclopedia, _i. E. _, his _Lectures on the Method of Academical Study_, is thepresupposition of all particular knowledge. The function of universities isto maintain intact the connection between particular knowledge and absoluteknowledge. The three higher faculties correspond to the three potencies inthe absolute: Natural Science and Medicine to the real or finite; Historyand Law to the ideal or infinite; Theology to the eternal or the copula. There is further a faculty of arts, the so-called Philosophical Faculty, which imparts whatever in philosophy is teachable. The two lectures ontheology (viii. And ix. ) are especially important. There are two forms ofreligion, one of which discovers God in nature, while the other finds himin history; the former culminates in the Greek religion, the latter in theChristian, and with the founding of this the third period of history (whichSchelling had previously postponed into the future), the period ofprovidence begins. In Christianity mythology is based on religion, notreligion on mythology, as was the case in heathenism. The speculativekernel of Christianity is the incarnation of God, already taught by theIndian sages; this, however, is not to be understood as a single event intime, but as eternal. It has been a hindrance to the development ofChristianity that the Bible, whose value is far below that of the sacredbooks of India, has been more highly prized than that which the patristicthinking succeeded in making out of its meager contents. 

If, finally, we compare Schelling's system of identity with its model, thesystem of Spinoza, two essential differences become apparent. Although boththinkers start from a principiant equal valuation of the two phenomenalmanifestations of the absolute, nature and spirit, Spinoza tends to positthought in dependence on extension (the soul represents what the body is), while in Schelling, conversely, the Fichtean preference of spirit is stillpotent (the state and art stand nearer to the absolute identitythan the organism, although, principiantly considered, the greatestpossible approximation to the equilibrium of the real and the ideal is asmuch attained in the one as in the other). The second difference lies inthe fact that the idea of development is entirely lacking in Spinoza, whilein Schelling it is everywhere dominant. It reminds one of Lessing andHerder, who also attempted to combine Spinozistic and Leibnitzian elements. 

%3a. Doctrine of Freedom. %

The system of identity had, with Spinoza, distinguished two worlds, thereal world of absolute identity and the imagined world of differentiatedand changeable individual things; it had traced back the latter to theformer as its ground, but had not deduced it from the former. Whence, then, the imagination which, instead of the unchangeable unity, shows us thechanging manifold? Whence the imperfections of the finite, whence evil?The pantheism of Spinoza is inseparably connected with determinism, whichdenies evil without explaining it. Evil and finitude demand explanation, not denial, and this without the abandonment of pantheism. But explanationby what? By the absolute, for besides the absolute there is naught. How, then, must the pantheistic doctrine of the absolute be transformed in orderthat the fact of evil and the separate existence of the finite may becomecomprehensible? To this task are devoted the _Inquiries into the Nature ofHuman Freedom (Philosophical Works_, vol. I. , 1809, with which should becompared the _Memorial of Jacobi_, 1812, and the _Answer to Eschenmayer_, 1813). 

As early as in the _Bruno_, the problem occasionally emerges why matters donot rest with the original infinite unity of the absolute, why the finitebreaks away from the identical primal ground. The possibility of theseparation, it is answered, lies in the fact that the finite is like theinfinite _realiter_, and yet, ideally, is different from it; the actualityof the coming forth, however, lies in the non-deducible self-will ofthe finite. Then after Eschenmayer[1] _(Philosophy in its Transition toNot-philosophy_, 1803) had characterized the procession of the Ideas out ofthe Godhead as an impenetrable mystery for thought, before which philosophymust yield to faith, Schelling, in the essay _Religion and Philosophy_, 1804, goes more deeply into the problem. The origin of the sense-world isconceivable only as a breaking away, a spring, a _falling away_, which consists in the soul's grasping itself in its selfhood, in itssubordination of the infinite in itself to the finite, and in its thusceasing to be in God. The procession of the world from the infinite is afree act, a fact which can only be described, not deduced as necessary. Thecounterpart of this attainment of independence on the part of things orcreation is history as the return of the world to its source. They arerelated to each other as the fall to redemption. Both the dismission of theworld and its reception back, together with the intervening development, are, however, events needed by God himself in order to become actual God:He develops through the world. (A similar thought was not unknown in theMiddle Ages: if God is to give a complete revelation of himself he mustmake known his grace; and this presupposes sin. As the occasion of divinegrace, the fall is a happy, saving fault; without it God could not haverevealed himself as gracious, as forgiving, hence not completely. )Schelling's study of Jacob Böhme, to which he was led by Baader, essentially contributed to the concentration of his thought on this point. _The Exposition of the True Relation_, etc. , already distinctly betrays theinfluence of this mystic. In correspondence with Böhme's doctrine that Godis living God only through his inclusion of negation in himself, it is heremaintained: A being can manifest itself only when it is not merely one, buthas another, an opposition (the many), in itself, whereby it is revealed toitself as unity. With the addition of certain Kantian ideas, in particularthe idea of transcendental freedom and the intelligible character, Schelling's theosophy now assumes the following form:

The only way to guard against the determinism and the lifeless God ofSpinoza is to assume something in God which is not God himself, todistinguish between God as existent and that which is merely the ground ofhis existence or "nature in God. " In God also the perfect proceeds from theimperfect, he too develops and realizes himself. The actual, perfect God, who is intelligence, wisdom, goodness, is preceded by something which ismerely the possibility of all this, an obscure, unconscious impulse towardself-representation. For in the last analysis there is no being butwilling; to willing alone belong the predicates of the primal being, groundlessness, eternity, independence of time, self-affirmation. This"ground of existence" is an obscure "longing" to give birth to self, anunconscious impulse to become conscious; the goal of this longing is the"understanding, " the Logos, the Word, wherein God becomes revealed to self. By the self-subordination of this longing to the understanding as itsmatter and instrument, God becomes actual God, becomes spirit and love. Theoperation of the light understanding on the dark nature-will consists in aseparation of forces, whence the visible world proceeds. Whatever in thelatter is perfect, rational, harmonious, and purposive is the work of theunderstanding; the irrational remainder, on the other hand, conflict andlawlessness, abortion, sickness and death, originates in the dark ground. Each thing has two principles in it: its self-will it receives from naturein God, yet, at the same time, as coming from the divine understanding, it is the instrument of the universal will. In God the light and darkprinciples stand in indissoluble unity, in man they are separable. Thefreedom of man's will makes him independent of both principles; going overfrom truth to falsehood, he may strive to make his selfhood supreme andto reduce the spiritual in him to the level of a means, or--with divineassistance--continuing in the center, he may endeavor to subordinatethe particular will to the will of love. Good consists in overcomingresistance, for in every case a thing can be revealed only through itsopposite. If man yields to temptation it is his own guilty choice. Evil isnot merely defect, privation, but something positive, selfhood breakingaway, the reversal of the rightful order between the particular and theuniversal will. The possibility of a separation of the two wills lies inthe divine ground (it is "permitted" in order that by overmastering theself-will the will of love may approve itself), the actuality of evil isthe free act of the creature. Freedom is to be conceived, in the Kantiansense, as equally far removed from chance or caprice and from compulsion:Man chooses his own non-temporal, intelligible nature; he predestinateshimself in the first creation, _i. E. _, from eternity, and is responsiblefor his actions in the sense-world, which are the necessary results of thatfree primal act. 

[Footnote 1: K. Ad. Eschenmayer was originally a physician, then, 1811-36, professor of philosophy in Tübingen, and died in 1852 at Kirchheim unterTeck. ]

As in nature and in the individual, so also in the history of mankind, thetwo original grounds of things do battle with one another. The golden ageof innocence, of happy indecision and unconsciousness concerning sin, whenneither good nor evil yet was, was followed by a period of the omnipotenceof nature, in which the dark ground of existence ruled alone, althoughit did not make itself felt as actual evil until, in Christianity, thespiritual light was born in personal form. The subsequent conflict of goodagainst evil, in which God reveals himself as spirit, leads toward a statewherein evil will be reduced to the position of a potency and everythingsubordinated to spirit, and thus the complete identity of the ground ofexistence and the existing God be brought about. 

Besides this after-reconciliation of the two divine moments, Schellingrecognizes another, original unity of the two. The not yet unfolded unityof the beginning (God as Alpha) he terms _indifference_ or groundlessness;the more valuable unity of the end, attained by unfolding (God as Omega)is called _identity_ or spirit. In the former the contraries are not yetpresent; in the latter they are present no longer. The groundless dividesinto two equally eternal beginnings, nature and light, or longing andunderstanding, in order that the two may become one in love, and therebythe absolute develop into the personal God. In this way Schelling endeavorsto overcome the antithesis between naturalism and theism, between dualismand pantheism, and to remove the difficulties which arise for pantheismfrom the fact of evil, as well as from the concepts of personality and offreedom. 

In the two moments of the absolute (nature in God--personal spirit) werecognize at once the antithesis of the real and ideal which was givenin the philosophy of identity. The chief difference between the mysticalperiod and the preceding one consists in the fact that the absolute itselfis now made to develop (from indifference to identity, from the neither-norto the as-well-as of the antithesis), and that there is conceded to thesense-world a reality which is more than apparent, more than merely presentfor imagination. That which facilitated this rapid, almost unceasing changeof position for Schelling, and which at the same time concealed the factfrom him, was, above all, the ambiguous and variable meaning of his leadingconcepts. The "objective, " for example, now signifies unconscious being, becoming, and production, now represented reality, now the real, in so faras it is not represented, but only _is_. "God" sometimes means the wholeabsolute, sometimes only the infinite, spiritual moment in the absolute. Scarcely a single term is sharply defined, much less consistently used in asingle meaning. 

%3b. Philosophy of Mythology and Revelation. %

Once again Schelling is ready with a new statement of the problem. Philosophy is the science of the existent. In this, however, a distinctionis to be made between the _what (quid sit)_ and the _that (quod sit)_, orbetween essence and existence. The apprehension of the essence, of theconcept, is the work of reason, but this does not go as far as actualbeing. Rational philosophy cognizes only the universal, the possible, the necessary truths (whose contradictory is unthinkable), but not theparticular and factual. This philosophy can only assert: If anything existsit must conform to these laws; existence is not given with the _what_. Hegel has ignored this distinction between the logical and the actual, hasconfused the rational and the real. Even the system of identity was merelyrational, _i. E. , negative_, philosophy, to which there must be added, as asecond part, a positive or existential philosophy, which does not, like theformer, rise to the highest principle, to God, but starts from this supremeIdea and shows its actuality. 

The content of this phase of Schelling's thought[1] was so unfruitful, andits influence so small, that brief hints concerning it must here suffice. First of all, the doctrine of the divine potencies and of creation isrepeated in altered form, and then there is given a philosophy of thehistory of religion as a reflection of the theogonic process in humanconsciousness. 

[Footnote 1: On Schelling's negative and positive philosophy, published inthe four volumes of the second division of the _Works_, cf. Karl Groos, _Die reine Vernunftwissenschaft, systematische Darstellung von Schellingsnegativer Philosophie_, 1889; Konstantin Frantz, _Schellings positivePhilosophie_, in three parts, 1879-80; Ed. Von Hartmann, _GesammelteStudien und Aufsätze_, 1876, p. 650 _seq_. ; Ad. Planck, _Schellingsnachgelassene Werke_, 1858; also the essay by Heyder, referred to above]. 

The potencies are now called the infinite ability to be (inactive will, subject), pure being (being without potentiality, object), and spirit, which is free from the one-sidednesses of mere potentiality and ofmere being, and master of itself (subject-object); to these is added, further--not as a fourth, but as that which has the three predicates andis wholly in each--the absolute proper, as the cause and support of theseattributes. The original unity of the three forms is dissolved, as thefirst raises itself out of the condition of a mere potency and withdrawsitself from pure being in order to exist for itself; the tension extendsitself to the two others--the second now comes out from its selflessness, subdues the first, and so leads the third back to unity. In creationthe three potencies stand related as the unlimited Can-be, the limitingMust-be, and the Ought-to-be, or operate as material, formal, and finalcauses, all held in undivided combination by the soul. It was not until theend of creation that they became personalities. Man, in whom the potenciescome to rest, can divide their unity again; his fall calls forth a newtension, and thereby the world becomes a world outside of God. History, theprocess o progressive reconciliation between the God-estranged world andGod, passes through two periods--heathenism, in which the second personworks as a natural potency, and Christianity, in which it works withfreedom. In the discussion of these positive philosophy becomes a_philosophy of mythology and revelation_. The irresistible force ofmythological ideas is explained by the fact that the gods are not creationsof the fancy, but real powers, namely, these potencies, which form thesubstance of human conciousness. 

The history of religion has for its starting-point the relative monotheismof humanity in its original unity, and for its goal the absolute monotheismof Christianity. With the separation into nations polytheism arises. Thisis partly simultaneous polytheism (a plurality of gods under a chief god), partly successive polytheism (an actual plurality of divinities, changingdynasties of several chief gods), and develops from star worship or Sabeismup to the religion of the Greeks. The Greek mysteries form the transitionfrom mythology to revelation. While in the mythological process one orother of the divine potencies (Ground, Son, Spirit) was always predominant, in Christianity they return into unity. The true monotheism of revelationshows God as an articulated unity, in which the opposites are contained, as being overcome. The person of Christ constitutes the content ofChristianity, who, in his incarnation and sacrificial death, yields up theindependence out of God which had come to him through the fall of man. The three periods in the development of the Church (real, substantialunity--ideality or freedom--the reconciliation of the two) wereforeshadowed in the chief apostles: Peter, with his leaning toward thepast, represents the Papal Church; Paul the thinker the Protestant Church;and the gentle John the Church of the future. 

CHAPTER XII. 

SCHELLING'S CO-WORKERS. 

In his period of vigorous creation Schelling was the center of an animatedphilosophical activity. Each phase of his philosophy found a circle ofenthusiastic fellow-laborers, whom we must hesitate to term disciplesbecause of their independence and of their reaction on Schelling himself. Only G. M. Klein (1776-1820, professor in Würzburg), Stutzmann (died 1816in Erlangen; _Philosophy of the Universe_, 1806; _Philosophy of History_, 1808), and the historians of philosophy Ast and Rixner can be calleddisciples of Schelling. Prominent among his co-workers in the philosophyof nature were Steffens, Oken, Schubert, and Carus; besides these thephysiologist Burdach, the pathologist Kieser, the plant physiologist Neesvon Esenbeck, and the medical thinker Schelver (_Philosophy of Medicine_, 1809) deserve mention. Besides Hegel, J. J. Wagner and Friedrich Krausedistinguished themselves as independent founders of systems of identity;Troxler, Suabedissen, and Berger are also to be assigned to this group. Baader and Schleiermacher were competitors of Schelling in the philosophyof religion, and Solger in aesthetics. Finally Fr. J. Stahl (died 1861;_Philosophy of Right_, 1830 _seq_. . ), was also influenced by Schelling. There is a wide divergence in Schelling's school, as J. E. Erdmannaccurately remarks, between the naturalistic pantheist Oken and themystical theosophist Baader, in whom elements which had been united inSchelling appear divided. 

%1. The Philosophers of Nature. %

Henrik Steffens[1] (a Norwegian, 1773-1845; professor in Halle, Breslau, and Berlin) makes individual development the goal of nature--which is firstcompletely attained in man and in his peculiarity or talent--and holds thatthe catastrophes of the spirit are reflected in the history of the earth. Lorenz Oken[2] (1779-1851; professor in Jena 1807-27, then in Munich andZurich) identifies God and the universe, which comes to self-consciousnessin man, the most perfect animal; teaches the development of organisms froman original slime (a mass of organic elements, infusoria, or cells); andlooks on the animal kingdom as man anatomized, in that the animal worldcontains in isolated development that which man possesses collected inminute organs--the worm is the feeling animal, the insect the light animal, the snail the touch animal, the bird the hearing animal, the fish thesmelling animal, the amphibian the taste animal, the mammal the animal ofall senses. 

[Footnote 1: Steffens, _Contributions to the Inner Natural History of theEarth_, 1801; _Caricatures of the Holiest_, 1819-21; _Anthropology_, 1822. ]

[Footnote 2: Oken: _On the Significance of the Bones of the Skull_, 1807;_Text-book of the Philosophy of Nature_, 1809-11, 2d ed. 1831, 3d ed. 1843;the journal _Isis_, from 1817. On Oken cf. C. Güttler, 1885. ]

While in Steffens geological interests predominate, and in Oken biologicalinterests, Schubert, Carus, and Ennemoser are the psychologists of theschool. Gotthilf Heinrich Schubert[1] (1780-1860; professor in Erlangen andMunich) brings the human soul into intimate relation with the world-soul, whose phantasy gives form to all that is corporeal, and delights to dwellon the abnormal and mysterious phenomena of the inner life, the border-landbetween the physical and the psychical, on the unconscious and thehalf-conscious, on presentiments and clairvoyance, as from anotherdirection also Schelling's philosophy was brought into perilous connectionwith somnambulism. A second predominantly contemplative thinker was KarlGustav Carus[2] (1789-1869; at his death in Dresden physician to the king;_Lectures on Psychology_, 1831; _Psyche_, 1846; _Physis_, 1851), greatlydistinguished for his services to comparative anatomy. Carus endows thecell with unconscious psychical life, --a memory for the past shows itselfin the inheritance of dispositions and talents, just as the formation ofmilk in the breasts of the pregnant and the formation of lungs in theembryo betray a prevision of the future, --and points out that with thehigher development of organic and spiritual life the antitheses constantlybecome more articulate: individual differences are greater among men thanamong women, among adults than among children, among Europeans than amongnegroes. 

[Footnote 1: G. H. Schubert: _Views of the Dark Side of Natural Science_, 1808; _The Primeval World and the Fixed Stars_, 1822; _History of theSoul_, 1830 (in briefer form, _Text-book of the Science of Man and of theSoul_, 1838). ]

[Footnote 2: Not to be confused with Friedrich August Carus (1770-1807;professor in Leipsic), whose _History of Psychology_, 1808, forms the thirdpart of his posthumous works. ]

%2. The Philosophers of Identity. %

It has been said of the Dane Johann Erich von Berger (1772-1833; from1814 professor in Kiel; _Universal Outlines of Science_, 1817-27) thathe adopted a middle course between Fichte and Schelling. The same may beasserted of Karl Ferdinand Solger (1780-1819; at his death professor inBerlin; _Erwin, Four Dialogues on Beauty and Art_, 1815; _Lectures onAesthetics_, edited by Heyse, 1829), who points out the womb of thebeautiful in the fancy, and introduces into aesthetics the concept ofirony, that spirit of sadness at the vanity of the finite, though this isneeded by the Idea in order to its manifestation. 

In Johann Jacob Wagner[1] (1775-1841; professor in Würzburg) and in J. P. V. Troxler[2] (1780-1866) we find, as in Steffens, a fourfold division insteadof Schelling's triads. Both Wagner and Troxler find an exact correspondencebetween the laws of the universe and those of the human mind. Wagner(in conformity to the categories essence and form, opposition andreconciliation) makes all becoming and cognition advance from unity toquadruplicity, and finds the four stages of knowledge in representation, perception, judgment, and Idea. Troxler shares with Fries theanthropological standpoint, (philosophy is anthropology, knowledge of theworld is self-knowledge), and distinguishes, besides the emotional natureor the unity of human nature, four constituents thereof, spirit, higher soul, lower soul (body, _Leib_), and body _(Körper)_, and fourcorresponding kinds of knowledge, in reverse order, sensuous perception, experience, reason, and spiritual intuition, of which the middle two aremediate or reflective in character, while the first and last are intuitive. For D. Th. A. Suabedissen also (1773-1835; professor in Marburg;_Examination of Man_, 1815-18) philosophy is the science of man, andself-knowledge its starting point. 

[Footnote 1: J. J. Wagner: _Ideal Philosophy_, 1804; _MathematicalPhilosophy_, 1811; _Organon of Human Knowledge_, 1830, in three parts, System of the World, of Knowledge, and of Language. On Wagner cf. L. Rabus, 1862. ]

[Footnote 2: Troxler: _Glances into the Nature of Man_, 1812;_Metaphysics_, 1828; _Logic_, 1830. ]

The relatively limited reputation enjoyed in his own time and to-day byFriedrich Krause[1] (born in Eisenberg 1781; habilitated in Jena 1802;lived privately in Dresden; became a _Privatdocent_ in Göttingen from 1824;and died at Munich 1832; _Prototype of Humanity_, 1812, and numerous otherworks) has been due, on the one hand, to the appearance of his more giftedcontemporary Hegel, and, on the other, to his peculiar terminology. He notonly Germanized all foreign words in a spirit of exaggerated purism, butalso coined new verbal roots, _(Mäl, Ant, Or, Om)_ and from these formedthe most extraordinary combinations (_Vereinselbganzweseninnesein, Oromlebselbstschauen_). His most important pupil, Ahrens (professor inLeipsic, died 1874; _Course of Philosophy_, 1836-38; _Natural Right_, 1852), helped Krause's doctrine to gain recognition in France and Belgiumby his fine translations into French; while it was introduced into Spain byJ. S. Del Rio of Madrid (died 1869). --Since the finite is a negative, theinfinite a positive concept, and hence the knowledge of the infiniteprimal, the principle of philosophy is the absolute, and philosophy itselfknowledge of God or the theory of essence. The Subjective Analytic Courseleads from the self-viewing of the ego up to the vision of God; theSynthetic Course starts from the fundamental Idea, God, and deduces fromthis the partial Ideas, or presents the world as the revelation of God. Forhis attempted reconciliation of theism and pantheism Krause invented thename panentheism, meaning thereby that God neither is the world nor standsoutside the world, but has the world in himself and extends beyond it. Heis absolute identity, nature and reason are relative identity, viz. , theidentity of the real and ideal, the former with the character of reality, the latter with the character of ideality. Or, the absolute considered fromthe side of its wholeness (infinity) is nature, considered from the side ofits selfhood (unconditionality) is reason; God is the common root of both. Above nature and reason is humanity, which combines in itself the highestproducts of both, the most perfect animal body and self-consciousness. Thehumanity of earth, the humanity known to us, is but a very small portion ofthe humanity of the universe, which in the multitude of its members, whichcannot be increased, constitutes the divine state. Krause's most importantwork is his philosophy of right and of history, with its marks of a highlykeyed idealism. He treats human right as an effluence of divine right;besides the state or legal union, he recognizes many otherassociations--the science and the art union, the religious society, theleague of virtue or ethical union. His philosophy of history(_General Theory of Life_, edited by Von Leonhardi, 1843) follows theFichteo-Hegelian rhythm, unity, division, and reunion, and correlates theseveral ages with these. The first stage is germinal life; the second, youth; the third, maturity. The culmination is followed by areverse movement from counter-maturity, through counter-youth, tocounter-childhood, whereupon the development recommences--withoutcessation. It is to be regretted that this noble-minded man joined to hiswarm-hearted disposition, broad outlook, and rigorous method a heatedfancy, which, crippling the operation of these advantageous qualities, led his thought quite too far away from reality. Ahrens, Von Leonhardi, Lindemann, and Roeder may be mentioned as followers of Krause. 

[Footnote 1: On Krause cf. P. Hohlfeld, _Die Krausesche Philosophic_, 1879;B. Martin, 1881; R. Eucken, _Zur Erinnerung an Krause, Festrede_, 1881. From his posthumous works Hohlfeld and Wünsche have published the _Lectureson Aesthetics_, the _System of Aesthetics_ (both 1882), and numerous othertreatises. ]

%3. The Philosophers of Religion. %

Franz (von) Baader, the son of a physician, was born in Munich in 1765, resided there as superintendent of mines, and, from 1826, as professorof speculative dogmatics, and died there also in 1841. His works, whichconsisted only of a series of brief treatises, were collected (16 vols. , 1851-60) by his most important adherent, Franz Hoffman[1] (at his death in1881 professor in Würzburg). Baader may be characterized as a mediaevalthinker who has worked through the critical philosophy, and who, abelieving, yet liberal Catholic, endeavors to solve with the instrumentsof modern speculation the old Scholastic problem of the reconciliation offaith and knowledge. His themes are, on the one hand, the developmentof God, and, on the other, the fall and redemption, which mean for him, however, not merely inner phenomena, but world-events. He is in sympathywith the Neoplatonists, with Augustine, with Thomas Aquinas, with Eckhart, with Paracelsus, above all, with Jacob Böhme, and Böhme's follower LouisClaude St. Martin (1743-1804), but does not overlook the value of themodern German philosophy. With Kant he begins the inquiry with the problemof knowledge; with Fichte he finds in self-consciousness the essence, and not merely a property, of spirit; with Hegel he looks on God orthe absolute spirit not only as the object, but also as the subjectof knowledge. He rejects, however, the autonomy of the will and thespontaneity of thought; and though he criticises the Cartesian separationbetween the thought of the creator and that of the creature, he as littleapproves the pantheistic identification of the two--human cognitionparticipates in the divine, without constituting a part of it. 

[Footnote 1: Besides Hoffman, Lutterbeck and Hamberger have described andexpounded Baader's system. See also Baumann's paper in the _PhilosophischeMonatshefte_, vol. Xiv. , 1878, p. 321 _seq_. ]

In accordance with its three principal objects, "God, Nature, and Man, "philosophy divides into fundamental science (logic or the theory ofknowledge and theology), the philosophy of nature (cosmology or thetheory of creation and physics), and the philosophy of spirit (ethics andsociology). In all its parts it must receive religious treatment. WithoutGod we cannot know God. In our cognition of God he is at once knowerand known; our being and all being is a being known by him; ourself-consciousness is a consciousness of being known by God: _cogitor, ergocogito et sum_; my being and thinking are based on my being thought byGod. Conscience is a joint knowing with God's knowing (_conscientia_). The relation between the known and the knower is threefold. Cognition isincomplete and lacks the free co-operation of the knower when God merelypervades (_durchwohnt_) the creature, as is the case with the devil'stimorous and reluctant knowledge of God. A higher stage is reached when theknown is present to the knower and dwells with him (_beiwohnt_). Cognitionbecomes really free and perfect when God dwells in (_inwohnt_) thecreature, in which case the finite reason yields itself freely and inadmiration to the divine reason, lets the latter speak in itself, andfeels its rule, not as foreign, but as its own. (Baader maintains a likethreefoldness in the practical sphere: the creature is either the objector, rather, the passive recipient, or the organ, or the representative ofthe divine action, i. E. , in the first case, God alone works; in the second, he co-operates with the creature; in the third, the creature works with theforces and in the name of God. Joyful obedience, conscious of its grounds, is the highest freedom). Knowing and loving, thought and volition, knowledge and faith, philosophy and dogma are as little to be abstractlydivided as thing and self, being and thought, object and subject. Truefreedom and genuine speculation are neither blind traditional belief nordoubting, God-estranged thinking, but the free recognition of authority, and self-attained conviction of the truth of the Church doctrine. 

Baader distinguishes a twofold creation of the world and a double processof development (an esoteric and an exoteric revelation) of God himself. The creation of the ideal world, as a free act of love, is a non-deduciblefact; the theogonic process, on the contrary, is a necessary event by whichGod becomes a unity returning from division to itself, and so a living God. The eternal self-generation of God is a twofold birth: in the immanentor logical process the unsearchable will (Father) gives birth to thecomprehensible will (Son) to unite with it as Spirit; the place of thisself-revelation is wisdom or the Idea. In the emanent or real process, since desire or nature is added to the Idea and is overcome by it, thesethree moments become actual persons. In the creation of the--at firstimmaterial--world, in which God unites, not with his essence, but withhis image only, the same two powers, desire and wisdom, operate as theprinciples of matter and form. The materialization of the world is aconsequence of the fall. Evil consists in the elevation of selfhood, whichsprings from desire, into self-seeking. Lucifer fell because of pride, andman, yielding to Lucifer's temptation, from baseness, by falling in lovewith nature beneath him. By the creation of matter God has out of pitypreserved the world, which was corrupted by the fall, from the descent intohell, and at the same time has given man occasion for moral endeavor. The appearance of Christ, the personification of the moral law, is thebeginning of reconciliation, which man appropriates through the sacrament. Nature participates in the redemption, as in the corruption. 

Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher was born in 1768 at Breslau, and diedin 1834 in Berlin, where he had become preacher at Trinity church in 1809, professor of theology in 1810, member of the philosophical section of theAcademy in 1811, and its secretary in 1814. Reared in the Moravian schoolsat Niesky and Barby, he studied at Halle; and, between 1794 and 1804, was apreacher in Landsberg on the Warthe, in Berlin (at the Charité Hospital), and in Stolpe, then professor in Halle. He first attracted attention by theoften republished _Discourses on Religion addressed to the Educated amongthose who despise it_, 1799 (critical edition by Pünjer, 1879), which wasfollowed in the succeeding year by the _Monologues_, and the anonymous_Confidential Letters on Lucinde (Lucinde_ was the work of his friend Fr. Schlegel). Besides several collections of sermons, mention must furtherbe made of his _Outlines of a Critique of Previous Ethics_, 1803; _TheCelebration of Christmas_, 1806; and his chief theological work, _TheChristian Faith_, 1822, new edition 1830. In the third (the philosophical)division of his _Collected Works_ (1835-64) the second and third volumescontain the essays on the history of philosophy, on ethical, and onacademic subjects; vols. Vi. To ix. , the Lectures on Psychology, Esthetics, the Theory of the State, and Education, edited by George, Lommatsch, Brandis, and Platz; and the first part of vol. Iv. , the _History ofPhilosophy_ (to Spinoza), edited by Ritter. The _Monologues_ and _TheCelebration of Christmas_ have appeared in _Reclam's Bibliothek_. 

Schleiermacher's philosophy is a rendezvous for the most diverse systems. Side by side with ideas from Kant, Fichte, and Schelling we meet Platonic, Spinozistic, and Leibnitzian elements; even Jacobi and the Romanticistshave contributed their mite. Schleiermacher is an eclectic, but one who, amid the fusion of the most diverse ideas, knows how to make his ownindividuality felt. In spite of manifold echoes of the philosophemes ofearlier and of contemporary thinkers, his system is not a conglomerationof unrelated lines of thought, but resembles a plant, which in its own wayworks over and assimilates the nutritive elements taken up from thesoil. Schleiermacher is attractive rather than impressive; he is less adiscoverer than a critic and systematizer. His fine critical sense works inthe service of a positive aim, subserves a harmonizing tendency; hetakes no pleasure in breaking to pieces, but in adjusting, limiting, andcombining. There is no one of the given views which entirely satisfies him, none which simply repels him; each contains elements which seem to himworthy of transformation and adoption. When he finds himself confronted bya sharp conflict of opinion, he seeks by careful mediation to constructa whole out of the two "half truths, " though this, it is true, does notalways give a result more satisfactory than the partial views which hewishes to reconcile. A single example may be given of this conciliatorytendency: space, time, and the categories are not only subjective forms ofknowledge, but at the same time objective forms of reality. "Not only"is the watchword of his philosophy, which became the prototype of thenumberless "ideal realisms" with which Germany was flooded after Hegel'sdeath. If the skeptical and eclectic movements, which constantly make theirappearance together, are elsewhere divided among different thinkers, theyhere come together in one mind in the form of a mediating criticism, which, although it argues logically, is yet in the end always guided by theinvisible cords of a _feeling_ of justice in matters scientific. In itsweaker portions Schleiermacher's philosophy is marked by lack of grasp, pettiness, and sportiveness. It lacks courage and force, and the raredelicacy of the thought is not entirely able to compensate for this defect. In its fear of one-sidedness it takes refuge in the arms of an oftenfaint-hearted policy of reconciliation. 

We shall not discuss the specifically theological achievements of thismany-sided man, nor his great services in behalf of the philologicalknowledge of the history of philosophy--through his translation of Plato, 1804-28, and a series of valuable essays on Greek thinkers--but shallconfine our attention to the leading principles of his theory of knowledge, of religion, and of ethics. 

The _Dialectic_[1] (edited by Jonas, 1839), treats in a transcendental partand a technical or formal part of the concept and the forms of knowledge. _Knowledge_ is thought. What distinguishes that thought which we callknowledge from that other thought which does not deserve this honorabletitle, from mere opinion? Two criteria: its agreement with the thought ofother thinkers (its universality and necessity), and its agreement withthe being which is thought in it. That thought alone is knowledge which isrepresented as necessarily valid for all who are capable of thought, andas corresponding to a being or reproducing it. These two agreements (amongthinkers, and of thought with the being which is thought) are the criteriaof knowledge--let us turn now to its factors. These are essentially thetwo brought forward by Kant, sensibility and understanding; Schleiermachercalls them the organic function and the intellectual function. The organicactivity of the senses furnishes us, in sensations, the unordered, manifoldmaterial of knowledge, which is formed and unified by the activity ofreason. If we except two concepts which limit our knowledge, chaos andGod--absolute formlessness or chaos is an idea just as incapable ofrealization as absolute unity or deity--every actual cognition is a productof both factors, of the sensuous organization and of reason. But these twodo not play equal parts in every cognitive act. When the organic functionis predominant we have perception; when the intellectual functionpredominates we have thought in the strict sense. A perfect balance of thetwo would be intuition, which, however, constitutes the goal of knowledge, never fully to be realized. These two kinds of knowledge, therefore, arenot specifically, but only relatively, different: in all perception reasonis also active, and in all thought sensibility, only to a less degree thanthe opposite function. Moreover, perception and thought, or sensibility andreason, are by no means to relate to different objects. They have the sameobject, only that the organic activity represents it as an indefinite, chaotic manifold, while the activity of reason (whose work consistsin discrimination and combination), represents it as a well-orderedmultiplicity and unity. It is the same being which is represented byperception in the form of an "image, " and by thought in the form of a"concept. " In the former case we have the world as chaos; in the latter, wehave it as cosmos. Inasmuch as the two factors in knowledge represent thesame object in relatively different ways, it may be said of them that theyare opposed to each other, and yet identical. The same is true of the twomodes of being which Schleiermacher posits as real and ideal over againstthe two factors in thought. The real is that which corresponds to theorganic function, the ideal that which corresponds to the activity ofreason. These forms of being also are opposed, and yet identical. Ourself-consciousness gives clear proof of the fact that _thought and being_can be _identical_; in it, as thinking being, we have the identity of thereal and the ideal, of being and thought immediately given. As the ego, in which the subject of thought and the object of thought are one, is theundivided ground of its several activities, so God is the primal unity, which lies at the basis of the totality of the world. As in Schelling, theabsolute is described as self-identical, absolute unity, exalted abovethe antithesis of real and ideal, nay, above all antitheses. God is thenegation of opposites, the world the totality of them. If there werean adequate knowledge of the absolute identity it would be an absoluteknowledge. This is denied, however, to us men, who are never able to riseabove the opposition of sensuous and intellectual cognition. The unity ofthought and being is presupposed in all thinking, but can never actuallybe thought. As an Idea this identity is indispensable, but to think itdefinitely, either by conception or judgment, is impossible. The conceptssupreme power (God or creative nature) and supreme cause (fate orprovidence) do not attain to that which we seek to think in them: thatwhich has in it no opposition is an idea incapable of realization by man, but, nevertheless, a necessary ideal, the presupposition of all cognition(and volition), and the ground of all certitude. All knowledge must berelated to the absolute unity and be accompanied by it. Since, then, theabsolute identity cannot be presented, but ever sought for only, andabsolute knowledge exists only as an ideal, dialectic is not so much ascience as a technique of thought and proof, an introduction to philosophicthinking or (since knowledge is thought in common) to discussion inconformity with the rules of the art. With this the name dialectic returnsto its original Platonic meaning. 

[Footnote 1: Cf. Quaebicker, _Ueber Schleiermachers erkeuntnisstheoretischeGrundansicht_, 1871, and the _Inquiries_ by Bruno Weiss in the _Zeitschriftfür Philosophie_, vols. Lxxiii. -lxxv. , 1878-79. ]

The popular ideas of God ill stand examination by the standard furnishedby the principle of identity. The plurality of attributes which we areaccustomed to ascribe to God agree but poorly with his unity free from allcontrariety. In reality God does not possess these manifold attributes;they first arise in the religious consciousness, in which his unconditionedand undivided working is variously reflected and, as it were, divided. Theyare only the various reflections of his undivided nature in the mind ofthe observer. In God ability and performance, intelligence and will, histhought of self and his thought of the world coincide in one. Eventhe concept of personality must not be ascribed to God, since it is alimitation of the infinite and belongs to mythology; while the idea oflife, on the contrary, is allowable as a protection against atheism andfatalism. When Schleiermacher, further, equates the activity of God and thecausality of nature he ranges himself on the pantheistic side in regardto the question of the "immanence or transcendence of God, " without beingwilling to acknowledge it. It sounds Spinozistic enough when he says: Godnever was without the world, he exists neither before nor outside it, weknow him only _in_ us and in things. Besides that which he actually bringsforth, God could not produce anything further, and just as little does hemiraculously interfere in the course of the world as regulated by naturallaw. Everything takes place necessarily, and man is distinguished aboveother beings neither by freedom (if by freedom we understand anything morethan inner necessitation) nor by eternal existence. Like all individualbeings, so we are but changing states in the life of the universe, which, as they have arisen, will disappear again. The common representations ofimmortality, with their hope of future compensation, are far from pious. The true immortality of religion is this--amid finitude to become one withthe infinite, and in one moment to be eternal. 

Schleiermacher's optimism well harmonizes with this view of the relationbetween God and the world. If the universe is the phenomenon of thedivine activity, then considered as a whole it is perfect; whatever ofimperfection we find in it, is merely the inevitable result of finitude. The bad is merely the less perfect; everything is as good as it can be;the world is the best possible; everything is in its right place; even themeanest thing is indispensable; even the mistakes of men are to be treatedwith consideration. All is good and divine. In this way Schleiermacherweds ideas from Spinoza to Leibnitzian conceptions. From the former heappropriates pantheism, from the latter optimism and the concept ofindividuality; he shares determinism with both: all events, even thedecisions of the will, are subject to the law of necessity. 

In the _philosophy of religion_ Schleiermacher created a new epoch by hisseparation between religion and related departments with which it had oftenbeen identified before his time, as it has been since. In its origin andessence religion is not a matter of knowing, further, not a matter ofwilling, but a matter of the heart. It lies quite outside the sphere ofspeculation and of practice, coincides neither with metaphysics nor withethics, is not knowledge and not volition, but an intermediate third: ithas its own province in the emotional nature, where it reigns withoutlimitation; its essence is intuition and feeling in undivided unity. In_feeling_ is revealed the presence of the infinite; in feeling we becomeimmediately aware of the Deity. The absolute, which in cognition andvolition we only presuppose and demand, but never attain, is actuallygiven in feeling alone as the relative identity and the common groundof cognition and volition. Religion is _piety_, an affective, not anobjective, consciousness. And if certain religious ideas and actionsally themselves with the pious state of mind, these are not essentialconstituents of religion, but derivative elements, which possess areligious significance only in so far as they immediately develop frompiety and exert an influence upon it. That which makes an act religiousis always feeling as a point of indifference between knowing and doing, between receptive and forthgoing activity, as the center and junctionof all the powers of the soul, as the very focus of personality. And asfeeling in general is the middle point in the life of the soul, so, again, the religious feeling is the root of all genuine feeling. What sort of afeeling, then, is piety? Schleiermacher answers: A feeling of _absolutedependence_. Dependence on what? On the universe, on God. Religion growsout of the longing after the infinite, it is the sense and taste for theAll, the direction toward the eternal, the impulse toward the absoluteunity, immediate experience of the world harmony; like art, religion is theimmediate apprehension of a whole. In and before God all that is individualdisappears, the religious man sees one and the same thing in all that isparticular. To represent all events in the world as actions of a God, to see God in all and all in God, to feel one's self one with theeternal, --this is religion. As we look on all being within us and withoutas proceeding from the world-ground, as determined by an ultimate cause, wefeel ourselves dependent on the divine causality. Like all that is finite, we also are the effect of the absolute Power. While we stand in a relationof interaction with the individual parts of the world, and feel ourselvespartially free in relation to them, we can only receive effects from Godwithout answering them; even our self-activity we have from him. Nevertheless the feeling of dependence is not to be depressing, nothumbling merely, but the joyous sense of an exaltation and broadening oflife. In our devotion to the universe we participate in the life of theuniverse; by leaning on the infinite we supplement our finitude--religionmakes up for the needy condition of man by bringing him into relation withthe absolute, and teaching him to know and to feel himself a part of thewhole. 

From this elevating influence of religion, which Schleiermacher eloquentlydepicts, it is at once evident that his definition of it as a feeling ofabsolute dependence is only half correct. It needs to be supplemented bythe feeling of freedom, which exalts us by the consciousness of the onenessof the human reason and the divine. It is only to this side of religion, neglected by Schleiermacher, that we can ascribe its inspiring influence, which he in vain endeavors to derive from the feeling of dependence. Powercan never spring from humility as such. This defect, however, does notdetract from Schleiermacher's merit in assigning to religion a specialfield of spiritual activity. While Kant treats religion as an appendix toethics, and Hegel, with a one-sidedness which is still worse, reduces it toan undeveloped form of knowledge, Schleiermacher recognizes that it isnot a mere concomitant phenomenon--whether an incidental result or apreliminary stage--of morality or cognition, but something independent, co-ordinate with volition and cognition, and of equal legitimacy. The proofthat religion has its habitation in feeling is the more deserving of thankssince it by no means induced Schleiermacher to overlook the connection ofthe God-consciousness with self-consciousness and the consciousness ofthe world. Schleiermacher's theory, moreover, may be held correct withoutignoring the relatively legitimate elements in the views of religion whichhe attacked. With the view that religion has its seat in feeling, it isquite possible to combine a recognition of the fact that it has its originin the will, and its basis in morals, and that, further, it has thesignificance of being (to use Schopenhauer's words) the "metaphysics of thepeople. "

Although religion and piety be made synonymous, it must still be admittedthat in a being capable of knowing and willing as well as of feeling, thisdevout frame will have results in the spheres of cognition and action. Inregard to _cultus_ Schleiermacher maintains that a religious observancewhich does not spring from one's own feeling and find an echo therein issuperstitious, and demands that religious feeling, like a sacred melody, accompany all human action, that everything be done with religion, nothingfrom religion. Instead of expressing itself in single specificallyreligious actions, the religious feeling should uniformly pervade the wholelife. Let a private room be the temple where the voice of the priest israised. Dogmas, again, are descriptions of pious excitation, and take theirorigin in man's reflection on his religious feelings, in his endeavor toexplain them, in his expression of them in ideas and words. The conceptsand principles of theology are valid only as descriptions and presentationsof feelings, not as cognitions; by their unavoidable anthropomorphiccharacter alone they are completely unfitted for science. The dogmaticsystem is an envelopment which religion accepts with a smile. He who treatsreligious doctrines as science falls into empty mythology. Principles offaith and principles of knowledge are in no way related to one another, neither by way of opposition nor by way of agreement; they never come intocontact. A theology in the sense of an actual science of God is impossible. Further, out of its dogmas the Church constructs prescriptive symbols, astep which must be deplored. It is to be hoped that some time religion willno longer have need of the Church. In view of the present condition ofaffairs it must be said that the more religious a man is the more secularhe must become, and that the cultured man opposes the Church in order topromote religion. 

So-called natural religion is nothing more than an abstraction of thought;in reality positive religions alone exist. Because of the infinity of Godand the finitude of man, the one, universal, eternal religion can onlymanifest itself in the form of particular historical religions, whichare termed revealed because founded by religious heroes, creativepersonalities, in whom an especially lively religious feeling is aroused bya new view of the universe, and determines (not, like artistic inspiration, single moments, but) their whole existence. Three stages are to bedistinguished in the development of religion, according as the world isrepresented as an unordered unity (chaos), or as an indeterminate manifoldof forces and elements (plurality without unity), or, finally, as anorganized plurality dominated by unity (system)--fetichism with fatalism, polytheism, mono- (including pan-) theism. Among the religions of the thirdstadium Islam is physical or aesthetic in spirit; Judaism and Christianity, on the other hand, ethical or teleological. The Christian religion isthe most perfect, because it gives the central place to the conceptof redemption and reconciliation (hence to that which is essential toreligion) instead of to the Jewish idea of retribution. 

The concept of individuality became of the highest importance forSchleiermacher's ethics, as well as for his philosophy of religion; andby his high appreciation of it he ranges himself with Leibnitz, Herder, Goethe, and Novalis. Now two sides may be distinguished both in regard tothat which the individual is and to that which he ought to accomplish. Likeevery particular being, man is an abbreviated, concentrated presentation ofthe universe; he contains everything in himself, contains all, that is, ina not yet unfolded, germinal manner, awaiting development in life in time, but yet in a form peculiar to him, which is never repeated elsewhere. Thisyields a twofold moral task. The individual ought to rouse into actualitythe infinite fullness of content which he possesses as possibility, asslumbering germs, should harmoniously develop his capacities; yet in thishe must not look upon the unique form which has been bestowed upon himas worthless. He is not to feel himself a mere specimen, an unimportantrepetition of the type, but as a particular, and in this particularity asignificant, expression of the absolute, whose omission would cause a gapin the world. It is surprising that the majority of the thinkers whohave defended the value of individuality lay far less stress upon themicro-cosmical nature of the individual and the development of hiscapacities in all directions than on care for his peculiar qualities. So also Schleiermacher. Yet he gradually returned from the extremeindividualism--the _Monologues_ affect one almost repellently by theimpulse which they give to vain self-reflection--which he at firstdefended. 

In the _Ethics_ (edited by Kirchmann, 1870; earlier editions by Schweizer, 1835, and Twesten, 1841) Schleiermacher brings the well-nigh forgottenconcept of goods again into honor. The three points of view from whichethics is to be discussed, and each of which presents the whole ethicalfield in its own peculiar way--the good, virtue, duty--are related asresultant, force, and law of motion. Every union of reason and natureproduced by the action of the former on the latter is called a _good_; thesum of these unities, the highest good. According as reason uses natureas an instrument in formation or as a symbol in cognition her action isformative or indicative; it is, further, either common or peculiar. On thecrossing of these (fluctuating) distinctions of identical and individualorganization and symbolization is based the division of the theory ofgoods:

 SPHERES. RELATIONS. GOODS. _Ident. Organ. :_ Intercourse. Right. The State. _Individ. Organ. :_ Property. Free Sociability. Class, House, Friendship. _Ident. Symbol. :_ Knowledge. Faith. School and University. _Individ. Symbol. :_ Feeling. Revelation. The Church (Art). 

The four ethical communities, each of which represents the organic unionof opposites--rulers and subjects, host and guests, teachers and pupilsor scholars and the public, the clergy and the laity--have for theirfoundation the family and the unity of the nation. Virtue (the personalunification of reason and sensibility) is either disposition or skill, andin each case either cognitive or presentative; this yields the cardinalvirtues wisdom, love, discretion, and perseverance. The division of dutiesinto duties of right, duties of love, duties of vocation, and duties ofconscience rests on the distinction between community in production andappropriation, each of which may be universal or individual. The mostgeneral laws of duty (duty is the Idea of the good in an imperative form)run: Act at every instant with all thy moral power, and aiming at thy wholemoral problem; act with all virtues and in view of all goods, further, Always do that action which is most advantageous for the whole sphere ofmorality, in which two different factors are included: Always do thattoward which thou findest thyself inwardly moved, and that to which thoufindest thyself required from without. Instead of following further thewearisome schematism of Schleiermacher's ethics, we may notice, finally, a fundamental thought which our philosopher also discussed by itself:The sharp contraposition of natural and moral law, advocated by Kant, isunjustifiable; the moral law is itself a law of nature, viz. , of rationalwill. It is true neither that the moral law is a mere "ought" nor that thelaw of nature is a mere "being, " a universally followed "must. " For, on theone hand, ethics has to do with the law which human action really follows, and, on the other, there are violations of rule in nature also. Immorality, the imperfect mastery of the sensuous impulses by rational will, has ananalogue in the abnormalities--deformities and diseases--in nature, whichshow that here also the higher (organic) principles are not completelysuccessful in controlling the lower processes. The higher law everywheresuffers disturbances, from the resistance of the lower forces, which cannotbe entirely conquered. It is Schleiermacher's determinism which leads him, in view of the parallelism of the two legislations, to overlook theiressential distinction. 

Adherents of Schleiermacher are Vorländer (died 1867), George (died 1874), the theologian, Richard Rothe (died 1867; cf. Nippold, 1873 _seq_. ), andthe historians of philosophy, Brandis (died 1867) and H. Ritter (died1869). [1]

[Footnote 1: W. Dilthey (born 1834), the successor of Lotze in Berlin, ispublishing a life of Schleiermacher (vol. I. 1867-70). Cf. Also Dilthey'sbriefer account in the _Allgemeine deutsche Biographie_, and Haym's_Romantische Schule_, 1870. Further, _Aus Schleiermachers Leben, inBriefen_, 4 vols. , 1858-63. ]

CHAPTER XIII. 

HEGEL. 

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was born at Stuttgart on August 27, 1770. Heattended the gymnasium of his native city, and, from 1788, the Tübingenseminary as a student of theology; while in 1793-1800 he resided as aprivate tutor in Berne and Frankfort-on-the-Main. In the latter city theplan of his future system was already maturing. A manuscript outlinedivides philosophy, following the ancient division, logic, physics, andethics, into three parts, the first of which (the fundamental science, thedoctrine of the categories and of method, combining logic and metaphysics)considers the absolute as pure Idea, while the second considers it asnature, and the third as real (ethical) spirit. Hegel habilitated in 1801at Jena, with a Latin dissertation _On the Orbits of the Planets_, inwhich, ignorant of the discovery of Ceres, he maintained that on rationalgrounds--assuming that the number-series given in Plato's _Timaeus_ is thetrue order of nature--no additional planet could exist between Mars andJupiter. This dissertation gives, further, a deduction of Kepler's laws. The essay on the _Difference between the Systems of Fichte and Schelling_had appeared even previous to this. In company with Schelling he edited in1802-03 the _Kritisches Journal der Philosophie_. The article on "Faith andKnowledge" published in this journal characterizes the standpoint of Kant, Jacobi, and Fichte as that of reflection, for which finite and infinite, being and thought form an antithesis, while true _speculation_ grasps thesein their identity. In the night before the battle of Jena Hegel finishedthe revision of his _Phenomenology of Spirit_, which was published in 1807. The extraordinary professorship given him in 1805 he was forced to resignon account of financial considerations; then he was for a year a newspapereditor in Bamberg, and in 1808 went as a gymnasial rector to Nuremberg, where he instructed the higher classes in philosophy. His lectures thereare printed in the eighteenth volume of his works, under the title_Propaedeutic_. In the Nuremberg period fell his marriage and thepublication of the _Logic_ (vol. I. 1812, vol. Ii. 1816). In 1816 he wascalled as professor of philosophy to Heidelberg (where the _Encyclopedia_appeared, 1817), and two years later to Berlin. The _Outlines of thePhilosophy of Right_, 1821, is the only major work which was written inBerlin. The _Jahrbücher für wissenschaftliche Kritik_, founded in 1827 asan organ of the school, contained a few critiques, but for the rest hedevoted his whole strength to his lectures. He fell a victim to the choleraon November 14, 1831. The collected edition of his works in eighteenvolumes (1832-45) contains in vols. Ii. -viii. The four major works whichhad been published by Hegel himself (the _Encyclopaedia_ with additionsfrom the Lectures); in vols. I. , xvi. , and xvii. The minor treatises; invols. Ix. -xv. The Lectures, edited by Cans, Hotho, Marheineke, andMichelet. The Letters from and to Hegel have been added as a nineteenthvolume, under the editorship of Karl Hegel, 1887. [1]

[Footnote 1: Hegel's Life has been written by Karl Rosenkranz (1844), whohas also defended the master (_Apologie Hegels_, 1858) against R. Haym _(Hegel und seine Zeit, _ 1857), and extolled him as the nationalphilosopher of Germany (1870; English by G. S. Hall). Cf. , further, theneat popular exposition by Karl Köstlin, 1870, and the essays by Ed. VonHartmann, _Ueber die dialektische Methode_, 1868, and _Hegels Panlogismus_(1870, incorporated in the _Gesammelte Studien und Aufsätze_, 1876). [TheEnglish reader may consult E. Caird's _Hegel_ in Blackwood's PhilosophicalClassics, 1883; Harris's _Hegel's Logic_, Morris's _Hegel's Philosophy ofthe State and of History_, and Kedney's _Hegel's Aesthetics_ in Griggs'sPhilosophical Classics; and Wallace's translation of the "Logic"--fromthe _Encyclopaedia_--with Prolegomena, 1874, 2d. Ed. , Translation, 1892, Prolegomena to follow. Stirling's _Secret of Hegel, 2_ vols. , London, 1865, includes a translation of a part of the _Logic_, and numerous translationsfrom different works of the master are to be found in the _Journal ofSpeculative Philosophy_. The _Lectures on the Philosophy of History_ havebeen translated by J. Sibree, M. A. , in Bohn's Library, 1860, and E. S. Haldane is issuing a translation of those on the _History of Philosophy_, vol. I. , 1892. --TR. ]]

We may preface our exposition of the parts of the system by some remarks onHegel's standpoint in general and his scientific method. 

%1. Hegel's View of the World and his Method. %

In Hegel there revives in full vigor the intellectualism which from thefirst had lain in the blood of German philosophy, and which Kant's moralismhad only temporarily restrained. The primary of practical reason isdiscarded, and theory is extolled as the ground, center, and aim of human, nay, of all existence. 

Leibnitz and Hegel are the classical representatives of theintellectualistic view of the world. In the former the subjectivepsychological point of view is dominant, in the latter, the objectivecosmical position: Leibnitz argues from the representative nature of thesoul to an analogous constitution of all elements of the universe; from thegeneral mission of all that is real, to be a manifestation of reason, Hegeldeduces that of the individual spirit, to realize a determinate series ofstages of thought. The true reality is reason; all being is the embodimentof a pregnant thought, all becoming a movement of the concept, the world adevelopment of thought. The absolute or the logical Idea exists first asa system of antemundane concepts, then it descends into the unconscioussphere of nature, awakens to self-consciousness in man, realizes itscontent in social institutions, in order, finally, in art, religion, andscience to return to itself enriched and completed, _i. E. _, to attain ahigher absoluteness than that of the beginning. Philosophy is thehighest product and the goal of the world-process. As will, intuition, representation, and feeling are lower forms of thought, so ethics, art, andreligion are preliminary stages in philosophy; for it first succeeds inthat which these vainly attempt, in presenting the concept adequately, inconceptual form. 

If we develop that which is contained as a constituent factor or byimplication in the intellectualistic thesis, "All being is thoughtrealized, all becoming a development of thought, " we reach the followingdefinitions: (i) The object of philosophy is formed by the Ideas of things. Its aim is to search out the concept, the purpose, the significance ofphenomena, and to assign to these their corresponding positions inthe world and in the system of knowledge. It is chiefly interested indiscovering where in the scale of values a thing belongs according toits meaning and its destination; the procedure is teleological, valuing, aesthetic. Instead of a causal explanation of phenomena we are given anideal interpretation of them. (So Lotze accurately describes the characterof German idealism. ) (2) If all that is real is a manifestation of reasonand each thing a stage, a modification of thought, then thought and beingare identical. (3) If the world is thought in becoming, and philosophy hasto set forth this process, philosophy is a theory of development. If eachthing realizes a thought, then all that is real is rational; and if theworld-process attains its highest stadium in philosophy, and this inturn its completion in the system of absolute idealism, then all that isrational is real. Reason or the Idea is not merely a demand, a longed forideal, but a world-power which accomplishes its own realization. "Therational is real and the real is rational" (Preface to the _Philosophy ofRight_). Or to sum it up--Hegel's philosophy is _idealism, a systemof identity, and an optimistic doctrine of development_. What, then, distinguishes Hegel from other idealists, philosophers of identity, andteachers of development? What in particular distinguishes him from hispredecessor Schelling?

In Schelling nature is the subject and art the conclusion of thedevelopment; his idealism has a physical and aesthetical character, asFichte's an ethical character. In Hegel, however, the concept is thesubject and goal of the development, his philosophy is, in the words ofHaym, a "_Logisierung_" of the world, a _logical idealism_. 

The theory of identity is that system which looks upon nature and spirit asone in essence and as phenomenal modes of an absolute which is above themboth. But while Schelling treats the real and the ideal as having equalrights, Hegel restores the Fichtean subordination of nature to spirit, without, however, sharing Fichte's contempt for nature. Nature is neitherco-ordinate with spirit nor a mere instrument for spirit, but a transitionstage in the development of the absolute, viz. , the Idea in its other-being_(Anderssein)_. It is spirit itself that becomes nature in order to becomeactual, conscious spirit; before the absolute became nature it was alreadyspirit, not, indeed, "for itself" _(für sich)_, yet "in itself" _(ansich)_, it was Idea or reason. The ideal is not merely the morning whichfollows the night of reality, but also the evening which precedes it. The absolute (the concept) develops from in-itself _(Ansich)_ throughout-of-self _(Aussersich)_ or other-being to for-itself _(Fürsich)_; itexists first as reason (system of logical concepts), then as nature, finally as living spirit. Thus Hegel's philosophy of identity isdistinguished from Schelling's by two factors: it subordinates nature tospirit, and conceives the absolute of the beginning not as the indifferenceof the real and ideal, but as ideal, as a realm of eternal thoughts. 

The assertion that Hegel represents a synthesis of Fichte and Schelling istherefore justified. This is true, further, for the character of Hegel'sthought as a whole, in so far as it follows a middle course between theworld-estranged, rigid abstractness of Fichte's thinking and Schelling'sartistico-fanciful intuition, sharing with the former its logicalstringency as well as its dominant interest in the philosophy of spirit, and with the latter its wide outlook and its sense for the worth and therichness of that which is individual. 

We have characterized Hegel's system, thirdly, as a philosophy ofdevelopment. The point of distinction here is that Hegel carries out withlogical consecutiveness and up to the point of obstinacy the principleof development which Fichte had discovered, and which Schelling alsohad occasionally employed, --the threefold rhythm _thesis, antithesis, synthesis_. Here we come to Hegel's _dialectic method_. He reached this asthe true method of speculation through a comparison of the two forms ofphilosophy which he found dominant at the beginning of his career--theIllumination culminating in Kant, on the one hand, and, on the other, thedoctrine of identity defended by Schelling and his circle--neither of whichentirely satisfied him. 

In regard to the main question he feels himself one with Schelling:philosophy is to be metaphysics, the science of the absolute and itsimmanence in the world, the doctrine of the identity of opposites, of the, _per se_ of things, not merely of their phenomenon. But the form whichSchelling had given it seems to him unscientific, unsystematic, forSchelling had based philosophical knowledge on the intuition of genius--andscience from intuition is impossible. The philosophy of the Illuminationimpresses him, on the other hand, by the formal strictness of its inquiry;he agrees with it that philosophy must be science from concepts. Only notfrom abstract concepts. Kant and the Illumination stand on the platformof reflection, for which the antithesis of thought and being, finite andinfinite remains insoluble, and, consequently, the absolute transcendent, and the true essence of things unknowable. Hegel wishes to combine theadvantages of both sides, the depth of content of the one, and thescientific form of the other. 

The intuition with which Schelling works is immediate cognition, directedto the concrete and particular. The concept of the philosophy of reflectionis mediate cognition, moving in the sphere of the abstract and universal. Is it not feasible to do away with the (unscientific) immediateness of theone, and the (non-intuitive, content-lacking) abstractness of the other, to combine the concrete with the mediate or conceptual, and in this wayto realize the Kantian ideal of an intuitive understanding? _A concreteconcept_ would be one which sought the universal not without theparticular, but in it; which should not find the infinite beyond thefinite, nor the absolute at an unattainable distance above the world, northe essence hidden behind the phenomenon, but manifesting itself therein. If the philosophy of reflection, in the abstract lifelessness of itsconcepts, looked on opposites as incapable of sublation, and Schellingregarded them as immediately identical, if the former denied the identityof opposites, and the latter maintained it primordially given (in theabsolute indifference which is to be grasped by intuition), the concreteconcept secures the identity of _opposites through self-mediation_, theirpassing over into it; it teaches us to know the identity as the result of aprocess. First immediate unity, then divergence of opposites, and, finally, reconciliation of opposites--this is the universal law of all development. 

The conflict between the philosophy of reflection and the philosophy ofintuition, which Hegel endeavors to terminate by a speculation at onceconceptual and concrete, concerns (1) the organ of thought, (2) the objectof thought, (3) the nature and logical dignity of the contradiction. 

The organ of the true philosophy is neither the abstract reflectiveunderstanding, which finds itself shut up within the limits of thephenomenal, nor mystical intuition, which expects by a quick leap to gainthe summit of knowledge concerning the absolute, but reason as the facultyof concrete concepts. That concept is concrete which does not assume anattitude of cold repulsion toward its contrary, but seeks self-mediationwith the latter, and moves from thesis through antithesis, and with it, tosynthesis. Reason neither fixes the opposites nor denies them, but has thembecome identical. The unity of opposites is neither impossible nor presentfrom the first, but the result of a development. 

The object of philosophy is not the phenomenal world or the relative, butthe absolute, and this not as passive substance, but as living subject, which divides into distinctions, and returns from them to identity, whichdevelops through the opposites. The absolute is a process, and all thatis real the manifestation of this process. If science is to correspondto reality, it also must be a process. Philosophy is thought-movement(dialectic); it is a system of concepts, each of which passes over intoits successor, puts its successor forth from itself, just as it has beengenerated by its predecessor. 

All reality is development, and the motive force in this development (ofthe world as well as of science) is opposition, _contradiction_. Withoutthis there would be no movement and no life. Thus all reality is full ofcontradiction, and yet rational. The contradiction is not that which isentirely alogical, but it is a spur to further thinking. It must notbe annulled, but "sublated" _(aufgehoben), _i. E. _, at once negated andconserved. This is effected by thinking the contradictory concepts togetherin a third higher, more comprehensive, and richer concept, whose momentsthey then form. As sublated moments they contradict each other no longer;the opposition or contradiction is overcome. But the synthesis is stillnot a final one; the play begins anew; again an opposition makes itsappearance, which in turn seeks to be overcome, etc. Each separate conceptis one-sided, defective, represents only a part of the truth, needs to besupplemented by its contrary, and, by its union with this, its complement, yields a higher concept, which comes nearer to the whole truth, but stilldoes not quite reach it. Even the last and richest concept--the absoluteIdea--is by itself alone not the full truth; the result implies the wholedevelopment through which it has been attained. It is only at the endof such a dialectic of concepts that philosophy reaches completecorrespondence with the living reality, which it has to comprehend; and thespeculative progress of thought is no capricious sporting with conceptson the part of the thinking subject, but the adequate expression ofthe movement of the matter itself. Since the world and its ground isdevelopment, it can only be known through a development of concepts. Thelaw which this follows, in little as in great, is the advance from positionto opposition, and thence to combination. The most comprehensive exampleof this triad--Idea, Nature, Spirit--gives the division of the system; thesecond--Subjective, Objective, Absolute Spirit--determines the articulationof the third part. 

%2. The System. %

Hegel began with a _Phenomenology_ by way of introduction, in which (notto start, like the school of Schelling, with absolute knowledge "as thoughshot from a pistol") he describes the genesis of philosophical cognitionwith an attractive mingling of psychological and philosophico-historicalpoints of view. He makes spirit--the universal world-spirit as well asthe individual consciousness, which repeats in brief the stages in thedevelopment of humanity--pass through six stadia, of which the first three(consciousness, self-consciousness, reason) correspond to the progressof the intermediate part of the Doctrine of Subjective Spirit, which isentitled _Phänomenologie_, and the others (ethical spirit, religion, andabsolute knowledge) give an abbreviated presentation of that which theDoctrine of Objective and Absolute Spirit develops in richer articulation. 

%(a) Logic% considers the Idea in the abstract element of thought, only asit is thought, and not yet as it is intuited, nor as it thinks itself; itscontent is the truth as it is without a veil in and for itself, or God inhis eternal essence before the creation of the world. Unlike common logic, which is merely formal, separating form and content, speculative logic, which is at the same time ontology or metaphysics, treats the categories asreal relations, the forms of thought as forms of reality: as thought andthing are the same, so logic is the theory of thought and of being in one. Its three principal divisions are entitled _Being, Essence, the Concept_. The first of these discusses quality, quantity, and measure or qualitativequantum. The second considers essence as such, appearance, and (essenceappearing or) actuality, and this last, in turn, in the moments, substantiality, causality, and reciprocity. The third part is divided intothe sections, subjectivity (concept, judgment, syllogism), objectivity(mechanism, chemism, teleology), and the Idea (life, cognition, theabsolute Idea). 

As a specimen of the way in which Hegel makes the concept pass over intoits opposite and unite with this in a synthesis, it will be sufficient tocite the famous beginning of the _Logic_. How must the absolute first bethought, how first defined? Evidently as that which is absolutely withoutpresupposition. The most general concept which remains after abstractingfrom every determinate content of thought, and from which no furtherabstraction is possible, the most indeterminate and immediate concept, ispure _being_. As without quality and content it is equivalent to _nothing_. In thinking pure being we have rather cogitated nothing; but this in turncannot be retained as final, but passes back into being, for in beingthought it exists as a something thought. Pure being and pure nothing arethe same, although we mean different things by them; both are absoluteindeterminateness. The transition from being to nothing and from nothing tobeing is _becoming_. Becoming is the unity, and hence the truth of both. When the boy is "becoming" a youth he is, and at the same time is not, ayouth. Being and not-being are so mediated and sublated in becoming thatthey are no longer contradictory. In a similar way it is further shownthat quality and quantity are reciprocally dependent and united in measure(which may be popularly illustrated thus: progressively diminishing heatbecomes cold, distances cannot be measured in bushels); that essence andphenomenon are mutually inseparable, inasmuch as the latter is always theappearance of an essence, and the former is essence only as it manifestsitself in the phenomenon, etc. 

The significance of the Hegelian logic depends less on its ingenious andvaluable explanations of particulars than on the fundamental idea, that thecategories do not form an unordered heap, but a great organically connectedwhole, in which each member occupies its determinate position, and isrelated to every other by gradations of kinship and subordination. Thispurpose to construct a _globus_ of the pure concepts was itself amighty feat, which is assured of the continued admiration of posteritynotwithstanding the failure in execution. He who shall one day take it upagain will draw many a lesson from Hegel's unsuccessful attempt. Beforeall, the connections between the concepts are too manifold and complexfor the monotonous transitions of this dialectic method (which Chalybaeuswittily called articular disease) to be capable of doing them justice. Again, the productive force of thought must not be neglected, and to it, rather than to the mobility of the categories themselves, the matter of thetransition from one to the other must be transferred. 

%(b) The Philosophy of Nature% shows the Idea in its other-being. Out ofthe realm of logical shades, wherein the souls of all reality dwell, we move into the sphere of external, sensuous existence, in which theconcepts take on material form. Why does the Idea externalize itself? Inorder to become actual. But the actuality of nature is imperfect, unsuitedto the Idea, and only the precondition of a better actuality, the actualityof spirit, which has been the aim from the beginning: reason becomesnature in order to become spirit; the Idea goes forth from itself inorder--enriched--to return to itself again. Only the man who once has beenin a foreign land knows his home aright. 

The relation of natural objects to one another and their action upon oneanother is an external one: they are governed by mechanical necessity, and the contingency of influences from without arrests and disturbs theirdevelopment, so that while reason is everywhere discernible in nature, it is not reason alone; and much that is illogical, contrary to purpose, lawless, painful, and unhealthy, points to the fact that the essence ofnature consists in externality. This inadequacy in the realization of theIdea, however, is gradually removed by development, until, in "life, " theway is prepared for the birth of spirit. 

As Hegel in his philosophy of nature--which falls into three parts, mechanics, physics, and organics--follows Schelling pretty closely, and, moreover, does not show his power, it does not seem necessary to dwelllonger upon it. In the next section, also, in view of the fact that itsmodels, the constructive psychologies of Fichte and Schelling, have alreadybeen discussed in detail, a statement of the divisions and connections mustsuffice. 

%(c) The Doctrine of Subjective Spirit% makes freedom (being with or inself) the essence and destination of spirit, and shows how spirit realizesthis predisposition in increasing independence of nature. The subject ofanthropology is spirit as the (natural, sensitive, and actual) "soul" ofa body; here are discussed the distinctions of race, nation, sex, age, sleeping and waking, disposition and temperament, together with talents andmental diseases, in short, whatever belongs to spirit in its union with abody. Phenomenology is the science of the "ego, " i. E. , of spirit, in sofar as it opposes itself to nature as the non-ego, and passes through thestages of (mere) consciousness, self-consciousness, and (the synthesis ofthe two) reason. Psychology (better pneumatology) considers "spirit" in itsreconciliation with objectivity under the following divisions: TheoreticalIntelligence as intuition (sensation, attention, intuition), asrepresentation (passive memory, phantasy, memory), and (as conceiving, judging, reasoning) thought; Practical Intelligence as feeling, impulse(passion and caprice), and happiness; finally, the unity of the knowing andwilling spirit, free spirit or rational will, which in turn realizes itselfin right, ethics, and history. 

%(d) The Doctrine of Objective Spirit%, comprehending ethics, thephilosophy of right, of the state, and of history, is Hegel's mostbrilliant achievement. It divides as follows: (1) Right (property, contract, punishment); (2) Morality (purpose, intention and welfare, goodand evil); (3) Social Morality: (a) the family; (b) civil society; (c) thestate (internal and external polity, and the history of the world). Inright the will or freedom attains to outer actuality, in morality itattains to inner actuality, in social morality to objective and subjectiveactuality at once, hence to complete actuality. 

Right, as it were a second, higher nature, because a necessity posited andacknowledged by spirit, is originally a sum of prohibitions; wherever itseems to command the negative has only received a positive expression. Private right contains two things--the warrant to be a person, and theinjunction to respect other persons as such. Property is the externalsphere which the will gives to itself; without property no personality. Through punishment (retaliation) right is restored against un-right(_Unrecht_), and the latter shown to be a nullity. The criminal is treatedaccording to the same maxim as that of his action--that coercion isallowable. 

In the stadium of morality the good exists in the form of a requirementwhich can never be perfectly fulfilled, as a mere imperative; there remainsan irrepressible opposition between the moral law and the individual will, between intention and execution. Here the judge of good and evil is theconscience, which is not secure against error. That which is objectivelyevil may seem good and a duty to subjective conviction. (According toFichte this was impossible). 

On account of the conflict between duty and will, which is at this stageirrepressible, Hegel is unable to consider morality, the sphere of thesubjective disposition, supreme. He thinks he knows a higher sphere, wherein legality and morality become one: "social morality"(_Sittlichkeit_). This sphere takes its name from _Sitte_, that customruling in the community which is felt by the individual not as a commandfrom without, but as his own nature. Here the good appears as the spiritof the family and of the people, pervading individuals as its substance. Marriage is neither a merely legal nor a merely sentimental relation, butan "ethical" (_sittliches_) institution. While love rules in the family, incivil society each aims at the satisfaction of his private wants, and yet, in working for himself, subserves the good of the whole. Class distinctionsare based on the division of labor demanded by the variant needs of men(the agricultural, industrial, and thinking classes). Class and party honoris, in Hegel's view, among the most essential supports of general morality. Strange to say, he brings the administration of justice and the police intothe same sphere. 

The state, the unity of the family and civil society, is the completedactualization of freedom. Its organs are the political powers (which areto be divided, but not to be made independent): the legislative powerdetermines the universal, the executive subsumes the particular thereunder, the power of the prince combines both into personal unity. In the will ofthe prince the state becomes subject. The perfect form of the state isconstitutional monarchy, its establishment the goal of history, whichHegel, like Kant, considers chiefly from the political standpoint. 

History is the development of the rational state; the world-spirit theguiding force in this development; its instruments the spirits of thenations and great men. A particular people is the expression of but onedeterminate moment of the universal spirit; and when it has fulfilledits commission it loses its legal warrant, and yields up its dominion toanother, now the only authorized one: the history of the world is thejudgment of the world, which is held over the nations. The world-historicalcharacters, also, are only the instruments of a higher power, the purposesof which they execute while imagining that they are acting in their owninterests--their own deed is hidden from them, and is neither their purposenor their object. This should be called the cunning of reason, that itmakes the passions work in its service. 

History is progress in the consciousness of freedom. At first one onlyknows himself free, then several, finally all. This gives three chiefperiods, or rather four world-kingdoms, --Oriental despotism, the Greek(democratic) and the Roman (aristocratic) republic, and the Germanicmonarchy, --in which humanity passes through its several ages. Like the sun, history moves from east to west. China and India have not advanced beyondthe preliminary stages of the state; the Chinese kingdom is a family state, India a society of classes stiffened into castes. The Persian despotism isthe first true state, and this in the form of a conquering military state. In the youth and manhood of humanity the sovereignty of the people replacesthe sovereignty of one; but not all have yet the consciousness of freedom, the slaves have no share in the government. The principle of the Greekworld, with its fresh life and delight in beauty, is individuality; hencethe plurality of small states, in which Sparta is an anticipation ofthe Roman spirit. The Roman Republic is internally characterized by theconstitutional struggle between the patricians and the plebeians, andexternally by the policy of world conquest. Out of the repellent relationsbetween the universal and the individual, which oppose one another asthe abstract state and abstract personality, the unhappy imperial perioddevelops. In the Roman Empire and Judaism the conditions were given for theappearance of Christianity. This brings with it the idea of humanity: everyman is free as man, as a rational being. In the beginning this emancipationwas religious; through the Germans it became political as well. Theremaining divisions cannot here be detailed. Their captions run: TheElements of the Germanic Spirit (the Migrations; Mohammedanism; theFrankish Empire of Charlemagne); the Middle Ages (the Feudal System and theHierarchy; the Crusades; the Transition from Feudal Rule to Monarchy, or the Cities); Modern Times (the Reformation; its Effect on PoliticalDevelopment; Illumination and Revolution). 

The philosophy of history[1] is Hegel's most brilliant and most lastingachievement. His view of the state as the absolute end, the completerealization of the good, is dominated, no doubt, by the antique ideal, which cannot take root again in the humanity of modern times. But hissplendid endeavor to "comprehend" history, to bring to light the laws ofhistorical development and the interaction between the different spheres ofnational life, will remain an example for all time. The leading ideas ofhis philosophy of history have so rapidly found their way into the generalscientific consciousness that the view of history which obtained inthe period of the Illumination is well nigh incomprehensible to theinvestigator of to-day. 

[Footnote 1: A well-chosen collection of aphorisms from the philosophy ofhistory is given by M. Schasler under the title _Hegel: Populäre Gedankenaus seinen Werken_, 2d. Ed. , 1873. ]

%(e) Absolute Spirit% is the unity of subjective and objective spirit. As such, spirit becomes perfectly free (from all contradictions)and reconciled with itself. The break between subject and object, representation and thing, thought and being, infinite and finite is doneaway with, and the infinite recognized as the essence of the finite. Theknowledge of the reconciliation of the highest opposites or of the infinite_in_ the finite presents itself in three forms: in the form of intuition(art), of feeling and representation (religion), of thought (philosophy). 

(1) _Aesthetics_. --The beautiful is the absolute (the infinite in thefinite) in sensuous existence, the Idea in limited manifestation. Accordingto the relation of these moments, according as the outer form or the innercontent predominates, or a balance of the two occurs, we have the symbolicform of art, in which the phenomenon predominates and the Idea is merelysuggested; or the classical form, in which Idea and intuition, or spiritualcontent and sensuous form, completely balance and pervade each other, inwhich the former of them is ceaselessly taken up into the latter; orthe romantic form, in which the phenomenon retires, and the Idea, theinwardness of the spirit predominates. Classical art, in which form andcontent are perfectly conformed to each other, is the most beautiful, butromantic art is, nevertheless, higher and more significant. 

Oriental, including Egyptian and Hebrew, art was symbolic; Greek art, classical; Christian art is romantic, bringing into art entirely newsentiments of a knightly and a religious sort--love, loyalty and honor, grief and repentance--and understanding how by careful treatment to ennobleeven the petty and contingent. The sublime belongs to symbolic art; theRoman satire is the dissolution of the classical, and humor the dissolutionof the romantic, ideal. 

Architecture is predominantly symbolic; sculpture permits the purestexpression of the classical ideal; painting, music, and poetry bear aromantic character. This does not exclude the recurrence of these threestages within each art--in architecture, for example, as monumental(the obelisk), useful (house and temple), and Gothic (the cathedral)architecture. As the plastic arts reached their culmination among theHellenes, so the romantic arts culminate among the Christian nations. Inpoetry, as the most perfect and universal (or the totality of) art, unitingin itself the two contraries, the symbolic and the classical, the lyricis a repetition of the architectonic-musical, the epic, of theplastic-pictorial, the drama, the union of the lyric and the epic. 

(2) _Philosophy of Religion_. --The withdrawal from outer sensibility intothe inner spirit, begun in romantic art, especially in poetry, is completedin religion. In religion the nations have recorded the way in which theyrepresent the substance of the world; in it the unity of the infinite andthe finite is felt, and represented through imagination. Religion is notmerely a feeling of piety, but a thought of the absolute, only not in theform of thinking. Religion and philosophy are materially the same, bothhave God or the truth for their object, they differ only in form--religioncontains in an empirical, symbolic form the same speculative content whichphilosophy presents in the adequate form of the concept. Religion isdeveloping knowledge as it gradually conquers imperfection. It appearsfirst as definite religion in two stadia, natural religion and the religionof spiritual individuality, and finally attains the complete realization ofits concept in the absolute religion of Christianity. 

Natural religion, in its lowest stage magic, develops in three forms--asthe religion of measure (Chinese), of phantasy (Indian or Brahmanical), andof being in self (Buddhistic). In the Persian (Zoroastrian) religion oflight, the Syrian religion of pain, and the Egyptian religion of enigma, isprepared the way for the transformation into the religion of freedom. TheGreek solves the riddle of the Sphinx by apprehending himself as subject, as man. 

The religion of spiritual individuality or free subjectivity passes throughthree stadia: the Jewish religion of sublimity (unity), the Greek religionof beauty (necessity), the Roman religion of purposiveness (of theunderstanding). In contrast to the Jewish religion of slavish obedience, which by miracle makes known the power of the one God and the nullity ofnature, which has been "created" by his will, and the prosaic severity ofthe Roman, which, in Jupiter and Fortuna, worships only the world-dominionof the Roman people, the more cheerful art-religion of the Hellenesreverences in the beautiful forms of the gods, the powers which man isaware of in himself--wisdom, bravery, and beauty. 

The Christian or revealed religion is the religion of truth, of freedom, ofspirit. Its content is the unity of the divine nature and the human, Godas knowing himself in being known of man+; the knowledge of God is God'sself-knowledge. Its fundamental truths are the Trinity (signifying that Goddifferentiates and sublates the difference in love), the incarnation (as afigure of the essential unity of the infinite and finite spirit), the fall, and Christ's atoning death (this signifies that the realization of theunity between man and God presupposes the overcoming of naturality andselfishness). 

(3) _Philosophy_. --Finally the task remains of clothing the absolutecontent given in religion in the form adequate to it, in the form of theconcept. In philosophy absolute spirit attains the highest stage, itsperfect self-knowledge. It is the self-thinking Idea. 

Here we must not look for further detailed explanations: philosophy isjust the course which has been traversed. Its systematic exposition isencyclopaedia; the consideration of its own actualization, the historyof philosophy, which, as a "philosophical" discipline, has to show theconformity to law and the rationality of this historical development, toshow the more than mere succession, the genetic succession, of systems, as well as their connection with the history of culture. Each systemis the product and expression of its time, and as the self-reflectionof each successive stage in culture cannot appear before this has reachedits maturity and is about to be overcome. Not until the approach of thetwilight does the owl of Minerva begin its flight. 

CHAPTER XIV. 

THE OPPOSITION TO CONSTRUCTIVE IDEALISM: FRIES, HERBART, SCHOPENHAUER. 

In Fries, Herbart, and Schopenhauer a threefold opposition was raisedagainst the idealistic school represented by Fichte, Schelling, andHegel. The opposition of Fries is aimed at the method of the constructivephilosophers, that of Herbart against their ontological positions, and thatof Schopenhauer against their estimate of the value of existence. Friesand Beneke declare that a speculative knowledge of the suprasensible isimpossible, and seek to base philosophy on empirical psychology; to themonism (panlogism) of the idealists Herbart opposes a pluralism, to theirphilosophy of becoming, a philosophy of being; Schopenhauer rejects theiroptimism, denying rationality to the world and the world-ground. Amongthemselves the thinkers of the opposition have little more in common thantheir claim to a better understanding of the Kantian philosophy, and adevelopment of it more in harmony with the meaning of its author, than ithad experienced at the hands of the idealists. Whoever fails to agreewith them in this, and ascribes to the idealists whom they oppose bettergrounded claims to the honor of being correct interpreters and consistentdevelopers of Kantian principles, will be ready to adopt the name_Semi-Kantians_, given by Fortlage to the members of the opposition, --atitle which seems the more fitting since each of them appropriates only adefinitely determinable part of Kant's views, and mingles a foreign elementwith it. In Fries this non-Kantian element comes from Jacobi's philosophyof faith; in Herbart it comes from the monadology of Leibnitz, and theancient Eleatico-atomistic doctrine; in Schopenhauer, from the religion ofIndia and (as in Beneke) from the sensationalism of the English and theFrench. We can only hint in passing at the parallelism which exists betweenthe chief representatives of the idealistic school and the leaders ofthe opposition. Fries's theory of knowledge and faith is the empiricalcounterpart of Fichte's Science of Knowledge. Schopenhauer, in his doctrineof Will and Idea, in his vigorously intuitive and highly fanciful view ofnature and art, and, in general, in his aesthetical mode of philosophizing, with its glad escape from the fetters of method, has so much in common withSchelling that many unhesitatingly treat his system as an offshoot of thePhilosophy of Nature. The contrast between Herbart and Hegel is the morepronounced since they are at one in their confidence in the power of theconcept. The most conspicuous point of comparison between the metaphysicsof the two thinkers is the significance ascribed by them to thecontradiction as the operative moment in the movement of philosophicalthought. The attitude of hostility which Schleiermacher assumed in relationto Hegel's intellectualistic conception of religion induced Harms to giveto Schleiermacher also a place in the ranks of the opposition. Followingthe chronological order, we begin with the campaign opened by Fries underthe banner of anthropology against the main branch of the Kantian school. 

%1. The Psychologists: Fries and Beneke. %

Jacob Friedrich Fries (1773-1843) was born and reared at Barby, studiedat Jena, and habilitated at the same university in the year 1801; he wasprofessor at Heidelberg in 1806-16, and at Jena from 1816 until his death. His chief work was the _New Critique of Reason_, in three volumes, 1807(2d ed. , 1828 _seq_. ), which had been preceded, in 1805, by the treatise_Knowledge, Faith, and Presentiment_. Besides these he composed a _Handbookof Psychical Anthropology_, 1821 (2d ed. , 1837 _seq_. ), text-books ofLogic, Metaphysics, the Mathematical Philosophy of Nature, and PracticalPhilosophy and the Philosophy of Religion, and a philosophical novel, _Julius and Evagoras, or the Beauty of the Soul_. 

Fries adopts and popularizes Kant's results, while he rejects Kant'smethod. With Reinhold and Fichte, he thinks "transcendental prejudice" hasforced its way into philosophy, a phase of thought for which Kant himselfwas responsible by his anxiety to demonstrate everything. That _a priori_forms of knowledge exist cannot be proved by speculation, but only byempirical methods, and discovered by inner observation; they aregiven facts of reason, of which we become conscious by reflection orpsychological analysis. The _a priori_ element cannot be demonstrated nordeduced, but only shown actually present. The question at issue[1] betweenFries and the idealistic school therefore becomes, Is the discovery of the_a priori_ element itself a cognition _a priori_ or _a posteriori_? Isthe criticism of reason a metaphysical or an empirical, that is, ananthropological inquiry? Herbart decides with the idealists: "All conceptsthrough which we think our faculty of knowledge are themselves metaphysicalconcepts" (_Lehrbuch zur Einleitung_, p. 231). Fries decides: The criticismof reason is an empirico-psychological inquiry, as in general empiricalpsychology forms the basis of all philosophy. 

[Footnote 1: Cf. Kuno Fischer's Pro-Rectoral Address, _Die beidenKantischen Schulen in Jena_, 1862. ]

With the exception of this divergence in method Fries accepts Kant'sresults almost unchanged, unless we must call the leveling down which theysuffer at his hands a considerable alteration. Only the doctrine of theIdeas and of the knowledge of reason is transformed by the introduction andsystematization of Jacobi's principle of the immediate evidence of faith. Reason, the faculty of Ideas, _i. E. _, of the indemonstrable yet indubitableprinciples, is fully the peer of the sensibility and the understanding. Thesame subjective necessity which guarantees to us the objective reality ofthe intuitions and the categories accompanies the Ideas as well; the faithwhich reveals to us the _per se_ of things is no less certain than theknowledge of phenomena. The ideal view of the world is just as necessary asthe natural view; through the former we cognize the same world as throughthe latter, only after a higher order; both spring from reason or theunity of transcendental apperception, only that in the natural view we areconscious of the fact, from which we abstract in the ideal view, that thisis the condition of experience. That which necessitates us to rise fromknowledge to faith is the circumstance that the empty unity-form of reasonis never completely filled by sensuous cognition. The Ideas are of twokinds: the aesthetic Ideas are intuitions, which lack clear conceptscorresponding to them; the logical Ideas are concepts under which nocorrespondent definite intuitions can be subsumed. The former are reachedthrough combination; the latter by negation, by thinking away thelimitations of empirical cognition, by removing the limits from theconcepts of the understanding. By way of the negation of all limitations wereach as many Ideas as there are categories, that is, twelve, among whichthe Ideas of relation are the most important. These are the three axioms offaith--the eternity of the soul (its elevation above space and time, to becarefully distinguished from immortality, or its permanence in time), the freedom of the will, and the Deity. Every Idea expresses somethingabsolute, unconditioned, perfect, and eternal. --The dualism of knowledgeand faith, of nature and freedom, or of phenomenal reality and true, higherreality, is bridged over by a third and intermediate mode of apprehension, feeling or presentiment, which teaches us the reconciliation of the tworealities, the union of the Idea and the phenomenon, the interpenetrationof the eternal and the temporal. The beautiful is the Idea as it manifestsitself in the phenomenon, or the phenomenon as it symbolizes the eternal. The aesthetico-religious judgment looks on the finite as the revelation andsymbol of the infinite. In brief, "Of phenomena we have knowledge; in thetrue nature of things we believe; presentiment enables us to cognize thelatter in the former. "

Theoretical philosophy is divided into the philosophy of nature, whichis to use the mathematical method, hence to give a purely mechanicalexplanation of all external phenomena, including those of organic life, and to leave the consideration of the world as a teleological realm toreligious presentiment--and psychology. The object of the former isexternal nature, that of the latter internal nature. I know myself only asphenomenon, my body through outer, my ego through inner, experience. Itis only a variant mode of appearing on the part of one and the samereality--so Fries remarks in opposition to the _influxus physicus_ andthe _harmonia praestabilata_--which now shows me my person inwardly asmy spirit, and now outwardly as the life-process of my body. Practicalphilosophy includes ethics, the philosophy of religion, and aesthetics. Inaccordance with the threefold interest of our animal, sensuo-rational, andpurely rational impulses, there result three ideals for the legislation ofvalues. These are the ideal of happiness, the ideal of perfection, and theideal of morality, or of the agreeable, the useful, and the good, the thirdof which alone possesses an unconditioned worth and validity as a universaland necessary law. The moral laws are deduced from faith in the equalpersonal dignity of men, and the ennobling of humanity set up as thehighest mission of morality. The three fundamental aesthetical tempers arethe idyllic and epic of enthusiasm, the dramatic of resignation, the lyricof devotion. 

Fries's system is thus a union of Kantian positions with elements fromJacobi, in which the former experience deterioration, and the latterimprovement, namely, more exact formulation. Among his adherents, and hehas them still, the following appear deserving of mention: the botanistsSchleiden and Hallier; the theologian De Wette; the philosophers Calker (ofBonn, died 1870) and Apelt (1812-59). The last made himself favorably knownby his _Epochs of the History of Humanity_, 1845-46, _Theory of Induction_, 1854, and _Metaphysics_, 1857; his _Philosophy of Religion_ (1860) did notappear until after his death. The Catholic theologian, Georg Hermes of Bonn(1775-1831) favored a Kantianism akin to that of Fries. 

 * * * * *

The psychological view founded by Fries was consistently developed byFriedrich Eduard Beneke (1798-1854). With the exception of three years ofteaching in Göttingen, 1824-27, whither he had gone in consequence of aprohibition of his lectures called forth by his _Foundation of the Physicsof Ethics_, 1822, he was a member of the university of his native city, Berlin, first as _Docent_, and, from 1832, after the death of Hegel, whowas unfavorably disposed toward him, as professor extraordinary. [1] BesidesKant, Jacobi, and Fries, Schleiermacher, Herbart (with whom he becameacquainted in 1821), and the English thinkers exerted a determininginfluence on the formation of his philosophy. Beneke denies the possibilityof speculative knowledge even more emphatically than Fries. Kant'sundertaking was aimed at the destruction of a non-experiential science fromconcepts, and if it has not succeeded in preventing the neo-Scholasticismof the Fichtean school, with its overdrawn attempts to revive a deductiveknowledge of the absolute, this has been chiefly due to the false, non-empirical method of the great critic of reason. The root and basis ofall knowledge is experience; metaphysics itself is an empirical science, itis the last in the series of philosophical disciplines. Whoever begins withmetaphysics, instead of ending with it, begins the house at the roof. The point of departure for all cognition is inner experience orself-observation; hence the fundamental science is psychology, and allother branches of philosophy nothing but applied psychology. By the innersense we perceive our ego as it really is, not merely as it appears to us;the only object whose _per se_ we immediately know is our own soul; inself-consciousness being and representation are one. Thus, in opposition toKant, Beneke stands on the side of Descartes: The soul is better knownto us than the external world, to which we only transfer the existenceimmediately given in the soul as a result of instinctive analogicalinference, so that in the descent of our knowledge from men organizedlike ourselves to inorganic matter the inadequacy of our representationsprogressively increases. 

[Footnote 1: On Beneke's character cf. The fourth of Fortlage's _Achtpsychologische Vorträge_, which are well worth reading. ]

Psychology--we may mention of Beneke's works in this field the_Psychological Sketches_, 1825-27, and the _Text-book of Psychology_, 1833, the third and fourth (1877) editions of which, edited by Dressler, containas an appendix a chronological table of all Beneke's works--must, asinternal natural science, follow the same method, and, starting withthe immediately given, employ the same instruments in the treatment ofexperience as external natural science, _i. E. _ the explanation of factsby laws, and, further still, by hypotheses and theories. Gratefullyrecognizing the removal of two obstacles to psychology, the doctrine ofinnate ideas and the traditional theory of the faculties of the soul byLocke and Herbart, (the commonly accepted faculties--memory, understanding, feeling, will--are in fact not simple powers, but mere abstractions, hypostatized class concepts of extremely complex phenomena, ) Beneke seeksto discover the simple elements from which all mental life is compounded. He finds these in the numerous elementary faculties of receiving andappropriating external stimuli, which the soul in part possesses, in partacquires in the course of its life, and which constitute its substance;each separate sense of itself includes many such faculties. Every actor product of the soul is the result of two mutually dependent factors:_stimulus and receptivity_. Their coming together gives the first ofthe _four fundamental processes_, that of perception. The second isthe constant addition of new elementary faculties. By the third, the equilibration or reciprocal transfer of the movable elements inrepresentations, Beneke explains the reproduction of an idea throughanother associated with it, and the widening of the mental horizon byemotion, _e. G. _, the astounding eloquence of the angry. Since eachrepresentation which passes out of consciousness continues to exist in thesoul as an unconscious product (where we cannot tell; the soul is not inspace), it is not retention, but obliviscence which needs explanation. Thatwhich persists of the representation which is passing into unconsciousness, and which makes its reappearance in consciousness possible, is calleda "trace" in reference to its departed cause, and a "disposition"(_Angelegtheit_) in reference to its future results. Every such traceor germ (_Anlage_)--that which lies intermediate between perception andrecollection--is a force, a striving, a tendency. The fourth of thefundamental processes (which may be traced downward into the materialworld, since the corporeal and the psychical differ only in degree andpass over into each other) is the combination of mental products accordingto the measure of their similarity, as these come to light in the formationof judgments, comparisons, witticisms, of collective images, collectivefeelings, and collective desires. The innate differences among men dependon the greater or lesser "powerfulness, vivacity, and receptivity" of theirelementary faculties; all further differences arise gradually and are dueto the external stimuli; even the distinction between the human and theanimal soul, which consists in the spiritual nature of the former, is notoriginal. 

Of the five constructive forms of the soul, which result from the varyingrelation between stimulus and faculty, four are emotional products orproducts of moods. If the stimulus is too small pain (dissatisfaction, longing) arises, while pleasure springs from a marked, but not too great, fullness of stimulus. If the stimulus gradually increases to the point ofexcess, blunted appetite and satiety come in; when the excess is suddenit results in pain. A clear representation, a sensation arises when thestimulus is exactly proportioned to the faculty; it is in this case onlythat the soul assumes a theoretical attitude, that it merely perceiveswithout any admixture of agreeable or disagreeable feelings. Desire ispleasure remembered, the ego the complex of all the representations whichhave ever arisen in the soul, the totality of the manifold given within me. For the immortality of the immaterial soul Beneke advances an original andattractive argument based on the principle that, in consequence of theconstantly increasing traces, through which the substance of the soul iscontinually growing, consciousness turns more and more from the outerto the inner, until finally perception dies entirely away. At death theconnection with the outer world ceases, it is true, but not the inner beingof the soul, for which that which has hitherto been highest now becomes thefoundation for new and still higher developments. 

Like Herbart, on whom he was in many ways dependent, Beneke discussedpsychology and pedagogics with greater success than logic, metaphysics, practical philosophy, and the philosophy of religion. He combats theapriorism of Kant in ethics as elsewhere. The moral law does not ariseuntil the end of a long development. First in order are the immediatelyfelt values of things, which we estimate according to the degree ofenhancement or depression in the psychical state which they call forth. From the feelings are formed concepts, from concepts judgments; and theabstraction of the categorical imperative is a highly derivative phenomenonand a very late result, although the feeling of oughtness or of moralobligation, which accompanies the correct estimation of values and bidsus prefer spiritual to sensuous delights and the general good to our ownwelfare, grows necessarily out of the inner nature of the human soul. Thereare two sources of religion: one theoretical, for the idea of God; theother practical, for the worship of God. We are impelled to the assumptionof a suprasensible, an unconditioned, a providence, on the one hand, by thedesire for a unitary conclusion for our fragmentary knowledge of the world;and, on the other, by moral need, by our unsatisfied longing after thegood. The attributes which we ascribe to God are taken from experience, theabstract attributes from being in general, the naturalistic from the world, the spiritual from man. As an inevitable outcome of the transformation ofreligious feelings into representations, and one which is harmless becauseof the unmistakableness of their symbolic character, the anthropomorphicpredicates, through which we think the Deity as personal, themselvesestablish the superiority of theism over pantheism. The object of religion, moreover, is accessible only to the subjective certitude of feeling whichis given by faith, and not to scientific knowledge. 

Feuerbach's anthropological standpoint will be discussed below. LikeFriedrich Ueberweg (1826-71; professor in Königsberg; _System of Logic_, 1857, 5th ed. , edited by J. B. Meyer, 1882--English translation, 1871), KarlFortlage was strongly influenced in his psychological views by Beneke. Born in 1806 at Osnabrück, and at his death in 1881 a professor in Jena, Fortlage shared with Beneke an impersonality of character, as well as thefate of meeting with less esteem from his contemporaries than he meritedby the seriousness and originality of his thinking. To his _System ofPsychology_, 1855, in two volumes, he added, as it were, a third volume, his _Contributions to Psychology_, 1875, besides psychological lectures ofa more popular cast (_Eight Lectures_, 1869, 2d ed. , 1872; _Four Lectures_, 1874). [1] Fortlage characterizes his psychological method--in the criticismof which F. A. Lange fails to show the justice for which he is elsewhereto be commended--as observation by the inner sense. In the first place, consciousness, as the active form of representation, must be separated fromthat of which we are conscious, from the "content of representation, " whichis in itself unconscious, but capable of coming into consciousness. NextFortlage seeks to determine the laws of these two factors. In regard tothe content of representation he distinguishes more sharply than Herbartbetween the fusibility of the homogeneous and the capacity for complexcombination possessed by the heterogeneous (the fusion of similars goes oneven without aid from consciousness, while the connection of dissimilars isbrought about only through the help of the latter), and adds to these twogeneral properties of the content of representation two further ones, itsrevivability (its persistence in unconsciousness), and its dissolubility inthe scale of size, color, etc. Consciousness, on the other hand, which forFortlage coincides with the ego or self, is treated as the presuppositionof all representations, not as their result--it is underived activity. Heexplains the nature of consciousness by the concept of attention, characterizes them both as "questioning activity" (_Fragethätigkeit_), andfollows them out in their various degrees from expectation throughobservation up to reflection. The listening and watching of the hunterwhen waiting for the game is only a prolongation of the same consciousnesswhich accompanies all less exciting representations. The essential elementin conscious or questioning activity is the oscillation between yes and no. 

As soon as the disjunction is decided by a yes, the desire which lies atits basis, and which in the condition of consciousness is arrested, passesover into activity. All consciousness is based on interest, and in itsorigin is "arrested impulse" (_Triebhemmung_). "The direction of impulseto an intuition to be expected only in the future is calledconsciousness. " The rank of a being depends on its capacity forreflection: the greater the extent of its attention and the smallerthe stimuli which suffice to rouse this to action, the higher it stands. Impulse--this is the fundamental idea of Fortlage's psychology, like willwith Fichte, and representation with Herbart--consists of an element ofrepresentation and an element of feeling. 

Pleasure + effort-image = impulse. 

[Footnote 1: Among Fortlage's other works we may mention his valuable_History of Poetry_, 1839; the _Genetic History of Philosophy since Kant_, 1852; and the attractive _Six Philosophical Lectures_, 1869, 2d ed. , 1872. ]

In his metaphysical convictions, to which he gave expression in his_Exposition and Criticism of the Arguments for the Existence of God_, 1840, among other works, Fortlage belongs to the philosophers of identity. Originally sailing in Hegel's wake, he soon recognizes that the roots ofthe theory of identity go back to the Kantio-Fichtean philosophy, withwhich the system of absolute truth, as he holds, has come into being. Hethus becomes an adherent of the Science of Knowledge, whose deductiveresults he finds inductively confirmed by psychological experience. Psychology is the empirical test for the metaphysical calculus of theScience of Knowledge. In regard to the absolute Fortlage is in agreementwith Krause, the younger Fichte, Ulrici, etc. , and calls his standpoint_transcendent pantheism_. According to this all that is good, exalted, andvaluable in the world is divine in its nature; the human reason is ofthe same essence as the divine reason (there can be nothing higher thanreason); the Godhead is the absolute ego of Fichte, which employs theempirical egos as organs, which thinks and wills in individuals, in sofar as they think the truth and will the good, but at the same time asuniversal subject goes beyond them. If, after the example of Hegel, we giveup transcendent pantheism in favor of immanence, two unphilosophical modesof representing the absolute at once result--on the one hand, materialism;on the other, popular, unphilosophical theism. If the Fichtean Scienceof Knowledge could be separated from its difficult method, which it isimpossible ever to make comprehensible to the unphilosophical mind, itwould be called to take the place of religion. [1]

[Footnote 1: Among Fortlage's posthumous manuscripts was one on thePhilosophy of Religion, on which Eucken published an essay in the_Zeitschrift für Philosophie_, vol. Lxxxii. 1883, p. 180 _seq_. AfterLipsius had given a single chapter from it--"The Ideal of Moralityaccording to Christianity"--in his _Jahrbücher für protestantischeTheologie_ (vol. Ix. Pp. 1-45). The journals _Im Neuen Reich_, 1881, No. 24, and _Die Gegenwart_, 1882, No. 34, contained warmly written notices ofFortlage by J. Volkelt. Leopold Schmid (in Giessen, died 1869) gives afavorable and skillfully composed outline of Fortlage's system in his_Grundzüge der Einleitung in die Philosophie mit einer Beleuchtung dervon K. Ph. Fischer, Sengler, und Fortlage ermöglichten Philosophie derThat_, 1860, pp. 226-357. Cf. Also Moritz Brasch, _K. Fortlage, Einphilosophisches Charakterbild_, in _Unsere Zeit_, 1883, Heft II, pp. 730-756, incorporated in the same author's _Philosophie derGegenwart_, 1888. ]

%2. Realism: Herbart. %

Johann Friedrich Herbart was scientifically the most important among thephilosophers of the opposition. Herbart was born at Oldenburg in 1776, theson of a councilor of justice, and had already become acquainted with thesystems of Wolff and Kant before he entered the University of Jena in1794. In 1796 he handed in to his instructor Fichte a critique of two ofSchelling's treatises, in which the youthful thinker already brokeaway from idealism. While a private tutor in Switzerland he made theacquaintance of Pestalozzi. In 1802 he habilitated in Göttingen, where, in1805, he was promoted to a professorship extraordinary; while in 1809 hereceived the professorship in Königsberg once held by Kant, and later byW. Tr. Krug (died 1842). He died in 1841 at Göttingen, whither he had beenrecalled in 1833. His _Collected Works_ were published in twelve volumes, 1850-52 (reprinted 1883 _seq_. ), by his pupil Hartenstein, who has alsogiven an excellent exposition of his master's system in his _Probleme undGrundlehren der allgemeinen Metaphysik_, 1836, and his _Grundbegriffe derethischen Wissenschaften_, 1844; a new edition, in chronological order, andunder the editorship of K. Kehrbach, began to appear in 1882, or rather1887, and has now advanced to the fourth volume, 1891. Herbart's chiefworks were written during his Königsberg residence: the _Text-book ofIntroduction to Philosophy_, 1813, 4th ed. , 1837 (very valuable as anintroduction to Herbartian modes of thought); _General Metaphysics_, 1829(preceded in 1806 and 1808 by _The Principal Points in Metaphysics_, with asupplement, _The Principal Points in Logic); Text-book of Psychology_, [1]1816, 2d ed. , 1834; _On the Possibility and Necessity of applyingMathematics to Psychology_, 1822; _Psychology as a Science_, 1824-25. Thetwo works on ethics, which were widely separated in time, were, on theother hand, written in Göttingen: _General Practical Philosophy_, 1808;_Analytical Examination of Natural Right and of Morals_, 1836. To thesemay be added a _Discourse on Evil_, 1817; _Letters on the Doctrine ofthe Freedom of the Human Will_, 1836; and the _Brief Encyclopaedia ofPhilosophy_, 1831, 2d ed. , 1841. His works on education and instruction, whose influence and value perhaps exceed those of his philosophicalachievements (collected editions of the pedagogical works have beenprepared by O. Willmann, 1873-75, 2d ed. , 1880; and by Bartholomaei), extended through his whole life. Besides pedagogics, psychology was thechief sphere of his services. 

[Footnote 1: English translation by M. K. Smith, 1891. ]

In antithesis to the philosophy of intuition with its imagined superiorityto the standpoint of reflection, Herbart makes philosophy begin withattention to concepts, defining it as the elaboration of concepts. Philosophy, therefore, is not distinguished from other sciences by itsobject, but by its method, which again must adapt itself to thepeculiarity of the object, to the starting point of the investigation inquestion--there is no universal philosophical method. There are as manydivisions of philosophy as there are modes of elaborating concepts. Thefirst requisite is the discrimination of concepts, both the discriminationof concepts from others and of the marks within each concept. This workof making concepts clear and distinct is the business of logic. With thisdiscipline, in which Herbart essentially follows Kant, are associated twoother forms of the elaboration of concepts, that of physical and thatof aesthetic concepts. Both of these classes require more than a merelylogical elucidation. The physical concepts, through which we apprehend theworld and ourselves, contain contradictions and must be freed from them;their correction is the business of meta-physics. Metaphysics is thescience of the comprehensibility of experience. The aesthetic (includingthe ethical) concepts are distinguished from the nature-concepts by apeculiar increment which they occasion in our representation, and whichconsists in a judgment of approval or disapproval. To clear up theseconcepts and to free them from false allied ideas is the task of aestheticsin its widest sense. This includes all concepts which are accompanied by ajudgment of praise or blame; the most important among them are the ethicalconcepts. Thus, aside from logic, we reach two principal divisions ofphilosophy, which are elsewhere contrasted as theoretical and practical, but here in Herbart as metaphysics and aesthetics. Herbart maintains thatthese are entirely independent of each other, so that aesthetics, since itpresupposes nothing of metaphysics, may be discussed before metaphysics, while the philosophy of nature and psychology depend throughout onontological principles. Together with natural theology the two lattersciences constitute "applied" metaphysics. This in turn presupposes"general" metaphysics, which subdivides into four parts: Methodology, Ontology, Synechology, _i. E. _, the theory of the continuous ([Greek:_suneches_]), which treats of the continua, space, time, and motion, andEidolology, _i. E. _, the theory of images or representations. The last formsthe transition to psychology, while synechology forms the preparationfor the philosophy of nature, whose most general problems it solves. Ourexposition will not need to observe these divisions closely. 

Metaphysics starts with the given, but cannot rest content with it, for itcontains contradictions. In resolving these we rise above the given. What_is given_? Kant has not answered this question with entire correctness. We may, indeed, term the totality of the given "phenomena, " but thispresupposes something which appears. If nothing existed there would alsonothing appear. As smoke points to fire, so appearance to being. So muchseeming, so much indication of being. Things in themselves may be knownmediately, though not immediately, by following out the indications ofbeing contained by the given appearance. Further, not merely the unformedmatter of cognition is given to us, but it is rather true that everythingcomes under this concept which experience so presses on us that we cannotresist it; hence not merely single sensations, but entire sensation-groups, not merely the matter, but also the forms of experience. If the latter werereally subjective products, as Kant holds, it would necessarily be possiblefor us at will to think each perceptive-content either under the categoryof substance, or property, or cause--possible for us, if we chose, to seea round table quadrilateral. In reality we are bound in the application ofthese forms; they are given for each object in a definite way. The givenforms--Herbart calls them experience-concepts--contain contradictions. How can these contradictions be removed? We may neither simply reject theconcepts which are burdened with contradictions, for they are given, norleave them as they are, for the logical _principium contradictionis_requires that the contradiction as such be rooted out. Theexperience-concepts are valid (they find application in experience), butthey are not thinkable. Therefore we must so transform and supplement themthat they shall become free from contradictions and thinkable. The methodwhich Herbart employs to remove the contradictions is as follows: Thecontradiction always consists in the fact that an _a_ should be the same asa _b_, but is not so. The desiderated likeness of the two is impossible solong as we think _a_ as _one_ thing. That which is unsuccessful in thiscase will succeed, perhaps, if in thought we break up the _a_ into severalthings--[Greek: _a b g_]. Then we shall be able to explain through the"together" (_Zusammen_) of this plurality what we were unable to explainfrom the undecomposed _a_, or from the single constituents of it. The"together" is a "relation" established by thought among the elements of thereal. For this reason Herbart terms his method of finding out necessarysupplements to the given "the method of relations. " Another name for thesame thing is "the method of contingent aspects. " Mechanics operates withcontingent aspects when, for the sake of explanation, it resolves a givenmotion into several components. Such fictions and substitutions--auxiliaryconcepts, which are not real, but which serve only as paths forthought--may be successfully employed by metaphysics also. The abstractexpression of this method runs: The contradiction is to be removed bythinking one of its members as manifold rather than as one. In order toobserve the workings of this Herbartian machine we shall go over the fourprincipal contradictions by which his acuteness is put to the test--theproblems of inherence, of change, of the continuous, of the ego. 

We call the given sensation-complexes "things, " and ascribe "properties" tothem. How can one and the same thing have different properties--how canthe one be at the same time many? To say that the thing "possesses" theproperties does not help the matter. The possession of the differentproperties is itself just as manifold and various as the properties whichare possessed. Hence the concept of the thing and its properties must beso transformed that the plurality which seems to be in the thing shall betransferred without it. Instead of one thing let us assume several, eachwith a single definite property, from whose "together" the appearanceof many qualities in one thing now arises. The appearance of manifoldproperties in the one thing has its ground in the "together" of manythings, each of which has one simple quality. Again, it is just asimpossible for a thing to have different qualities in succession, or tochange, as it is for it to have them at the same time. The popular viewof change, which holds that a thing takes on different forms (ice, water, steam) and yet remains the same substance, is untenable. How is it possibleto become another, and yet to remain the same? The universal feeling thatthe concept needs correction betrays itself in the fact that everyoneinvoluntarily adds a cause to the change in thought, and seeks a cause forit, and thus of himself undertakes a transformation of the concept, though, it is true, an inadequate one. If we think this concept through we comeupon a trilemma, a threefold impossibility. Whether we endeavor to deducethe change from external or from internal causes, or (with Hegel) to thinkit as causeless, in each case we involve ourselves in inconceivabilities. All three ideas--change as mechanism, as self-determination or freedom, as absolute becoming--are alike absurd. We can escape these contradictionsonly by the bold decision to conceive the quality of the existent asunchangeable. For the truly existent there is no change whatever. Itremains, however, to explain the appearance of change, in which the wand ofdecomposition and the "together" again proves its magic power. Supported bythe motley manifoldness of phenomena, we posit real beings as qualitativelydifferent, and view this diversity as partial contraposition; we resolve, _e. G. _, the simple quality _a_ into the elements _x_ + _z_, and a secondquality _b_ into _y - z_. So long as the individual things remain bythemselves, the opposition of the qualities will not make itself evident. But as soon as they come together, something takes place--now the opposites(+_z_ and -_z_) seek to destroy or at least to disturb each other. Thereals defend themselves against the disturbance which would follow if theopposites could destroy each other, by each conserving its simple, unchangeable quality, _i. E. _, by simply remaining self-identical. _Self-conservation against_ threatened _disturbances_ from without (it maybe compared to resistance against pressure) is the only real change, andapparent change, the empirical changes of things, to be explained fromthis. That which changes is only the relations between the beings, as athing maintains itself now against this and now against that other thing;the relations, however, and their change are something entirely contingentand indifferent to the existent. In itself the self-conservation of a realis as uniform as the quality which is conserved, but in virtue of thechanging relations (the variety of the disturbing things) it can expressitself for the observer in manifold ways as force. The real itself changesas little as a painting changes, for instance, when, seen near at hand, thefigures in it are clearly distinguished, while for the distantobserver, on the contrary, they run together into an indistinguishablechaos. Change has no meaning in the sphere of the existent. 

Anyone who speaks thus has denied change, not deduced it. Among the manyobjections experienced by Herbart's endeavor to explain the empiricalfact of change by his theory of self-conservation against threateneddisturbances Lotze's is the most cogent: The unsuccessful attempt tosolve the difficulties in the concept of becoming and action is stillinstructive, for it shows that they cannot be solved in this way--from theconcept of inflexible being. If the "together, " the threatened disturbance, and the reaction against the latter be taken as realities, then, in theaffection by the disturber, the concept of change remains uneliminated anduncorrected; if they be taken as unreal concepts auxiliary to thought, change is relegated from the realm of being to the realm of seeming. Herbart gives to them a kind of semi-reality, less true than the unmovingground of things (their unchangeable, permanent qualities), and more truethan their contradictory exterior (the empirical appearance of change). Between being and seeming he thrusts in, as though between day and night, the twilight region of his "contingent aspects, " with their relations, which are nothing to the real, their disturbances, which do not come topass, and their self-conservations, which are nothing but undisturbedcontinuance in existence on the part of the real. 

Besides the contradictions in the concepts of inherence, of change, and action and passion, it is the concept of being which prevents ourphilosopher from ascribing a living character to reality. Being, as Kantcorrectly perceived, contains nothing qualitative; it is absolute position. Whoever affirms that an object _is_, expresses thereby that the matter isto rest with the simple position; in which is included that it is nothingdependent, relative, or negative. (Every negation is something relative, relates to a precedent position, which is to be annulled by it. ) Besidesbeing, the existent contains something more--a quality; it consists of thisabsolute position and a _what_. If this _what_ is separated from being wereach an "image"; united with being it yields an essence or a real. This_what_ of things is not their sensuous qualities; the latter belong ratherto the mere phenomenon. No one of them indicates what the object is byitself, when left alone. They depend on contingent circumstances, and apartfrom these they would not exist--what is color in the dark? what soundin airless space? what weight in empty space? what fusibility withoutfire?--they are each and all relative. Since being excludes negation ofevery kind, the quality of the existent must be absolutely _simple andunchangeable_; it brooks no manifoldness, no quantity, no distinctions indegree, no becoming; all this were a corruption of the purely affirmativeor positive character of being. The existent is unextended and eternal. The Eleatics are to be praised because the need of escaping from thecontradictions in the world of experience led them to make themselvesmasters of the concept of being without relation and without negation, andof the simple, homogeneous quality of the existent in its full purity. Butwhile the Eleatics conceived the existent as one, the atomists made anadvance by assuming a _plurality_ of reals. The truly one never becomesa plurality; plurality is given, hence an original plurality must bepostulated. Herbart characterizes his own standpoint as qualitativeatomism, since his reals are differentiated by their properties, not byquantitative relations (size and figure). The idealists and the pantheistsmake a false use of the tendency toward unity which, no doubt, is presentin our reason, when they maintain that true being must be one. There isabsolutely nothing in the concept of being to forbid us to think theexistent as many; while the world of phenomena, with its many things andtheir many properties, gives irrefragable grounds which compel us to thisconclusion. Hence, according to Herbart, the true reality is a (verylarge, though not, it is true, an infinite[1]) plurality of supra-sensible(non-spatial and non-temporal) reals, or, according to the Leibnitzianexpression, monads, which all their life have nothing further to do thanto preserve intact against disturbances the simple quality in which theyconsist (for the existent is not distinct from its quality; it does nothave the quality, but is the quality). Each thing has but one response forthe most varied influences: it answers all suggestions from without byaffirming its _what_, by continually repeating, as it were, the same note, which gains a varying meaning only in so far as, in accordance with thecharacter of the disturber, it appears now as a third, now as a fifth orseventh. This picture of the world is certainly not attractive; in it allchange and becoming, all life and all activity is offered up on the altarof monotonous being. Happily Herbart is inconsistent enough to enliven thiscomfortless waste of changeless being by the relatively real or semi-realmanifoldness of the self-conservations. 

The infinite divisibility of space and of matter forms the chief difficultyin the problem of the continuous. Herbart endeavors to solve it by theassumption of an intelligible space with "fixed" lines (lines formed by adefinite number of points, hence finitely divisible, and not continuous). Metaphysics demands the fixed or discrete line, although common thoughtis incapable of conceiving it. Space is a mere form of combination inrepresentation or for the observer, and yet it is objective, _i. E. _, it isvalid for all intelligences, and not merely for human intelligence. From his complex and unproductive endeavors to derive the appearance ofcontinuity from discontinuous reality we hurry on to the fourth, thepsychological problem, which Herbart discusses with great acuteness. Heconsiders it the chief merit of Fichte's Science of Knowledge that itcalled attention to this problem. 

The concept of the ego, of whose reality we have so strong and immediate aconviction that, in the formula of asseveration, "as true as I exist, "it is made the criterion of all other certitude, labors under variouscontradictions. Besides the familiar difficulty, here especially sensible, of one thing with many marks, it contains other absurdities of its own. Inthe ego or self-consciousness subject and object are to be identical. The identity of the representing and the represented ego is aself-contradictory idea, for the law of contradiction forbids the equationof opposites, while a subject is subject only through the fact that it isnot object. But, again, self-consciousness can never be realized, becauseit involves a _regressus in infinitum_. The ego is defined as that whichrepresents itself. What is this "self"? It is, in turn, the self-knower. This new explanation contains still a further self; which once moresignifies the self-knower and so on to infinity. The ego represents therepresentation (_Vorstellen_) of its representation (_Vorstellen)_, etc. The representation (_Vorstellung_) of the ego, therefore, can never beactually brought to completion. (The assumption of the freedom of the willleads to an analogous _regressus in infinitum_, in which the question, "Willst thou thy volition?" "Willst thou the willing of this volition"? isrepeated to infinity. ) The only escape from this tissue of absurditiesis to think the ego otherwise than is done by popular consciousness. Theknowing and the known ego are by no means the same, but the observingsubject in self-consciousness is one group of representations, the observedsubject another. Thus, for example, newly formed representations areapperceived by the existing older ones, but the highest apperceiver is not, in turn, itself apperceived. The ego is not a unit being, which representsitself in the literal meaning of the phrase, but that which is representedis a plurality. The ego is the junction of numberless series ofrepresentations, and is constantly changing its place; it dwells now inthis representation, now in that. But as we distinguish the point ofmeeting from the series which meet there, and imagine that it is possiblesimultaneously to abstract from all the represented series (whereas in factwe can only abstract from each one separately), there arises the appearanceof a permanent ego as the unit subject of all our representations. Inreality the ego is not the source of our representations, but the finalresult of their combination. The representation, not the ego, is thefundamental concept of psychology, the ego constituting rather its mostdifficult problem. [1] It is a "result of other representations, which, however, in order to yield this result, must be together in a singlesubstance, and must interpenetrate one another" (_Text-book ofIntroduction_, p. 243). In this way Herbart defends the substantialityof the soul against Kant and Fries. The soul's immortality (as also itspre-existence) goes without saying, because of the non-temporal characterof the real. 

[Footnote 1: On the Herbartian psychology, cf. Ribot, _German Psychology ofTo-day_, English Translation by Baldwin, 1886, pp. 24-67; and G. F. Stout, _Mind_, vols. Xiii. -xiv. --TR. ]

The soul is one of these reals which, unchangeable in themselves, enterinto various relations with others, and conserve themselves against thelatter. In its simple _what_ as unknowable as the rest, it is yet familiarto us in its self-conservations. In the absence of a more fittingexpression for the totality of psychical phenomena we call these_representations_, the phenomenal manifoldness of which is due to thevariety of the disturbances and exists for the observer alone. In itself, without a plurality of dispositions and impulses, the soul is originallynot a representative force, but first becomes such under certaincircumstances, viz. , when it is stimulated to self-conservation by otherbeings. The sum of the reals which stand in immediate relation to the soulis called its body; this, an aggregate of simple beings, furnishes theintermediate link of causal relation between the soul and the externalworld. The soul has its (movable) seat in the brain. In opposition to thephysiological treatment of psychology, Herbart remarks that psychologythrows much more light on physiology than she can ever receive from it. 

The simplest representations are the sensations, which, amid all theirvariety, still group themselves into definite classes (odors, sounds, colors). They serve us as symbols of the disturbing reals, but they are notimages of things, nor effects of these, but products of the soul itself:the generation of sensations is the soul's peculiar way of guarding itselfagainst threatened disturbances. Every representation once come into beingdisappears again from consciousness, it is true, but not from the soul. It persists, unites with others, and stands with them in a relation ofinteraction--in both cases according to definite laws. These originalrepresentations are the only ones which the soul produces by its ownactivity; all other psychical phenomena, feeling, desire, will, attention, memory, judgment, the whole wealth of inner events, result of themselvesfrom the interplay of the primary representations under law. Representation(more exactly sensation) is alone original; space, time, the categories, which Kant makes _a priori_, are all acquired, _i. E. _, like all the highermental life, they are the results of a psychical _mechanism_, results whoseproduction needs no renewed exertion on the part of the soul itself. It hasbeen a very harmful error in psychology hitherto to ascribe each particularmental activity to a special _faculty of the soul_ having a similar name, instead of deriving it from combinations of simple representations. Abstract, empty class ideas have been treated as real forces, in the beliefthat thus the single concrete acts had been "explained. "

There is no bitterer foe of the faculty theory than Herbart. His campaignagainst it, if not victorious, was yet salutary, and the motives of hishostility, up to a certain point, entirely justified. Nothing is moreuseless than the assurance that what the soul actually does, that it mustalso have the power to do. Who disputes this? A faculty explains nothingso long as the laws under which its functions and its relations to otherfaculties remain unexplained. But although the faculty idea serves nopositive end, it cannot be entirely discarded. It marks the boundary whereour ability to reduce one class of psychical phenomena to another ceases. Herbart's polemic has no force against the moderate and necessary use ofthis idea, no matter how much it was in place in view of the impropriety ofa superfluous multiplication of the faculties of the soul. The realizationof the ideal of psychology, the reduction of the complex phenomena ofmental life to the smallest possible number of simple elements, is limitedby the heterogeneity of the original phenomena, knowing, feeling, willing, which wholly resists derivation from the combination of sensations. Thatwhich blinded Herbart to these limitations was that tendency toward unity, which, as a metaphysician and moral philosopher, he had all too willfullysuppressed, and which now took revenge for this infringement of its rightsby misleading the psychologist to an exaggeration which had importantconsequences. Nevertheless his unsuccessful attempt remains interesting andworthy of gratitude. 

The discovery of the laws which govern the interaction of the psychicalelements is the task of a _statics and a mechanics_ of representations. Theformer investigates the equilibrium or the settled final state; the latter, the change, _i. E. _ the movements of representations. These names ofthemselves betray Herbart's conviction that mathematics can and must beapplied to psychology. The bright hopes, however, which Herbart formed forthe attempt at a mathematical psychology, were fulfilled neither in his ownendeavors nor in those of his pupils, although, as Lotze remarks, it wouldbe asserting too much to say that the most general formulas which he set upcontradict experience. --The unity of the soul forces representations to acton one another. Disparate representations, those, that is, which belongto different representative series, as the visual image of a rose and theauditory image of the word rose, or as the sensations yellow, hard, round, ringing, connected in the concept gold piece, enter into complications[complexes]. Homogeneous representations (the memory image and theperceptual image of a black poodle) fuse into a single representation. Opposed representations (red and blue) arrest one another when they are inconsciousness together. The connection and graded fusion of representationsis the basis of their retention and reproduction, as well as of theformation of continuous series of representations. The reproduction is inpart immediate, a free rising of the representation by its own power assoon as the hindrances give way; in part mediate, a coming up throughthe help of others. On the _arrest_ of partially or totally opposedrepresentations Herbart bases his psychological calculus. Let there begiven simultaneously in consciousness three opposed representations ofdifferent intensities, the strongest to be called _a_, the weakest _c_, theintermediate one _b_. What happens? They arrest one another, _i. E. _ a partof each is forced to sink below the threshold of consciousness. [1]

What is the amount of the arrest? As much as all the weaker representationstogether come to--the sum of arrest or the sum of that which becomesunconscious (as it were the burden to be divided) is equal to the sum ofall the representations with the exception of the strongest (hence = _b_ +_c_), and is divided among the individual representations in the inverseratio of their strength, consequently in such a way that the strongest (theone which most actively and successfully resists arrest) has the least, and the weakest the most, of it to bear. It may thus come to pass that arepresentation is entirely driven out of consciousness by two strongerones, while it is impossible for this to happen to it from a single one, no matter how superior it be. The simplest case of all is when two equallystrong representations are present, in which case each is reduced tothe half of its original intensity. The sum of that which remains inconsciousness is always equal to the greatest representation. 

[Footnote 1: By their mutual pressure representations are transformed intoa mere _tendency_ to represent, which again becomes actual representationwhen the arrest ceases. The parts of a representation transformed into atendency, and the residua remaining unobscured, are not pieces cut off, but the quantity denotes merely a degree of obscuration in the wholerepresentation, or rather in the representation which actually takesplace. ]

As soon as a representation reaches the zero point of consciousness, or assoon as a new representation (sensation) comes in, the others begin atonce to rise or sink. The Mechanics seeks to investigate the laws of thesemovements of representations; but we may the more readily pass over itscomplicated calculations since their precise formulas can never more thanvery roughly represent the true state of the case, which simply rebelsagainst precision. The rock on which every immanent use of mathematicsin psychology must strike, is the impossibility of exactly measuring onerepresentation by another. We may, indeed, declare one stronger thananother on the basis of the immediate impression of feeling, but we cannotsay how much stronger it is, nor with reason assert that it is twice orhalf as intense. Herbart's mathematical psychology was wrecked by thisinsurmountable difficulty. The demand for exactness which it raised, butwhich it was unable to satisfy with the means at its disposal, has recentlybeen renewed, and has led to assured results in psycho-physics, which workson a different basis and with ingenious methods of measurement. 

Herbart endeavors, as we have seen, to deduce the various mental activitiesfrom the play of representations, Feeling and desire are not somethingbeside representations, are not special faculties of the soul, but resultsof the relations of representations, changing states of representationsarrested and working upward against hindrances. A representation which hasbeen forced out of consciousness persists as a _tendency or effort_ torepresent, and as such exerts a pressure on the conscious representations. If a representation is suspended between counteracting forces a feelingresults; desire is the rise of a representation in the face of hindrances, aversion is hesitation in sinking. If the effort is accompanied by the ideathat its goal is attainable, it is termed will. The character of a mandepends on the fact that definite masses of representations havebecome dominant, and by their strength and persistence hold opposingrepresentations in check or suppress them. The longer the dominant mass ofrepresentations exercises its power, the firmer becomes the habit of actingin a certain way, the more fixed the will. Herbart's intellectualisticdenial of self-dependence to the practical capacities of the soul leads himlogically to determinism. Volition depends on insight, is determined byrepresentations; freedom signifies nothing but the fact that the willcan be determined by motives. If the individual decisions of man wereundetermined he would have no character; if the character were free in thechoice between two actions, then, along with the noblest resolve, therewould remain the possibility of an opposite decision; freedom of choicewould make pure chance the doer of our deeds. Pedagogics, above all, must reject the idea of an undetermined freedom; education, along withimputation, correction, and punishment, would be a meaningless word, if nodetermining influence on the will of the pupil were possible. --This lastobjection overlooks the fact that the pedagogical influence is alwaysmediate, and can do no more than, by disciplining the impulses of the pupiland by supplying him with aids against immoral inclinations, to lighten hismoral task. We can work on the motives only, never directly on the willitself. Otherwise it would be inexplicable that even the best pedagogicalskill proves powerless in the case of many individuals. 

Herbart's psychology was preceded by a philosophy of nature, whichconstrues matter from attraction and repulsion, and declares an _actio indistans_ impossible. The intermediate link between physics and psychologyis formed by the science of organic life (physiology or biology); andwith this natural theology is connected by the following principles: Thepurposiveness which we notice with admiration in men and the higher animalscompels us, since it can neither come from chance nor be explained onnatural grounds alone, to assume as its author a supreme artificer, an intelligence which works by ends. It is true, indeed, that the existenceof the Deity is not demonstrated by the teleological argument; this is onlyan hypothesis, but one as highly probable as the assumption that the humanbodies by which we are surrounded are inhabited by human souls--a factwhich we can only assume, not perceive nor prove. The assurance of faithis different from that of logic and experience, but not inferior to it. Religion is based on humility and grateful reverence, which is favored, notinjured, by the immeasurable sublimity of its object, the incompleteness ofour idea of the Supreme Being, and the knowledge of our ignorance. If faithrests, on the one hand, on the teleological view of nature, it is, on theother, connected with moral need, and exercises, in addition, aestheticinfluences. By comforting the suffering, setting right the erring, reclaiming and pacifying the sinner, warning, strengthening, andencouraging the morally sound, religion brings the spirit into a new andbetter land, shows it a higher order of things, the order of providence, which, amid all the mistakes of men, still furthers the good. The religiousspirit always includes an ethical element, and the bond of the Church holdsmen together even where the state is destroyed. Indispensable theoreticallyas a supplement to our knowledge, and practically because of the moralimperfection of men, who need it to humble, warn, comfort, and lift themup, religion is, nevertheless, in its origin independent of knowledgeand moral will. Faith is older than science and morals: the doctrine ofreligion did not wait for astronomy and cosmology, nor the erection oftemples for ethics. Before the development of the moral concepts religionalready existed in the form of wonder without a special object, of a gloomyawe which ascribed every sudden inner excitement to the impulse of aninvisible power. Since a speculative knowledge of the nature of God isimpossible, the only task which remains for metaphysics is the removal ofimproper determinations from that which tradition and phantasy have tosay on the subject. We are to conceive God as personal, extramundane, andomnipotent, as the creator, not of the reals themselves, but of theirpurposive coexistence (_Zusammen_). In order, however, to rise from theidea of the original, most real, and most powerful being to that of themost excellent being we need the practical Ideas, without which the formerwould remain an indifferent theoretical concept. Man can pray only to awise, holy, perfect, just, and good God. 

This, in essential outline, is the content of the scattered observationson the philosophy of religion given by Herbart. Drobisch (_FundamentalDoctrines of the Philosophy of Religion_, 1840), from the standpoint ofreligious criticism and with a renewal of the moral argument, and Taute(1840-52) and Flügel (_Miracles and the Possibility of a Knowledge of God_, 1869) with an apologetic tendency and one toward a belief in miracles, have, among others, endeavored to make up for the lack of a detailedtreatment of this discipline by Herbart--from which, moreover, much ofvalue could hardly have been expected in view of the jejuneness of hismetaphysical conceptions and the insufficiency of his appreciation of evil. 

It remains only to glance at Herbart's Aesthetics. The beautiful isdistinguished from the agreeable and the desirable, which, like it, are theobjects of preference and rejection, by the facts, first, that it arousesan involuntary and disinterested judgment of approval; and second, that itis a predicate which is ascribed to the object or is objective. To these isadded, thirdly, that while desire seeks for that which is to come, tastepossesses in the present that which it judges. 

That which pleases or displeases is always the form, never the matter;and further, is always a relation, for that which is entirely simple isindifferent. As in music we have succeeded in discovering the simplestrelations, which please immediately and absolutely--we know not why--sothis must be attempted in all branches of the theory of art. The mostimportant among them, that which treats of moral beauty, moral philosophy, has therefore to inquire concerning the simplest relations of will, whichcall forth moral approval or disapproval (independently of the interestof the spectator), to inquire concerning the practical Ideas orpattern-concepts, in accordance with which moral taste, involuntarily andwith unconditional evidence, judges concerning the worth or unworth of(actually happening or merely represented) volitions. Herbart enumeratesfive such primary Ideas or fundamental judgments of conscience. 

(1) The Idea of inner freedom compares the will with the judgment, theconviction, the conscience of the agent himself. The agreement of hisdesire with his own judgment, with the precept of his taste, pleases, lackof agreement displeases. Since the power to determine the will accordingto one's own insight of itself establishes only an empty consistency andloyalty to conviction, and may also subserve immoral craft, the first Ideawaits for its content from the four following. 

(2) The Idea of perfection has reference to the quantitative relationsof the manifold strivings of a subject, in intensity, extension, andconcentration. The strong is pleasing in contrast with the weak, thegreater (more extended, richer) in contrast with the smaller, the collectedin contrast with the scattered; in other words, in the individualdesires it is energy which pleases, in their sum variety, in the systemco-operation. While the first two Ideas have compared the will of theindividual man with itself, the remaining ones consider its relation to thewill of other rational beings, the third to a merely represented will, andthe last two to an actual one. 

(3) According to the Idea of benevolence or goodness, which gives the mostimmediate and definite criterion of the worth of the disposition, the willpleases if it is in harmony with the (represented) will of another, _i. E. _, makes the satisfaction of the latter its aim. 

(4) The Idea of right is based on the fact that strife displeases. Ifseveral wills come together at one point without ill-will (in claiming athing), the parties ought to submit themselves to right as a rule for theavoidance of strife. 

(5) In retribution and equity, also, the original element is displeasure, displeasure in an unrequited act as a disturbance of equilibrium. Thislast Idea demands that no deed of good or evil remain unanswered; that inreward, thanks, and punishment, a quantum of good and evil equal to that ofwhich he has been the cause return upon the agent. The one-sided deed ofgood or ill is a disturbance, the removal of which demands a correspondingrequital. 

Herbart warns us against the attempt to derive the five original Ideas(which scientific analysis alone separates, for in life we always judgeaccording to all of them together) from a single higher Idea, maintainingthat the demand for a common principle of morals is a prejudice. Fromthe union of several beings into one person proceed five otherpattern-concepts, the derived or social Ideas of the ethical institutionsin which the primary Ideas are realized. These correspond to the primaryIdeas in the reverse order: The system of rewards, which regulatespunishment; the legal society, which hinders strife; the system ofadministration, aimed at the greatest possible good of all; the systemof culture, aimed at the development of the greatest possible power andvirtuosity; finally, as the highest, and that which unites the others initself, society as a person, which, when it is provided with the necessarypower, is termed the state. 

If we combine the totality of the original Ideas into the unity of theperson the concept of virtue arises. If we reflect on the limitations whichoppose the full realization of the ideal of virtue, we gain the concepts oflaw and duty. An ethics, like that of Kant, which exclusively emphasizesthe imperative or obligatory character of the good, is one-sided; itconsiders morality only in arrest, a mistake which goes with its falsedoctrine of freedom. On the other hand, it was a great merit in Kantthat he first made clear the unconditional validity of moral judgment, independent of all eudemonism. Politics and pedagogics are branches of thetheory of virtue. The end of education is development in virtue, and, asa means to this, the arousing of varied interests and the production of astable character. 

In conclusion, we may sum up the points in which Herbart shows himselfa follower of Kant--he calls himself a "Kantian of the year 1828. " Hispractical philosophy takes from Kant its independence of theoreticalphilosophy, the disinterested character of aesthetic judgment, theabsoluteness of ethical values, the non-empirical origin of the moralconcepts: "The fundamental ethical relations are not drawn fromexperience. " His metaphysics owes to Kant the critical treatment of theexperience-concepts (its task is to make experience comprehensible), inwhich the leading idea in the Kantian doctrine of the antinomies, theinevitableness of contradictions, is generalized, extended to all thefundamental concepts of experience, and, as it were, transferred from theDialectic to the Analytic; it owes to him, further, the conception of beingas absolute position, and, finally, the dualism of phenomena and thingsin themselves. Herbart (with Schopenhauer) considers the renewal of thePlatonic distinction between seeming and being the chief service of thegreat critical philosopher, and finds his greatest mistake in the _apriori_ character ascribed to the forms of cognition. In the doctrine ofthe pure intuitions and the categories, and the Critique of Judgment, herejects, and with full consciousness, just those parts of Kant on which theFichtean school had built further. Finally, Herbart's method of thought, his impersonality, the at times anxious caution of his inquiry, and theneatness of his conceptions, are somewhat akin to Kant's, only that helacked the gift of combination to a much greater degree than his greatpredecessor on the Königsberg rostrum. His remarkable acuteness is busierin loosening than in binding; it is more happy in the discovery ofcontradictions than in their resolution. Therefore he does not belong tothe kings who have decided the fate of philosophy for long periods of time;he stands to one side, though it is true he is the most important figureamong these who occupy such a position. 

The first to give his adherence to Herbart in essential positions, and soto furnish occasion for the formation of an Herbartian school, was Drobisch(born 1802), in two critiques which appeared in 1828 and 1830. BesidesDrobisch, from whom we have valuable discussions of Logic (1836, 5th ed. , 1887) and Empirical Psychology (1842), and an interesting essay on _MoralStatistics and the Freedom of the Will_ (1867), L. Strümpell (born 1812;_The Principal Points in Herbart's Metaphysics Critically Examined_, 1840), is a professor in Leipsic. The organ of the school, the _Zeitschriftfür exakte Philosophie_, now edited by Flügel (the first volume, 1860, contained a survey of the literature of the school), was at first issuedby T. Ziller, the pedagogical thinker, and Allihn. The _Zeitschrift fürVölkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft_, from 1859, edited by M. Lazarus(born 1824; _The Life of the Soul_, 3 vols. , 1856 _seq_. , 3d ed. , 1883_seq_. ) and H. Steinthal (born 1823; _The Origin of Language_, 4th ed. , 1888; _Sketch of the Science of Language_, part i. 2d ed. , 1881; _GeneralEthics_, 1885) of Berlin, also belongs to the Herbartian movement. Distinguished service has been done in psychology by Nahlowsky (_The Lifeof Feeling_, 1862, 2d. Ed. , 1884), Theodor Waitz in Marburg (1821-84;_Foundation of Psychology_, 1846; _Text-book of Psychology_, 1849), andVolkmann in Prague (1822-77; _Text-book of Psychology_, 3d. Ed. , byCornelius, 1884 and 1885); while Friedrich Exner (died 1853) was formerlymuch spoken of as an opponent of the Hegelian psychology (1843-44). RobertZimmermann in Vienna (born 1824) represents an extreme formalistic tendencyin aesthetics (_History of Aesthetics_, 1858; _General Esthetics as Scienceof Form_, 1865; further, a series of thorough essays on subjects in thehistory of philosophy). Among historians of philosophy Thilo has given arather one-sided representation of the Herbartian standpoint. The school'sphilosophers of religion have been mentioned above (p. 532). Beneke, whomwe have joined with Fries on account of his anthropological standpoint, stands about midway between Herbart and Schopenhauer. He shares in theformer's interest in psychology, in the latter's foundation of metaphysicalknowledge on inner experience, and in the dislike felt by both for Hegel;while, on the other hand, he differs from Herbart in his empirical method, and from Schopenhauer in the priority ascribed to representation overeffort. 

%3. Pessimism: Schopenhauer. %

Schopenhauer is in all respects the antipodes of Herbart. If in Herbartphilosophy breaks up into a number of distinct special inquiries, Schopenhauer has but one fundamental thought to communicate, in thecarrying out of which, as he is convinced, each part implies the whole andis implied by the whole. The former operates with sober concepts where thelatter follows the lead of gifted intuition. The one is cool, thorough, cautious, methodical to the point of pedantry; the other is passionate, ingenious, unmethodical to the point of capricious dilettantism. In the onecase, philosophy is as far as possible exact science, in which the personof the thinker entirely retires behind the substance of the inquiry; in theother, philosophy consists in a sum of artistic conceptions, which derivetheir content and value chiefly from the individuality of the author. Thehistory of philosophy has no other system to show which to the samedegree expresses and reflects the personality of the philosopher asSchopenhauer's. This personality, notwithstanding its limitations and itswhims, was important enough to give interest to Schopenhauer's views, evenapart from the relative truth which they contain. 

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) was the son of a merchant in Dantzic andhis wife Johanna, _née_ Trosiener, who subsequently became known as anovelist. His early training was gained from foreign travel, but after thedeath of his father he exchanged the mercantile career, which he had begunat his father's request, for that of a scholar, studying under G. E. Schulzein Göttingen, and under Fichte at Berlin. In 1813 he gained his doctor'sdegree in Jena with a dissertation _On the Fourfold Root of the Principleof Sufficient Reason_. Then he moved from Weimar, the residence of hismother, where he had associated considerably with Goethe and had beenintroduced to Indian philosophy by Fr. Mayer, to Dresden (1814-18). In thelatter place he wrote the essay _On Sight and Colors_ (1816; subsequentlypublished by the author in Latin), and his chief work, _The World as Willand Idea_ (1819; new edition, with a second volume, 1844). After thecompletion of the latter he began his first Italian journey, while hissecond tour fell in the interval between his two quite unsuccessfulattempts (in Berlin 1820 and 1825) to propagate his philosophy from theprofessor's desk. From 1831 until his death he lived in learned retirementin Frankfort-on-the-Main. Here he composed the opuscule _On Will inNature_, 1836, the prize treatises _On the Freedom of the Human Will_ and_On the Foundation of Ethics_ (together, _The Two Fundamental Problemsof Ethics_, 1841), and the collection of minor treatises _Parerga andParalipomena_, 2 vols. , 1851 (including an essay "On Religion"). J. Frauenstädt has published a considerable amount of posthumous material(among other things the translation, _B. Gracians Handorakel derWeltklugheit_); the _Collected Works_ (6 vols. , 1873-74, 2d ed. , 1877, witha biographical notice); _Lichtstrahlen aus Schopenhauers Werken_, 1861, 5thed. 1885; and a _Schopenhauer Lexicon_, 2 vols. , 1871. [1]

[Footnote 1: From the remaining Schopenhauer literature (F. Laban haspublished a chronological survey of it, 1880) we may call attention to thecritiques of the first edition of the chief work by Herbart and Beneke, andthat of the second edition by Fortlage (_Jenaische Litteratur Zeitung_, 1845, Nos. 146-151); J. E. Erdmann _Herbart und Schopenhauer, eine Antithese(Zeitschrift für Philosophie_, 1851); Wilh. Gwinner, _SchopenhauersLeben_, 1878 (the second edition of _Schopenhauer aus persönlichemUmgang dargestellt_, 1862); Fr. Nietzsche, _Schopenhauer als Erzieher(Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen, Stück iii_. , 1874); O. Busch, _A. Schopenhauer_, 2d. Ed. , 1878; K. Peters, _Schopenhauer als Philosoph undSchriftsteller_, 1880; R. Koeber, _Die Philosophie A. Schopenhauers_, 1888. [The English reader may be referred to Haldane and Kemp's translation of_The World as Will and Idea_, 3 vols. , 1883-86; the translation of _TheFourfold Root_ and the _Will in Nature_ in Bohn's Philosophical Library, 1889; Saunders's translations from the _Parerga and Paralipomena_, 1889_seq_. ; Helen Zimmern's _Arthur Schopenhauer, his Life and his Philosophy_, 1876; W. Wallace's _Schopenhauer_, Great Writers Series, 1890 (with abibliography by Anderson, including references to numerous magazinearticles, etc. ); Sully's _Pessimism_, 2d ed. , 1882, chap. Iv. ; and Royce's_Spirit of Modern Philosophy_, chap, viii. , 1892. --TR. ]]

In regard to subjective idealism Schopenhauer confesses himself athoroughgoing Kantian. That sensations are merely states in us has longbeen known; Kant opened the eyes of the world to the fact that the forms ofknowledge are also the property of the subject. I know things only as theyappear to me, as I represent them in virtue of the constitution of myintellect; the world is my idea. The Kantian theory, however, is capable ofsimplification, the various forms of cognition may be reduced to a singleone, to the category of causality or principle of sufficient reason--whichwas preferred by Kant himself--as the general expression of the regularconnection of our representations. This principle, in correspondence withthe several classes of objects, or rather of representations--viz. , pure(merely formal) intuitions, empirical (complete) intuitions, acts of will, abstract concepts--has four forms: it is the _principium rationis essendi, rationis fiendi, rationis agendi, rationis cognoscendi_. The _ratioessendi_ is the law which regulates the coexistence of the parts of spaceand the succession of the divisions of time. The _ratio fiendi_ demands forevery change of state another from which it regularly follows as from itscause, and a substance as its unchangeable substratum--matter. All changestake place necessarily, all that is real is material; the law of causalityis valid for phenomena alone, not beyond them, and holds only for thestates of substances, not for substances themselves. In inorganic naturecauses work mechanically, in organic nature as stimuli (in which thereaction is not equal to the action), and in animated nature as motives. A motive is a conscious (but not therefore a free) cause; the law ofmotivation is the _ratio agendi_. This serial order, "mechanical cause, stimulus, and motive, " denotes only distinctions in the mode of action, notin the necessity of action. Man's actions follow as inevitably from hischaracter and the motives which influence him as a clock strikes the hours;the freedom of the will is a chimera. Finally, the _ratio cognoscendi_determines that a judgment must have a sufficient ground in order to betrue. Judgment or the connection of concepts is the chief activity of thereason, which, as the faculty of abstract thought and the organ of science, constitutes the difference between man and the brute, while the possessionof the understanding with its intuition of objects is common to both. Inopposition to the customary overestimation of this gift of mediaterepresentations, of language, and of reflection, Schopenhauer givesprominence to the fact that the reason is not a creative faculty like theunderstanding, but only a receptive power, that it clarifies and transformsthe content furnished by intuition without increasing it by newrepresentations. 

Objective cognition is confined within the circle of our representations;all that is knowable is phenomenon. Space, time, and causality spread outlike a triple veil between us and the _per se_ of things, and prevent avision of the true nature of the world. There is one point, however, atwhich we know more than mere phenomena, where of these three disturbingmedia only one, time-form, separates us from the thing in itself. Thispoint is the consciousness of ourselves. 

On the one hand, I appear to myself as body. My body is a temporal, spatial, material object, an object like all others, and with them subjectto the laws of objectivity. But besides this objective cognition, I have, further, an immediate consciousness of myself, through which I apprehendmy true being--I know myself as willing. My will is more than a mererepresentation, it is the original element in me, the truly real whichappears to me as body. The will is related to the intellect as the primaryto the secondary, as substance to accident; it is related to the bodyas the inner to the outer, as reality to phenomenon. The act of will isfollowed at once and inevitably by the movement of the body willed, nay, the two are one and the same, only given in different ways: will is thebody seen from within, body the will seen from without, the will becomevisible, objectified. After the analogy of ourselves, again, who appear toourselves as material objects but in truth are will, all existence is tobe judged. The universe is the _mac-anthropos_; the knowledge of our ownessence, the key to the knowledge of the essence of the world. Like ourbody, the whole world is the visibility of will. The human will is thehighest stage in the development of the same principle which manifests itsactivity in the various forces of nature, and which properly takes its namefrom the highest species. To penetrate further into the inner nature ofthings than this is impossible. What that which presents itself as willand which still remains after the negation of the latter (see below) is initself, is for us absolutely unknowable. 

The world is _per se_ will. None of the predicates are to be attributed tothe primal will which we ascribe to things in consequence of our subjectiveforms of thought--neither determination by causes or ends, nor plurality:it stands outside the law of causality, as also outside space and time, which form the _principium individuationis_. The primal will is groundless, blind stress, unconscious impulse toward existence; it is one, the oneand all, [Greek: en nai pan]. That which manifests itself as gravity, asmagnetic force, as the impulse to growth, as the _vis medicatrix naturae_, is only this one world-will, whose unity (not conscious character!) showsitself in the purposiveness of its embodiments. The essence of each thing, its hidden quality, at which empirical explanation finds its limit, is itswill: the essence of the stone is its will to fall; that of the lungs isthe will to breathe; teeth, throat, and bowels are hunger objectified. Those qualities in which the universal will gives itself materialmanifestation form a series with grades of increasing perfection, a realmof unchangeable specific forms or eternal Ideas, which (with a real valuedifficult to determine) stand midway between the one primal will andthe numberless individual beings. That the organic individual does notperfectly correspond to the ideal of its species, but only approximatesthis more or less closely, is grounded in the fact that the stadia in theobjectification of the will, or the Ideas, contend, as it were, for matter;and whatever of force is used up in the victory of the higher Ideas overthe lower is lost for the development of the examples of the former. Thehigher the level on which a being stands the clearer the expression of itsindividuality. The most general forces of nature, which constitute the rawmass, play the fundamental bass in the world-symphony, the higher stagesof inorganic nature, with the vegetable and animal worlds, the harmoniousmiddle parts, and man the guiding treble, the significant melody. With thehuman brain the world as idea is given at a stroke; in this organ the willhas kindled a torch in order to throw light upon itself and to carry outits designs with careful deliberation; it has brought forth the intellectas its instrument, which, with the great majority of men, remains in aposition of subservience to the will. Brain and thought are the same; theformer is nothing other than the will to know, as the stomach is willto digest. Those only talk of an immaterial soul who import intophilosophy--where such ideas do not belong--concepts taught them when theywere confirmed. 

Schopenhauer's philosophy is as rich in inconsistencies as his personalitywas self-willed and unharmonious. "He carries into his system all thecontradictions and whims of his capricious nature, " says Zeller. From themost radical idealism (the objective world a product of representation) hemakes a sharp transition to the crassest materialism (thought a function ofthe brain); first matter is to be a mere idea, now thought is to be merelya material phenomenon! The third and fourth books of _The World as Will andIdea_, which develop the aesthetic and ethical standpoint of their author, stand in as sharp a contradiction to the first (poëtical) and the second(metaphysical) books as these to each other. While at first it wasmaintained that all representation is subject to the principle ofsufficient reason, we are now told that, besides causal cognition, there isa higher knowledge, one which is free from the control of this principle, viz. , aesthetic and philosophical intuition. If, before, it was said thatthe intellect is the creature and servant of the will, we now learn that infavored individuals it gains the power to throw off the yoke of slavery, and not only to raise itself to the blessedness of contemplation free fromall desire, but even to enter on a victorious conflict with the tyrant, to slay the will. The source of this power--is not revealed. R. Haym _(A. Schopenhauer_, 1864, reprinted from the _Preussische Jahrbücher_) was notfar wrong in characterizing Schopenhauer's philosophy as a clever novel, which entertains the reader by its rapid vicissitudes. 

The contemplation which is free from causality and will is the essence ofaesthetic life; the partial and total sublation, the quieting and negationof the will, that of ethical life. It is but seldom, and only in theartistic and philosophical genius, that the intellect succeeds in freeingitself from the supremacy of the will, and, laying aside the question ofthe _why_ and _wherefore_, _where_ and _when_, in sinking itself completelyin the pure _what_ of things. While with the majority of mankind, as withanimals, the intellect always remains a prisoner in the service of the willto live, of self-preservation, of personal interests, in gifted men, in artists and thinkers, it strips off all that is individual, and, indisinterested vision of the Ideas, becomes pure, timeless subject, freedfrom the will. Art removes individuality from the subject as well as fromthe object; its comforting and cheering influence depends on the fact thatit elevates those enjoying it to the stand-point--raised above all painof desire--of a fixed, calm, completely objective contemplation of theunchangeable essence, of the eternal types of things. For aestheticintuition the object is not a thing under relations of space, time, andcause, but only an expression, an exemplification, a representative ofthe Idea. Poetry, which presents--most perfectly in tragedy--the Idea ofhumanity, stands higher than the plastic arts. The highest rank, however, belongs to music, since it does not, like the other arts, represent singleIdeas, but--as an unconscious metaphysic, nay, a second, ideal world abovethe material world--the will itself. In view of this high appreciationof their art, it is not surprising that musicians have contributed aconsiderable contingent to the band of Schopenhauer worshipers. A differentsource of attraction for the wider circle of readers was supplied by thepiquant spice of pessimism. 

If the purposiveness of the phenomena of nature points to the unity of theprimal will, the unspeakable misery of life, which Schopenhauer sets forthwith no less of eloquence, proves the blindness and irrationality of theworld-ground. To live is to suffer; the world contains incomparably morepain than pleasure; it is the worst possible world. In the world ofsub-animal nature aimless striving; in the animal world an insatiableimpulse after enjoyment--while the will, deceiving itself with fanciedhappiness to come, which always remains denied it, and continuallytossed to and fro between necessity and _ennui_, never attains completesatisfaction. The pleasure which it pursues is nothing but the removal ofa dissatisfaction, and vanishes at once when the longing is stilled, tobe replaced by fresh wants, that is, by new pains. In view of theindescribable misery in the world, to favor optimism is evidence not somuch of folly and blindness as of a wanton disposition. The old saying istrue: Non-existence is better than existence. The misery, however, is thejust punishment for the original sin of the individual, which gave itselfits particular existence by an act of intelligible freedom. Redemption fromthe sin and misery of existence is possible only through a second actof transcendental freedom, which, since it consists in the completetransformation of our being, and since it is supernatural in its origin, the Church is right in describing as a new birth and work of grace. 

Morality presupposes pessimistic insight into the badness of the world andthe fruitlessness of all desire, and pantheistic discernment of the untruthof individual existence and the identity in essence of all individualsfrom a metaphysical standpoint. Man is able to free himself from egoisticself-affirmation only when he perceives the two truths, that all strivingis vain and the longed-for pleasure unattainable, and that all individualsare at bottom one, viz. Manifestations of the same primal will. This istemporarily effected in sympathy, which, as the only counterpoise tonatural selfishness, is the true moral motive and the source of all loveand justice. The sympathizer sees himself in others and feels theirsuffering as his own. The entire negation of the will, however, inspiringexamples of which have been furnished by the Christian ascetics andOriental penitents, stands higher than the vulgar virtue of sympathy withthe sufferings of others. Here knowledge, turned away from the individualand vain to the whole and genuine, ceases to be a motive for the will andbecomes a means of stilling it; the intellect is transformed from a motiveinto a quietive, and brings him who gives himself up to the All safelyout from the storm of the passions into the peace of deliverance fromexistence. Absence of will, resignation, is holiness and blessedness inone. For him who has slain the will in himself the motley deceptive dreamof phenomena has vanished, he lives in the ether of true reality, which forour knowledge is an empty nothingness ("Nirvana"), yet (as the ultimate, incomprehensible _per se_, which remains after the annulling of the will)only a relative nothingness--relative to the phenomenon. 

Schopenhauer disposes of the sense of responsibility and the reproofs ofconscience, which are inconvenient facts for his determinism, by makingthem both refer, not to single deeds and the empirical character, but tothe indivisible act of the intelligible character. Conscience does notblame me because I have acted as I must act with my character and themotives given, but for being what in these actions I reveal myself to be. _Operari sequitur esse_. My action follows from my being, my being was myown free choice, and a new act of freedom is alone capable of transformingit. 

If Schopenhauer is fond of referring to the agreement of his views with theoldest and most perfect religions, the idea lies in the background thatreligion, --which springs from the same metaphysical needs as philosophy, and, for the great multitude, who lack the leisure and the capacity forphilosophical thought, takes the place of the former, --as the metaphysicsof the people, clothes the same fundamental truths which the philosopheroffers in conceptual form and supports by rational grounds in the garb ofmyth and allegory, and places them under the protection of an externalauthority. When this character of religion is overlooked, and that whichis intended to be symbolical is taken for literal truth (it is notthe supernaturalists alone who start with this unjust demand, but therationalists also, with their minimizing interpretations), it becomes theworst enemy of true philosophy. In Christianity the doctrines of originalsin and of redemption are especially congenial to our philosopher, as wellas mysticism and asceticism. He declares Mohammedanism the worst religionon account of its optimism and abstract theism, and Buddhism the best, because it is idealistic, pessimistic, and--atheistic. 

It was not until after the appearance of the second edition of hischief work that Schopenhauer experienced in increasing measure thesatisfaction--which his impatient ambition had expected much earlier--ofseeing his philosophy seriously considered. A zealous apostle arose forhim in Julius Frauenstädt (died 1878; _Letters on the Philosophy ofSchopenhauer_, 1854; _New Letters on the Philosophy of Schopenhauer_, 1876), who, originally an Hegelian, endeavored to remove pessimism from themaster's system. Like Eduard von Hartmann, who will be discussed below, Julius Bahnsen (died 1882; _The Contradiction in the Knowledge and Beingof the World, the Principle and Particular Verification of Real-Dialectic_, 1880-81; also, interesting characterological studies) seeks to combineelements from Schopenhauer and Hegel, while K. Peters (_Will-world andWorld-will_, 1883) shows in another direction points of contact with thefirst named thinker. Of the younger members of the school we may name P. Deussen in Kiel (_The Elements of Metaphysics_, 2d ed. , 1890), and PhilippMainländer (_Philosophy of Redemption_, 2d ed. , 1879). As we have mentionedabove, Schopenhauer's doctrines have exercised an attractive force inartistic circles also. Richard Wagner (1813-83; _Collected Writings_, 9vols. , 1871-73, vol. X. 1883; 2d ed. , 1887-88), whose earlier aestheticwritings (_The Art-work of the Future_, 1850; _Opera and Drama_, 1851) hadshown the influence of Feuerbach, in his later works (_Beethoven_, 1870;_Religion and Art_, in the third volume of the _Bayreuther Blätter_, 1880)became an adherent of Schopenhauer, after, in the _Ring of the Nibelung_, he had given poetical expression to a view of the world nearly allied toSchopenhauer's, though this was previous to his acquaintance with the worksof the latter. [1] One of the most thoughtful disciples of the Frankfortphilosopher and the Bayreuth dramatist is Fried rich Nietzsche (born 1844). His _Unseasonable Reflections_, 1873-76, [2] is a summons to return from theerrors of modern culture, which, corrupted by the seekers for gain, by thestate, by the polite writers and savants, especially by the professorsof philosophy, has made men cowardly and false instead of simple andhonorable, mere self-satisfied "philistines of culture. " In his writingssince 1878[3] Nietzsche has exchanged the rôle of a German Rousseau forthat of a follower of Voltaire, to arrive finally at the ideal of the manabove men. [4]

[Footnote 1: Cf. On Wagner, Fr. V. Hausegger, _Wagner und Schopenhauer_, 1878. [English translation of Wagner's _Prose Works_ by Ellis, vol. I. , 1892. --TR. ]]

[Footnote 2: "D. Strauss, the Confessor and the Author"; "On the Advantageand Disadvantage of History for Life"; "Schopenhauer as an Educator"; "R. Wagner in Bayreuth. "]

[Footnote 3: _Human, All-too-human_, new ed. , 1886; _The Dawn, Thoughts onHuman Prejudices_, 1881; _The Merry Science_, 1882; _So spake Zarathustra_, 1883-84; _Beyond Good and Evil_, 1886; _On the Genealogy of Morals_, 1887, 2d ed. , 1887; _The Wagner Affair_, 1888, 2d ed. , 1892; _Götzendämmerung, orHow to Philosophize with the Hammer_, 1889. ]

[Footnote 4: Cf. H. Kaatz, _Die Weltanschauung Fr. Nietzsches, I. Kulturund Moral_, 1892. ]

CHAPTER XV. 

PHILOSOPHY OUT OF GERMANY. 

%1. Italy. %

The Cartesian philosophy, which had been widely accepted in Italy, and hadstill been advocated, in the sense of Malebranche, by Sigismond Gerdil(1718-1802), was opposed as an unhistorical view of the world byGiambattista Vico, [1] the bold and profound creator of the philosophy ofhistory (1668-1744; from 1697 professor of rhetoric in the Universityof Naples). Vico's leading ideas are as follows: Man makes himself thecriterion of the universe, judges that which is unknown and remote by theknown and present. The free will of the individual rests on the judgments, manners, and habits of the people, which have arisen without reflectionfrom a universal human instinct. Uniform ideas among nations unacquaintedwith one another are motived in a common truth. History is the developmentof human nature; in it neither chance nor fate rules, but the legislativepower of providence, in virtue of which men through their own freedomprogressively realize the idea of human nature. The universal course ofcivilization is that culture transfers its abode from the forests and hutsinto villages, cities, and, finally, into academies; the nature of thenations is at first rude, then stern, gradually it becomes mild, nay, effeminate, and finally wanton; at first men feel only that which isnecessary, later they regard the useful, the convenient, the agreeableand attractive, until the luxury sprung from the sense for the beautifuldegenerates into a foolish misuse of things. Vico divides antiquity intothree periods: the divine (theocracy), the heroic (aristocracy), and thehuman (democracy and monarchy). The same course of things repeats itself inthe nations of later times: to the patriarchal dominion of the fanciful, myth-making Orient correspond the spiritual states of the migrations; tothe old Greek aristocracy, the chivalry and robbery of the period of theCrusades; to the republicanism and the monarchy of later antiquity, themodern period, which gives even the citizens and peasants a share in theuniversal equality. If European culture had not been transplanted toAmerica, the same three-act drama of human development would there beplaying. Vico carries this threefold division into his consideration ofmanners, laws, languages, character, etc. 

[Footnote 1: Vico: _Principles of a New Science of the Common Nature ofNations_, 1725; _Works_, in six volumes, edited by G. Ferrari, 1835-37, new ed. . 1853 _seq_. On Vico cf. K. Werner, 1877 and 1879. [Also Flint's_Vico_, Blackwood's Philosophical Classics, 1884. --TR. ]]

If Vico anticipates the Hegelian view of history, Antonio Genovesi(1712-69), who also taught at the University of Naples, and while theformer was still living, shows himself animated by a presentiment of theKantian criticism. [1] Appreciating Leibnitz and Locke, and appropriatingthe idea of the monads from the one and the unknowableness of substancefrom the other, he reaches the conviction--according to statements in hisletters--that sense-bodies are nothing but the appearances of intelligibleunities; that each being for us is an activity, whose substratum andground remains unknown to us; that self-consciousness and the knowledgeof external impressions yield phenomena alone, through the elaboration ofwhich we produce the intellectual worlds of the sciences. For the rest, Genovesi thus advises his friends: Study the world, devote yourselves tolanguages and to mathematics, think more about men than about the thingsabove us, and leave metaphysical vagaries to the monks! His countrymenhonor in him the man who first included ethics and politics inphilosophical instruction, and who used the Italian language both from thedesk and in his writings, holding that a nation whose scientific works arenot composed in its own tongue is barbarian. 

[Footnote 1: In the following account we have made use of a translation ofthe concluding section of Francesco Florentine's _Handbook of the Historyof Philosophy_, 1879-81, which was most kindly placed at our disposal byDr. J. Mainzer. Cf. _La Filosofia Contemporanea in Italia_, 1876, by thesame author; further, Bonatelli, _Die Philosophic in Italien seit_, 1815;_Zeitschrift für Philosophic und philosophische Kritik_, vol. Liv. 1869, p. 134 _seq. _; and especially, K. Werner, _Die Italienische Philosophic desXIX. Jahrhunderts_, 5 vols. , 1884-86. [The English reader may be referred tothe appendix on Italian philosophy in vol. Ii. Of the English translationof Ueberweg, by Vincenzo Botta; and to Barzellotti's "Philosophy in Italy, "_Mind_, vol. In. 1878. --TR. ]]

The sensationalism of Condillac, starting from Parma, gained influence overMelchiore Gioja (1767-1828; _Statistical Logic_, 1803; _Ideology_, 1822)and Giandomenico Romagnosi (1761-1835; _What is the Sound Mind?_ 1827), butnot without experiencing essential modification from both. The importanceof these men, moreover, lies more in the sphere of social philosophy thanin the sphere of noëtics. 

Of the three greatest Italian philosophers of this century, Galluppi, Rosmini, and Gioberti, the first named is more in sympathy with the Kantianposition than he himself will confess. Pasquale Galluppi[1] (1770-1846;from 1831 professor at Naples) adheres to the principle of experience, butdoes not conceive experience as that which is sensuously given, but asthe elaboration of this through the synthetic relations _(rapporti)_ ofidentity and difference, which proceed from the activity of the mind. Vincenzo de Grazia (_Essay on the Reality of Human Knowledge_, 1839-42), who holds all relations to be objective, and Ottavio Colecchi (died 1847;_Philosophical Investigations_, 1843), who holds them all subjective, oppose the view of Galluppi that some are objective and others subjective. According to De Grazia judgment is observation, not connection; it findsout the relations contained in the data of sensation; it discovers, butdoes not produce them. Colecchi reduces the Kantian categories to two, substance and cause. Testa, Borelli (1824), and, among the younger men, Cantoni, are Kantians; Labriola is an Herbartian. 

[Footnote 1: Galluppi: _Philosophical Essay on the Critique of Knowledge_, 1819 _seq. ; Lectures on Logic and Metaphysics_, 1832 _seq. ; Philosophyof the Will_, 1832 _seq. ; On the System of Fichte, or Considerations onTranscendental Idealism and Absolute Rationalism_, 1841. By the _Letterson the History of Philosophy from Descartes to Kant_, 1827, in the latereditions to Cousin, he became the founder of this discipline in his nativeland. ]

Antonio Rosmini-Serbati[1] (born 1797 at Rovereto, died 1855 at Stresa)regards knowledge as the common product of sensibility and understanding, the former furnishing the matter, the latter the form. The form is one: theIdea of being which precedes all judgment, which does not come from myself, which is innate, and apprehensible by immediate inner perception _(essereideale, ente universale)_. The pure concepts (substance, cause, unity, necessity) arise when the reflecting reason analyzes this general Ideaof being; the mixed Ideas (space, time, motion; body, spirit), when theunderstanding applies it to sensuous experience. The universal Idea ofbeing and the particular existences are in their being identical, but intheir mode of existence different. In his posthumous _Theosophy_, 1859 _seq_. , Rosmini no longer makes the universal being receive itsdeterminations from without, but produce them from its own inner natureby means of an _a priori_ development. Vincenzo Gioberti[1] (born 1801 inTurin, died 1852 at Paris) has been compared as a patriot with Fichte, andin his cast of thought with Spinoza. In place of Rosmini's "psychologism, "which was advanced by Descartes and which leads to skepticism, he seeks tosubstitute "ontologism, " which is alone held capable of reconciling scienceand the Catholic religion. By immediate intuition (the content of whichGioberti comprehends in the formula "Being creates the existences") wecognize the absolute as the creative ground of two series, the series ofthought and the series of reality. The endeavors of Rosmini and Gioberti tobring the reason into harmony with the faith of the Church were fiercelyattacked by Giussepe Ferrari (1811-76) and Ausonio Franchi (1853), whileFrancesco Bonatelli _(Thought and Cognition_, 1864) and Terenzio Mamiani(1800-85; _Confessions of a Metaphysician_, 1865), follow a line of thoughtakin to the Platonizing views of the first named thinkers. The review_Filosofia delle Scuole Italiane_, called into life by Mamiani in 1870, hasbeen continued since 1886 under the direction of L. Ferri as the _RivistaItaliana di Filosofia_. 

[Footnote 1: Rosmini: _New Essay on the Origin of Ideas_, 1830 (Englishtranslation, 1883-84); _Principles of Moral Science_, 1831; _Philosophyof Right_, 1841. ] [Footnote B: Gioberti: _Introduction to the Study ofPhilosophy_, 1840; _Philosophical Errors of A. Rosmini_, 1842; _On theBeautiful_, 1841; _On the Good_, 1842; _Protology_ edited by Massari, 1857. On both cf. R. Seydel, _Zeitschrift für Philosophie_, 1859. ]

The Thomistic doctrine has many adherents in Italy, among whom the JesuitM. Liberatore (1865) may be mentioned. The Hegelian philosophy has alsofound favor there (especially in Naples), as well as positivism. The formeris favored by Vera, Mariano, Ragnisco, and Spaventa (died 1885); the_Rivista di Filosofia Scientifica_, 1881 _seq_. , founded by Morselli, supports the latter, and E. Caporali's _La Nuova Scienza_, 1884, moves ina similar direction. Pietro Siciliani _(On the Revival of the PositivePhilosophy in Italy_, 1871) makes the third, the critical, period ofphilosophy by which scholasticism is overthrown and the reason madeauthoritative, commence with Vico, and bases his doctrine on Vico'sformula: The conversion (transposition) of the _verum_ and the _factum_, and _vice versa_. Subsequently he inclined to positivism, which he hadpreviously opposed, and among the representatives of which we may mention, further, R. Ardigò of Pavia _(Psychology as Positive Science_, 1870; _TheEthics of Positivism_, 1885; _Philosophical Works_, 1883 _seq_. ), andAndrea Angiulli of Naples (died 1890; _Philosophy and the Schools_, 1889), who explain matter and spirit as two phenomena of the same essence;further, Giuseppe Sergi, Giovanni Cesca, and the psychiatrist, C. Lombroso, the head of the positivistic school of penal law. 

%2. France. %

Among the French philosophers of this century[1] none can compare infar-reaching influence, both at home and abroad, with Auguste Comte, [2] thecreator of positivism (born at Montpellier in 1798, died at Paris in 1857), whose chief work, the _Course of Positive Philosophy_, 6 vols. , appeared in1830 42. [English version, "freely translated and condensed, " by HarrietMartineau, 1853. ]

[Footnote 1: Accounts of French philosophy in the nineteenth century havebeen given by Taine (1857, 3d ed. , 1867); Janet _(La Philosophie FrançaiseContemporaine_, 2d ed. , 1879); A. Franck; Ferraz (3 vols. , 1880-89); FelixRavaisson (2d ed. , 1884); the Swede, J. Borelius _(Glances at the PresentPosition of Philosophy in Germany and France_, German translation by Jonas, 1887); [and Ribot, _Mind_, vol. Ii. , 1877]. ]

[Footnote 2: On Comte cf. B. Pünjer, _Jahrbücher für protestantischeTheologie_, 1878; R. Eucken, _Zur Würdigung Comtes und des Positivismus_, in the _Aufsätze zum Zellerjubiläum_, 1887; Maxim. Brütt, _DerPositivismus_, Programme of the _Realgymnasium des Johanneums_, Hamburg, 1889; [also, besides Mill, p. 560, John Morley, _Encyclopedia Britannica_, vol. Vi. Pp. 229-238, and E. Caird, _The Social Philosophy and Religion ofComte_, 1885. --Tr. ]]

The positive philosophy seeks to put an end to the hoary error thatanything more is open to our knowledge than given facts--phenomena andtheir relations. We do not know the essence of phenomena, and justas little their first causes and ultimate ends; we know--by means ofobservation, experiment, and comparison--only the constant relationsbetween phenomena, the relations of succession and of similarity amongfacts, the uniformities of which we call their laws. All knowledge is, therefore, relative; there is no absolute knowledge, for the inmost essenceof facts, and likewise their origin, the way in which they are produced, is for us impenetrable. We know only, and this by experience, that thephenomenon A is invariably connected with the phenomenon B, that thesecond always follows on the first, and call the constant antecedent of aphenomenon its cause. We know such causes only as are themselves phenomena. The fact that our knowledge is limited to the succession and coexistence ofphenomena is not to be lamented as a defect: the only knowledge which isattainable by us is at the same time the only useful knowledge, that whichlends us practical power over phenomena. When we inquire into causes wedesire to hasten or hinder the effect, or to change it as we wish, or atleast to anticipate it in order to make our preparations accordingly. Suchforesight and control of events can be attained only through a knowledgeof their laws, their order of succession, their phenomenal causes. _Savoirpour prévoir_. But, although the prevision of facts is the only knowledgewhich we need, men have always sought after another, an "absolute"knowledge, or have even believed that they were in possession of it; theforerunners of the positive philosophy themselves, Bacon and Descartes, have been entangled in this prejudice. A long intellectual development wasrequired to reach the truth, that our knowledge does not extend beyondthe cognition of the succession and coexistence of facts; that the sameprocedure must be extended to abstract speculation which the common minditself makes use of in its single actions. On the other hand, the positivephilosophy, notwithstanding its rejection of metaphysics, is far fromgiving its sanction to empiricism. Every isolated, empirical observationis useless and uncertain; it obtains value and usefulness only when it isdefined and explained by a theory, and combined with other observationsinto a law--this makes the difference between the observations of thescholar and the layman. 

The positive stage of a science, which begins when we learn to explainphenomena by their laws, is preceded by two others: a theological stage, which ascribes phenomena to supposed personal powers, and a metaphysicalstage, which ascribes them to abstract natural forces. These three periodsdenote the childhood, the youth, and the manhood of science. 

The earliest view of the world is the theological view, which derives theevents of the world from the voluntary acts of supernatural intelligentbeings. The crude view of nature sees in each individual thing a beinganimated like man; later man accustoms himself to think of a whole classof objects as governed by one invisible being, by a divinity; finallythe multitude of divinities gives place to a single God, who creates, maintains, and rules the universe, and by extraordinary acts, by miracles, interferes in the course of events. Thus fetichism (in its highest form, astrolatry), polytheism, and monotheism are the stages in the developmentof the theological mode of thought. In the second, the metaphysical, period, the acts of divine volition are replaced by entities, by abstractconcepts, which are regarded as realities, as the true reality back ofphenomena. A force, a power, an occult property or essence is made to dwellin things; the mysterious being which directs events is no longer calledGod, but "Nature, " and invested with certain inclinations, with a horrorof a vacuum, an aversion to breaks, a tendency toward the best, a _vismedicatrix_, etc. Here belong, also, the vegetative soul of Aristotle, thevital force and the plastic impulse of modern investigators. Finally thepositive stage is reached, when all such abstractions, which are even yetconceived as half personal and acting voluntarily, are abandoned, andthe unalterable and universally valid laws of phenomena established byobservation and experiment alone. But to explain the laws of naturethemselves transcends, according to Comte, the fixed limits of humanknowledge. The beginning of the world lies outside the region of theknowable, atheism is no better grounded than the theistic hypothesis, andif Comte asserts that a blindly acting mechanism is less probable than aworld-plan, he is conscious that he is expressing a mere conjecture whichcan never be raised to the rank of a scientific theory. The origin and theend of things are insoluble problems, in answering which no progress hasyet been made in spite of man's long thought about them. Only that whichlies intermediate between the two inscrutable termini of the world is anobject of knowledge. 

It is not only the human mind in general that exhibits this advance fromthe theological, through the metaphysical, to the positive mode of thought, but each separate science goes through the same three periods--only thatthe various disciplines have developed with unequal rapidity. While somehave already culminated in the positive method of treatment, others yetremain caught in the theological period of beginnings, and others still arein the metaphysical transition stage. Up to the present all three phasesof development exist side by side, and even among the objects of the mosthighly developed sciences there are some which we continue to regardtheologically; these are the ones which we do not yet understand how tocalculate, as the changes of the weather or the spread of epidemics. Whichscience first attained the positive state, and in what order have theothers followed? With this criterion Comte constructs his _classificationof the sciences_, in which, however, he takes account only of thosesciences which he calls abstract, that is, those which treat of "events" indistinction from "objects. " The abstract sciences (as biology) investigatethe most general laws of nature, valid for all phenomena, from which theparticular phenomena which experience presents to us cannot be deduced, buton the basis of which an entirely different world were also possible. Theconcrete sciences, on the other hand (_e. G. _, botany and zoölogy), have todo with the actually given combinations of phenomena. The former follow outeach separate one of the general laws through all its possible modes ofoperation, the latter consider only the combination of laws given in anobject. Thus oaks and squirrels are the result of very many laws, inasmuchas organisms are dependent not only on biological, but also on physical, chemical, and mathematical laws. 

Comte enumerates six of these abstract sciences, and arranges them in sucha way that each depends on the truths of the preceding, and adds to theseits own special truths, while the first (the most general and simplest)presupposes no earlier laws whatever, but is presupposed by all thelater ones. According to this principle of increasing particularity andcomplexity the following scale results: (i) Mathematics, in which thescience of number, as being absolutely without presuppositions, precedesgeometry and mechanics; (2) Astronomy; (3) Physics (with five subordinatedivisions, in which the first place belongs to the theory of weight, andthe last to electrology, while the theory of heat, acoustics, and opticsare intermediate); (4) Chemistry; (5) Biology or physiology; (6) Sociologyor the science of society. This sequence, which is determined by theincreasing complexity and increasing dependence of the objects of thesciences, is the order in which they have historically developed--beforethe special laws of the more complicated sciences can be ascertained, thegeneral laws of the more simple ones must be accurately known. It is alsoadvisable to follow this same order of increasing complexity and difficultyin the study of the sciences, for acquaintance with the methods of thosewhich are elementary is the best preparation for the pursuit of the higherones. In arithmetic and geometry we study positivity at its source; in thesociological spirit it finds its completion. 

Mathematics entered on its positive stage at quite an early period, chemistry and biology only in recent times, while, in the highest and mostcomplicated science, the metaphysical (negative, liberal, democratic, revolutionary) mode of thought is still battling with the feudalism of thetheological mode. To make sociology positive is the mission of the secondhalf of Comte's work, and to this goal his philosophical activity had beendirected from the beginning. Comte rates the efforts of political economyvery low, with the exception of the work of Adam Smith, and will not letthem pass as a preparation for scientific sociology, holding that they arebased on false abstractions. Psychology, which is absent from the aboveenumeration, is to form a branch of biology, and exclusively to use theobjective method, especially phrenology (to the three faculties of thesoul, "heart, character, and intellect, " correspond three regions of thebrain). Self-observation, so Comte, making an impossibility out of adifficulty, teaches, can at most inform us concerning our feelings andpassions, and not at all concerning our own thinking, since reflectionbrings to a stop the process to which it attends, and thus destroys itsobject. The sole source of knowledge is external sense-perception. In his_Positive Polity_ Comte subsequently added a seventh fundamental science, ethics or anthropology. 

Sociology, [1] the elevation of which to the rank of a positive science isthe principal aim of our philosopher, uses the same method as the naturalsciences, namely, the interrogation and interpretation of experience bymeans of induction and deduction, only that here the usual relation ofthese two instruments of knowledge is reversed. Between inorganic andorganic philosophy, both of which proceed from the known to the unknown, there is this difference, that in the former the advance is from theelements, as that which alone is directly accessible, to the whole which iscomposed of them, while in the latter the opposite is the case, since herethe whole is better known than the individual parts of which it consists. Hence, in inorganic science the laws of the composite phenomena areobtained by deduction (from the laws of the simple facts inductivelydiscovered) and confirmed by observation; in sociology, on the otherhand, the laws are found through (historical) experience, and deductivelyverified (from the nature of man as established by biology) only in thesequel. Since the phenomena of society are determined not merely by thegeneral laws of human nature, but, above all, by the growing influence ofthe past, historical studies must form the basis of sociological inquiry. 

[Footnote 1: Cf. Krohn: _Beiträge zur Kenntniss und Würdigung derSoziologie, Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik_, New Series, vols. I. And iii. , 1880 and 1881. ]

Of the two parts of sociology, the Statics, which investigates theequilibrium (the conditions of the existence, the permanence, and thecoexistence of social states), and Dynamics, which investigates themovement (the laws of the progress) of social phenomena, the first was inessence established by Aristotle. The fundamental concept of the Staticsis the _consensus_, the harmony, solidarity, or mutual dependence of themembers of the social organism. All its parts, science, art, religion, politics, industry, must be considered together; they stand in suchintimate harmony and correlation that, for every important change ofcondition in one of these parts, we may be certain of findingcorresponding changes in all the others, as its causes and effects. Besides the selfish propensities, there dwell in man an equally original, but intrinsically weaker, impulse toward association, which instinctivelyleads him to seek the society of his fellows without reflection on theadvantages to be expected therefrom, and a moderate degree ofbenevolence. As altruism conflicts with egoism, so the reason, togetherwith the impulse to get ahead, which can only be satisfied throughlabor, is in continual conflict with the inborn disinclination to regulatedactivity (especially to mental effort). The character of society depends onthe strength of the nobler incentives, that is, the social inclinations andintellectual vivacity in opposition to the egoistic impulses and naturalinertness. The former nourish the progressive, the latter the conservativespirit. Women are as much superior to men in the stronger development oftheir sympathy and sociability as they are inferior in insight and reason. Society is a group of families, not of individuals, and domestic life isthe foundation, preparation, and pattern for social life, Comte praises thefamily, the connecting link between the individual and the species, as aschool of unselfishness, and approves the strictness of the Catholic Churchin regard to the indissolubility of the marriage relation. He remarks theevil consequences of the constantly increasing division of labor, whichmakes man egoistic and narrow-minded, since it hides rather than revealsthe social significance of the employment of the individual and itsconnection with the welfare of the community, and seeks for a means ofchecking them. Besides the universal education of youth, he demandsthe establishment of a spiritual power to bring the general interestcontinually to the minds of the members of all classes and avocations, todirect education, and to enjoy the same authority in moral and intellectualmatters as is conceded to the astronomer in the affairs of his department. The function of this power would be to occupy the position heretofore heldby the clergy. Comte conceives it as composed of positive philosophers, entirely independent of the secular authorities, but in return cut off frompolitical influence and from wealth. Secular authority, on the other hand, he wishes put into the hands of an aristocracy of capitalists, with thebankers at the head of these governing leaders of industry. 

The Dynamics, the science of the temporal succession of social phenomena, makes use of the principle of development. The progress of society, which is to be regarded as a great individual, consists in the growingpredominance of the higher, human activities over the lower and animal. Thehumanity in us, it is true, will never attain complete ascendency over theanimality, but we can approach nearer and nearer to the ideal, and it isour duty to aid in this march of civilization. Although the law of progressholds good for all sides of mental life, for art, politics, and morals, as well as for science, nevertheless the most important factor in theevolution of the human race is the development of the intellect as theguiding power in us (though not in itself the strongest). Awakened first bythe lower wants, the intellect assumes in increasing measure the guidanceof human operations, and gives a determinate direction to the feelings. Thepassions divide men, and, without the guidance of the speculative faculty, would mutually cripple one another; that which alone unites them intoa collection force is a common belief, an idea. Ideas are related tofeeling--to quote a comparison from John Stuart Mill's valuable treatise_Auguste Comte and Positivism_, 3d ed. , 1882, a work of which we have madeconsiderable use--as the steersman who directs the ship is to the steamwhich drives it forward. Thus the history of humanity has been determinedby the history of man's intellectual convictions, and this in turn by thethree familiar stages in the theory of the universe. With the developmentfrom the theological to the positive mode of thought is most intimatelyconnected, further, the transition from the military to the industrialmode of life. As the religious spirit prepares the way for the scientificspirit, so without the dominion of the military spirit industry could nothave been developed. It was only in the school of war that the earliestsocieties could learn order; slavery was beneficial in that through itlabor was imposed upon the greater part of mankind in spite of theiraversion to it. The political preponderance of the legists corresponds tothe intermediate, metaphysical stage. The sociological law (discovered byComte in the year 1822) harmonizes also with the customary division whichseparates the ancient from the modern world by the Middle Ages. 

In his philosophy of history Comte gives the further application of theseprinciples. Here he has won commendation even from his opponents for asense of justice which merits respect and for his comprehensive view. Theoutlooks and proposals for the future here interspersed were in laterwritings[1] worked out into a comprehensive theory of the regenerationof society; the extravagant character of which has given occasion to hiscritics to make a complete division between the second, "subjective orsentimental, " period of his thinking, in which the philosopher is said tobe transformed into the high priest of a new religion, and the first, thepositivistic period, although the major part of the qualities pointed outas characteristic of the former are only intensifications of some which maybe shown to have been present in the latter. Beneath the surface of themost sober inquiry mystical and dictatorial tendencies pulsate in Comtefrom the beginning, and science was for him simply a means to humanhappiness. But now he no longer demands the independent pursuit of sciencein order to the attainment of this end, but only the believing acceptanceof its results. The intellect is to be placed under the dominion of theheart, and only such use made of it as promises a direct advantage forhumanity; the determination of what problems are most important at a giventime belongs to the priesthood. The systematic unity or harmony of themind demands this dominion of the feelings over thought. The religion ofpositivism, which has "love for its principle, order for its basis, andprogress for its end, " is a religion without God, and without any otherimmortality than a continuance of existence in the grateful memory ofposterity. The dogmas of the positivist religion are scientific principles. Its public _cultus_ with nine sacraments and a large number of annualfestivals, is paid to the _Grand Être_ "Humanity" (which is not omnipotent, but, on account of its composite character, most dependent, yet infinitelysuperior to any of its parts); and, besides this, space, the earth, theuniverse, and great men of the past are objects of reverence. Privatedevotion consists in the adoration of living or dead women as our guardianangels. The _ethics_ of the future declares the good of others to be thesole moral motive to action (altruism). Comte's last work, the _Philosophyof Mathematics_, 1856, indulges in a most remarkable numerical mysticism. The historical influence exercised by Comte through his later writings isextremely small in comparison with that of his chief work. BesidesBlignières and Robinet, E. Littré, the well-known author of the_Dictionnaire de la Langue Française_ (1863 _seq_. ) who was the mosteminent of Comte's disciples and the editor of his _Collected Works_ (1867_seq_. ), has written on the life and work of the master. Comte's schooldivided into two groups--the apostates, with Littré (1801-81) at theirhead, who reject the subjective phase and hold fast to the earlierdoctrine, and the faithful, who until 1877, when a new division betweenstrict and liberal Comteans took place within this group, gathered about P. Laffitte (born 1823). [2] The leader of the English positivists is FredericHarrison (born 1831). Positivistic societies exist also in Sweden, Brazil, Chili, and elsewhere. Positivism has been developed in an independentspirit by J. S. Mill and Herbert Spencer. 

[Footnote 1: _Positivist Catechism_, 1852 [English translation by Congreve, 1858, 2d ed. , 1883]; _System of Positive Polity_, 4 vols. , 1851-54 [Englishtranslation, 1875-77]. Cf. Pünjer, _A. Comtes "Religion der Menschheit_" inthe _Jahrbücher für protestantische Theologie_, 1882. ]

[Footnote 2: On this division cf. E. Caro, _M. Littré et le Positivisme_, 1883, and Herm. Gruber (S. J. ), _Der Positivismus vom Tode Comtes bis aufunsere Tage_, 1891. ]

The following brief remarks on the course of French philosophy may also beadded. Against the sensationalism of Condillac as continued by Cabanis, Destutt de Tracy (see above, pp. 259-260), and various physiologists, atwofold reaction asserted itself. One manifestation of this proceeded fromthe _theological school_, represented by the "traditionalists" Victor deBonald (1818), Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821; _St. Petersburg Soirées_, 1821), and F. De Lamennais (1782-1854), who, however, after his break withthe Church (_Words of a Believer_, 1834) developed in his _Sketch of aPhilosophy_, 1841 _seq_. , an ontological system after Italian and Germanmodels. The other came from the _spiritualistic school_, at whose headstood Maine de Biran[1] (1766-1824; _On the Foundations of Psychology_; his_Works_ have been edited by Cousin, 1841, Naville, 1859, and Bertrand) andRoyer Collard (1763-1845). Their pupil Victor Cousin (1792-1867; _Works_, 1846-50), who admired Hegel also, became the head of the _eclectic school_. Cousin will neither deny metaphysics with the Scotch, nor construemetaphysics _a priori_ with the Germans, but with Descartes bases it onpsychology. For a time an idealist of the Hegelian type (infinite andfinite, God and the world, are mutually inseparable; the Ideas revealthemselves in history, in the nations, in great men), he gradually sankback to the position of common sense. His adherents, among whom ThéodoreJouffroy (died 1842) was the most eminent, have done special service in thehistory of philosophy. From Cousin's school, which was opposed by P. Lerouxand J. Reynaud, have come Ravaisson, Saisset, Jules Simon, P. Janet (born1823), [2] and E. Caro (born 1826; _The Philosophy of Goethe_, 1866). Kanthas influenced Charles Renouvier (born 1817; _Essays in General Criticism_, 4 vols. , 1854-64) and E. Vacherot (born 1809; _Metaphysics and Science_, 1858, 2d ed. , 1863; _Science and Consciousness_, 1872). 

[Footnote 1: Cf. E. König in _Philosophische Monatshefte_, vol. Xxv. 1889, p. 160 _seq_. ]

[Footnote 2: Janet: _History of Political Science in its Relations toMorals_, 1858, 3d ed. , 1887; _German Materialism of the Present Day_, 1864, English translation by Masson, 1866: _The Family_, 1855; _The Philosophy ofHappiness_, 1862; _The Brain and Thought_, 1867; _Elements of Morals_, 1869 [English translation by Corson, 1884]; _The Theory of Morals_, 1874[English translation by Mary Chapman, 1883]; _Final Causes_, 1876 [Englishtranslation by Affleck, with a preface by Flint, new ed. , 1883]. ]

Among other thinkers of reputation we may mention the socialist Henri deSaint-Simon (1760-1825; _Selected Works_, 1859), the physiologist ClaudeBernard (1813-78), the positivist H. Taine (1828-93; _The Philosophy ofArt_, English translation by Durand, 2d ed. , 1873; _On Intelligence_, 1872, English translation by Haye, 1871), E. Renan (1823-92; _The Life ofJesus_, 1863, English translation by Wilbour, _Philosophical Dialogues andFragments_--English, 1883), the writer on aesthetics and ethics J. M. Guyau(_The Problems of Contemporary Aesthetics_, 1884; _Sketch of an Ethicwithout Obligation or Sanction_, 1885; _The Irreligion of the Future_, 1887), Alfred Fouillée _(The Future of Metaphysics founded on Experience_, 1889; _Morals, Art, and Religion according to Guyau_, 1889; _TheEvolutionism of the Idea-Forces_, 1890), and the psychologist Th. Ribot, [1]editor of the _Revue Philosophique_ (from 1876). 

[Footnote 1: Ribot: _Heredity_, 2d ed. , 1882 [English translation, 1875];_The Diseases of Memory_, 1881 [English translation, 1882]; _The Diseasesof the Will_, 1883 [English. 1884]; _The Diseases of Personality_, 1885[English, 1887]; _The Psychology of Attention_, 1889 [English, 1890];_German Psychology of To-day_, 2d ed. , 1885 [English translation byBaldwin, 1886]. ]

%3. Great Britain and America. %

Prominent among the British philosophers of the nineteenth century[1]are Hamilton, Bentham, J. S. Mill, and Spencer. Hamilton is the leadingrepresentative of the Scottish School; Bentham is known as the advocate ofutilitarianism; Mill, an exponent of the traditional empiricism of Englishthinking, develops the theory of induction and the principle of utility;Spencer combines an agnostic doctrine of the absolute and thoroughgoingevolution in the phenomenal world into a comprehensive philosophicalsystem. [2] In recent years there has been a reaction against empiricaldoctrines on the basis of neo-Kantian and neo-Hegelian principles. Foremostamong the leaders of this movement we may mention T. H. Green. 

[Footnote 1: Cf. Harald Höffding, _Einleitung in die englische Philosophieunserer Zeit_ (Danish, 1874), German (with alterations and additions by theauthor) by H. Kurella, 1889; David Masson, _Recent British Philosophy_, 1865, 3d ed. , 1877; Ribot, _La Psychologie Anglaise Contemporaine_, 1870, 2d ed. , 1875 [English, 1874] Guyau, _La Morale Anglaise Contemporaine_, 1879 [Morris, _British Thought and Thinkers_, 1880; Porter, "On English andAmerican Philosophy, " Ueberweg's _History_, English translation, vol. Ii. Pp. 348-460; O. Pfleiderer, _Development of Theology_, 1890, bookiv. --TR. ]]

[Footnote 2: Cf. On Mill and Spencer, Bernh. Pünjer, _Jahrbücher fürprotestantische Theologie_, 1878. ]

The Scottish philosophy has been continued in the nineteenth century byJames Mackintosh (_Dissertation on the Progress of Ethical Philosophy_, 1830, 3d ed. , 1863), and William Whewell (_History of the InductiveSciences_, 3d ed. , 1857; _Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences_, 1840, 3ded. , 1858-60). Its most important representative is Sir William Hamilton[1]of Edinburgh (1788-1856), who, like Whewell, is influenced by Kant. Hamilton bases philosophy on the facts of consciousness, but, in antithesisto the associational psychology, emphasizes the mental activity ofdiscrimination and judgment. Our knowledge is relative, and relations itsonly object. Consciousness can never transcend itself, it is bound tothe antithesis of subject and object, and conceives the existent underrelations of space and time. Hence the unconditioned is inaccessible toknowledge and attainable by faith alone. Among Hamilton's followers belongMansel (_Metaphysics_, 3d. Ed. , 1875; _Limits of Religions Thought_, 5thed. , 1870) and Veitch. The Scottish doctrine was vigorously opposed by J. F. Ferrier (1808-64; _Institutes of Metaphysics_, 2d ed. , 1856), who himselfdeveloped an idealistic standpoint. 

[Footnote 1: Hamilton: _Discussions on Philosophy and Literature_, 1852, 3ded. , 1866; _Lectures on Metaphysics_, 2d ed. , 1860, and on _Logic_, 2d ed. , 1866, edited by his pupils, Mansel and Veitch; _Reid's Works_, with notesand dissertations, 1846, 7th ed. , 1872. On Hamilton cf. Veitch, 1882, 1883[Monck, 1881]. ]

In the United States the Scottish philosophy has exercised a wideinfluence. In recent times it has been strenuously advocated, chiefly inthe spirit of Reid, by James McCosh (a native of Scotland, but since 1868in America; _The Intuitions of the Mind_, 3d ed. , 1872; _The Laws ofDiscursive Thought_, new ed. , 1891; _First and Fundamental Truths_, 1889);while in Noah Porter (died 1892; _The Human Intellect_, new ed. , 1876; _TheElements of Moral Science_, 1885) it appears modified by elements fromGerman thinking. 

Jeremy Bentham[1] (1748-1832) is noteworthy for his attempt to reviveEpicureanism in modern form. Virtue is the surest means to pleasure, andpleasure the only self-evident good. Every man strives after happiness, butnot every one in the right way. The honest man calculates correctly, thecriminal falsely; hence a careful calculation of the value of the variouspleasures, and a prudent use of the means to happiness, is the firstcondition of virtue; in this the easily attainable minor joys, whosesummation amounts to a considerable quantum, must not be neglected. Thevalue of a pleasure is measured by its intensity, duration, certainty, propinquity, fecundity in the production of further pleasure, purity orfreedom from admixture of consequent pain, and extent to the greatestpossible number of persons. Every virtuous action results in a balance ofpleasure. Inflict no evil on thyself or others from which a balance of goodwill not result. The end of morality is the "greatest happiness of thegreatest number, " in the production of which each has first to care forhis own welfare: whoever injures himself more than he serves others actsimmorally, for he diminishes the sum of happiness in the world; theinterest of the individual coincides with the interest of society. The twoclasses of virtues are prudence and benevolence. The latter is a natural, though not a disinterested affection: happiness enjoyed with others isgreater than happiness enjoyed alone. Love is a pleasure-giving extensionof the individual; we serve others to be served by them. 

[Footnote 1: Bentham: _Introduction to the Principles of Morals andLegislation_, 1789; new ed. , 1823, reprinted 1876; _Deontology_, 1834, edited by Bowring, who also edited the _Works_, 1838-43. _The Principlesof Civil and Criminal Legislation_, edited in French from Bentham'smanuscripts by his pupil Etienne Dumont (1801, 2d ed. , 1820; English byHildreth, 5th ed. , 1887), was translated into German with notes by F. E. Beneke, 1830. ]

Associationalism has been reasserted by James Mill (1773-1836; _Analysis ofthe Phenomena of the Human Mind_, 1829), whose influence lives on in thework of his greater son. The latter, John Stuart Mill, [1] was born inLondon 1806, and was from 1823 to 1858 a secretary in the India House;after the death of his wife he lived (with the exception of two years ofservice as a Member of Parliament) at Avignon; his death occurred in1873. Mill's _System of Logic_ appeared in 1843, 9th ed. , 1875; his_Utilitarianism_, 1863, new ed. , 1871; _An Examination of Sir WilliamHamilton's Philosophy_, 1865, 5th ed. , 1878; his notes to the new editionof his father's work, _Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind_, 2ded. , 1878, also deserve notice. With the phenomenalism of Hume and the(somewhat corrected) associational psychology of his father as a basis, Mill makes experience the sole source of knowledge, rejecting _a priori_and intuitive elements of every sort. Matter he defines as a "permanentpossibility of sensation"; mind is resolved into "a series of feelings witha background of possibilities of feeling, " even though the author is notunaware of the difficulty involved in the question how a series of feelingscan be aware of itself as a series. Mathematical principles, like allothers, have an experiential origin--the peculiar certitude ascribed tothem by the Kantians is a fiction--and induction is the only fruitfulmethod of scientific inquiry (even in mental science). The syllogism isitself a concealed induction. 

[Footnote 1: Cf. On Mill. Taine, _Le Positivisme Anglais_, 1864 [English, by Haye]; the objections of Jevons _(Contemporary Review_, December, 1877_seq_. , reprinted in _Pure Logic and other Minor Works_, 1890; cf. _Mind_, vol. Xvi. Pp. 106-110) to Mill's doctrine of the inductive character ofgeometry, his treatment of the relation of resemblance, and his expositionof the four methods of experimental inquiry in their relation to the law ofcausation; and the finely conceived essay on utilitarianism, by C. Hebler, _Philosophische Aufsãtze_, 1869, pp. 35-66. [Also Mill's own_Autobiography_, 1873: Bain's _John Stuart Mill, a Criticism_, 1882; andT. H. Green, Lectures on the _Logic, Works_, vol. Ii. --TR. ]]

When I assert the major premise the inference proper is already made, andin the conclusion the comprehensive formula for a number of particulartruths which was given in the premise is merely explicated, interpreted. Because universal judgments are for him merely brief expressions foraggregates of particular truths, Mill is able to say that all knowledge isgeneralization, and at the same time to argue that all inference is fromparticulars to particulars. Inference through a general proposition is notnecessary, yet useful as a collateral security, inasmuch as the syllogisticforms enable us more easily to discover errors committed. The ground ofinduction, the uniformity of nature in reference both to the coexistenceand the succession of phenomena, since it wholly depends on induction, is not unconditionally certain; but it may be accepted as very highlyprobable, until some instance of lawless action (in itself conceivable)shall have been actually proved. Like the law of causation, the principlesof logic are also not _a priori_, but only the highest generalizations fromall previous experience. 

Mill's most brilliant achievement is his theory of experimental inquiry, for which he advances four methods: (1) The Method of Agreement: "If twoor more instances of the phenomenon under investigation have only onecircumstance in common, the circumstance in which alone all the instancesagree is the cause (or effect) of the given phenomenon. " (2) The Method ofDifference: "If an instance in which the phenomenon under investigationoccurs, and an instance in which it does not occur, have every circumstancein common save one, that one occurring only in the former; the circumstancein which alone the two instances differ, is the effect, or the cause, or anindispensable part of the cause, of the phenomenon, " These two methods (themethod of observation, and the method of artificial experiment) may also beemployed in combination, and the Canon of the Joint Method of Agreement andDifference runs: "If two or more instances in which the phenomenon occurshave only one circumstance in common, while two or more instances inwhich it does not occur have nothing in common save the absence of thatcircumstance, the circumstance in which alone the two sets of instancesdiffer is the effect, or the cause, or an indispensable part of thecause, of the phenomenon. " (3) The Method of Residues: "Subduct from anyphenomenon such part as is known by previous inductions to be the effect ofcertain antecedents, and the residue of the phenomenon is the effect of theremaining antecedents. " (4) The Method of Concomitant Variations: "Whateverphenomenon varies in any manner whenever another phenomenon varies in someparticular manner, is either a cause or an effect of that phenomenon, or isconnected with it through some fact of causation. " When the phenomena arecomplex the deductive method must be called in to aid: from the inductivelyascertained laws of the action of single causes this deduces the lawsof their combined action; and, as a final step, the results of suchratiocination are verified by the proof of their agreement with empiricalfacts. To explain a phenomenon means to point out its cause; theexplanation of a law is its reduction to other, more general laws. In allthis, however, we remain within the sphere of phenomena; the essence ofnature always eludes our knowledge. 

In the chapter "Of Liberty and Necessity" (book vi. Chap, ii. ) Millemphasizes the position that the necessity to which human actions aresubject must not be conceived, as is commonly done, as irresistiblecompulsion, for it denotes nothing more than the uniform order of ouractions and the possibility of predicting them. This does not destroythe element in the idea of freedom which is legitimate and practicallyvaluable: we have the power to alter our character; it is formed _by_ usas well as _for_ us; the desire to mould it is one of the most influentialcircumstances in its formation. The principle of morality is the promotionof the happiness of all sentient beings. Mill differs from Bentham, however, from whom he derives the principle of utility, in severalimportant particulars--by his recognition of qualitative as well as ofquantitative differences in pleasures, of the value of the ordinary rulesof morality as intermediate principles, of the social feelings, and of thedisinterested love of virtue. Opponents of the utilitarian theory havenot been slow in availing themselves of the opportunities for attack thusafforded. [1] A third distinguished representative of the same generalmovement is Alexander Bain, the psychologist (born 1818; _The Senses andthe Intellect_, 3d ed. , 1868; _The Emotions and the Will_, 3d ed. , 1875;_Mental and Moral Science_, 1868, 3d ed. , 1872, part ii. , 1872; _Mind andBody_, 3d ed. , 1874). 

[Footnote 1: On the relation of Bentham and Mill cf. Höffding, p. 68:Sidgwick's _Outlines_, chap. Iv. § 16; and John Grote's _Examination of theUtilitarian Philosophy_, 1870, chap. I. ]

The system projected by Herbert Spencer (born 1820), the major part ofwhich has already appeared, falls into five parts: _First Principles_, 1862, 7th ed. , 1889; _Principles of Biology_, 1864-67, 4th ed. , 1888;_Principles of Psychology_, 1855, 5th ed. , 1890; _Principles of Sociology_(vol. I. 1876, 3d ed. , 1885; part iv. _Ceremonial Institutions_, 1879, 3ded. , 1888, part v. _Political Institutions_, 1882, 2d ed. , 1885, part vi. _Ecclesiastical Institutions_, 1885, 2d ed. , 1886, together constitutingvol. Ii. ); _Principles of Ethics_ (part i. _The Data of Ethics_, 1879, 5thed. , 1888; parts ii. And iii. _The Inductions of Ethics_ and _The Ethics ofIndividual Life_, constituting with part i. The first volume, 1892; partiv. _Justice_, 1891). A comprehensive exposition of the system has beengiven, with the authority of the author, by F. H. Collins in his _Epitome ofthe Synthetic Philosophy_, 1889. [1] The treatise on _Education_, 1861, 23ded. , 1890, his sociological writings, and his various essays have alsocontributed essentially to Mr. Spencer's fame, both at home and abroad. The_First Principles_ begin with the "Unknowable. " Since human opinions, nomatter how false they may seem, have sprung from actual experiences, and, when they find wide acceptance and are tenaciously adhered to, must havesomething in them which appeals to the minds of men, we must assume thatevery error contains a kernel of truth, however small it be. No one ofopposing views is to be accepted as wholly true, and none rejected asentirely false. To discover the incontrovertible fact which lies at theirbasis, we must reject the various concrete elements in which they disagree, and find for the remainder the abstract expression which holds truethroughout its divergent manifestations. No antagonism is older, wider, more profound, and more important than that between religion and science. Here too some most general truth, some ultimate fact must lie at the basis. The ultimate religious ideas are self-contradictory and untenable. Noone of the possible hypotheses concerning the nature and origin ofthings--every religion may be defined as an _a priori_ theory of theuniverse, the accompanying ethical code being a later growth--is logicallydefensible: whether the world is conceived atheistically as self-existent, or pantheistically as self-created, or theistically (fetichism, polytheism, or monotheism), as created by an external agency, we are everywhereconfronted by unthinkable conclusions. The idea of a First Cause or ofthe absolute (as Mansel, following Hamilton, has proved in his _Limitsof Religious Thought_) is full of contradictions. But however widely thecreeds diverge, they show entire unanimity, from the grossest superstitionup to the most developed theism, in the belief that the existence of theworld is a mystery which ever presses for interpretation, though it cannever be entirely explained. And in the progress of religion from crudefetichism to the developed theology of our time, the truth, at first butvaguely perceived, that there is an omnipresent Inscrutable which manifestsitself in all phenomena, ever comes more clearly into view. 

[Footnote 1: Cf. Also Fiske's _Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy_, 2 vols. , 1874. Numerous critiques and discussions of Spencer's views have been givenin various journals and reviews; among more extended works reference may bemade to Bowne, _The Philösophy of Herbert Spencer_, 1874; Malcolm Guthrie, _On Mr. Spencer's Formula of Evolution_, 1879, and the same author, _On Mr. Spencer's Unification of Knowledge_, 1882; and T. H. Green, on Spencer andLewes, _Works_, vol. I. --TR. ]

Science meets this ultimate religious truth with the conviction, graspedwith increasing clearness as the development proceeds from Protagoras toKant, that the reality hidden behind all phenomena must always remainunknown, that our knowledge can never be absolute. This principle maybeestablished inductively from the incomprehensibility of the ultimatescientific ideas, as well as deductively from the nature of intelligence, through an analysis of the product and the process of thought. (1) Theideas space, time, matter, motion, and force, as also the first states ofconsciousness, and the thinking substance, the ego as the unity of subjectand object, all represent realities whose nature and origin are entirelyincomprehensible. (2) The subsumption of particular facts under moregeneral facts leads ultimately to a most general, highest fact, whichcannot be reduced to a more general one, and hence cannot be explained orcomprehended. (3) All thought (as has been shown by Hamilton in his essay"On the Philosophy of the Unconditioned, " and by his follower Mansel)is the establishment of relations, every thought involving relation, difference, and (as Spencer adds) likeness. Hence the absolute, the ideaof which excludes every relation, is entirely beyond the reach of anintelligence which is concerned with relations alone, and which alwaysconsists in discrimination, limitation, and assimilation--it is treblyunthinkable. Therefore: Religion and Science agree in the supreme truththat the human understanding is capable of relative knowledge only or of aknowledge of the relative (Relativity). Nevertheless, according to Spencer, it is too much to conclude with the thinkers just mentioned, that theidea of the absolute is a mere expression for inconceivability, and itsexistence problematical. The nature of the absolute is unknowable, butnot the existence of a basis for the relative and phenomenal. Theconsiderations which speak in favor of the relativity of knowledge and itslimitation to phenomena, argue also the existence of a non-relative, whosephenomenon the relative is; the idea of the relative and the phenomenalposits _eo ipso_ the existence of the absolute as its correlative, whichmanifests itself in phenomena. We have at least an indefinite, though nota definite, consciousness of the Unknowable as the Unknown Cause, theUniversal Power, and on this is founded our ineradicable belief inobjective reality. 

All knowledge is limited to the relative, and consists in increasinggeneralization: the apex of this pyramid is formed by philosophy. Commonknowledge is un-unified knowledge; science is partially unified knowledge;philosophy, which combines the highest generalizations of the sciences intoa supreme one, is completely unified knowledge. The data of philosophyare--besides an Unknowable Power--the existence of knowable likenesses anddifferences among its manifestations, and a resulting segregation of themanifestations into those of subject and object. Further, derivative dataare space (relations of coexistence), time (relations of irreversiblesequence), matter (coexistent positions that offer resistance), motion(which involves space, time, and matter), and force, the ultimate ofultimates, on which all others depend, and from our primordial experiencesof which all the other modes of consciousness are derivable. Similarly theultimate primary truth is the _persistence of force_, from which, besidesthe indestructibility of matter and the continuity of (actual or potential)motion, still further truths may be deduced: the persistence of relationsamong forces or the uniformity of law, the transformation and equivalenceof (mental and social as well as of physical) forces, the law of thedirection of motion (along the line of least resistance, or the line ofgreatest traction, or their resultant), and the unceasing rhythm ofmotion. Beyond these analytic truths, however, philosophy demands a law ofuniversal synthesis. This must be the law of _the continuous redistributionof matter and motion_, for each single thing, and the whole universeas well, is involved in a (continuously repeated) double process of_evolution_ and _dissolution_, the former consisting in the integration ofmatter[1] and the dissipation of motion, the latter in the absorption ofmotion and the disintegration of matter. The law of evolution, in itscomplete development, then runs: "Evolution is an integration of matter andconcomitant dissipation of motion; during which the matter passes from anindefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity;and during which the retained motion undergoes a parallel transformation. "This is inductively supported by illustrations from every region of natureand all departments of mental and social life; and, further, showndeducible from the ultimate principle of the persistence of force, throughthe mediation of several corollaries to it, viz. , the instability of thehomogeneous under the varied incidence of surrounding forces, themultiplication of effects by action and reaction, and segregation. Finallythe principle of equilibration indicates the impassable limit at whichevolution passes over into dissolution, until the eternal round is againbegun. If it may be said of Hegel himself, that he vainly endeavored tomaster the concrete fullness of reality with formal concepts, the criticismis applicable to Spencer in still greater measure. The barren schemata ofconcentration, passage into heterogeneity, adaptation, etc. , which aretaken from natural science, and which are insufficient even in their ownfield, prove entirely impotent for the mastery of the complex and peculiarphenomena of spiritual life. 

[Footnote 1: Organic growth is the concentration of elements beforediffused; cf. The union of nomadic families into settled tribes. ]

Armed with these principles, however, Mr. Spencer advances to thediscussion of the several divisions of "Special Philosophy. " Passing overinorganic nature, he finds his task in the interpretation of the phenomenaof life, mind, and society in terms of matter, motion, and force under thegeneral evolution formula. This procedure, however, must not be understoodas in any wise materialistic. Such an interpretation would be amisrepresentation, it is urged, for the strict relativity of the standpointlimits all conclusions to phenomena, and permits no inference concerningthe nature of the "Unknowable. " The _Principles of Biology_ take up thephenomena of life. Life is defined as the "continuous adjustment ofinternal relations to external relations. " No attempt is made to explainits origin, yet (in the words of Mr. Sully) it is clear that the lowestforms of life are regarded as continuous in their essential nature withsub-vital processes. The evolution of living organisms, from the lowest tothe highest, with the development of all their parts and functions, resultsfrom the co-operation of various factors, external and internal, whoseaction is ultimately reducible to the universal law. 

The field of _psychology_ is intimately allied with biology, and yetistinguished from it. Mental life is a subdivision of life in general, andmay be subsumed under the general definition; but while biological truthsconcern the connection between internal phenomena, with but tacit oroccasional recognition of the environment, psychology has to do neitherwith the internal connection nor the external connection, but "theconnection between these two connections. " Psychology in its subjectiveaspect, again, is a field entirely _sui generis_. The substance of mind, conceived as the underlying substratum of mental states, is unknowable; butthe character of those states of which mind, as we know it, is composed, is a legitimate subject of inquiry. If this be carefully investigated, itseems highly probable that the ultimate unit of consciousness is something"of the same order as that which we call a nervous shock. " Mind isproximately composed of feelings and the relations between feelings;from these, revived, associated, and integrated, the whole fabric ofconsciousness is built up. There is, then, no sharp distinction between theseveral phases of mind. If we trace its development objectively, in termsof the correspondence between inner and outer phenomena, we find a gradualprogress from the less to the more complex, from the lower to the higher, without a break. Reflex action, instinct, memory, reason, are simplystages in the process. All is dependent on experience. Even the forms ofknowledge, which are _a priori_ to the individual, are the productof experience in the race, integrated and transmitted by heredity, andbecome organic in the nervous structure. In general the correspondence ofinner and outer in which mental life consists is mediated by the nervousorganism. The structure and functions of this condition consciousness andfurnish the basis for the interpretation of mental evolution in terms of"evolution at large, regarded as a process of physical transformation. "Nevertheless mental phenomena and bodily phenomena are not identical, consciousness is not motion. They are both phenomenal modes of theunknowable, disparate in themselves, and giving no indication of theultimate nature of the absolute. Subjective analysis of human consciousnessyields further proof of the unity of mental composition. All mental actionis ultimately reducible to "the continuous differentiation and integrationof states of consciousness. " The criterion of truth is the inconceivabilityof the negation. Tried by this test, as by all others, realism is superiorto idealism, though in that "transfigured" form which implies objectiveexistence without implying the possibility of any further knowledgeconcerning it, --hence in a form entirely congruous with the conclusionreached by many other routes. 

_Sociology_ deals with super-organic evolution, which involves theco-ordinated actions of many individuals. To understand the social unit, wemust study primitive man, especially the ideas which he forms of himself, of other beings, and of the surrounding world. The conception of a mind orother-self is gradually evolved through observation of natural phenomenawhich favor the notion of duality, especially the phenomena of sleep, dreams, swoons, and death. Belief in the influence of these doubles of thedead on the fortunes of the living leads to sorcery, prayer, and praise. Ancestor-worship is the ultimate source of all forms of religion; to itcan be traced even such aberrant developments as fetichism and idolatry, animal-, plant-, and nature-worship. Thus the primitive man feels himselfrelated not only to his living fellows, but to multitudes of supernaturalbeings about him. The fear of the living becomes the root of the political, and the fear of the dead the root of the religious, control. A society isan organic entity. Though differing from an individual organism in manyways, it yet resembles it in the permanent relations among its componentparts. The Domestic Relations, by which the maintenance of the species isnow secured, have come from various earlier and less developed forms; themilitant type of society is accompanied by a lower, the industrial typeby a higher stage of this development. Ceremonial observance is the mostprimitive kind of government, and the kind from which the political andreligious governments have differentiated. Political organization isnecessary in order to co-operation for ends which benefit the societydirectly, and the individual only indirectly. The ultimate political forceis the feeling of the community, including as its largest part ancestralfeeling. Many facts combine to obscure this truth, but however much it maybe obscured, public feeling remains the primal source of authority. Thevarious forms and instruments of government have grown up through processesin harmony with the general law. The two antithetical types of society arethe militant and the industrial--the former implies compulsory co-operationunder more or less despotic rule, with governmental assumption of functionsbelonging to the individual and a minimizing of individual initiative;in the latter, government is reduced to a minimum and best conducted byrepresentative agencies, public organizations are largely replaced byprivate organizations, the individual is freer and looks less to the statefor protection and for aid. The fundamental conditions of the highestsocial development is the cessation of war. The ideas and sentiments at thebasis of Ecclesiastical Institutions have been naturally derived from theghost-theory already described. The goal of religious development is thefinal rejection of all anthropomorphic conceptions of the First Cause, until the harmony of religion and science shall be reached in theveneration of the Unknowable. The remaining parts of Mr. Spencer'sSociology will treat of Professional Institutions, Industrial Institutions, Linguistic Progress, Intellectual, Moral, and Aesthetic Progress. 

The subject matter of _ethics_ is the conduct termed good or bad. Conductis the adjustment of acts to ends. The evolution of conduct is marked byincreasing perfection in the adjustment of acts to the furtherance ofindividual life, the life of offspring, and social life. The ascription ofethical character to the highly evolved conduct of man in relation tothese ends implies the fundamental assumption, that "life is good or badaccording as it does, or does not, bring a surplus of agreeable feeling. "The ideal of moral science is rational deduction: a rational utilitarianismcan be attained only by the recognition of the necessary laws--physical, biological, psychological, and sociological--which condition the results ofactions; among these the biological laws have been largely neglected inthe past, though they are of the utmost importance as furnishing the linkbetween life and happiness. The "psychological view, " again, explains theorigin of conscience. In the course of development man comes to recognizethe superiority of the higher and more representative feelings as guidesto action; this form of self-restraint, however, is characteristic of thenon-moral restraints as well, of the political, social, and religiouscontrols. From these the moral control proper has emerged--differing fromthem in that it refers to intrinsic instead of extrinsic effects--and theelement of coerciveness in them, transferred, has generated the feeling ofmoral compulsion (which, however, "will diminish as fast as moralizationincreases"). 

Such a rational ethics, based on the laws which condition welfare ratherthan on a direct estimation of happiness, and premising the relativity ofall pains and pleasures, escapes fundamental objections to the earlierhedonism (_e. G. _, those to the hedonic calculus); and, combining thevaluable elements in the divergent ethical theories, yields satisfactoryprinciples for the decision of ethical problems. Egoism takes precedenceof altruism; yet it is in turn dependent on this, and the two, on dueconsideration, are seen to be co-essential. Entirely divorced from theother, neither is legitimate, and a compromise is the only possibility;while in the future advancing evolution will bring the two into completeharmony. The goal of the whole process will be the ideal man in the idealsociety, the scientific anticipation of which, absolute ethics, promisesguidance for the relative and imperfect ethics of the transition period. 

Examination of the actual, not the professed, ideas and sentiments of menreveals wide variation in moral judgments. This is especially true of the"pro-ethical" consciousnesses of external authorities, coercions, andopinions--religious, political, and social--by which the mass of mankindare governed; and is broadly due to variation in social conditions. Wherethe need of external co-operation predominates the ethics of enmitydevelops; where internal, peaceful co-operation is the chief social needthe ethics of amity results: and the evolution principle enables us toinfer that, as among certain small tribes in the past, so in the greatcultivated nations of the future, the life of amity will unqualifiedlyprevail. The Ethics of Individual Life shows the application of moraljudgments to all actions which affect individual welfare. The very factthat some deviations from normal life are now morally disapproved, impliesthe existence of both egoistic and altruistic sanctions for the moralapproval of all acts which conduce to normal living and the disapproval ofall minor deviations, though for the most part these have hitherto remainedunconsidered. Doubtless, however, moral control must here be somewhatindefinite; and even scientific observation and analysis must leave theproduction of a perfectly regulated conduct to "the organic adjustment ofconstitution to [social] conditions. "

The Ethics of Social Life includes justice and beneficence. Human justiceemerges from sub-human or animal justice, whose law (passing over gratisbenefits to offspring) is "that each individual shall receive the benefitsand evils of its own nature and its consequent conduct. " This is the lawof human justice, also, but here it is more limited than before by thenon-interference which gregariousness requires, and by the increasing needfor the sacrifice of individuals for the good of the species. The egoisticsentiment of justice arises from resistance to interference with freeaction; the altruistic develops through sympathy under social conditions, these being maintained meanwhile by a "pro-altruistic" sentiment, intowhich dread of retaliation, of social reprobation, of legal punishment, andof divine vengeance enter as component parts. The idea of justice emergesgradually from the sentiment of justice: it has two elements, one brute orpositive, with inequality as its ideal, one human or negative, the idealof which is equality. In early times the former of these was undulyappreciated, as in later times the latter, the true conception includesboth, the idea of equality being applied to the limits and the idea ofinequality to the benefits of action. Thus the formula of justice becomes:"Every man is free to do that which he wills, provided he infringes not theequal freedom of any other man "--a law which finds its authority in thefacts, that it is an _a priori_ dictum of "consciousness after it has beensubject to the discipline of prolonged social life, " and that it is alsodeducible from the conditions of the maintenance of life at large and ofsocial life. From this law follow various particular corollaries or rights, all of which coincide with ordinary ethical concepts and have legalenactments corresponding to them. Political rights so-called do not exist;government is simply a system of appliances for the maintenance of privaterights. Both the nature of the state and its constitution are variable:the militant type requires centralization and a coercive constitution;the industrial type implies a wider distribution of political power, butrequires a representation of interests rather than a representation ofindividuals. Government develops as a result of war, and its function ofprotection against internal aggression arises by differentiation from itsprimary function of external defense. These two, then, constitute theessential duties of the state; when war ceases the first falls away, andits sole function becomes the maintenance of the conditions under whicheach individual may "gain the fullest life compatible with the fullest lifeof fellow-citizens. " All beyond this, all interference with this life ofthe individual, whether by way of assistance, restraint, or education, proves in the end both unjust and impolitic. The remaining parts of the_Ethics_ will treat of Negative and Positive Beneficence. 

If J. S. Mill and Spencer (the latter of whom, moreover, had announcedevolution as a world-law before the appearance of Darwin), move in adirection akin to positivism, the same is true, further, of G. H. Lewes(1817-78; _History of Philosophy_, 5th ed. , 1880; _Problems of Life andMind_, 1874 _seq_). 

Turning to the discussion of particular disciplines, we may mention asprominent among English logicians, [1] besides Hamilton, Whewell, and Mill, Whately, Mansel, Thomson, De Morgan, Boole (_An Investigation of the Lawsof Thought_, 1854); W. S. Jevons (_The Principles of Science_, 2d ed. , 1877); Venn (_Symbolic Logic_, 1881; _Empirical Logic_, 1889), Bradley, andBosanquet. Among more recent investigators in the field of psychology wemay name Carpenter, Ferrier, Maudsley, Galton, Ward, and Sully (_The HumanMind_, 1892), and in the field of comparative psychology, Lubbock, Romanes(_Mental Evolution in Animals_, 1883; _Mental Evolution in Man_, 1889), andMorgan (_Animal Life and Intelligence_, 1891). Among ethical writers thefollowing, besides Spencer and Green, hold a foremost place: H. Sidgwick_(The Methods of Ethics_, 4th ed. , 1890), Leslie Stephen _(The Science ofEthics_, 1882), and James Martineau _(Types of Ethical Theory_, 3d ed. , 1891). The quarterly review _Mind_ (vols. I. -xvi. 1876-91, edited by G. Croom Robertson; new series from 1892, edited by G. F. Stout) has since itsfoundation played an important part in the development of English thought. 

[Footnote 1: Cf. Nedich, _Die Lehre von der Quantifikation des Prädikats_in vol. Iii. Of Wundt's _Philosophische Studien_; L. Liard, _LesLogiciens Anglais Contemporains_, 1878; Al. Riehl in vol. I. Of the_Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophie_, 1877 [cf. Alsoappendix A to the English translation of Ueberweg's _Logic_. --TR. ]. ]

German idealism, for which S. T. Coleridge (died 1834) and Thomas Carlyle(died 1881) endeavored to secure an entrance into England, for a longtime gained ground there but slowly. Later years, however, have broughtincreasing interest in German speculation, and much of recent thinkingshows the influence of Kantian and Hegelian principles. As pioneer of thismovement we may name J. H. Stirling _(The Secret of Hegel_, 1865); and asits most prominent representatives John Caird _(An Introduction to thePhilosophy of Religion_, 1880), Edward Caird _(The Critical Philosophy ofImmanuel Kant_, 1889; _The Evolution of Religion_, 1893), both in Glasgow, and T. H. Green (1836-82; professor at Oxford; _Prolegomena to Ethics_, 3d ed. , 1887; _Works_, edited by Nettleship, 3 vols. , 1885-88). [1] Inopposition to the hereditary empiricism of English philosophy--whichappears in Spencer and Lewes, as it did in Locke, Berkeley, and Hume, though in somewhat altered form--Green maintains that all experience isconstituted by intelligible relations. Knowledge, therefore, is possibleonly for a correlating self-consciousness; while nature, as a system ofrelations, is likewise dependent on a spiritual principle, of which it isthe expression. Thus the central conception of Green's philosophy becomes, "that the universe is a single eternal activity or energy, of which it isthe essence to be self-conscious, that is, to be itself and not itselfin one" (Nettleship). To this universal consciousness we are related asmanifestations or "communications" under the limitations of our physicalorganization. As such we are free, that is, self-determined, determined bynothing from without. The moral ideal is self-realization or perfection, the progressive reproduction of the divine self-consciousness. This ispossible only in terms of a development of persons, for as a self-consciouspersonality the divine spirit can reproduce itself in persons alone; and, since "social life is to personality what language is to thought, "the realization of the moral ideal implies life in common. The nearerdetermination of the ideal is to be sought in the manifestations of theeternal spirit as they have been given in the moral history of individualsand nations. This shows what has already been implied in the relation ofmorality to personality and society, that moral good must first of all bea common good, one in which the permanent well-being of self includes thewell-being of others also. This is the germ of morality, the development ofwhich yields, first, a gradual extension of the area of common good, andsecondly, a fuller and more concrete determination of its content. Furtherrepresentatives of this movement are W. Wallace, Adamson, Bradley; A. Sethis an ex-member. 

[Footnote 1: Cf. On Green the Memoir by Nettleship in vol. Iii. Of the_Works_. ]

The first and greatest of American philosophical thinkers was theCalvinistic theologian Jonathan Edwards (1703-58; treatise on the _Freedomof Will_, 1754; _Works_, 10 vols. , edited by Dwight, 1830). Edwards'sdeterministic doctrine found numerous adherents (among them his son, whobore his father's name, died 1801) as well as strenuous opponents (Tappan, Whedon, Hazard among later names), and essentially contributed tothe development of philosophical thought in the United States. For aconsiderable period this crystallized for the most part around elementsderived from British thinkers, especially from Locke and the ScottishSchool. In 1829 James Marsh called attention to German speculation [1] byhis American edition of Coleridge's _Aids to Reflection_, with an importantintroduction from his own hand. Later W. E. Channing (1780-1842), the headof the Unitarian movement, attracted many young and brilliant minds, themost noted of whom, Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82), became a leader amongthe New England transcendentalists. Metaphysical idealism has, perhaps, metwith less resistance in America than in England. Kant and Hegel have beeneagerly studied (G. S. Morris, died 1889; C. C. Everett; J. Watson in Canada;Josiah Royce, _The Spirit of Modern Philosophy_, 1892; and others); and_The Journal of Speculative Philosophy_, edited by W. T. Harris, has since1867 furnished a rallying point for idealistic interests. The influenceof Lotze has also been considerable (B. P. Bowne in Boston). Sympathywith German speculation, however, has not destroyed the naturally closeconnection with the work of writers who use the English tongue. ThusSpencer's writings have had a wide currency, and his system numbers manydisciples, though these are less numerous among students of philosophy byprofession (John Fiske, _Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy_, 1874). 

[Footnote 1: Cf. Porter, _op. Cit. _]

In the latest decades the broadening of the national life, the increasingacquaintance with foreign thought, and the rapid development of universitywork have greatly enlarged and deepened the interest in philosophicalpursuits. This is manifested most clearly in the field of psychology, including especially the "new" or "physiological" psychology, and thehistory of philosophy, though indications of pregnant thought in otherdepartments, as ethics and the philosophy of religion, and even ofindependent construction, are not wanting. Among psychologists of the daywe may mention G. S. Hall, editor of _The American Journal of Psychology_(1887 seq. ), G. T. Ladd (_Elements of Physiological Psychology_, 1887), and William James (_Principles of Psychology_, 1890). _The InternationalJournal of Ethics_ (Philadelphia, 1890 seq. ), edited by S. Burns Weston, is"devoted to the advancement of ethical knowledge and practice"; among theforeign members of its editorial committee are Jodl and Von Gizycki. Theweekly journal of popular philosophy, _The Open Court_, published inChicago, has for its object the reconciliation of religion and science; thequarterly, _The Monist_ (1890 seq. ), published by the same company underthe direction of Paul Carus (_The Soul of Man_, 1891), the establishment ofa monistic view of the world. Several journals, among them the _EducationalReview_ (1891 seq. , edited by N. M. Butler), point to a growing interest inpedagogical inquiry. _The American Philosophical Review_ (1892 seq. , edited by J. G. Schurman, _The Ethical Import of Darwinism_, 1887) is acomprehensive exponent of American philosophic thought. 

%4. Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Holland. %

In _Sweden_ an empirical period represented by Leopold (died 1829) and Th. Thorild (died 1808), and based upon Locke and Rousseau, was followed, afterthe introduction of Kant by D. Boëthius, 1794, by a drift toward idealism. This was represented in an extreme form by B. Höijer (died 1812), acontemporary and admirer of Fichte, who defended the right of philosophicalconstruction, and more moderately by Christofer Jacob Böstrom (1797-1866), the most important systematic thinker of his country. As predecessors ofBöstrom we may mention Biberg (died 1827), E. G. Geijer (died 1846), and S. Grubbe (died 1853), like him professors in Upsala, and of his pupils, S. Ribbing, known in Germany by his peculiar conception of the Platonicdoctrine of ideas (German translation, 1863-64), the moralist Sahlin(1877), the historian, of Swedish philosophy[1] (1873 seq. ) A. Nyblaeus ofLund, and H. Edfeldt of Upsala, the editor of Böstrom's works (1883). 

[Footnote 1: Cf. Höffding, _Die Philosophie in Schweden_ in the_Philosophische Monatshefte_, vol. Xv. 1879, p. 193 seq. ]

Böstrom's philosophy is a system of self-activity and personalism whichrecalls Leibnitz and Krause. The absolute or being is characterized as aconcrete, systematically articulated, self-conscious unity, which dwellswith its entire content in each of its moments, and whose members both bearthe character of the whole and are immanent in one another, standing inrelations of organic inter-determination. The antithesis between unity andplurality is only apparent, present only for the divisive view of finiteconsciousness. God is infinite, fully determinate personality (fordetermination is not limitation), a system of self-dependent living beings, differing in degree, in which we, as to our true being, are eternally andunchangeably contained. Every being is a definite, eternal, and livingthought of God; thinking beings with their states and activities aloneexist; all that is real is spiritual, personal. Besides this true, suprasensible world of Ideas, which is elevated above space, time, motion, change, and development, and which has not arisen by creation or a processof production, there exists for man, but only for him--man is formallyperfect, it is true, but materially imperfect (since he represents the realfrom a limited standpoint)--a sensuous world of phenomena as the sphere ofhis activity. To this he himself belongs, and in it he is spontaneously todevelop the suprasensible content which is eternally given him (i. E. , histrue nature), namely, to raise it from the merely potential condition ofobscure presentiment to clear, conscious actuality. Freedom is the powerto overcome our imperfection by means of our true nature, to realize oursuprasensible capacities, to become for ourselves what we are in ourselves(in God). The ethics of Böstrom is distinguished from the Kantian ethics, to which it is related, chiefly by the fact that it seeks to bringsensibility into a more than merely negative relation to reason. Societyis an eternal, and also a personal, Idea in God. The most perfect formof government is constitutional monarchy; the ideal goal of history, theestablishment of a system of states embracing all mankind. 

J. Borelius of Lund is an Hegelian, but differs from the master in regardto the doctrine of the contradiction. The Hegelian philosophy has adherentsin _Norway_ also, as G. V. Lyng (died 1884; _System of Fundamental Ideas_), M. J. Monrad (_Tendencies of Modern Thought_, 1874, German translation, 1879), both professors in Christiania, and Monrad's pupil G. Kent (_Hegel'sDoctrine of the Nature of Experience_, 1891). 

The _Danish_ philosophy of the nineteenth century has been describedby Höffding in the second volume of the _Archiv für Geschichte derPhilosophie_, 1888. He begins with the representatives of the speculativemovement: Steffens (see above), Niels Treschow (1751-1833), Hans ChristianOersted (1777-1851; _Spirit in Nature_, German translation, Munich, 1850-51), and Frederik Christian Sibbern (1785-1872). A change was broughtabout by the philosophers of religion Sören Kierkegaard (1813-55) andRasmus Nielsen (1809-84; _Philosophy of Religion_, 1869), who opposedspeculative idealism with a strict dualism of knowledge and faith, and werein turn opposed by Georg Brandes (born 1842) and Hans Bröchner (1820-75). Among younger investigators the Copenhagen professors, Harald Höffding[1](born 1843) and Kristian Kroman[2] (born 1846) stand in the first rank. 

[Footnote 1: Höffding: _The Foundations of Human Ethics_, 1876, Germantranslation, 1880; _Outlines of Psychology_, 1882, English translation byLowndes, 1891, from the German translation, 1887; _Ethics_, 1887, Germantranslation by Bendixen, 1888. ]

[Footnote 2: Kroman: _Our Knowledge of Nature_, German translation, 1883;_A Brief Logic and Psychology_, German translation by Bendixen, 1890. ]

Land (_Mind_, vol. Iii. 1878) and G. Von Antal (1888) have written onphilosophy in _Holland_. Down to the middle of the nineteenth century thefield was occupied by an idealism based upon the ancients, in particularupon Plato: Franz Hemsterhuis (1721-90; _Works_, new ed. , 1846-50), and thephilologists Wyttenbach and Van Heusde. Then Cornelius Wilhelm Opzoomer[3](1821-92; professor in Utrecht) brought in a new movement. Opzoomerfavors empiricism. He starts from Mill and Comte, but goes beyond them inimportant points, and assigns faith a field of its own beside knowledge. In opposition to apriorism he seeks to show that experience is capable ofyielding universal and necessary truths; that space, time, and causalityare received along with the content of thought; that mathematics itself isbased upon experience; and that the method of natural science, especiallydeduction, must be applied to the mental sciences. The philosophy of mindconsiders man as an individual being, in his connection with others, inrelation to a higher being, and in his development; accordingly itdivides into psychology (which includes logic, aesthetics, and ethology), sociology, the philosophy of religion, and the philosophy of history. Central to Opzoomer's system is his doctrine of the five sources ofknowledge: Sensation, the feeling of pleasure and pain, aesthetic, moral, and religious feeling. If we build on the foundation of the first threealone, we end in materialism; if we leave the last unused, we reachpositivism; if we make religious feeling the sole judge of truth, mysticismis the outcome. The criteria of science are utility and progress. These arestill wanting in the mental sciences, in which the often answered but neverdecided questions continually recur, because we have neither derived theprinciples chosen as the basis of the deduction from an exact knowledgeof the phenomena nor tested the results by experience. The causes of thisdefective condition can only be removed by imitating the study of nature:we must learn that no conclusions can be reached except from facts, andthat we are to strive after knowledge of phenomena and their laws alone. Wehave no right to assume an "essence" of things beside and in addition tophenomena, which reveals itself in them or hides behind them. Pupils ofOpzoomer are his successor in his Utrecht chair, Van der Wyck, and Pierson. We may also mention J. P. N. Land, who has done good service in editingthe works of Spinoza and of Geulincx, and the philosopher of religionRauwenhoff (1888). 

[Footnote 1: Opzoomer: _The Method of Science_, a Handbook of Logic, Germantranslation by Schwindt, 1852; _Religion_, German translation by Mook, 1869. ]

On the system of the Hungarian philosopher Cyrill Horváth (died 1884 atPesth) see the essay by E. Nemes in the _Zeitschrift für Philosophie_, vol. Lxxxviii, 1886. Since 1889 a review, _Problems of Philosophy andPsychology_, has appeared at Moscow in Russian, under the direction ofProfessor N. Von Grot. 

CHAPTER XVI. 

GERMAN PHILOSOPHY SINCE THE DEATH OF HEGEL. 

With Hegel the glorious dynasty which, with a strong hand, had guided thefate of German philosophy since the conclusion of the preceding centurydisappears. From his death (1831) we may date the second period ofpost-Kantian philosophy, [1] which is markedly and unfavorably distinguishedfrom the first by a decline in the power of speculative creation and bya division of effort. If previous to this the philosophical public, comprising all the cultured, had been eagerly occupied with problems incommon, and had followed with unanimous interest the work of those who werelaboring at them, during the last fifty years the interest of wider circlesin philosophical questions has grown much less active; almost everythinker goes his own way, giving heed only to congenial voices; the innerconnection of the schools has been broken down; the touch with thinkers ofdifferent views has been lost. The latest decades have been the firstto bring a change for the better, in so far as new rallying points ofphilosophical interest have been created by the neo-Kantian movement, bythe systems of Lotze and Von Hartmann, by the impulse toward the philosophyof nature proceeding from Darwinism, by energetic labors in the field ofpractical philosophy, and by new methods of investigation in psychology. 

[Footnote 1: On philosophy since 1831 cf. Vol. Iii. Of J. E. Erdmann's_History_; Ueberweg, _Grundriss_, part iii. §§ 37-49 (English translation, vol. Ii. Pp. 292-516); Lange, _History of Materialism_; B. Erdmann, _DiePhilosophie der Gegenwart_ in the _Deutsche Rundschau_, vols. Xix. , xx. , 1879, June and July numbers; (A. Krohn, ) _Streifzüge durch die Philosophieder Gegenwart_ in the _Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophischeKritik_, vols. Lxxxvii. , lxxxix. , 1885-86; (Burt, _History of ModernPhilosophy_, 1892), also the third volume of Windelband's _Geschichte derneueren Philosophie_, when it appears. ]

%1. From the Division of the Hegelian School to the MaterialisticControversy. %

A decade after the philosophy of Hegel had entered on its supremacy adivision in the school was called forth by Strauss's _Life of Jesus_(1835). The differences were brought to light by the discussion of religiousproblems, in regard to which Hegel had not expressed himself withsufficient distinctness. The relation of knowledge and faith, as he haddefined it, admitted of variant interpretations and deductions, and this infavor of Church doctrine as well as in opposition to it. Philosophy has thesame content as religion, but in a different form, _i. E. _, not in the formof representation, but in the form of the concept--it transforms dogma intospeculative truth. The conservative Hegelians hold fast to the identity ofcontent in the two modes of cognition; the liberals, to the alterationin form, which, they assert, brings an alteration in content with it. According to Hegel the lower stage is "sublated" in the higher, _i. E. _, conserved as well as negated. The orthodox members of the school emphasizethe conservation of religious doctrines, their justification from the sideof the philosopher; the progressists, their negation, their overcoming bythe speculative concept. The general question, whether the ecclesiasticalmeaning of a dogma is retained or to be abandoned in its transformationinto a philosopheme, divides into three special questions, theanthropological, the soteriogical, and the theological. These are: whetheron Hegelian principles immortality is to be conceived as a continuanceof individual existence on the art of particular spirits, or only as theeternity of the universal reason; whether by the God-man the person ofChrist is to be understood, or, on the other hand, the human species, theIdea of Humanity; whether personality belongs to the Godhead before thecreation of the world, or whether it first attains to self-consciousnessin human spirits, whether Hegel was a theist or a pantheist, whether heteaches the transcendence or the immanence of God. The Old Hegelians defendthe orthodox interpretation; the Young Hegelians oppose it. The former, Göschel, Gabler, Hinrichs, Schaller (died 1868; _History of the Philosophyof Nature since Bacon_, 1841 _seq_. ), J. E. Erdmann in Halle (1805-92; _Bodyand Soul_, 1837; _Psychological Letters_, 1851, 6th ed. , 1882; _EarnestSport_, 1871, 4th ed. , 1890), form, according to Strauss's parliamentarycomparison carried out by Michelet, the "right"; the latter, Strauss, Feuerbach, Bruno Bauer, and A. Ruge, who, with Echtermeyer, edited the_Hallesche_, afterward _Deutsche, Jahrbücher für Wissenschaft und Kunst_, 1838-42, the "left. " Between them, and forming the "center, " stand KarlRosenkranz[1] in Königsberg (1805-79), C. L. Michelet in Berlin (p. 16;_Hegel, the Unrefuted World-philosopher_, 1870; _System of Philosophy_, 1876 _seq_. ), and the theologians Marheineke (a pupil of Daub atHeidelberg) and W. Vatke (_Philosophy of Religion_, edited by Preiss, 1888). Contrasted with these is the group of semi- or pseudo-Hegelians (p. 596), who declare themselves in accord with the theistic doctrines of theright, but admit that the left represents Hegel's own opinion, or at leastthe correct deductions from his position. 

[Footnote 1: K. Rosenkranz: _Psychology_, 1837, 3d ed. , 1863; _Scienceof the Logical Idea_, 1858; _Studies_, 1839 _seq_. , _New Studies_, 1875_seq_. ; _Aesthetics of the Ugly_, 1853; several works on the history ofpoetry. ]

The following should also be mentioned as Hegelians: the philosopher ofhistory, Von Cieszkowski, the pedagogical writer, Thaulow (at Kiel, died1883), the philosopher of religion and of law, A. Lasson at Berlin, theaesthetic writers Hotho, Friedrich Theodor Vischer[1] (1807-87), and MaxSchasler (_Critical History of Aesthetics_, 1872; _Aesthetics_, 1886), the historians of philosophy, Schwegler (died 1857; _History of GreekPhilosophy_, 1859, 4th ed. , 1886, edited by Karl Köstlin, whose_Aesthetics_ appeared 1869), Eduard Zeller[2] of Berlin (born 1814), and Kuno Fischer (born 1824; 1856-72 professor at Jena, since then atHeidelberg; _Logic and Metaphysics_, 2d ed. , 1865). While Weissenborn (died1874) is influenced by Schleiermacher also, and Zeller and Fischer striveback toward Kant, Johannes Volkelt[3] in Würzburg (born 1848), who startedfrom Hegel and advanced through Schopenhauer and Hartmann, has of lateyears established an independent noëtical position and has done goodservice by his energetic opposition to positivism _(Das Denken alsHülfvorstellungs--Thätigkeit und als Aupassungsvorgang_ in the _Zeitschriftfür Philosophic_, vols. Xcvi. , xcvii. , 1889-90). 

[Footnote 1: Vischer: _Aesthetics_, 1846-58; _Critical Excursions_, 1844_seq_. ; several _Hefte "Altes and Neues_". The diary in the second part ofthe novel _Auch Einer_ develops an original pantheistic view of the world. ]

[Footnote 2: Zeller: _The Philosophy of the Greeks in its HistoricalDevelopment_, 5 vols. , 3d ed. , vol. I. 5th ed. (English translation, 1868_seq_. ); three collections of _Addresses and Essays_, 1865, 1877, 1884. ]

[Footnote 3: Volkelt: _The Phantasy in Dreams_, 1875; _Kant's Theory ofKnowledge_, 1879; _On the Possibility of Metaphysics_, inaugural address atBasle, 1884; _Experience and Thought, Critical Foundation of the Theory ofKnowledge_, 1886; _Lectures Introductory to the Philosophy of the PresentTime_ (delivered in Frankfort on the Main), 1892. ]

The leaders of the Hegelian left require more detailed consideration. InDavid Friedrich Strauss[1] (1808-74, born and died at Ludwigsburg) thephilosophy of religion becomes a historical criticism of the Bible and ofdogmatics. The biblical narratives are, in great part, not history (thishas been the common error alike of the super-naturalistic and of therationalistic interpreters), but myths, that is, suprasensible factspresented in the form of history and in symbolic language. It is evidentfrom the contradictions in the narratives and the impossibility of miraclesthat we are not here concerned with actual events. The myths possess(speculative, absolute) truth, but no (historical) reality. They areunintentional creations of the popular imagination; the spirit of thecommunity speaks in the authors of the Gospels, using the historical factor(the life-history of Jesus) with mythical embellishments as an investiturefor a supra-historical, eternal truth (the speculative Idea ofincarnation). The God become man, in which the infinite and the finite, thedivine nature and the human, are united, is the human race. The Idea ofincarnation manifests itself in a multitude of examples which supplementone another, instead of pouring forth its whole fullness in a single one. The (real) Idea of the race is to be substituted for a single individualas the subject of the predicates (resurrection, ascension, etc. ) which theChurch ascribes to Christ. The Son of God is _Humanity_. 

[Footnote 1: Strauss: _The Life of Jesus_, 1835-36, 4th ed. , 1840 [Englishtranslation by George Eliot, 2d. Ed. , 1893]; the same "for the GermanPeople, " 1864 [English translation, 1865]; _Christian Dogmatics_, 1840-41;_Voltaire_, 1870; _Collected Writings_, 12 vols. , edited by Zeller, 1876-78. On Strauss cf. Zeller, 1874 [English, 1874], and Hausrath, 1876-78. ]

In his second principal work Strauss criticises the dogmas of Christianityas sharply as he had criticised the Gospel narrative in the first one. Thehistorical development of these has of itself effected their destruction:the history of dogma is the objective criticism of dogma. Christianity andphilosophy, theism and pantheism, dualism and immanence, are irreconcilableopposites. To be able to know we must cease to believe. Dogma is theproduct of the unphilosophical, uncultured consciousness; belief inrevelation, only for those who have not yet risen to reason. In thetransformation of religious representations into philosophical Ideasnothing specifically representative is left; the form of representationmust be actually overcome. The Christian contraposition of the presentworld and that which is beyond is explained by the fact that thesensuo-rational spirit of man, so long as it does not philosophically knowitself as the unity of the infinite and the finite, but only feels itselfas finite, sensuo-empirical consciousness, projects the infinite, whichit has in itself, as though this were something foreign, looks on itas something beyond the world. This separation of faith is entirelyunphilosophical; it is the mission of the philosopher to reduce all that isbeyond the world to the present. Thus for him immortality is not somethingto come, but the spirit's own power to rise above the finite to the Idea. And like future existence, so the transcendent God also disappears. Theabsolute is the universal unity of the world, which posits and sublates theindividual as its modes. God is the being in all existence, the life inall that lives, the thought in all that think: he does not stand as anindividual person beside and above other persons, but is the infinite whichpersonifies itself and attains to consciousness in human spirits, and thisfrom eternity; before there was a humanity of earth there were spirits onother stars, in whom God reflected himself. 

Three decades later Strauss again created a sensation by his confessionof materialism and atheism, _The Old Faith and the New_, 1872 (since thesecond edition, "With a Postscript as Preface"), [1] in which he continuesthe conflict against religious dualism. The question "Are we"--thecultured men of the day--"still Christians?" is answered in the negative. Christianity is a cult of poverty, despising the world, and antagonistic tolabor and culture; but we have learned to esteem science and art, richesand acquisition, as the chief levers of culture and of human progress. Christianity dualistically tears apart body and soul, time and eternity, the world and God; we need no Creator, for the life-process has neitherbeginning nor end. The world is framed for the highest reason, it is true, but it has not been framed by a highest reason. Our highest Idea is theAll, which is conformed to law, and instinct with life and reason, andour feeling toward the universe--the consciousness of dependence on itslaws--exercises no less of ethical influence, is no less full of reverence, and no less exposed to injury from an irreverent pessimism, than thefeeling of the devout of the old type toward their God. Hence the answerto the second question "Have we still a religion?" maybe couched in theaffirmative. The new faith does not need a _cultus_ and a Church. Since thedry services of the free congregations offer nothing for the fancy and thespirit, the edification of the heart must be accomplished in other ways--byparticipation in the interests of humanity, in the national life, and, not last, by aesthetic enjoyment. Thus in his last work, which in twoappendices reaches a discussion of the great German poets and musicians, the old man returns to a thought to which he had given earlier expression, that the religious _cultus_ should be replaced by the _cultus_ of genius. 

[Footnote 1: English translation by Mathilde Blind, 1873. ]

As Strauss went over from Hegelianism to pantheism, so Ludwig Feuerbach[1](1804-72), a son of the great jurist, Anselm Feuerbach, after he had fora short time moved in the same direction, took the opposite, theindividualistic course, only, like Strauss, to end at last in materialism. "My first thought, " as he himself describes the course of his development, "was God; my second, reason; my third and last, man. " As theology has beenovercome by Hegel's philosophy of reason, so this in turn must give placeto the philosophy of man. "The new philosophy makes man, including natureas his basis, the highest and sole subject of philosophy, and, consequently, anthropology the universal science. " Only that which isimmediately self-evident is true and divine. But only that which issensible is evident (_sonnenklar)_; it is only where sensibility beginsthat all doubt and conflict cease. Sensible beings alone are true, realbeings; existence in space and time is alone existence; truth, reality, and sensibility are identical. While the old philosophy took for itsstarting point the principle, "I am an abstract, a merely thinking being;the body does not belong to my essence, " the new philosophy, on the otherhand, begins with the principle, "I am a real, a sensible being; the bodyin its totality is my ego, my essence itself. " Feuerbach, however, usesthe concept of sensibility in so wide and vague a sense that, supported--or deceived--by the ambiguity of the word sensation, heincludes under it even the most elevated and sacred feelings. Even theobjects of art are seen, heard, and felt; even the souls of other men aresensed. In the sensations the deepest and highest truths are concealed. Notonly the external, but the internal also, not only flesh, but spirit, notonly the thing, but the ego, not only the finite, the phenomenal, but alsothe true divine essence is an object of the senses. Sensation proves theexistence of objects outside our head--there is no other proof of beingthan love, than sensation in general. Everything is perceivable by thesenses, if not directly, yet indirectly, if not with the vulgar, untrainedsenses, yet with the "cultivated senses, " if not with the eye of theanatomist or chemist, yet with that of the philosopher. All our ideasspring from the senses, but their production requires communication andconverse between man and man. The higher concepts cannot be derived fromthe individual Ego without a sensuously given Thou; the highest object ofsense is man; man does not reach concepts and reason in general by himself, but only as one of two. The nature of man is contained in community alone;only in life with others and for others does he attain his destiny andhappiness. The conscience is the ego putting itself in the place of anotherwho has been injured. Man with man, the unity of I and Thou, is God, andGod is love. 

[Footnote 1: Feuerbach was born at Landshut, studied at Heidelberg andBerlin, habilitated, 1828, at Erlangen, and lived, 1836-60, in the villageof Bruckberg, not far from Bayreuth, and from 1860 until his death inRechenberg, a suburb of Nuremberg. _Collected Works_ in 10 vols. , 1846-66. The chief works are entitled: _P. Bayle_, 1838, 2d ed. , 1844; _Philosophyand Christianity_, 1839; _The Essence of Christianity_, 1841, 4th ed. , 1883[English translation by George Eliot, 1854]; _Principles of the Philosophyof the Future_, 1843; _The Essence of Religion_, 1845; _Theogony_, 1857;_God, Freedom, and Immortality_, 1866. Karl Grün, 1874, C. N. Starcke, 1885, and W. Bolin, 1891, treat of Feuerbach. ]

To the philosophy of religion Feuerbach assigns the task of giving apsychological explanation of the genesis of religion, instead of showingreason in religion. In bidding us believe in miracles dogma is aprohibition to think. Hence the philosopher is not to justify it, but touncover the illusion to which it owes its origin. Speculative theology isan intoxicated philosophy; it is time to become sober, and to recognizethat philosophy and religion are diametrically opposed to each other, that they are related to each other as health to disease, as thought tophantasy. Religion arises from the fact that man objectifies his own trueessence, and opposes it to himself as a personal being, without coming to aconsciousness of this divestment of self, of the identity of the divineand human nature. Hence the Hegelian principles, that the absolute isself-consciousness, that in man God knows himself, must be reversed:self-consciousness is the absolute; in his God man knows himself only. TheGodhead is our own universal nature, freed from its individual limitations, intuited and worshiped as another, independent being, distinct from us. God is self objectified, the inner nature of man expressed; man isthe beginning, the middle, and the end of religion. All theology isanthropology, for all religion is a self-deification of man. In religionman makes a division in his own nature, posits himself as double, first aslimited (as a human individual), then as unlimited, raised to infinity (asGod); and this deified self he worships in order to obtain from it thesatisfaction of his needs, which the course of the world leaves unmet. Thusreligion grows out of egoism: its basis is the difference between our willand our power; its aim, to set us free from the dependence which we feelbefore nature. (Like culture, religion seeks to make nature an intelligibleand compliant being, only that in this it makes use of the supernaturalinstruments faith, prayer, and magic; it is only gradually that men learnto attack the evils by natural means. ) That which man himself is not, butwishes to be, that he represents to himself in his gods as existing; theyare the wishes of man's heart transformed into real beings, his longingafter happiness satisfied by the fancy. The same holds true of all dogmas:as God is the affirmation of our wishes, so the world beyond is the presentembellished and idealized by the fancy. Instead of "God is merciful, islove, is omnipotent, he performs miracles and hears prayers, " the statementmust be reversed: mercy, love, omnipotence, to perform miracles, and tohear prayers, is divine. In the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's supperFeuerbach sees the truth that water and food are indispensable and divine. As Feuerbach, following out this naturalistic tendency, reached the extremeof materialism, the influence of his philosophy--whose different phasesthere is no occasion to trace out in detail--had already passed itsculmination. From his later writings little more has found its way intopublic notice than the pun, that man is (_ist_) what he eats (_isst_). 

The remaining members of the Hegelian left may be treated more briefly. Bruno Bauer[1] (died in 1882; his principal work is the _Critique of theSynoptics_, in three volumes, 1841-42, which had been preceded, in 1840, bya _Critique of the Evangelical History of John_) at first belonged on theright of the school, but soon went over to the extreme left. He explainsthe Gospel narratives as creations with a purpose (_Tendenzdichtungen_), as intentional, but not deceitful, inventions, from which, despite theirunreality, history may well be learned, inasmuch as they reflect the spiritof the time in which they were constructed. His own publications and thoseof his brother Edgar are much more radical after the year 1844. In thesethe brothers advocate the standpoint of "pure or absolute criticism, " whichextends itself to all things and events for or against which sides aretaken from any quarter, and calmly watches how everything destroysitself. As soon as anything is admitted, it is no longer true. Nothing isabsolutely valid, all is vain; it is only the criticising, all-destroyingego, free from all ethical ties, that possesses truth. 

[Footnote 1: Not to be confused with the head of the Tübingen School, Ferdinand Christian Baur (died 1860). ]

One further step was possible beyond Feuerbach and Bruno Bauer, that fromthe community to the particular, selfish individual, from the criticising, therefore thinking, ego, to the ego of sensuous enjoyment. This step wastaken in that curious book _The Individual and his Property_, which KasparSchmidt, who died in 1856 at Berlin, published in 1845 (2d ed. , 1882), under the pseudonym of Max Stirner. The Individual of whom the title speaksis the egoist. For me nothing is higher than myself; I use men and use upthe world for my own pleasure. I seek to be and have all that I can beand have; I have a right to all that is within my power. Morality is adelusion, justice, like all Ideas, a phantom. Those who believe in ideals, and worship such generalities as self-consciousness, man, society, arestill deep in the mire of prejudice and superstition, and have banished theold orthodox phantom of the Deity only to replace it by a new one. Nothingwhatever is to be respected. 

 * * * * *

Among the opponents of the Hegelian philosophy the members of the "theisticschool, " who have above been designated as semi-Hegelians, approximate itmost closely. These endeavor, in part retaining the dialectic method, toblend the immanence of the absolute, which philosophy cannot give up andconcerning which Hegel had erred only by way of over-emphasis, with thetranscendence of God demanded by Christian consciousness, to establish atheism which shall contain pantheism as a moment in itself. God is presentin all creatures, yet distinct from them; he is intramundane as well asextramundane; he is self-conscious personality, free creative spirit, is this from all eternity, and does not first become such through theworld-development. He does not need the world for his perfection, but outof his goodness creates it. Philosophy must begin with the living Godheadinstead of beginning, like Hegel's Logic, with the empty concept of being. For the categories--as Schelling had already objected--express necessaryforms or general laws only, to which all reality must conform, but whichare never capable of generating reality; the content which appears in themand which obeys them, can only be created by a Deity, and only empiricallycognized. This is the standpoint of Christian Hermann Weisse[1] in Leipsic(1801-66), Karl Philipp Fischer[2] in Erlangen (1807-85), Immanuel HermannFichte[3] (1797-1879; 1842-65 professor in Tübingen), and the follower ofSchleiermacher, Julius Braniss in Breslau (1792-1873). The following holdsimilar views, influenced, like Weisse and K. Ph. Fischer, by Schelling:Jacob Sengler of Freiburg (1799-1878; _The Idea of God_, 1845 _seq_. ), Leopold Schmid of Giessen (1808-69; cf. P. 516, note), Johannes Huber(died 1879), Moritz Carrière[4] (born 1817), both in Munich, K. Steffensenof Basle (1816-88; _Collected Essays_, 1890), and Karl Heyder in Erlangen(1812-86; _The Doctrine of Ideas_, vol. I. 1874). Chalybaeus at Kiel (died1862), and Friedrich Harms at Berlin (died 1880; _Metaphysics_, posthumously edited by H. Wiese, 1885), who, like Fortlage and I. H. Fichte, start from the system of the elder Fichte, should also be mentioned assympathizing with the opinions of those who have been named. 

[Footnote 1: Weisse: _System of Aesthetics_, 1830; _The Idea of theGodhead_, 1833; _Philosophical Dogmatics_, 1855. His pupil Rudolf Seydelhas published several of his posthumous works; H. Lotze also acknowledgesthat he owes much to Weisse. Rud. Seydel in Leipsic (born 1835), _Logic_, 1866; _Ethics_, 1874; cf. P. 17. ]

[Footnote 2: K. Ph. Fischer: _The Idea of the Godhead_, 1839; _Outlines ofthe System of Philosophy_, 1848 _seq_. ; _The Untruth of Sensationalism andMaterialism_, 1853. ]

[Footnote 3: I. H. Fichte: _System of Ethics_, 1850-53, the first volume ofwhich gives a history of moral philosophy since 1750; _Anthropology_, 1856, 3d ed. , 1876; _Psychology_, 1864. ]

[Footnote 4: Carrière: _Aesthetics_, 1859, 3d ed. , 1885; _The Moral Orderof the World_, 1877, 2d ed. , 1891; _Art in connection with the Developmentof Culture_, 5 vols. , 1863-73. ]

The same may be said, further, of Hermann Ulrici[1] of Halle (1806-84), for many years the editor of the _Zeitschrift für Philosophie undphilosophische Kritik_, founded in 1837 by the younger Fichte and nowedited by the author of this _History_, which, as the organ of the theisticschool, opposed, first, the pantheism of the Young Hegelians, and then therevived materialism so loudly proclaimed after the middle of thecentury. This _Zeitschrift_ of Fichte and Ulrici, following the alteredcircumstances of the time, has experienced a change of aim, so that it nowseeks to serve idealistic efforts of every shade; while the _PhilosophischeMonatshefte_ (founded by Bergmann in 1868, edited subsequently bySchaarschmidt, and now) edited by P. Natorp of Marburg, favorsneo-Kantianism, and the _Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftlichePhilosophie_ (begun in 1877, and) edited by R. Avenarius of Zurich, especially cultivates those parts of philosophy which are open to exacttreatment. 

[Footnote 1: Ulrici: _On Shakespeare's Dramatic Art_, 1839, 3d ed. , 1868[English, 1876]; _Faith and Knowledge_, 1858; _God and Nature_, 1861, 2ded. , 1866; _God and Man_, in two volumes, _Body and Soul_, 1866, 2d ed. , 1874, and _Natural Law_, 1872; various treatises on Logic--in whichconsciousness is based on the distinguishing activity, and the categoriesconceived as functional modes of this--on Spiritualism, etc. ]

The appearance of _materialism_ was the consequence of the flagging ofthe philosophic spirit, on the one hand, and, on the other, of thedissatisfaction of the representatives of natural science with theconstructions of the Schelling-Hegelian school. If the German naturalist isespecially exposed to the danger of judging all reality from the sectionof it with which he is familiar, from the world of material substances andmechanical motions, the reason lies in the fact that he does not find iteasy, like the Englishman for example, to let the scientific and thephilosophico-religious views of the world go on side by side as twoentirely heterogeneous modes of looking at things. The metaphysical impulseto generalization and unification spurs him on to break down the boundarybetween the two spheres, and, since the physical view of things has becomepart of his flesh and blood, psychical phenomena are for him nothing butbrain-vibrations, and the freedom of the will and all religious ideas, nothing but illusions. The materialistic controversy broke out mostactively at the convention of naturalists at Göttingen in 1854, whenRudolph Wagner in his address "On the Creation of Man and the Substanceof the Soul" declared, in opposition to Karl Vogt, that there is nophysiological reason for denying the descent of man from one pair and animmaterial immortal soul. Vogt's answer was entitled "Collier Faith andScience. " Among others Schaller (_Body and Soul_, 1855), J. B. Meyer in atreatise with the same title, 1856, and the Jena physicist, Karl Snell, [1]took part in the controversy by way of criticism and mediation. A muchfiner nature than the famous leaders of materialism--Moleschott (_TheCircle of Life_, 1852, in answer to Liebig's _Chemical Letters_), and LouisBüchner, with whose _Force and Matter_ (1855, 16th ed. , 1888; Englishtranslation by Collingwood, 4th ed. , 1884) the gymnasiast of to-day stillsatisfies his freethinking needs--is H. Czolbe (1819-73; _New Exposition ofSensationalism_, 1855; _The Limits and Origin of Human Knowledge_, 1865), who, on ethical grounds, demands the exclusion of everything suprasensibleand contentment with the given world of phenomena, but holds that, besidesmatter and motion, eternal, purposive forms and original sensations in aworld-soul are necessary to explain organic and psychical phenomena. 

[Footnote 1: Snell (1806-86): _The Materialistic Question_, 1858; _TheCreation of Man_, 1863. R. Seydel has edited _Lectures on the Descent ofMan_, 1888, from Snell's posthumous writings. ]

%2. New Systems: Trendelenburg, Fechner, Lotze, and Hartmann%. 

The speculative impulse, especially in the soul of the German people, is ineradicable. It has neither allowed itself to be discouraged by thecollapse of the Hegelian edifice, nor to be led astray by the clamor of theapostles of empiricism, nor to be intimidated by the papal proclamation ofthe infallibility of Thomas Aquinas. [1] Manifold attempts have been madeat a new conception of the world, and with varying success. Of the earliertheories[2] only two have been able to gather a circle of adherents--thedualistic theism of Günther (1783-1863), and the organic view of the worldof Trendelenburg (1802-72). 

[Footnote 2: In 1879 a summons was sent forth from Rome for the revival anddissemination of the Thomistic system as the only true philosophy (cf. R. Eucken, _Die Philosophic des Thomas von Aquino und die Kultur derNeuzeit_, 1886). This movement is supported by the journals, _Jahrbuch fürPhilosophie und spekulative Theologie_, edited by Professor E. Commerof Münster, 1886 _seq_. , and _Philosophisches Jahrbuch_, edited, at theinstance and with the support of the Görres Society, by Professor Const. Gutberlet of Fulda, 1888 _seq_. While the text-books of Hagemann, Stoeckl, Gutberlet, Pesch, Commer, C. M. Schneider, and others also follow Scholasticlines, B. Bolzano (died 1848), M. Deutinger (died 1864) and his pupilNeudecker, Oischinger, Michelis, and W. Rosenkrantz (1821-74; _Science ofKnowledge_, 1866-68), who was influenced by Schelling, have taken a freercourse. ]

[Footnote 2: Trahndorff, gymnasial professor in Berlin (1782-1863), _Aesthetics_, 1827 (cf. E. Von Hartmann in the _PhilosophischeMonatshefte_, vol. Xxii. 1886, p. 59 _seq_. , and J. Von Billewicz, in thesame, vol. Xxi. 1885, p. 561 _seq_. ); J. F. Reiff in Tübingen: _System ofthe Determinations of the Will_, 1842; K. Chr. Planck (died 1880): _TheAges of the World_, 1850 _seq_. ; _Testament of a German_, edited by KarlKöstlin, 1881; F. Röse (1815-59), _On the Method of the Knowledge ofthe Absolute_, 1841; _Psychology as Introduction to the Philosophy ofIndividuality_, 1856. Emanuel Sharer follows Röse. Friedrich Rohmer(died 1856): _Science of God, Science of Man_, in _Friedrich Rohmer'sWissenschaft und Leben_, edited by Bluntschli and Rud. Seele, 6 vols. , 1871-92. ]

Anton Günther (engaged in authorship from 1827; _Collected Writings_, 1881;_Anti-Savarese_, edited with an appendix by P. Knoodt), who in 1857was compelled to retract his views, invokes the spirit of Descartes inopposition to the Hegelian pantheism. In agreement with Descartes, Günther starts from self-consciousness (in the ego being and thought areidentical), and brings not only the Creator and the created world, but alsonature (to which the soul is to be regarded as belonging) and spirit intoa relation of exclusive opposition, yet holds that in man nature (body andsoul) and spirit are united, and that they interact without prejudice totheir qualitative difference. J. H. Pabst (died in 1838 in Vienna), TheodorWeber of Breslau, Knoodt of Bonn (died 1889), V. Knauer of Vienna andothers are Güntherians. 

Adolf Trendelenburg[1] of Berlin, the acute critic of Hegel and Herbart, in his own thinking goes back to the philosophy of the past, especially tothat of Aristotle. Motion and purpose are for him fundamental facts, whichare common to both being and thinking, which mediate between the two, andmake the agreement of knowledge and reality possible. The ethical is ahigher stage of the organic. Space, time, and the categories are forms ofthought as well as of being; the logical form must not be separated fromthe content, nor the concept from intuition. We must not fail to mentionthat Trendelenburg introduced a peculiar and fruitful method of treatingthe history of philosophy, viz. , the historical investigation of particularconcepts, in which Teichmüller of Dorpat (1832-88; _Studies in the Historyof Concepts_, 1874; _New Studies in the History of Concepts_, 1876-79;_The Immortality of the Soul_, 2d ed. , 1879; _The Nature of Love_, 1880;_Literary Quarrels in the Fourth Century before Christ_, 1881 and 1884), and Eucken of Jena (cf. Pp. 17 and 623) have followed his example. Kym inZurich (born 1822; _Metaphysical Investigations_, 1875; _The Problem ofEvil_, 1878) is a pupil of Trendelenburg. 

[Footnote 1: Trendelenburg: _Logical Investigations_, 1840, 3d ed. , 1870;_Historical Contributions to Philosophy_, 3 vols. , 1846, 1855, 1867;_Natural Law on the Basis of Ethics_, 1860, 2d ed. , 1868. On Trendelenburgcf. Eucken in the _Philosophische Monatshefte_, 1884. ]

Of more recent systematic attempts the following appear worthy ofmention: Von Kirchmann (1802-84; from 1868 editor of the _PhilosophischeBibliothek_), _The Philosophy of Knowledge_, 1865; _Aesthetics_, 1868; _Onthe Principles of Realism_, 1875; _Catechism of Philosophy_ 2d ed. , 1881;E. Dühring (born 1833), _Natural Dialectic_, 1865; _The Value of Life_, 1865, 3d ed, 1881; _Critical History of the Principles of Mechanics_, 1873, 2d ed. , 1877; _Course of Philosophy_, 1875 (cf. On Dühring, HeleneDruskowitz, 1889); J. Baumann of Göttingen (born 1837), _Philosophy asOrientation concerning the World_, 1872; _Handbook of Ethics_, 1879;_Elements of Philosophy_, 1891; L. Noiré, _The Monistic Idea_, 1875, andmany other works; Frohschammer of Munich (born 1821), _The Phantasy asthe Fundamental Principle of the World-process_, 1877; _On the Genesisof Humanity, and its Spiritual Development in Religion, Morality andLanguage_, 1883; _On the Organization and Culture of Human Society_, 1885. 

In the first rank of the thinkers who have made their appearance sinceHegel and Herbart stand Fechner and Lotze, both masters in the use of exactmethods, yet at the same time with their whole souls devoted to the highestquestions, and superior to their contemporaries in breadth of view as inthe importance and range of their leading ideas--Fechner a dreamer andsober investigator by turns, Lotze with gentle hand reconciling theantitheses in life and science. 

Gustav Theodor Fechner[1] (1801-87; professor at Leipsic) opposes theabstract separation of God and the world, which has found a place innatural inquiry and in theology alike, and brings the two into the samerelation of correspondence and reciprocal reference as the soul and thebody. The spirit gives cohesion to the manifold of material parts, andneeds them as a basis and material for its unifying activity. As ourego connects the manifold of our activities and states in the unity ofconsciousness, so the divine spirit is the supreme unity of consciousnessfor all being and becoming. In the spirit of God everything is as in ours, only expanded and enhanced. Our sensations and feelings, our thoughts andresolutions are His also, only that He, whose body all nature is, and towhom not only that which takes place in spirits is open, but also thatwhich goes on between them, perceives more, feels deeper, thinks higher, and wills better things than we. According to the analogy of the humanorganism, both the heavenly bodies and plants are to be conceived as beingsendowed with souls, although they lack nerves, a brain, and voluntarymotion. How could the earth bring forth living beings, if it were itselfdead? Shall not the flower itself rejoice in the color and fragrance whichit produces, and with which it refreshes us? Though its psychical life maynot exceed that of an infant, its sensations, at all events, since they donot form the basis of a higher activity, are superior in force and richnessto those of the animal. Thus the human soul stands intermediate in thescale of psychical life: beneath and about us are the souls of plants andanimals, above us the spirits of the earth and stars, which, sharing in andencompassing the deeds and destinies of their inhabitants, are intheir turn embraced by the consciousness of the universal spirit. Theomnipresence of the divine spirit affords at the same time the means ofescaping from the desolate "night view" of modern science, which looks uponthe world outside the perceiving individual as dark and silent. No, lightand sound are not merely subjective phenomena within us, but extend aroundus with objective reality--as sensations of the divine spirit, to whicheverything that vibrates resounds and shines. 

[Footnote 1: _Nanna, or on the Psychical Life of Plants_, 1848;_Zend-Avesta, or on the Things of Heaven and the World Beyond_, 1851;_Physical and Philosophical Atomism_, 1855; _The Three Motives and Groundsof Belief_, 1863; _The Day View_, 1879; _Elements of Aesthetics_, 1876;_Elements of Psycho-physics_, 1860; _In the Cause of Psycho-physics_, 1877;_Review of the Chief Points in Psycho-physics_, 1882; _Book of the Lifeafter Death_, 1836, 3d ed. , 1887; _On the Highest Good_, 1846; _FourParadoxes_, 1846; _On the Question of the. Soul_, 1861; _Minor Works by Dr. Mises_ (Fechner's pseudonym), 1875. On Fechner cf. J. E. Kuntze, Leipsic, 1892. ]

The door of the world beyond also opens to the key of analogy. Similarlaws unite the here with the hereafter. As intuition prepares the way formemory, and lives on in it, so the life of earth merges in the future life, and continues active in it, elevated to a higher plane. Fechner treats theproblem of evil in a way peculiar to himself. We must not consider thefact of evil apart from the effort to remove it. It is the spur to allactivity--without evil, no labor and no progress. 

Fechner's "psycho-physics, " a science which was founded by him incontinuation of the investigations of Bernoulli, Euler, and especiallyof E. H. Weber, wears an entirely different aspect from that of hismetaphysics (the "day view, " moreover does not claim to be knowledge, but belief--though a belief which is historically, practically, andtheoretically well-grounded). This aims to be an exact science of therelations between body and mind, and to reach indirectly what Herbartfailed to reach by direct methods, that is, a measurement of psychicalmagnitudes, using in this attempt the least observable differences insensations as the unit of measure. Weber's law of the dependence of theintensity of the sensation on the strength of the stimulus--the increasein the intensity of the sensation remains the same when the relativeincrease of the stimulus (or the relation of the stimuli) remainsconstant;[1] so that, _e. G. _, in the case of light, an increase from astimulus of intensity 1 to one of intensity 100, gives just the sameincrease in the intensity of the sensation as an increase from a stimulusof intensity 2 (or 3) to a stimulus of 200 (or 300)--is much more generallyvalid than its discoverer supposed; it holds good for all the senses. Inthe case of the pressure sense of the skin, with an original weight of 15grams (laid upon the hand when at rest and supported), in order to producea sensation perceptibly greater we must add not 1 gram, but 5, and with anoriginal weight of 30 grams, not 5, but 10. Equal additions to the weightsare not enough to produce a sensation of pressure whose intensity shallrender it capable of being distinguished with certainty, but the greaterthe original weights the larger the increments must be; while theintensities of the sensations form an arithmetical, those of the stimuliform a geometrical, series; the change in sensation is proportional to therelative change of the stimulus. Sensations of tone show the sameproportion (3:4) as those of pressure; the sensibility of the muscle senseis finer (when weights are raised the proportion is 15:16), as also thatof vision (the relative brightness of two lights whose difference ofintensity is just perceptible is 100:101). In addition to theinvestigations on the threshold of difference there are others on thethreshold of stimulation (the point at which a sensation becomes justperceptible), on attention, on methods of measurement, on errors, etc. Moreover, Fechner does not fail to connect his psycho-physics, thepresuppositions and results of which have recently been questioned inseveral quarters, [2] with his metaphysical conclusions. Both are pervadedby the fundamental view that body and spirit belong together (consequentlythat everything is endowed with a soul, and that nothing is without amaterial basis), nay, that they are the same essence, only seen fromdifferent sides. Body is the (manifold) phenomenon for others, while spiritis the (unitary) self-phenomenon, in which, however, the inner aspect isthe truer one. That which appears to us as the external world of matter, is nothing but a universal consciousness which overlaps and influences ourindividual consciousness. This is Spinozism idealistically interpreted. Inaesthetics Fechner shows himself an extreme representative of the principleof association. 

[Footnote 1: Fechner teaches: The sensation increases and diminishes inproportion to the logarithm of the stimulus and of the psycho-physicalnervous activity, the latter being directly proportional to the externalstimulus. Others, on the contrary, find a direct dependence between nervousactivity and sensation, and a logarithmic proportion between the externalstimulus and the nervous activity. ]

[Footnote 2: So by Helmholtz; Hering _(Fechners psychophysisches Gesetz_, 1875); P. Langer _(Grundlagen der Psychophysik_, 1876); G. E. Müller inGöttingen _(Zur Grundlegung der Psychophysik_, 1878); F. A. Müller _(DasAxiom der Psychophysik_, 1882); A. Elsas _(Ueber die Psychophysik_, 1886);O. Liebmann _(Aphorismen zur Psychologie, Zeitschrift für Philosophie_, vol. Ci. --Wundt has published a number of papers from his psycho-physicallaboratory in his _Philosophische Studien_, 1881 _seq_. Cf. Also HugoMünsterberg, _Neue Grundlegung der Psychophysik_ in _Heft_ iii. Of his_Beiträge zur experimentellen Psychologie_, 1889 _seq_). [Further, Delboeuf, in French, and a growing literature in English as A. Seth, _Encyclopedia Britannica_, vol. Xxiv. 469-471; Ladd, _Elements ofPhysiological Psychology_, part ii. Chap, v. ; James, _Principles ofPsychology_, vol. I. P. 533 _seq_. ; and numerous articles as Ward, _Mind_, vol. I. ; Jastrow, _American Journal of Psychology_, vols. I. Andiii. --TR. ]]

The most important of the thinkers mentioned in the title of this sectionis Rudolph Hermann Lotze (1817-81: born at Bautzen; a student of medicine, and of philosophy under Weisse, in Leipsic; 1844-81 professor in Göttingen;died in Berlin). Like Fechner, gifted rather with a talent for the fine andthe suggestive than for the large and the rigorous, with a greater reservethan the former before the mystical and peculiar, as acute, cautious, andthorough as he was full of taste and loftiness of spirit, Lotze has provedthat the classic philosophers did not die out with Hegel and Herbart. His_Microcosmus_ (3 vols. , 1856-64, 4th ed. , 1884 _seq_; English translationby Hamilton and Jones, 3d ed. , 1888), which is more than an anthropology, as it is modestly entitled, and _History of Aesthetics in Germany_, 1868, which also gives more than the title betrays, enjoy a deserved popularity. These works were preceded by the _Medical Psychology_, 1852, and a polemictreatise against I. H. Fichte, 1857, as well as by a _Pathology_ and a_Physiology_, and followed by the _System of Philosophy_, which remainedincomplete (part i. _Logic_, 1874, 2d ed. , 1881, English translationedited by Bosanquet, 2d ed. , 1888; part ii. _Metaphysics_, 1879, Englishtranslation edited by Bosanquet, 2d ed. , 1887). Lotze's _Minor Treatises_have been published by Peipers in three volumes (1885-91); and Rehnisch hasedited eight sets of dictata from his lectures, 1871-84. [1] Since these"Outlines, " all of which we now have in new editions, make a convenientintroduction to the Lotzean system, and are, or should be, in thepossession of all, a brief survey may here suffice. 

[Footnote 1: _Outlines of Psychology, Practical Philosophy, Philosophy ofReligion, Philosophy of Nature, Logic and the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Metaphysics, Aesthetics_, and the _History of Philosophy since Kant_, allof which may be emphatically commended to students, especially the onefirst mentioned, and, in spite of its subjective position, the last. [English translations of these _Outlines_ except the fourth and thelast, by Ladd, 1884 _seq_. ] On Lotze cf. The obituaries by J. Baumann(_Philosophische Monatshefte_, vol. Xvii. ), H. Sommer (_Im Neuen Reich_), A. Krohn (_Zeitschrift für Philosophie_, vol. Lxxxi. Pp. 56-93), R. Falckenberg (Augsburg _Allgemeine Zeitung_, 1881, No. 233), and Rehnisch(_National Zeitung_ and the _Revue Philosophique_, vol. Xii. ). The last ofthese was reprinted in the appendix to the _Grundzüge der Aesthetik_, 1884, which contains, further, a chronological table of Lotze's works, essays, and critiques, as well as of his lectures. Hugo Sommer has zealouslydevoted himself to the popularization of the Lotzean system. Cf. , further, Fritz Koegel, _Lotzes Aesthetik_, Göttingen, 1886, and the article byKoppelmann referred to above, p. 330. ]

The subject of metaphysics is reality. Things which are, events whichhappen, relations which exist, representative contents and truths whichare valid, are real. Events happening and relations existing presupposeexisting things as the subjects in and between which they happen and exist. The being of things is neither their being perceived (for when we say thata thing is we mean that it continues to be, even when we do not perceiveit), nor a pure, unrelated position, its position in general, but _to be isto stand in relations_. Further, the _what_ or essence of the things whichenter into these relations cannot be conceived as passive quality, butonly abstractly, as a rule or a law which determines the connection andsuccession of a series of qualities. The nature of water, for example, isthe unintuitable somewhat which contains the ground of the change of ice, first into the liquid condition, and then into steam, when the temperatureincreases, and conversely, of the possibility of changing steam backinto water and ice under opposite conditions. And when we speak of anunchangeable identity of the thing with itself, as a result of which itremains the same essence amid the change of its phenomena, we mean only theconsistency with which it keeps within the closed series of forms a1, a2, a3, without ever going over into the series b1, b2. The relations, however, in which things stand, cannot pass to and fro between things like threadsor little spirits, but are states in things themselves, and the changeof the former always implies a change in these inner states. To stand inrelations means to _exchange actions_. In order to experience such effectsfrom others and to exercise them upon others, things must neither be whollyincomparable (as red, hard, sweet) and mutually indifferent, nor yetabsolutely independent; if the independence of individual beings werecomplete the process of action would be entirely inconceivable. Thedifficulty in the concept of causality--how does being _a_ come to producein itself a different state _a_ because another being _b_ enters into thestate [Greek: _b_]?--is removed only when we look on the things asmodes, states, parts of a single comprehensive being, of an infinite, unconditioned substance, in so far as there is then only an action ofthe absolute on itself. Nevertheless the assumption that, in virtue ofthe unity and consistency of the absolute or of its impulse toself-preservation, state [Greek: _b_] in being _b_ follows state[Greek: _a_] in being _a_ as an accommodation or compensation follows adisturbance, is not a full explanation of the process of action, doesnot remove the difficulty as to how one state can give rise to another. Metaphysics is, in general, unable to show how reality is made, but only toremove certain contradictions which stand in the way of the conceivabilityof these notions. The so far empty concept of an absolute looks to thephilosophy of religion for its content; the conception of the Godhead asinfinite personality (it is a person in a far higher sense than we) isfirst produced when we add to the ontological postulate of a comprehensivesubstance the ethical postulate of a supreme good or a universalworld-Idea. 

By "thing" we understand the permanent unit-subject of changing states. Butthe fact of consciousness furnishes the only guaranty that the differentstates _a, [Greek: b], y_, are in reality states of one being, and not somany different things alternating with one another. Only a consciousbeing, which itself effects the distinction between itself and the statesoccurring in it, and in memory and recollection feels and knows itself astheir identical subject, is actually a subject which has states. Hence, if things are to be real, we must attribute to them a nature in essencerelated to that of our soul. Reality is existence for self. All beingsare spiritual, and only spiritual beings possess true reality. Thus Lotzecombines the monadology of Leibnitz with the pantheism of Spinoza, justas he understands how to reconcile the mechanical view of natural science(which is valid also for the explanation of organic life) with theteleology and the ethical idealism of Fichte. The sole mission of theworld of forms is to aid in the realization of the ideal purposes of theabsolute, of the world of values. 

The ideality of space, which Kant had based on insufficient grounds, ismaintained by Lotze also, only that he makes things stand in "intellectual"relations, which the knowing subject translates into spatial language. Thesame character of subjectivity belongs not only to our sensations, butalso to our ideas concerning the connection of things. Representations areresults, not copies, of the external stimuli; cognition comes under thegeneral concept of the interaction of real elements, and depends, likeevery effect, as much upon the nature of the being that experiences theeffect as upon the nature of the one which exerts it, or rather, more uponthe former than upon the latter. If, nevertheless, it claims objectivereality, truth must not be interpreted as the correspondence of thought andits object (the cognitive image can never be like the thing itself), northe mission of cognition, made to consist in copying a world alreadyfinished and closed apart from the realm of spirits, to which mentalrepresentation is added as something accessory. Light and sound are nottherefore illusions because they are not true copies of the waves of etherand of air from which they spring, but they are the end which nature hassought to attain through these motions, an end, however, which it cannotattain alone, but only by acting upon spiritual subjects; the beauty andsplendor of colors and tones are that which of right ought to be in theworld; without the new world of representations awakened in spirits by theaction of external stimuli, the world would lack its essential culmination. The purpose of things is to be known, experienced, and enjoyed by spirits. The truth of cognition consists in the fact that it opens up the meaningand destination of the world. That which ought to be is the ground of thatwhich is; that which is exists in order to the realization of values init; the good is the only real. It is true that we are not permitted topenetrate farther than to the general conviction that the Idea of the goodis the ground and end of the world; the question, how the world has arisenfrom this supreme Idea as from the absolute and why just this world withits determinate forms and laws has arisen, is unanswerable. We understandthe meaning of the play, but we do not see the machinery by which it isproduced at work behind the stage. In ethics Lotze emphasizes with Fechnerthe inseparability of the good and pleasure: it is impossible to state inwhat the worth or goodness of a good is to consist, if it be conceived outof all relation to a spirit capable of finding enjoyment in it. 

If Lotze's philosophy harmoniously combines Herbartian and Fichteo-Hegelianelements, Eduard von Hartmann (born 1842; until 1864 a soldier, now a manof letters in Berlin) aims at a synthesis of Schopenhauer and Hegel; withthe pessimism of the former he unites the evolutionism of the latter, andwhile the one conceives the nature of the world-ground as irrational will, and the other as the logical Idea, he follows the example of Schellingin his later days by making will and representation equally legitimateattributes of his absolute, the Unconscious. His principal theoreticalwork, _The Philosophy of the Unconscious_, 1869 (10th ed. , 1891; Englishtranslation by Coupland, 1884), was followed in 1879 by his chief ethicalone, _The Moral Consciousness_ (2d ed. , 1886, in the _Selected Works_); thetwo works on the philosophy of religion, _The Religious Consciousness ofHumanity in the Stages of its Development_, 1881, and _The Religion ofSpirit_, 1882, together form the third chief work (_The Self-Disintegrationof Christianity and the Religion of the Future_, 1874, and _The Crisis ofChristianity in Modern Theology_, 1880, are to be regarded as forerunnersof this); the fourth is the _Aesthetics_ (part i. _German Aesthetics sinceKant_, 1886; part ii. _Philosophy of the Beautiful_, 1887). The _CollectedStudies and Essays_, 1876, were preceded by two treatises on the philosophyof nature, _Truth and Error in Darwinism_, 1875, and _The Unconsciousfrom the Standpoint of Physiology and the Theory of Descent_, publishedanonymously in 1872, in the latter of which, disguised as a Darwinian, he criticises his own philosophy. Of his more recent publications we maymention the _Philosophical Questions of the Day_, 1885; _Modern Problems_, 1886; and the controversial treatise _Lotzes Philosophy_, 1888. [1]

[Footnote 1: On Hartmann cf. Volkelt in _Nord und Süd_, July, 1881; thesame, _Das Unbewusste und der Pessimismus_, 1873; Vaihinger, _Hartmann_, _Dühring und Lange_, 1876; R. Koeber, _Das philosophische System Ed. V, Hartmann_, 1884; O. Pfleiderer, critique of the _Phänomenologie dessittlichen Bewusstseins (Im neuen Reich)_, 1879; L. Von Golther, _Dermoderne Pessimismus_, 1878; J. Huber, _Der Pessimismus_, 1876; Weygoldt, _Kritik des philosophischen Pessimismus der neuesten Zeit_, 1875; M. Venetianer, _Der Allgeist_, 1874; A Taubert (Hartmann's first wife), _Der Pessimismus und seine Gegner_, 1873; O. Plümacher, _Der Kampf umsUnbewusste_ (with a chronological table of Hartmann literature appended), 1881; the same, _Der Pessimismus in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart_, 1884;Krohn, _Streifzüge_ (see above); Seydel (see above). During the year1882 four publications appeared under the title _Der Pessimismus und dieSittenlehre_, by Bacmeister, Christ, Rehmke, and H. Sommer (2d ed. , 1883). [English translation of _Truth and Error in Darwinism_ in the _Journalof Speculative Philosophy_, vols. Xi. -xiii. , and of _The Religion of theFuture_, by Dare, 1886; cf. Also Sully's _Pessimism_, chap. V. --TR. ]]

In polemical relation, on the one hand, to the naïve realism of life, and, on the other, to the subjective idealism of Kant, or rather ofthe neo-Kantians, the logical conclusion of which would be absoluteillusionism, Hartmann founds his "transcendental realism, " which mediatesbetween these two points of view (the existence and true nature of theworld outside our representations is knowable, if only indirectly; theforms of knowledge, in spite of their subjective origin, have a morethan subjective, a transcendental, significance) by pointing out thatsense-impressions, which are accompanied by the feeling of compulsion andare different from one another, cannot be explained from the ego, but onlyby the action of things in themselves external to us, _i. E. _, independentof consciousness, and themselves distinct from one another. The causalityof things in themselves is the bridge which enables us to cross the gulfbetween the immanent world of representations and the transcendent world ofbeing. The causality of things in themselves proves their reality, theirdifference at different times, their changeability and their temporalcharacter; change, however, demands something permanent, existence, anexisting, unchangeable, supra-temporal, and non-spatial substance (whethera special substance for each thing in itself or a common one for all, isleft for the present undetermined). My action upon the thing in itselfassures me of its causal conditionality or necessity; the variousaffections of the same sense, that there are many things in themselves; thepeculiar form of change shown by some bodies, that these, like my body, areunited with a soul. Thus it is evident that, besides the concept of cause, a series of other categories must be applied to the thing in itself, henceapplied transcendentally. 

The "speculative results" obtained by Hartmann on an "inductive" basisare as follows: The _per se (Ansich)_ of the empirical world is theUnconscious. The two attributes of this absolute are the active, groundless, alogical, infinite will, and the passive, finite representation(Idea); the former is the ground of the _that_ of the world, the latterthe ground of its purposive _what_ and _how_. Without the will therepresentation, which in itself is without energy, could not become real, and without the representation (of an end) the will, which in itself iswithout reason, could not become a definite willing (relative or immanentdualism of the attributes, a necessary moment in absolute monism). Theempirical preponderance of pain over pleasure, which can be shown bycalculation, [1] proves that the world is evil, that its non-existence werebetter than its existence; the purposiveness everywhere perceptible innature and the progress of history toward a final goal (it is true, anegative one) proves, nevertheless, that it is the best world that waspossible (reconciliation of eudemonistic pessimism with evolutionisticoptimism). The creation of the world begins when the blind will to livegroundlessly and fortuitously passes over from essence to phenomenon, frompotency to act, from supra-existence to existence, and, in irrationalstriving after existence, draws to itself the only content which is capableof realization, the logical Idea. This latter seeks to make good theerror committed by the will by bringing consciousness into the field asa combatant against the insatiable, ever yearning, never satisfied will, which one day will force the will back into latency, into the (antemundane)blessed state of not-willing. The goal of the world-development isdeliverance from the misery of existence, the peace of non-existence, thereturn from the will and representation, become spatial and temporal, tothe original, harmonious equilibrium of the two functions, which has beendisturbed by the origin of the world or to the antemundane identity of theabsolute. The task of the logical element is to teach consciousness moreand more to penetrate the illusion of the will--in its three stages ofchildlike (Greek) expectation of happiness to be attained here, youthful(Christian) expectation of happiness to be attained hereafter, andadult expectation of happiness to be attained in the future of theworld-development--and, finally, to teach it to know, in senile longingafter rest, that only the doing away with this miserable willing, and, consequently, with earthly existence (through the resolve of the majorityof mankind) can give the sole attainable blessedness, freedom from pain. The world-process is the incarnation, the suffering, and the redemptionof the absolute; the moral task of man is not personal renunciation andcowardly retirement, but to make the purposes of the Unconscious his own, with complete resignation to life and its sufferings to labor energeticallyin the world-process, and, by the vigorous promotion of consciousness, tohasten the fulfillment of the redemptive purpose; the condition of moralityis insight into the fruitlessness of all striving after pleasure and intothe essential unity of all individual beings with one another and with theuniversal spirit, which exists in the individuals, but at the same timesubsists above them. "To know one's self as of divine nature, this doesaway with all divergence between selfwill and universal will, with allestrangement between man and God, with all undivine, that is, merelynatural, conduct. "

[Footnote 1: Cf. Volkelt, _Ueber die Lust als höchsten Werthmassstab_(in the _Zeitschrift für Philosophie_, vol. Lxxxviii. ), 1886, and O. Pfleiderer, _Philosophy of Religion_, vol. Ii. P. 249 _seq_. ]

Religion, which, in common with philosophy, has for its basis themetaphysical need for, or the mystical feeling of, the unity of the humanindividual and the world-ground, needs transformation, since in itstraditional forms it is opposed to modern culture, and the merging ofreligion (as a need of the heart) in metaphysics is impossible. Thereligion of the future, for which the way has already been prepared by thespeculative Protestantism of the present, is _concrete monism_ (the divineunity is transcendent as well as immanent in the plurality of the beings ofearth, every moral man a God-man), which includes in itself the abstractmonism (pantheism) of the Indian religions and the Judeo-Christian (mono-)theism as subordinate moments. (The original henotheism and its declineinto polytheism, demonism, and fetichism was followed by--Egyptian andPersian, as well as Greek, Roman, and German--naturalism, and then bysupernaturalism in its monistic and its theistic form. The chief defect ofthe Christian religion is the transcendental-eudemonistic heteronomy of itsethics. ) The _Religion of Spirit_ divides into three parts. The psychologyof religion considers the religious function in its subjective aspect, faith as a combined act of representation, feeling, and will, in which oneof these three elements may predominate--though feeling forms the inmostkernel of the theoretical and practical activities as well--and, asthe objective correlate of faith, grace (revealing, redeeming, andsanctifying), which elevates man above peripheral and phenomenal dependenceon the world, and frees him from it, through his becoming conscious of hiscentral and metaphysical dependence upon God. The metaphysics of religion(in theological, anthropological, and cosmological sections) provesby induction from the facts of religion the existence, omnipotence, spirituality, omniscience, righteousness, and holiness of the All-one, which coincides with the moral order of the world. Further, it proves theneed and the capacity of man for redemption from guilt and evil--here threespheres of the individual will are distinguished, one beneath God, onecontrary to God, and one conformable to God, or a natural, an evil, and amoral sphere--and, preserving alike the absoluteness of God and the realityof the world, shows that it is not so much man as God himself, who, as thebearer of all the suffering of the world, is the subject of redemption. The ethics of religion discusses the subjective and objective processes ofredemption, namely, repentance and amendment on the part of the individualand the ecclesiastical _cultus_ of the future, which is to despise symbolsand art. 

It is to Hartmann's credit, though the fact has not been sufficientlyappreciated by professional thinkers, that in a time averse to speculationhe has devoted his energies to the highest problems of metaphysics, and intheir elaboration has approached his task with scientific earnestness anda comprehensive and thorough consideration of previous results. Thusthe critique of ethical standpoints in the historical part of the_Phenomenology of the Moral Consciousness_, especially, contains much thatis worthy of consideration; and his fundamental metaphysical idea, that theabsolute is to be conceived as the unity of will and reason, also deservesin general a more lively assent than has been accorded to it, while hisrejection of an infinite consciousness has justly met with contradiction. It has been impossible here to go into his discussions in the philosophy ofnature--they cannot be described in brief--on matter (atomic forces), onthe mechanical and teleological views of life and its development, oninstinct, on sexual love, etc. , which he very skillfully uses in support ofhis metaphysical principle. 

%3. From the Revival of the Kantian Philosophy to the Present Time. %

%(a) Neo-Kantianism, Positivism, and Kindred Phenomena. %--The Kantianphilosophy has created two epochs: one at the time of its appearance, anda second two generations after the death of its author. The new Kantianmovement, which is one of the most prominent characteristics of thephilosophy of the present time, took its beginning a quarter of a centuryago. It is true that even before 1865 individual thinkers like ErnstReinhold of Jena (died 1855), the admirer of Fries, J. B. Meyer of Bonn, K. A. Von Reichlin-Meldegg, and others had sought a point of departure fortheir views in Kant; that K. Fischer's work on Kant (1860) had given alively impulse to the renewed study of the critical philosophy; nay, thatthe cry "Back to Kant" had been expressly raised by Fortlage (as early as1832 in his treatise _The Gaps in the Hegelian System_), and by Zeller(p. 589). But the movement first became general after F. A. Lange in his_History of Materialism_ had energetically advocated the Kantian doctrineaccording to his special conception of it, after Helmholtz[1] (born 1821)had called attention to the agreement of the results of physiology withthose of the Critique of Reason, and at the same time Liebmann's youthfulwork, _Kant and the Epigones_, in which every chapter ended with theinexorable refrain, "therefore we must go back to Kant, " had given thestrongest expression to the longing of the time. 

[Footnote 1: Helmholtz: _On Human Vision_, 1855; _Physiological Optics_, 1867; _Sensations of Tone_, 1863, 4th ed. , 1877 [English translation byEllis, 2d ed. , 1885]. ]

Otto Liebmann (cf. Also the chapter on "The Metamorphoses of the A Priori"in his _Analysis of Reality_) sees the fundamental truth of criticism inthe irrefutable proof that, space, time, and the categories are functionsof the intellect, and that subject and object are necessary correlates, inseparable factors of the empirical world, and finds Kant's fundamentalerror, which the Epigones have not corrected, but made still worse, in thenon-concept of the thing in itself, which must be expelled from the Kantianphilosophy as a remnant of dogmatism, as a drop of alien blood, and as anillegitimate invader which has debased it. 

According to Friedrich Albert Lange[1] (1828-75; during the last yearsof his life professor at Marburg), materialism, which is unfruitful anduntenable as a principle, a system, and a view of the world, but usefuland indispensable as a method and a maxim of investigation, must besupplemented by formal idealism, which, rejecting all science from merereason limits knowledge to the sensuous, to that which can be experienced, yet at the same time conceives the formal element in the sense world as theproduct of the organization of man, and hence makes objects conform to ourrepresentations. Above the sensuous world of experience and of mechanicalbecoming, however, the speculative impulse to construction, rounding offthe fragmentary truth of the sciences into a unified picture of the wholetruth, rears the ideal world of that which ought to be. Notwithstandingtheir indefeasible certitude, the Ideas possess no scientific truth, thoughthey have a moral value which makes them more than mere fabrics of thebrain: man is framed not merely for the knowledge of truth, but also forthe realization of values. But since the significance of the Ideas isonly practical, and since determinations of value are not groundsof explanation, science and metaphysics or "concept poetry"(_Begriffsdichtung_) must be kept strictly separate. 

[Footnote 1: F. A. Lange: _Logical Studies_, 1877. Cf. M. Heinze in the_Vierteljahrsschrift für wissenschaftliche Philosophic_, 1877, andVaihinger in the work cited above, p. 610 note. ]

Friedrich Paulsen of Berlin (born in 1846; cf. Pp. 330, 332, note) sees inthe Kantian philosophy the foundation for the philosophy of the future. Aprofounder Wolff (the self-dominion of the reason), a Prussian Hume (thecategories of the understanding are not world-categories; rejection ofanthropomorphic metaphysics), and a German Rousseau (the primacy of thewill, consideration of the demands of the heart; the good will alone, notdeeds nor culture, constitutes the worth of man; freedom, the rights ofman) in one person, Kant has withdrawn from scientific discussion thequestion concerning the dependence of reality on values or the good, which is theoretically insoluble but practically to be answered in theaffirmative, and given it over to faith. Kant is in so far a positivistthat he limits the mission of knowledge to the reduction of thetemporo-spatial relations of phenomena to rules, and declares theteleological power of values to be undemonstrable. But science is ableto prove this much, that the belief in a suprasensible world, in theindestructibility of that which alone has worth, and in the freedom ofthe intelligible character, which the will demands, is not scientificallyimpossible. Since, according to formal rationalism, the whole order ofnature is a creation of the understanding, and hence atomism and mechanismare only forms of representation, valid, no doubt, for our peripheral pointof view, but not absolutely valid, since, further, the empirical view ofthe world apart from the Idea of the divine unity of the world (which, itis true, is incapable of theoretical realization) would lack completion, the immediate conviction of the heart in regard to the power of the good isin no danger of attack from the side of science, although this can do nofurther service for faith than to remove the obstacles which oppose it. Thewill, not the intellect, determines the view of the world; but this is onlya belief, and in the world of representation, the intelligible world, withwhich the will brings us into relation, can come before us only in the formof symbols. --While Albrecht Krause (_The Laws of the Human Heart, a FormalLogic of Pure Feeling_, 1876) and A. Classen (_Physiology of the Sense ofSight_, 1877) are strict followers of Kant, J. Volkelt (_Analysis of theFundamental Principles of Kant's Theory of Knowledge_, 1879) has traced theoften deplored inconsistencies and contradictions in Kant down to theirroots, and has shown that in Kant's thinking, which has hitherto beenconceived as too simple and transparent, but which, in fact, is extremelycomplicated and struggling in the dark, a number of entirely heterogeneousprinciples of thought (skeptical, subjectivistic, metaphysico-work, rationalistic, _a priori_, and practical motives) are at which, conflictingwith and crippling one another, make the attainment of harmonious resultsimpossible. Benno Erdmann (p. 330) and Hans Vaihinger (pp. 323 note, 331)have given Kant's principal works careful philological interpretation. 

Among the various differences of opinion which exist within the neo-Kantianranks, the most important relates to the question, whether the individualego or a transcendental consciousness is to be looked upon as the executorof the _a priori_ functions. In agreement with Schopenhauer and with Lotze, who makes the subjectivity of space, time, and the pure concepts parallelwith that of the sense qualities, Lange teaches that the human individualis so organized that he must apprehend that which is sensuously given underthese forms. Others, on the contrary, urge that the individual soul withits organization is itself a phenomenon, and consequently cannot be thebearer of that which precedes phenomena--space, time, and the categoriesas "conditions" of experience are functions of a pure consciousness to bepresupposed. The antithesis of subject and object, the soul and the world, first arises in the sphere of phenomena. The empirical subject, like theworld of objects, is itself a product of the _a priori_ forms, hence notthat which produces them. To the transcendental group belong HermannCohen[1] in Marburg, A. Stadler[2], Natorp, Lasswitz (p. 17), E. König (p. 17), Koppelmann (p. 330), Staudinger (p. 331). Fritz Schultze of Dresden isalso to be counted among the neo-Kantians (_Philosophy of Natural Science_, 1882; _Kant and Darwin_, 1875; _The Fundamental Thoughts of Materialism_, 1881; _The Fundamental Thoughts of Spiritualism_, 1883; _ComparativePsychology_, i. 1, 1892). 

[Footnote 1: Cohen: _Kant's Theory of Experience_, 1871, 2d ed. , 1886;_Kant's Foundation of Ethics_, 1877; _Kant's Foundation of Aesthetics_, 1889. ]

[Footnote 2: Stadler: _Kant's Teleology_, 1874; _The Principles of the PureTheory of Knowledge in the Kantian Philosophy_, 1876; _Kant's Theory ofMatter_, 1883. ]

The German positivists[1]:--E. Laas of Strasburg (1837-85), A. Riehlof Freiburg in Baden (born 1844), and R. Avenarius of Zurich (born1843)--develop their sensationalistic theory of knowledge in criticalconnection with Kant. Ernst Laas defines positivism (founded by Protagoras, advocated in modern times by Hume and J. S. Mill, and hostile to Platonicidealism) as that philosophy which recognizes no other foundations thanpositive facts (_i. E. _, perceptions), and requires every opinion to exhibitthe experiences on which it rests. Its basis is constituted by threearticles of belief: (1) The correlative facts, subject and object, existand arise only in connection (objects are directly known only as thecontents of a consciousness, _cui objecta sunt_, subjects only as centersof relation, as the scene or foundation of a representative content, _cuisubjecta sunt_: outside my thoughts body does not exist as body, nor Imyself as soul). (2) The variability of the objects of perception. (3)Sensationalism--all specific differences in consciousness must be conceivedas differences in degree, all higher mental processes and states, includingthought, as the perceptions and experiences, transformed according tolaw, of beings which feel, have wants, possess memory, and are capable ofspontaneous motion. The subject coincides with its feeling of pleasure andpain, from which sensation is distinguished by its objective content. Theillusions of metaphysics are scientifically untenable and practicallyunnecessary. Various yearnings, wants, presentiments, hopes, and fancies, it is true, lead beyond the sphere of that which can be checked by senseand experience, but for none of their positions can any sufficient proof beadduced. As physics has discarded transcendent causes and learned how toget along with immanent causes, so ethics also must endeavor to establishthe worth of moral good without excursions into the suprasensible. Theethical obligations arise naturally from human relations, from earthlyneeds. The third volume of Laas's work differs from the earlier ones byconceding the rank of facts to the principles of logic as well as toperception. Aloys Riehl opposes the theory of knowledge (which starts fromthe fundamental fact of sensation) as scientific philosophy to metaphysicsas unscientific, and banishes the doctrine of the practical ideals from therealm of science into the region of religion and art. Richard Avenariusdefends the principle of "pure experience. " Sensation, which is all that isleft as objectively given after the removal of the subjective additions, constitutes the content, and motion the form of being. 

[Footnote 1: Laas: _Idealism and Positivism_, 1879-84. Riehl:_Philosophical Criticism_, 1876-87; Address _On Scientific and UnscientificPhilosophy_, 1883. Avenarius (p. 598): _Philosophy as Thought concerningthe World according to the Principle of Least Work_, 1876; _Critique ofPure Experience_, vol. I. 1888, vol. Ii. 1890; _Man's Concept of theWorld_, 1891. C. Göring (died 1879; _System of Critical Philosophy_, 1875)may also be placed here. ]

With the neo-Kantians and the positivists there is associated, thirdly, acoherent group of noëtical thinkers, who, rejecting extramental elements ofevery kind, look on all conceivable being as merely a conscious content. This monism of consciousness is advocated by W. Schuppe of Greifswald (born1836; _Noëtical Logic_, 1878), J. Rehmke, also of Greifswald (_The World asPercept and Concept_, 1880; "The Question of the Soul" in vol. Ii. Of the_Zeitschrift für Psychologie_, 1891), A. Von Leclair (_Contributions toa_ _Monistic Theory of Knowledge_, 1882), and R. Von Schubert-Soldern(_Foundations of a Theory of Knowledge_, 1884; _On the Transcendenceof Object and Subject_, 1882; _Foundations for an Ethics_, 1887). J. Bergmann[1] in Marburg (born 1840) occupies a kindred position. 

[Footnote 1: Bergmann: _Outlines of a Theory of Consciousness_, 1870; _PureLogic_, 1879; _Being and Knowing_, 1880; _The Fundamental Problems ofLogic_, 1882; _On the Right_, 1883; _Lectures on Metaphysics_, 1886; _Onthe Beautiful_, 1887; _History of Philosophy_, vol. I. , _Pre-KantianPhilosophy_, 1892. ]

It is the same scientific spirit of the time, which in the fifties led manywho were weary of the idealistic speculations over to materialism, that nowsecures such wide dissemination and so widespread favor for the endeavorsof the neo-Kantians and the positivists or neo-Baconians, who desire to seemetaphysics stricken from the list of the sciences and replaced by noëtics, and the theory of the world relegated to faith. The philosophy of thepresent, like the pre-Socratic philosophy and the philosophy of the earlymodern period, wears the badge of physics. The world is conceived from thestandpoint of nature, psychical phenomena are in part neglected, in partsee their inconvenient claims reduced to a minimum, while it is but rarelythat we find an appreciation of their independence and co-ordinate value, not to speak of their superior position. The power which natural sciencehas gained over philosophy dates essentially from a series of famousdiscoveries and theories, by which science has opened up entirely new andwide outlooks, and whose title to be considered in the formation of ageneral view of reality is incontestable. To mention only the mostprominent, the following have all posited important and far-reachingproblems for philosophy as well as for science: Johannes Müller's (Müllerdied 1858) theory of the specific energies of the senses, which Helmholtzmade use of as an empirical confirmation of the Kantian apriorism; the lawof the conservation of energy discovered by Robert Mayer (1842, 1850;Helmholtz, 1847, 1862), and, in particular, the law of the transformationof heat into motion, which invited an examination of all the forces activein the world to test their mutual convertibility; the extension ofmechanism to the vital processes, favored even by Lotze; the renewedconflict between atomism and dynamism; further, the Darwinian theory[1](1859), which makes organic species develop from one another by naturalselection in the struggle for existence (through inheritance andadaptation); finally, the meta-geometrical speculations[2] of Gauss (1828), Riemann (_On the Hypotheses which lie at the Basis of Geometry_, 1854, published in 1867), Helmholtz (1868), B. Erdmann (_The Axioms of Geometry_, 1877). G. Cantor, and others, which look on our Euclidean space of threedimensions as a special case of the unintuitable yet thinkable analyticconcept of a space of _n_ dimensions. The circumstance that these theoriesare still largely hypothetical in their own field appears to have stirredup rather than moderated the zeal for carrying them over into otherdepartments and for applying them to the world as a whole. Thus, especially, the Darwinians[3] have undauntedly attempted to utilize thebiological hypothesis of the master as a philosophical principle of theworld, and to bring the mental sciences under the point of view of themechanical theory of development, though thus far with more daring andnoise than success. The finely conceived ethics of Höffding (p. 585) is anexception to the rule which is the object of this remark. 

[Footnote 1: A critical exposition of the modern doctrine of developmentand of the causes used to explain it is given by Otto Hamann, _Entwickelungslehre und Darwinismus_, Jena, 1892. Cf. Also, O. Liebmann, _Analysis der Wirklichkeit_; and Ed. Von Hartmann (above, p. 610). [Amongthe numerous works in English the reader may be referred to the article"Evolution, " by Huxley and Sully, _Encyclopedia Britannica_, 9th ed. , vol. Viii. ; Wallace's _Darwinism_, 1889; Romanes, _Darwin and after Darwin_, i. _The Darwinian Theory_, 1892; and Conn's _Evolution of To-day_, 1886. --TR. ]]

[Footnote 2: Cf. Liebmann, _Analysis der Wirklichkeit_, 2d ed. , pp. 53-59. G. Frege (_Begriffsschrift_, 1879; _The Foundations of Arithmetic_, 1884;_Function and Concept_, 1891; "On Sense and Meaning" in the _Zeitschriftfür Philosophie, _ vol. C. 1892) has also chosen the region intermediatebetween mathematics and philosophy for his field of work. We note, further, E. G. Husserl, _Philosophy of Arithmetic_, vol. I. , 1891. ]

[Footnote 3: Ernst Haeckel of Jena (born 1834; _General Morphology_, 1866;_Natural History of Creation_, 1868 [English, 1875] I _Anthropogeny_, 1874;_Aims and Methods of the Development History of To-day_, 1875; _PopularLectures_, 1878 _seq_. --English, 1883), G. Jäger, A. Schleicher _(TheDarwinian Theory and the Science of Language_, 1865), Ernst Krause(Carus Sterne, the editor of _Kosmos_) O. Caspari, Carneri (_Morals andDarwinism_, 1871), O. Schmidt, Du Prel, Paul Rée (_The Origin of the MoralFeelings_, 1877; _The Genesis of Conscience_, 1885; _The Illusion of FreeWill_, 1885); G. H. Schneider (_The Animal Will_, 1880; _The Human Will_, 1882; _The Good and III of the Human Race_, 1883). ]

Besides the theory of knowledge, in the elaboration of which the mosteminent naturalists[1] participate with acuteness and success, psychologyand the practical disciplines also betray the influence of the scientificspirit. While sociology and ethics, following the English model, seek anempirical basis and begin to make philosophical use of statistical results(E. F. Schäffle, _Frame and Life of the Social Body_, new ed. , 1885; A. VonOettingen, _Moral Statistic in its Significance for a Social Ethics_, 3ded. , 1882), psychology endeavors to attain exact results in regard topsychical life and its relation to its physical basis--besides Fechner andthe Herbartians, W. Wundt and A. Horwicz should be mentioned here. Wundtand, of late, Haeckel go back to the Spinozistic parallelism of materialand psychical existence, only that the latter emphasizes merely theinseparability _(Nichtohneeinander)_ of the two sides (the cell-body andthe cell-soul) with a real difference between them and a metaphysicalpreponderance of the material side, while the former emphasizes theessential unity of body and soul, and the higher reality of the spiritualside. 

[Footnote 1: Helmholtz, Virchow (born 1821), Zöllner (1834-82; _On theNature of Comets_, 1872), and Du Bois-Reymond (born 1818), who, in hislectures _On the Limits of the Knowledge of Nature_, 1872, and _The SevenWorld-riddles_, 1880 (both together in 1882, and reprinted in the firstseries of his _Addresses_, 1886), looks on the origin of life, thepurposive order of nature, and thought as problems soluble in the future, but declares, on the other hand, that the nature of matter (atoms)and force _(actio in distant)_, the origin of motion, the genesis ofconsciousness (of sensation, together with pleasure and pain) from theknowable conditions of psychical life, and the freedom of the will, areabsolute limits to our knowledge of nature. ]

%(b) Idealistic Reaction against the Scientific Spirit. %--In opposition tothe preponderance of natural science and the empirico-skeptical tendency ofthe philosophy of the day conditioned by it, an idealistic counter-movementis making itself increasingly felt as the years go on. Wilhelm Dilthey[1]abandons metaphysics as a basis, it is true, but (with the assent ofGierke, _Preussische Jahrbücher_, vol. Liii. 1884) declares against thetransfer of the method of natural science to the mental sciences, whichrequire a special foundation. In spite of his critical rejection ofmetaphysics, Wilhelm Windelband in Strasburg (born 1848; _Preludes_, 1884)is, like Dilthey, to be counted among the idealists. In opposition to theindividualism of the positivists, the folk-psychologists--at their headSteinthal and Lazarus (p. 536); Gustav Glogau[2] in Kiel (born 1844) isan adherent of the same movement--defend the power of the universal overindividual spirits. The spirit of the people is not a phrase, an emptyname, but a real force, not the sum of the individuals belonging to thepeople, but an encompassing and controlling power, which brings forthin the whole body processes (_e. G. _, language) which could not occur inindividuals as such. It is only as a member of society that anyone becomestruly man; the community is the subject of the higher life of spirit. 

[Footnote 1: Dilthey: _Introduction to the Mental Sciences_, part i. , 1883; _Poetic Creation_ in the Zeller _Aufsätze_, 1887; "Contributions tothe Solution of the Question of the Origin of our Belief in the Reality ofthe External World, and its Validity, " _Sitzungsberichte_ of the BerlinAcademy of Sciences, 1890; "Conception and Analysis of Man in theFifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries" in the _Archiv für Geschichte derPhilosophie_, vols. Iv. , v. , 1891-92. ]

[Footnote 2: Glogau: _Sketch of the Fundamental Philosophical Sciences_(part i. , _The Form and the Laws of Motion of the Spirit_, 1880; partii. , _The Nature and the Fundamental Forms of Conscious Spirit_, 1888);_Outlines of Psychology_; 1884. ]

If folk-psychology, whose title but imperfectly expresses the comprehensiveendeavor to construct a psychology of society or of the universal spirit, is, as it were, an empirical confirmation of Hegel's theory of ObjectiveSpirit, Rudolf Eucken[1] (born 1846), pressing on in the Fichtean mannerfrom the secondary facts of consciousness to an original real-life, endeavors to solve the question of a universal becoming, of anall-pervasive force, of a supporting unity ("totality") in the life ofspirit (neither in a purely noëtical nor a purely metaphysical, but) in anoölogical way, and demands that the fundamental science or doctrine ofprinciples direct its attention not to cognition by itself, but to theactivity of psychical life as a whole. 

[Footnote 1: Eucken: _The Unity of Spiritual Life in the Consciousness andDeeds of Humanity_, 1888; _Prolegomena_ to this, 1885. A detailed analysisof the latter by Falckenberg is given in the _Zeitschrift für Philosophie_, vol. Xc, 1887; cf. Above, pp. 17 and 610. ]

We have elsewhere discussed the more recent attempts to establish ametaphysic which shall be empirically well grounded and shall cautiouslyrise from facts. [1] In regard to the possibility of metaphysics threeparties are to be distinguished: On the left, the positivists, theneo-Kantians, and the monists of consciousness, who deny it out of hand. Onthe right, a series of philosophers--e. G. , adherents of Hegel, Herbart, andSchopenhauer--who, without making any concessions to the modern theory ofknowledge, hold fast to the possibility of a speculative metaphysics of theold type. In the center, a group of thinkers who are willing to renounceneither a solid noëtical foundation nor the attainment of metaphysicalconclusions--so Eduard von Hartmann, Wundt, [2] Eucken, Volkelt (pp. 590, 617). Otto Liebmann (born 1840; _On the Analysis of Reality_, 1876, 2ded. , 1880; _Thoughts and Facts_, Heft i. 1882) demands a sharp separationbetween the certain and the uncertain and an exact estimation of the degreeof probability which theories possess; puts the principles of metaphysicsunder the rubric of logical hypothesis; and, in his _Climax of theTheories_, 1884, calls attention to the fact that experiential science, inaddition to axioms necessarily or apodictically certain and empeiremespossessing actual or assertory certainty, needs, further, a number of"interpolation maxims, " which form an attribute of our type of intellectualorganization _(i. E. _, principles, according to the standard of which wesupplement the fragmentary and discrete series of single perceptions andisolated observations by the interpolation of the needed intermediatelinks, so that they form a connected experience). The most important ofthese maxims are the principles of real identity, of the continuity ofexistence, of causality, and of the continuity of becoming. Experience isa gift of the understanding; the premises, as a rule, latent in ordinaryconsciousness, on whose anticipatory application our experience is basedthroughout, assert something absolutely incapable of being experienced. If, in order to the production of a "pure experience, " we eliminate allsubjective additions of the understanding contained in experiential thought(all that cannot be present at the moment or locally at hand, in short, allthat cannot be the direct object and content of actual observation), this breaks up into an unordered, unconnected aggregate of discontinuousperceptual fragments; in order that a complete and articulated conditionof experience may result, these fragments (the purely factual content ofobservation, the incoherent matter of perception) must be supplemented andconnected by very much that is not observed. 

[Footnote 1: R. Falckenberg, _Ueber die gegenwärtige Lage der deutschenPhilosophie_, inaugural address at Erlangen, Leipsic, 1890. ]

[Footnote 2: Wundt: _Essays_, 1885, including "Philosophy and Science";_System of Philosophy_, 1889. On the latter cf. Volkelt's paper in the_Philosophische Monatshefte_, vol. Xxvii. 1891; and on the _Essays_ anotice by the same author in the same review, vol. Xxiii. 1887. ]

Further, a reaction against crude naturalism is observable in the practicalfield, though political economists (Roscher) and jurists take a more activepart in it than the philosophers. Personally R. Von Jhering (1818-92;_Purpose in Law_, 2 vols. , 1877-83, 2d ed. , 1884-86) stands on idealisticground, although, rejecting the nativistic and formalistic theory, he is inprinciple an adherent of "realism, " of the principle of interest and socialutility (the moral is that Which is permanently useful to society). 

Finally, similar motives underlie the growing interest in the historyof philosophy. The idealistic impulse seeks the nourishment which theun-metaphysical present denies to it from the great works of the past, andhopes, by keeping alive the classical achievements of previous times, toenhance the consciousness of the urgency and irrepressibleness of thehighest questions, and to awaken courage for renewed attempts at theirsolution. Thus the study of history enters the service of systematicphilosophy. 

%(c) The Special Philosophical Sciences. %--The more the courage to attackthe central problems of philosophy has been paralyzed by the neo-Kantiantheory of knowledge and the coming-in of the positivistic spirit, the morelively has been the work of the last decades in the special departments:the transfer of the center of gravity from metaphysics to the particularsciences is the most prominent characteristic of the philosophy of thetime. Logic sees century-old convictions shattered and new foundationsarising. Psychology has entered into competition with physiology in regardto the discovery of the laws of the psychical functions which dependon bodily processes, while metaphysical questions are forced into thebackground and there is a growing distrust of the reliability of innerobservation. The philosophy of religion is favored with undiminishedinterest and aesthetics, after long neglect, with a renewal of attention;the philosophy of history is about to reconquer its former rights. There is, moreover, an especially lively interest in ethics; and theinvestigation of the history of philosophy is more widely extended thanever before. We will close our sketch with a short survey of the particulardisciplines. 

In the department of _logic_ the following should be mentioned as classicalachievements: the works of Christoph Sigwart of Tübingen (vol. I. 1873, 2d ed. , 1889; vol. Ii. 1878), of Lotze (p. 605), and of Wundt (vol. I. _Erkenntnisslehre_, 1880; vol. Ii. _Methodenlehre_, 1883). Besides these, Bergmann (p. 620), Schuppe (p. 619), and Benno Erdmann (_Logik_, vol. I. 1892) deserve notice. 

In _psychology_ the following writers have made themselves prominent:Wilhelm Wundt at Leipsic (born 1832), _Grundzüge der physiologischenPsychologie_, 1874, 3d ed. , 1887; A. Horwicz, _Psychologische Analysen aufphysiologischer Grundlage_, 1872 _seq_. ; Franz Brentano in Vienna (born1838), _Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte_, vol. I. 1874; CarlStumpf of Munich (born 1848), _Ueber den psychologischen Ursprung derRaumvorstellung_, 1873, _Tonpsychologie_, vol. I. 1883, vol. Ii. 1890;Theodor Lipps of Breslau (born 1851), _Grundthatsachen des Seelenlebens_, 1883. The following may be mentioned in the same connection: J. H. Witte, _Das Wesen der Seele_, 1888; H. Münsterberg, _Die Willenshandlung_, 1888, _Beiträge zur experimentellen Psychologie_, 1889 _seq_, ; Goswin K. Uphuesat Halle, _Wahrnehmung und Empfindung_, 1888, _Ueber die Erinnerung_, 1889;H. Schmidkunz, _Psychologie der Suggestion_, 1892; H. Ebbinghaus, theco-editor of the _Zeitschrift für Psychologie una Physiologie derSinnesorgane_, 1890 _seq_. ; H. Spitta; Max Dessoir, _Der Hautsinn_, inthe _Archiv für Anatomie una Physiologie_, 1892. The following works arepsychological contributions to the theory of knowledge: E. L. Fischer, _Theorie der Gesichtswahrnehmung_, 1891; Hermann Schwarz, _DasWahrnehmungsproblem_, 1892. Finally we may add A. Dorner in Königsberg, _Das menschliche Erkennen_, 1887; and E. L. Fischer, _Die Grundfragen derErkenntnisstheorie_, 1887. 

The literature of _moral philosophy_ has been substantially enriched byWundt, _Ethik_, 1886, 2d ed. , 1892; and Friedrich Paulsen, _System derEthik_, 1889, 2d ed. , 1891. We may mention, further, Baumann (p. 601);Schuppe, _Grundzüge der Ethik und Rechtsphilosophie_, 1882; Witte, _Freiheit des Willens_, 1882; G. Class in Erlangen, _Ideale und Güter_, 1886; Richard Wallaschek, _Ideen zur praktischen Philosophic_, 1886;F. Tönnies in Kiel, _Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft_, 1887; A. Döring, _Philosophische Güterlehre_, 1888; Th. Ziegler, _Sittliches Sein undWerden_, 2d ed. , 1890; G. Simmel, _Einleitung in die Moralwissenschaft_, vol. I. 1892. 

Of the newer works in the field of _aesthetics_, in addition to A. Zeising's _Aesthetische Forschungen_, 1855, C. Hermann's _Aesthetik_, 1875, and Hartmann's _Philosophie des Schönen_, 1887, we may mention the_Einleitung in die Aesthetik_ of Karl Groos, 1892, and the following byLipps: _Der Streit über die Tragödie_, 1890; _Aesthetische Faktoren derRaumanschauung_, 1891; the essay _Psychologie der Komik (PhilosophischeMonatshefte_, vols. Xxiv. -xxv. 1888-89), and _AesthetischeLitteraturberichte_, (in the same review, vol. Xxvi. 1890 _seq_. ). 

Among the writers and works on the _philosophy of history_ we may noteConrad Hermann in Leipsic (born 1819), _Philosophie der Geschichte_, 1870;Bernheim, _Geschichtsforschung und Geschichtsphilosophie_, 1880; KarlFischer, _Ist eine Philosophie der Geschichte wissenschaftlich erforderlichbezw. Möglich?_ Dillenburg Programme, 1889; Hinneberg, _Die philosophischenGrundlagen der Geschichtswissenschaft_ in Sybel's _HistorischeZeitschrift_, vol. Lxiii. 1889; A. Dippe, _Das Geschichtsstudium mitseinen Zielen und Fragen_, 1891; Georg Simmel, _Die Probleme derGeschichtsphilosophie_, 1892. 

In the _philosophy of religion_, which is discussed especially by thetheologians, a neo-Kantian and a neo-Hegelian tendency confront each other. The former, dividing in its turn, is represented, on the one hand, bythe Ritschlian school--W. Herrmann in Marburg (_Die Metaphysik in derTheologie_, 1876, _Die Religion im Verhältniss zum Welterkennen und zurSittlichkeit_, 1889), J. Kaftan in Berlin (_Das Wesen der christlichenReligion_, 1881)--and, on the other, by R. A. Lipsius in Jena (born 1830;_Dogmatik_, 1876, 2d ed. , 1879; _Philosophie und Religion_, 1885). Thelatter is represented by A. E. Biedermann of Zurich (1819-85; _ChristlicheDogmatik_, 1868; 2d ed. , 1884-85), a pupil of W. Vatke, and by OttoPfleiderer of Berlin (born 1839; _Religionsphilosophie_, 1879; 2d ed. , 1883-4). The neo-Kantians base religion exclusively on the practical sideof human nature, especially on the moral law, derive it from the contrastbetween external dependence on nature and the inner freedom or supernaturaldestination of the spirit, and wish it preserved from all intermixturewith metaphysics. According to the neo-Hegelians, on the contrary, thetheoretical element in religion is no less essential; and is capable ofbeing purified, of being elevated from the form of representation, which isfull of contradictions, into the adequate form of pure thought, capable, therefore, of reconciliation with philosophy. Hugo Delff (_Ueber den Wegzum Wissen und zur Gewissheit zu gelangen_, 1882; _Die Hauptprobleme derPhilosophie und Religion_, 1886) follows Jacobi's course. 

Among the numerous works on the _history of philosophy_, besides themasterpieces of Zeller, J. E. Erdmann, and Kuno Fischer, the following areespecially worthy of attention:

Cl. Bäumker in Breslau, _Das Problem der Materie in der griechischenPhilosophie_, 1890; H. Bonitz, _Platonische Studien_, 3d ed. , 1886, _Aristotelische Studien_, 1862 _seq. , Index Aristotelicus_, 1870, _KleineSchriften_; P. Deussen (born 1845), _Das System der Vedanta_, 1883, H. Diels in Berlin, _Doxographi Graeci_, 1879; Eucken in Jena (p. 17), _DieMethode der aristotelischen Forschung_, 1872, Address _Ueber den Werth derGeschichte der Philosophie_, 1874; J. Freudenthal in Breslau (born 1839, pp. 63, 118), _Hellenistische Studien, 3 Hefte_, 1879, _Ueber die Theologiedes Xenophanes_, 1886; M. Heinze in Leipsic, _Die Lehre vom Logos in dergriechischen Philosophie_, 1872; G. Freiherr von Hertling in Munich (born1843), _Materie und Form und die Definition der Seele bei Aristoteles_, 1871, _Albertus Magnus_, 1880; H. Heussler in Basle (p. 65 note), _Der Rationalismus des XVII. Jahrhunderts in seinen Beziehungen zurEniwickelungslehre_, 1885; Fr. Jodl in Prague (born 1849; pp. 16, 221note); A. Krohn (1840-89), _Sokrates und Xenophon_, 1874, _Der platonischeStaat_, 1876, _Die platonische Frage_, 1878--on Krohn, an obituary byFalckenberg in the _Biographisches Jahrbuch für Alterthumskunde, Jahrg_. 12, 1889; P. Natorp (pp. 88 note, 598), _Forschungen zur Geschichte desErkenntnissproblems im Alterthum_, 1884; Edmund Pfleiderer in Tübingen(born 1842; p. 113 note[1]), _Empirismus und Skepsis im D. HumesPhilosophie_, 1874, _Die Philosophie des Heraklit im Lichte derMysterienidee_, 1886; K. Von Prantl (1820-88), _Geschichte der Logik imAbendlande_, 4 vols. , 1855-70; Carl Schaarschmidt (pp. 88 note, 117-118);_Johannes Sarisberiensis_, 1862, _Die Sammlung der platonischen Schriften_, 1866; L. Schmidt in Marburg (born 1824), _Die Ethik der alten Griechen_, 1881; Gustav Schneider, _Die platonische Metaphysik_, 1884; H. Siebeck inGiessen, _Untersuchungen zur Philosophie der Griechen_, 1873, 2d ed. , 1888, _Geschichte der Psychologie_, part i. 1880-84; Chr. Von Sigwart (born 1830;pp. 17, 118); Heinrich von Stein in Rostock (born 1833), _Sieben Bücher zurGeschichte des Platonismus_, 1862-75; Ludwig Stein in Berne, editor of the_Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie_, founded in 1877, _Die Psychologieder Stoa_, I. _Metaphysisch-Anthropologischer Theil_, 1886, II. _Erkenntnisstheorie_, 1888, _Leibniz und Spinoza_, 1890; L. Strümpell, _Geschichte der griechischen Philosophie_, 1854, 1861; Susemihl inGreifswald, _Die Politik des Aristoteles_, Greek and German with notes, 1879, further, a series of essays on Plato and Aristotle; Teichmüller (p. 601); Trendelenburg (pp. 600-601), _Aristotelis de Anima_, 2d ed. , byBelger. 1887; Th. Waitz, _Aristotelis Organon_, 1844-46; J. Walter inKönigsberg, _Die Lehre von der praktischen Vernunft in der griechischenPhilosophie_, 1874, _Geschichte der Aesthetik im Alterthum_, 1892; Tob. Wildauer in Innsbruck, _Die Psychologie des Willens bei Sokrates, Platon, und Aristoteles_, 1877, 1879; W. Windelbund in Strasburg (pp. 15-16), _Geschichte der alten Philosophie_, 1888; Theob. Ziegler in Strasburg, _Geschichte der christlichen Ethik_, 1886, 2d ed. , with index, 1892; Rob. Zimmermann (pp. 19 note, 331, 536), _Studien und Kritiken_, 1870. 

%4. Retrospect. %

In order to avoid the appearance of arbitrary construction we have beensparing with references of a philosophico-historical character. Inconclusion, looking back at the period passed over, we may give expressionto some convictions concerning the guiding threads in the development ofmodern philosophy, though these here claim only the rights of subjectiveopinion. 

A mirror of modern culture, and conscious of its sharp antithesis toScholasticism, modern philosophy in its pre-Kantian period is pre-eminentlycharacterized by naturalism. Nature, as a system of masses moved accordingto law, forms not only the favorite object of investigation, but alsothe standard by which psychical reality is judged and explained. The twodirections in which this naturalism expresses itself, the mechanicalview of the world, which endeavors to understand the universe from thestandpoint of nature and all becoming from the standpoint of motion, [1] andthe intellectualistic view, which seeks to understand the mind from thestandpoint of knowledge, are most intimately connected. Where the generalview of the All takes form and color from nature, a content and a missioncan come to the mind from no other source than the external world; whetherwe (empirically) make it take up the material of representation fromwithout or (rationalistically) make it create an ideal reproduction ofthe content of external reality from within, it is always the function ofknowledge, conceived as the reproduction of a completed reality, which, since it brings us into contact with nature, advances into the foregroundand determines the nature of psychical activity. As is conceivable, alongwith dogmatic faith in the power of the reason to possess itself of thereality before it and to reconstrue it in the system of science, and withtriumphant references to the mathematical method as a guaranty for theabsolute certainty of philosophical knowledge, the noëtical questionemerges as to the means by which, and the limits within which, humanknowledge is able to do justice to this great problem. Descartes gave outthe programme for all these various tendencies--the mechanical explanationof nature, the absolute separation of body and soul (despiritualization ofmatter), thought the essence of the mind, the demand for certain knowledge, armed against every doubt, and the question as to the origin of ideas. Itsexecution by his successors shows not only a lateral extension in themost various directions (the dualistic view of the world held by theoccasionalists, the monistic or pantheistic view of Spinoza, thepluralistic or individualistic view of Leibnitz; similarly the antithesisbetween the sensationalism of Locke and Condillac and the rationalismof Spinoza and Leibnitz), but also a progressive deepening of problems, mediated by party strife which puts every energy to the strain. What atremendous step from the empiricism of Bacon to the skepticism of Hume, from the innate ideas of Descartes to the potential _a priori_ of Leibnitz!From the moment when the negative and positive culminations of thepre-Kantian movement in thought--Hume and Leibnitz--came together inone mind, the conditions of the Kantian reform were given, just as thepreparation for the Socratic reform had been given in the skepticism of theSophists and the [Greek: nous] principle of Anaxagoras. 

[Footnote 1: Even for Leibnitz the mind is a machine (_automatonspirituale_), and psychical action a movement of ideas. ]

Kant, who dominates the second period of modern philosophy down to thepresent time, is related to his predecessors in a twofold way. In hiscriticism he completes the noëtical tendency, and at the same timeovercomes naturalism, by limiting the mechanical explanation (and withit certain knowledge, it is true) to phenomena and opposing moralism tointellectualism. Nature must be conceived from the standpoint of the spirit(as its product, for all conformity to law takes its origin in the spirit), the spirit from the standpoint of the will. Metaphysics, as the theory ofthe _a priori_ conditions of experience, is raised to the rank of ascience, while the suprasensible is removed from the region of proof andrefutation and based upon the rock of moral will. In the positive side ofthe Kantian philosophy--the spirit the law-giver of nature, the will theessence of spirit and the key to true reality--we find its kernel, thatin it which is forever valid. The conclusions on the absolute worth ofthe moral disposition, on the ultimate moral aim of the world, on theintelligible character, and on radical evil, reveal the energy with whichKant took up the mission of furnishing the life-forces opened up byChristianity--which the Middle Ages had hidden rather than conserved underthe crust of Aristotelian conceptions entirely alien to them, and thepre-Kantian period of modern times had almost wholly ignored--an entranceinto philosophy, and of transforming and enriching the modern view of theworld from this standpoint. Kant's position is as opposite and superior tothe specifically modern, to the naturalistic temper of the new period, asPlato stands out, a stranger and a prophet of the future, above the levelof Greek modes of thought. More fortunate, however, than Plato, he founddisciples who followed further in the direction pointed out by that face ofthe Janus-head of his philosophy which looked toward the future: theethelism of Fichte and the historicism of Hegel have their roots in Kant'sdoctrine of the practical reason. These are acquisitions which must neverbe given up, which must ever be reconquered in face of attack from forceshostile to spirit and to morals. In life, as in science, we must ever anew"win" ethical idealism "in order to possess it. " As yet the reconciliationof the historical and the scientific, the Christian and the modern spiritis not effected. For the inbred naturalism of the modern period has notonly asserted itself, amalgamated with Kantian elements, in the realisticmetaphysics and mechanical psychology of Herbart and in the system ofSchopenhauer, as a lateral current by the side of Fichte, Schelling, andHegel, but, under the influence of the new and powerful development of thenatural sciences, has once more confidently risen against the traditions ofthe idealistic school, although now it is tempered by criticism andconcedes to the practical ideals at least a refuge in faith. The convictionthat the rule of neo-Kantianism is provisional does not rest merely on themutability of human affairs. The widespread active study of the philosophyof the great Königsberger gives ground for the hope that also thoseelements in it from which the systems of the idealists have proceeded asnecessary consequences will again find attention and appreciation. Theperception of the fact that the naturalistico-mechanical view representsonly a part, a subordinate part, of the truth will lead to the furthertruth, that the lower can only be explained by the higher. We shall alsolearn more and more to distinguish between the permanent import of theposition of fundamental idealism and the particular form which theconstructive thinkers have given it; the latter may fall before legitimateassaults, but the former will not be affected by them. _The revival of theFichteo-Hegelian idealism by means of a method which shall do justice tothe demands of the time by a closer adherence to experience, by makinggeneral use of both the natural and the mental sciences, and by an exactand cautious mode of argument--this seems to us to be the task of thefuture_. The most important of the post-Hegelian systems, the system ofLotze, shows that the scientific spirit does not resist reconciliation withidealistic convictions in regard to the highest questions, and theconsideration which it on all sides enjoys, that there exists a strongyearning in this direction. But when a deeply founded need of the timebecomes active, it also rouses forces which dedicate themselves to itsservice and which are equal to the work. 

THE END. 

 * * * * *

INDEX. 

AbbtAbsolute, the Fichte on Schelling on F. Krause on Schleiermacher on Hegel on Fortlage on Spencer on Böstrom on Strauss on Feuerbach on the theistic school on Lotze on Hartmann on See also God the UnconditionedAchilliniAdamson, R. Aesthetics of Home (Lord Kames) of Burke of Baumgarten of Herder of Kant of Schiller of Schelling of Hegel of J. F. Fries of Herbart of SchopenhauerAgnosticism, of SpencerAgricola, R. Agrippa of NettesheimAhrens, H. AlexandristsAllihnAlthusiusAndersonAngiulli, A. Annet, P. Antal, G. VonAntinomies, the of Kant his antinomy of aesthetic judgment and of teleological judgmentApelt, E. F. _A priori_, the in Kant in Kant and the post-Kantians nature, in Schelling in J. F. Fries Beneke on Herbart on J. S. Mill on Spencer's doctrine of the racial origin of Opzoomer on _Cf_. IdeasAquinas, ThomasArdigò, R. Aristotelians, the opponents ofArnauldArnoldt, E. Associationalism of Hartley and Priestley of Hume of the Mills of BainAst, G. A. F. Atomism in modern physics in Gassendi and Descartes in Boyle Leibnitz onAttributes in Descartes Spinoza's doctrine ofAuerbachAugustineAvenarius, R. Averroists

Baader, F. (von), and Schelling system ofBach, J. BacmeisterBacon, Francis a beginner of modern philosophy, doctrine of, in relation to Locke

Bacon, RogerBahnsen, J. Bain, AlexanderBakuBarclayBardiliBartholomaeiBarzellotti, G. BasedowBauer, BrunoBauer, EdgarBaumann, J. BaumeisterBaumgarten, Alex. Baumgarten, SiegmundBäumker, Cl. Baur, F. C. Bayle, P. , doctrine of, and LeibnitzBeattie, J. Beck, SigismundBeckers, H. , Bekker, Balthasar, IIIBelgerBellarminBeneke, F. E. Benoit, G. VonBentham, J. Bentley, RichardBerger, J. E. VonBergmann, J. Berkeley, George, position in modern philosophy, view of mind and matter, relation to Locke on perception, on knowledge, his system, relation to Hume, relation to Scottish School, relation to Condillac, his idealism criticised by Kant, referred toBernard, ClaudeBernheimBessarionBezold, F. Von, BibergBiedermann, A. E. Biedermann, Fr. K. BilfingerBillewicz, J. Von, Biran, Maine deBlignièresBluntschliBodin(us)Body and Mind, _see_ Mind and BodyBoëthius, D. Böhme, Jacob, system of, and SchellingBöhmerBöhringer, A. Bolin, W. BolingbrokeBolzano, B. Bonald, Victor deBonatelli, F. Bonitz, H. BonnetBontekoeBoole, G. Borelius, J. BorelliBorgeaudBosanquet, B. Böstrom, C. J. Botta, V. BouillierBourdinBourignon, AntoinetteBowen, F. Bowne, B. P. Boyle, R. Bradley, F. H. Brahé, TychoBrandes, G. Brandis, C. A. Braniss, J. Brasch, M. Brentano, F. Bröchner, H. BrockerhoffBrown, ThomasBrowne, PeterBrowne, Sir ThomasBruckerBruderBrunnhoferBruno, Giordano system of and Spinoza, and SchellingBrütt, M. Buchanan, GeorgeBüchner, L. BuckleBuddeBuffonBurckhardtBurdach, K. F. BurgersdijckBurke, EdmundBurt, B. C. Busch, O. Butler, JosephButler, N. M. 

CabanisCaesalpinCaird, EdwardCaird, JohnCairnsCalker, F. V. CamererCampanella, Thomas system ofCampeCantoniCantor, G. Caporali, E. Cardanus, HieronymusCarlyle, ThomasCarneriCaro, E. Carpenter, W. B. Carrière, M. Cartesians, the Locke's relation to Leibnitz's relation toCarus, F. A. Carus, K. G. Carus, P. Caspari, O. Categories, the, Kant on Hegel's doctrine ofCaterusCausation Spinoza's view of Locke on Hume's skeptical analysis of Kant on Schopenhauer on Lotze on Hartmann on _See also_ Sufficient Reason, TeleologyCesca, GiovanniChalybaeusChandler, SamuelChanning, W. E. Character, the Intelligible in Kant in Schelling in SchopenhauerCharron, PierreChrist, P. Chubb, ThomasCieszkowski, A. VonClarke, Samuel ethics ofClass, G. Classen, A. Clauberg_Cogito ergo sum_ the CartesianCohen, H. Colecchi, A. Coleridge, S. T. Collard, RoyerCollier, ArthurCollins, AnthonyCollins, F. H. Collins, W. L. CombachiusComeniusCommer, E. Common Sense, Scottish doctrine ofComte, AugusteCondillac doctrine ofCondorcetConn, H. W. Conybeare, J. Copernicus, N. CordemoyCosmological Argument, the in Locke in Rousseau in Leibnitz in KantCotes, RogerCousin, VictorCremoniniCrescas, ChasdaiCreuz, K. VonCritique of Reason, the meaning of the neo-Kantians on its central position in modern thoughtCrousazCrusius, C. A. Cudworth, Ralph ethics ofCumberland, RichardCzolbe, H. 

D'AlembertDamironDanzelDarjesDarwin, CharlesDarwin, ErasmusDaub, K. Da Vinci, LeonardoDeism naturalism of in Herbert in English thinkers of XVIII. Century in Hume in Rousseau of Reimarus in Lessing Kant's relation to _See also_ Faith, Faith and Reason, Religion, TheologyDelboeufDelff, H. De Morgan, A. 

DenifleDes BossesDescartes, René system of and occasionalism and Spinoza and Locke and Leibnitz _See also_ SpinozaDesdouitsDessoir, M. DeterDeterminism in Hobbes in Spinoza of the early associationalists of Hume in Leibnitz of Schleiermacher of Herbart of Schopenhauer of J. S. Mill of Jonathan Edwards _See also_ Character, the Intelligible; Freedom of the WillDeussen, P. Deutinger, M. De WetteDewey, J. Diderot, DenisDiels, H. Dieterich, K. Digby, EverardDillmanDilthey, W. Doctrine of, Dippe, A. Döring, A. Dorner, A. Doubt the Cartesian in Bayle Rousseau's reverentialDrobisch, M. W. DrozDruskowitz, HeleneDu Bois-Reymond, EDühring, E. Dumont, E. Duncan, G. M. Durdik

Ebbinghaus, H. Eberhard, J. A. EchtermeyerEckhartEclecticism, of the German Illumination of Schleiermacher of Cousin and his SchoolEdfeldt, H. Education Locke on Rousseau onEdwards, JonathanEgo, the certain knowledge of, in Campanella, and Descartes the individual, and the transcendental consciousness in Kant Fichte's doctrine of a complex of representations in Beneke Fortlage on Herbart's doctrine of the neo-Kantians on the individual, and the transcendental consciousness _See also_ SoulEllisEmerson, R. W. Empiricism founded by Bacon in Hobbes and rationalism of Locke of J. S. Mill of Opzoomer Liebmann on _See also_ Experience, SensationalismEncyclopedists, theEngel, J. J. EnnemoserErasmus, DesideriusErdmann, Benno works byErdmann, J. E. Works by philosophy ofErhardt, F. Eschenmayer, K. A. Ethelism in Crusius of Fichte of Schopenhauer in Hartmann _See also_ Panthelism. Ethics Bacon on Hobbes's political theory of Descartes on Geulincx on Spinoza on Pascal on Malebranche on Locke on English, of XVIII. Century Hume's empirical and mechanical of French sensationalists of French materialists of Rousseau of Leibnitz of Herder of Kant of Fichte of Schleiermacher of Hegel of J. F. Fries of Beneke of Herbart of Schopenhauer of Comte of Bentham of J. S. Mill, of Spencer of T. H. Green of Lotze of Hartmann recent German interest inEucken, R. Works by philosophy ofEverett, C. C. Evil Weigel on the origin of Böhme on the origin of Spinoza's doctrine of Leibnitz's doctrine of Schelling's theory of Baader's theory of Fechner's view of _See also_ Optimism, PessimismEvolution in the sense of explication in Nicolas of Cusa and involution in Leibnitz cosmical, of Spencer biological, of Darwin _Cf_. Also the systems of Schelling, Hegel, HartmannExner, F. Experience the basis of science in Bacon Kant on Green on Liebmann's view of _See also_ Empiricism, SensationalismExternal World, the reality of, in Descartes knowledge and reality of, in Locke Berkeley on Kant on the reality of the "material of duty in the form of sense" in Fichte

Faber Stapulensis (Lefèvre of Etaples)Faith the reformers' view of Deistic view of Kant on Kant on moral or practical Paulsen on practical _See also_ DeismFaith and Reason, the relation of, in modern philosophy Bayle on Locke on Deistic view of in Rousseau Leibnitz on Lessing on Baader on Schleiermacher on _See also_ DeismFaith Philosophy, the of Hamann of Herder of Jacobi elements of, in J. F. FriesFalckenberg, R. Works byFarrer, J. A. Fechner, G. T. System ofFechner, H. A. Feder, J. G. H. Feeling the basis of knowledge in Pascal the central doctrine of Rousseau central to religion in Schleiermacher _See also_ The Faith PhilosophyFerguson, AdamFerrari, GiuseppeFerrazFerri, L. Ferrier, D. Ferrier, J. F. Fester, R. Feuerbach, L. Philosophy ofFichte, I. H. Fichte, J. G. And Kant system of and Schelling and Hegel and Herbart and Lotze _See also_ Idealism, Jacobi, KantFicinusFilmerFinal Causes, _see_ TeleologyFiorentino, F. Fischer, E. L. Fischer, K. Ph. Fischer, KarlFischer, Kuno works by on Spinoza on Kant his philosophy and neo-KantianismFiske, JohnFlint, K. Fludd, R. FlügelForbergForge, L. De laFortlage, Karl works by system ofFouillèe, A. Fowler, Thos. Fox BourneFranchi, A. Franck, A. Franck, SebastianFranckeFrantz, K. Eraser, A. C. Frauenstädt, J. Frederichs, F. Frederick the GreatFreedom of the Will, Hobbes's denial of Descartes's unlimited affirmation of denied by Spinoza Locke on denied by Hume in Rousseau Leibnitz on Herder on Kant on Fichte on Schelling on Herbart on Schopenhauer on J-S. Mill on _See also_ Character, the Intelligible; DeterminismFrege, G. Freudenthal, J. Fries, A. DeFries, J. F. , and Kant an opponent of constructive idealism his system and HerbartFroschammerFullerton, G. S. 

GablerGaleGalileo (Galileo Galilei) his work as a foundation for modern physics his systemGalluppi, P. Galton, FrancisGarve, C. Gassendi, P. GaussGayGeijer, E. G. GeilGenovesi, A. Gentilis, AlbericusGeorge, L. George of TrebizondGeorgius Scholarius (Gennadius)Gerdil, S. GerhardtGersonGersonidesGeulincx, ArnoldGichtelGierke, O. Gilbert, WilliamGioberti, V. Gioja, M. Gizycki, G. VonGlanvilGlisson, FrancisGlogau, G. God, doctrine of, in Nicolas of Cusa in Taurellus in Bruno Campanella's argument for the existence of Weigel's doctrine of Böhme's doctrine of Descartes's arguments for the existence of Spinoza's doctrine of Malebranche's view of Locke's doctrine of Berkeley ascribes ideas of sense-world to Hume's doctrine of Voltaire's doctrine of Holbach's discussion of Leibnitz's doctrine of Reimarus's doctrine of Lessing's doctrine of Herder's doctrine of Jacobi's doctrine of Kant on the arguments for the existence of Fichte's doctrine of Schelling's doctrine of F. Krause's doctrine of Baader's doctrine of Schleiermacher's doctrine of Beneke's doctrine of Herbart's doctrine of Böstrom's doctrine of the doctrine of, in Hegel's School Strauss's doctrine of Feuerbach's doctrine of the doctrine of, in the Theistic School Fechner on the relation of God and the world Lotze's doctrine of Hartmann's doctrine of See also: Cosmological Argument Deism Ontological Argument Religion Teleological Argument TheologyGöhring, C. Golther, L. VonGöschelGoetheGottschedGracian, B. Grazia, V. DeGreen, T. H. , works by doctrine ofGrimm, E. Grimm, F. M. , Baron vonGroos, K. Grot, N. VonGrote, JohnGrotius, HugoGrubbe, S. Gruber, H. Grün, K. GuhrauerGünther, A. Gutberlet, C. Guthrie, M. Güttler, C. Guyau, J. M. Gwinner, W. 

Haeckel, E. Haeghen, V. Van derHagemannHall, G. S. HallierHamann, J. G. Hamann, O. HambergerHamilton, Sir WilliamHarless, A. VonHarmony Leibnitz's pre-established Wolff's development of Leibnitz's, pre-establishedHarms, F. Harris, W. T. Harrison, FredericHartenstein, G. Hartley, DavidHartmann, E. Von works by system ofHarveyHase, K. A. HassbachHauseggerHausrathHavetHaym, R. Hazard, R. G. HeathHebler, C. HeereboordHegel, G. W. F. And Schelling system of opponents of influence and followers of _See also_ J. G. Fichte, Kant, SchellingHegelians, the Old the Young _See also_ Semi-HegeliansHegler, A. Heiland, K. Heinze, M. Helmholtz, H. Helmont, F. M. VanHelmont, J. B. VanHelvetius, C. A. HemmingHemsterhuis, F. Herbart, J. F. System of _See also_ J. G. FichteHerbert, Lord, of CherburyHerder, J. G. System of Schelling andHeringHermann, C. Hermann, W. Hermes, G. Herz, M. Heusde, P. W. VanHeussler, H. Heyder, KarlHinnebergHinrichsHirnhaymHistory Machiavelli on Herder's philosophy of Kant's view of Fichte's view of Schelling's view of F. Krause's philosophy of Hegel's philosophy of Vico's philosophy ofHistory of Philosophy, the importance of method in Hegel's view of recent development ofHobbes, Thomas his system and Descartes and Spinoza and Locke and Hume and PufendorfHöffding, H. Hoffmann, FranzHöijer, B. Holbach, Baron vonHölder, A. 

HölderlinHome, Henry, (Lord Kames)HorváthHorwicz, A. HothoHuber, J. Huber, U. Huet(ius), P. D. HufelandHume, David system of and Scottish School and Kant _See also_ Berkeley, LockeHunt, J. Husserl, E. G. Hutcheson, FrancisHuxley, T. H. 

IbbotIdealism phenomenal or individual of Berkeley in Leibnitz critical or transcendental, of Kant post-Kantian, of Beck subjective, of Fichte objective, of Schelling absolute or logical, of Hegel the opposition to constructive in Schopenhauer German, in Great Britain of Green in America ethical or ideological, of Lotze idealistic reaction in Germany against the scientific spirit Falckenberg on (ethical) idealism and the futureIdeas, innate, in Descartes, Locke, Leibnitz, the rationalists and the empiricists origin of, in Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, the rationalists and empiricists, and Herbart impressions and, in Hume unconscious ideas or representations in Leibnitz Ideas of reason in Kant the logical Idea the subject of the world-process in HegelIdentity, Locke on Spinozism a system of Schelling's philosophy or system of the philosophy of, among Schelling's followers Hegel's doctrine a system of Fortlage's system of philosophy of, in SchopenhauerImmortality Hume on Voltaire on Rousseau on Leibnitz on Kant on Schleiermacher on Beneke on Herbart on Hegel's followers on Strauss on Fechner onImperative, the Categorical in Kant in Fichte in BenekeInduction Kepler on Galileo on used before Bacon Bacon's theory of in Hobbes J. S. Mill's theory ofIrwing, Von

Jacobi, F. H. System of and Fichte and the anti-idealistsJacobson, J. Jäger, G. James, WilliamJanet, PaulJansenistsJastrow, J. JesuitsJevons, W. S. Jhering, R. VonJodl, F. Joël, M. Jouffroy, T. Judgment Descartes on rationalists and empiricists both mistake nature of Kant on synthetic judgments _a priori_ the categories and, in Kant judgments of perception and of experience in Kant Kant on aesthetic and teleologicalJungius

Kaatz, H. Kaftan, J. Kaltenborn, C. VonKant, I. 

 position in modern philosophy and Locke and the Illumination system of the development to Fichte and Fichte and Schelling and Hegel and Schopenhauer his influence, followers, and opponents _See also_ Berkeley, Critique of Reason, J. G. Fichte, Hume, Leibnitz, Locke, Schopenhauer, WolffKayserlingKedney, J. S. Kent, G. Kepler, J. Philosophy ofKielmeyerKierkegaard, S. KieserKing, LordKirchmann, J. H. VonKirchnerKlein, G. M. Knauer, V. Knight, W. Knoodt, P. Knowledge theory of, in modern thought doctrine of, in Nicolas of Cusa declared deceptive by Montaigne mathematical basis of, in Kepler and Galileo in Bacon in Hobbes in Herbart the two views of Geulincx on Descartes on Spinoza on Malebranche on ("we see all things in God") Locke's doctrine of Berkeley on Hume's skeptical doctrine of Scottish doctrine of sensationalistic doctrine of, in France Leibnitz's theory of Kant on Fichte's Science of Schelling's philosophy of Baader on Schleiermacher's doctrine of Hegel on philosophical J. F. Fries's doctrine of Beneke on speculative Schopenhauer's doctrine of Comte's doctrine of Sir Wm. Hamilton's doctrine of J. S. Mill's doctrine of Spencer's doctrine of T. H. Green's doctrine of Feuerbach's doctrine of Lotze's doctrine of Hartmann's doctrine of the neo-Kantians on the German positivists on influence of recent science on the theory of Liebmann's doctrine of _See also_ Agnosticism, Critique of Reason, Empiricism, Faith, Faith and Reason, Nominalism, Positivism, Rationalism and Empiricism, Relativity, Sensationalism, SkepticismKnutzen, M. Koch, A. Koeber, R. VonKoegel, F. König, E. KoppelmannKöstlin, KarlKrause, A. Krause, E. Krause, F. Krauth, C. P. Krohn, A. Kroman, K. Krug, W. T. KuhnKuntze, J. E. KvacsalaKym, A. L. 

Laas, E. Laban, F. Labriola, La BruyèreLadd, G. T. Laffitte, P. LagrangeLambert, J. H. Lamennais, F. DeLa Mettrie, J. O. DeLa Mothe la VayerLand, J. P. N. Lange, F. A. Lange, J. J. La RochefoucauldLasson, A. Lasswitz, K. Last, E. LavaterLaw (or Right) early philosophy of Montesquieu on Pufendorf on C. Thomasius on Kant's theory of legal right Fichte's theory of right Schelling's view of F. Krause's philosophy of right Hegel's philosophy of rightLazarus, M. LechlerLeclair, A. VonLeibnitz, Friedrich (the father)Leibnitz, G. W. Position in modern thought and occasionalism system of and the Illumination (Wolff, Lessing) and Kant _See also_ Descartes, Locke, SpinozaLeonhardi, H. K. VonLeopoldLessing, G. E. System ofLewes, G. H. Liard, L. Liberatore, M. LichtenbergLiebigLiebmann, O. Linde, A. Van derLindemannLipps, T. Lipsius, JustusLipsius, R. A. Littré, E. Locke, J. Position in modern philosophy system of and Berkeley and Hume and the French Illumination (and Rousseau) and Leibnitz and Kant _See also_ Bacon, Berkeley, Descartes, Empiricism, KantLohmeyerLombroso, C. LossiusLott, F. C. Lotze, R. H. System ofLöwe, J. H. Lubbock, J. Lülmann, C. LutherLutterbeckLyng, G. V. 

Macaulay, T. B. Machiavelli, N. MackieMackintosh, J. Mahaffy, J. P. Maimon, S. MaimonidesMainländer, P. Mainzer, J. Maistre, J, deMalebranche, Nicolas system ofMamiani, T. Mandeville, Bernard deMansel, H. L. MarcusMarheinekeMariana, JuanMarianoMarion, H. Marsh, JamesMarsilius of PaduaMartin, B. Martineau, HarrietMartineau, JamesMartini, JacobMasson, DavidMaterialism in Hobbes Spinoza's tendency toward in the early associationalists in France in XVIII. Century Kant on in Schopenhauer and Spencer's philosophy in Strauss of Feuerbach the controversy over, in Germany Lange onMathematics the philosophical use of, advocated by Nicolas of Cusa by Kepler scientific use of, ignored by Bacon Hobbes's recognition of method of, adopted by Spinoza Kant on philosophy and Kant on science and applied to psychology by Herbart and by Fechner recent, and philosophyMaudsley, HenryMaupertuisMayer, F. Mayer, R. McCosh, J. Mechanism in modern thought in modern physical science the central doctrine of Hobbes fundamental in Spinoza applied to mind by the associationalists of J. F. Fries of ideas in Herbart in Lotze in recent physical science _See also_ Naturalism, Physical Science, TeleologyMeier, G. F. MeinersMelancthonMellinMelville, AndrewMendelssohnMersenneMerz, J. T. Metaphysics Bacon on of Descartes of Spinoza of Leibnitz the Wolffian division of Kant on Hegel on of Fortlage of Herbart Comte on of Fechner of Lotze of Hartmann recent German views onMeyer, J. B. Meyer, LudwigMichelet, C. L. Michelis, Mill, JamesMill, J. S. Milton, JohnMind and Body Descartes on occasionalistic view of, in Geulincx Spinoza on Hartley and Priestley on Leibnitz on J. F. Fries onModern Philosophy value of history of characteristics of relation to the church relation to nationality beginnings of bibliography of two main schools of future ofModes (of Substance) in Descartes in Spinoza in LockeMoleschottMonads Giordano Bruno's doctrine of Leibnitz's doctrine of Wolff's development of Leibnitz's doctrine ofMonchamp, G. Monck, W. H. S. Monrad, M. J. Montaigne, M. DeMontesquieuMore, H. More, ThomasMoreauMorellyMorgan, C. L. Morgan, ThomasMorizMorley, J. Morris, G. S. MorselliMueller, W. Müller, F. A. Müller, G. E. Müller, H. Müller, JohannesMüller, MaxMünsterberg, H. Münz, W. 

NahlowskyNaigeonNatgeNatorp, P. Naturalism characteristic of modern philosophy _See also_ Mechanism, Physical Science, TeleologyNature, Philosophy of early Italian Schelling's among Schelling's followers Hegel's J. F. Fries's Herbart's _See also_ Physical ScienceNedichNees von EsenbeckNemes, E. Neo-KantiansNettleship, R. L. NeudeckerNewton, IsaacNicholNicolai, F. Nicolas of CusaNicoleNielsen, R. NiethammerNietzsche, F. NiphusNippoldNizolius, MariusNoack, L. Noiré, L. NolenNominalism in Hobbes in Locke of Berkeley of HumeNoumena _See also_ Phenomena, Things in themselvesNovalisNyblaeus, A. 

OccamOccasionalistsOischingerOken, L. OldendorpOntological argument, the in Descartes in Spinoza in Leibnitz in KantOpel, J. O. Opposites the unity of, in Nicolas of Cusa in Schelling the reconciliation and identity of, in HegelOptimism in Voltaire of Leibnitz of SchleiermacherOpzoomer, C. W. OratoriansOersted, H. C. Oswald, JamesOettingen, A. Von

Pabst, J. H. Paley, W. Pantheism of Nicolas of Cusa of Spinoza Malebranche's "Christian" in Toland Berkeley's tendency to of Holbach in Fichte in Schelling in Schleiermacher Fortlage's transcendent of Strauss the theistic school on _See also_ Hegel, PanthelismPanthelism of Fichte in Schelling of Schopenhauer _See also_ EthelismPappenheimParacelsusParkerPascal, BlaisePatritius, FranciscusPaulsen, F. PaulusPertzPessimism of Schopenhauer of HartmannPeschPestalozzi, J. H. Peters, K. Pfleiderer, E. Pfleiderer, O. Phenomena and things in themselves in Kant and representation in Kant and things in themselves in Herbart in Schopenhauer in Lotze _See also_ Noumena, Things in themselvesPhysical Science concepts of modern Newton's development of its influence on philosophy in XIX centuryPico, Francis, of MirandolaPico, John, of MirandolaPiersonPietsch, T. Planck, A. Planck, K. C. PlatnerPlatonistsPletho, G. G. PlittPloucquetPlümacher, O. Poiret, P. Pollock, F. Pomponatius, PetrusPorter, N. Positivism in Italy of Comte of Comte's followers in England in Sweden, Brazil, and Chili in GermanyPrantlPrel, K. DuPrice, RichardPriestley, J. Prowe, L. Psychology the associational the sensationalistic of Leibnitz of Wolff of Tetens Kant on rational constructive the basis of philosophy in J. F. Fries and Beneke of Beneke of Fortlage of Herbart of Comte physiological folk-psychology

 of Spencer _See also_ Ego, Mind and Body, SoulPufendorf, SamuelPünjer, B. , works by

Quaebicker, R. Qualities Primary and Secondary, so termed by Boyle Locke's doctrine of Kant's relation to Berkeley's co-ordination ofQuesnay

Rabus, L. RagniscoRamus (Pierre de la Ramée)Rationalism and Empiricism in Locke in Leibnitz in Tschirnhausen in others of the German Illuminati in relation to KantRauwenhoffRavaisson, F. Realism of Herbart the "transfigured, " of Spencer the "transcendental realism" of HartmannRée, P. RegiusRegulative and constitutive principles, in KantRehmke, J. RehnischReichlin-Meldegg, K. A. VonReicke, RReid, ThomasReiff, J. F. ReimarusReinhold, E. Reinhold, K. L. Relativity of Knowledge in Comte of Sir Wm. Hamilton of Mansel of SpencerReligion Bacon's view of Hobbes on Lord Herbert's doctrine of natural Pascal on deistic view of Hume on Voltaire on Holbach on Rousseau's view of Leibnitz on Reimarus on Lessing's developmental theory of Kant on Fichte on Schelling on Schleiermacher's philosophy of Hegel's philosophy of Beneke on Herbart's doctrine of Schopenhauer's doctrine of Comte's religion of humanity Spencer's view of Hegel's followers on Strauss on Feuerbach's doctrine of Hartmann's philosophy of _See also_ Deism, Faith, Faith and Reason, God, TheologyRémusat, C. DeRenan, E. ReneryRenouvier, C. Reuchlin, H. Reuchlin, J. Reuter, H. Reynaud, J. Ribbing, S. Ribot, Th. Riedel, O. Riehl, A. RiemannRiezler, S. Right, _see_ LawRio, J. S. DelRitschl, A. Ritter, H. RixnerRobertson, G. C. RobinetRobinet, J. B. RochollRoederRohmer, F. Romagnosi, G. Romanes, G. J. Romanticists, theRomundt, H. RoscherRöse, F. Rosenkrantz, W. Rosenkranz, K. Rosmini, A. Rothe, R. Rousseau, J. J. System ofRoyce, J. RüdigerRuge, A. Ruge, S. Ruysbroek

SahlinSt. Martin, L. C. Saint Simon, H. DeSaisset, E. Sanchez, FrancisSchaarschmidt, C. Schäffle, E. F. SchallerSchärer, E. Schasler, M. SchefflerScheiblerSchelling, F. W. J. (von) system of immediate followers of and Hegel _See also_ J. G. Fichte, Hegel, Kant, SpinozaSchelverSchematism, Kant'sSchillerSchindler, C. Schlegel, F. Schleicher, A. SchleidenSchleiermacher, F. D. E. System ofSchmid, E. Schmid, LeopoldSchmidkunz, H. Schmid-SchwarzenbergSchmidt, K. Schmidt, L. Schmidt, O. Schneider, C. M. Schneider, G. Schneider, G. H. Schneider, O. SchoenlankSchopenhauer, A. And Kant system of followers ofSchoppe (Scioppius)Schubert, F. W. Schubert, G. H. Schubert-Soldern, R. VonSchuller, H. Schultze, FritzSchulz, J. Schulze, G. E. (Aenesidemus-Schulze)Schuppe, W. Schurman, J. G. SchützSchwarz, H. Schwarz, G. E. Schwegler, A. SchwenckfeldScottish School, theSelby-BiggeSemi-Hegelians, theSemi-Kantians, theSemlerSengler, J. Sennert, D. Sensation a source of knowledge in Locke and in Hume the sole source of knowledge in Condillac Leibnitz's view of _See also_ Rationalism and Empiricism, SensationalismSensationalism in Hobbes in modern thought in general of Locke of Condillac of Bonnet of Helvetius of La Mettrie of Holbach in Italy of Feuerbach of the German positivists _See also_ Empiricism, Experience, SensationSergi, G. Seth, A. Seydel, R. SeyfarthShaftesburySherlock, T. Sibbern, F. C. SiberSiciliani, P. Sidgwick, H. Sidney, AlgernonSiebeckSigwart, Chr. VonSigwart, Chr. W. SilesiusSime, J. Simmel, G. Simon, J. Skepticism, in Montaigne in Charron in F. Sanchez in Bayle of Hume of Diderot, of D'Alembert the anti-Critical, of Schulze the Critical, of MaimonSmith, AdamSnell, K. Social Contract, the theory of, in Hobbes Hume on in Rousseau Kant onSolger, K. F. Sommer, H. Sommer, R. Soul, the, thought the essence of, in Descartes a congeries of ideas in Spinoza thought the essence of, in Malebranche, thought merely an activity of, in Locke a sum of inner states in Hume Leibnitz's monadological view of Kant on Herbart on _See also_ Ego, Immortality, Mind and BodySpace (and Time), Hobbes on in Leibnitz in Kant in Herbart in Schopenhauer in Spencer in LotzeSpaventaSpeddingSpencer, H. System ofSpicker, G. Spinoza, B. De position in modern philosophy and Descartes system of and Leibnitz and Schelling _See also_ DescartesSpirit, Schilling's philosophy of Hegel's phenomenology of his doctrine of subjective of objective of absolute recent German philosophy ofSpitta, H. Stadler, A. Stahl, F. J. Starcke, C. N. State, the, early theories of Hobbes on Spinoza on Locke on Montesquieu on Rousseau's theory of Kant's view of Fichte on Schelling on Hegel on Spencer on _See also_ Social ContractStaudinger, F. Steckelmacher, M. Steffens, H. Steffensen, K. SteinbartStein, H. VonStein, L. SteinthalStephen, LeslieStern, A. Stewart, DugaldStirling, J. H. Stirner, Max (pseudonym, cf. K. Schmidt)Stoeckl, A. Stöhr, A. Stout, G. F. Strauss, D. F. Strümpell, L. Stumpf, C. Stumpf, T. Sturm, ChristophStutzmannSuabedissenSuarez, FrancisSubstance Descartes on Spinoza on Locke on Berkeley on (material) Hume's skeptical analysis of Leibnitz's doctrine of Kant on Schopenhauer on Hartmann onSufficient Reason, the Principle of in Leibnitz in SchopenhauerSully, JamesSulzerSusemihlSuso

Taine, H. Tappan, H. P. Taubert, A. TaulerTaurellusTauteTeichmüllerTeleological Argument, the in Boyle Hume on Reimarus on Leibnitz on Kant on Herbart onTeleology minimized by modern thought rejected by modern physics in Boyle Bacon on Hobbes's denial of Descartes on Spinoza's denial of Newton on Leibnitz on Kant on in Fichte Schelling on in Hegel in Trendelenburg in Hartmann _See also_ Mechanism, Naturalism, Sufficient Reason, Teleological ArgumentTelesiusTemple, Sir WilliamTestaTetens, J. N. ThaulowTheology relation of, to philosophy in Taurellus in Campanella and science in Bacon in Leibnitz Lessing's speculative

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UeberhorstUeberweg, F. Uebinger, J. Ulrici, H. Unconditioned, the in Kant in Sir Wm. Hamilton in Mansel in Spencer _See also_ the AbsoluteUnconscious, the, Hartmann's philosophy ofUphues, G. K. 

Vacherot, E. Vaihinger, H. Valla, L. VaniniVatke, W. Veitch, J. Venetianer, M. Venn, J. VeraVicoVillersVirchow, R. Vischer, F. T. VivesVloten, J. VanVoëtiusVogelVogt, KarlVolkelt, J. Works by position ofVolkmann von VolkmarVolney (Chasseboeuf)VoltaireVorländer, F. 

WaddingtonWagner, J. J. Wagner, RichardWagner, RudolphWaitz, TheodorWallace, A. R. Wallace, WilliamWallaschek, R. Walter, J. Warburton, W. Ward, J. Watson, JohnWeber, E. H. Weber, TheodorWeigel, E. Weigel, ValentinWeiss, BrunoWeisse, C. H. WeissenbornWerner, K. Weston, S. BurnsWeygoldtWhately, RichardWhedon, D. D. Whewell, W. Whiston, W. Wildauer, T. Willmann, O. Windelband, W. Winkler, B. Witte, J. H. WohlrabeWolff, Christian system of and KantWollaston, WilliamWoolston, T. Wundt, W. Wyck, Van derWyttenbach, D. 

ZabarellaZart, G. Zeising, A. Zeller, E. Works of position ofZiegler, T. Ziller, T. Zimmer, F. Zimmermann, R. Zimmern, HelenZöllner