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diff --git a/34283-8.txt b/34283-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..339eee4 --- /dev/null +++ b/34283-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4637 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, History of Modern Philosophy, by Alfred +William Benn + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: History of Modern Philosophy + + +Author: Alfred William Benn + + + +Release Date: November 11, 2010 [eBook #34283] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY*** + + +E-text prepared by Steven Gibbs, Keith Edkins, and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) + + + +Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this + file which includes the original illustrations. + See 34283-h.htm or 34283-h.zip: + (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/34283/34283-h/34283-h.htm) + or + (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/34283/34283-h.zip) + + +Transcriber's note: + + Page numbers in curly braces (example: {25}) have been + included in the text to enable the reader to use the + index. + + A few typographical errors have been corrected; they + are listed at the end of the text. + + + +[Illustration: GIORDANO BRUNO. + +From the Statue in the Campo dei Fiori, Rome.] + +HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY + +by + +A. W. BENN, + +Author of "The History of English Rationalism in the +Nineteenth Century," Etc. + + +[Illustration: GIORDANO BRUNO. + +From the Statue in the Campo dei Fiori, Rome.] + + + + + + + +[ISSUED FOR THE RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION, LIMITED] + +London: +Watts & Co., +17 Johnson's Court, Fleet Street, E.C. +1912 + +Printed by Watts and Co., +Johnson's Court, Fleet Street, +London, E.C. + + + + +CONTENTS + + CHAPTER I. PAGE + THE PHILOSOPHICAL RENAISSANCE 1 + + CHAPTER II. + THE METAPHYSICIANS 31 + + CHAPTER III. + THE THEORISTS OF KNOWLEDGE 65 + + CHAPTER IV. + THE GERMAN IDEALISTS 101 + + CHAPTER V. + THE HUMANISTS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 124 + + BIBLIOGRAPHY 149 + + INDEX 153 + +LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS + + GIORDANO BRUNO _Frontispiece_ + + PAGE + FRANCIS BACON 13 + + RENÉ DESCARTES 34 + + BENEDICTUS SPINOZA 47 + + DAVID HUME 78 + + IMMANUEL KANT 86 + + G. W. F. HEGEL 111 + + ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER 117 + + AUGUSTE COMTE 128 + + HERBERT SPENCER 138 + + + + +{1} + +CHAPTER I. + +THE PHILOSOPHICAL RENAISSANCE + +For a thousand years after the schools of Athens were closed by Justinian +philosophy made no real advance; no essentially new ideas about the +constitution of nature, the workings of mind, or the ends of life were put +forward. It would be false to say that during this period no progress was +made. The civilisation of the Roman Empire was extended far beyond its +ancient frontiers; and, although much ground was lost in Asia and Africa, +more than the equivalent was gained in Northern Europe. Within Europe also +the gradual abolition of slavery and the increasing dignity of peaceful +labour gave a wider diffusion to culture, combined with a larger sense of +human fellowship than any but the best minds of Greece and Rome had felt. +Whether the status of women was really raised may be doubted; but the ideas +and sentiments of women began to exercise an influence on social +intercourse unknown before. And the arts of war and peace were in some ways +almost revolutionised. + +This remarkable phenomenon of movement in everything except ideas has been +explained by the influence of Christianity, or rather of Catholicism. There +is truth in the contention, but it is not the whole truth. The Church +entered into a heritage that she did not create; she defined and +accentuated tendencies that {2} long before her advent had secretly been at +work. In the West that diffusion of civilisation which is her historic +boast had been begun and carried far by the Rome whence her very name is +taken. In the East the title of orthodox by which the Greek Church is +distinguished betrays the presence of that Greek thought which moulded her +dogmas into logical shape. What is more, the very idea of right belief as a +vital and saving thing came to Christianity from Platonism, accompanied by +the persuasion that wrong belief was immoral and its promulgation a crime +to be visited by the penalty of death. + +Ecclesiastical intolerance has been made responsible for the speculative +stagnation of the Middle Ages, and it has been explained as an effect of +the belief in the future punishment of heresy by eternal torments. But in +truth the persecuting spirit was responsible for the dogma, not the dogma +for persecution. And we must look for the underlying cause of the whole +evil in the premature union of metaphysics with religion and morality first +effected by Plato, or rather by the genius of Athens working through Plato. +Indeed, on a closer examination we shall find that the slowing-down of +speculation had begun long before the advent of Christianity, and coincides +with the establishment of its headquarters at Athens, where also the first +permanent schools of philosophy were established. These schools were +distinctly religious in their character; and none was so set against +innovation as that of Epicurus, falsely supposed to have been a home of +freethought. In the last Greek system of philosophy, Neo-Platonism, +theology reigned supreme; and during the two and a-half centuries of its +existence no real advance on the teaching of Plotinus was made. {3} + +Neo-Platonism when first constituted had incorporated a large Aristotelian +element, the expulsion of which had been accomplished by its last great +master, Proclus; and Christendom took over metaphysics under what seemed a +Platonic form--the more welcome as Plato passed for giving its creeds the +independent support of pure reason. This support extended beyond a future +life and went down to the deepest mysteries of revealed faith. For, +according to the Platonic doctrine of ideas, it was quite in order that +there should be a divine unity existing independently of the three divine +persons composing it; that the idea of humanity should be combined with one +of these persons; and that the same idea, being both one with and distinct +from Adam, should involve all mankind in the guilt of his transgression. +Thus the Church started with a strong prejudice in favour of Plato which +continued to operate for many centuries, although the first great +schoolman, John Scotus Eriugena (810-877), incurred a condemnation for +heresy by adopting the pantheistic metaphysics of Neo-Platonism. + +As the Platonic doctrine of ideas came to life again in the realism, as it +was called, of scholastic philosophy, so the conflicting view of his old +opponent Aristotle was revived under the form of conceptualism. According +to this theory the genera and species of the objective world correspond to +real and permanent distinctions in the nature of things; but, apart from +the conceptions by which they are represented in the intellect of God and +man, those distinctions have no separate existence. Aristotle's philosophy +was first brought into Europe by the Mohammedan conquerors of Spain, which +became an important centre of learning in the earlier Middle Ages. Not a +few Christian scholars went there to {4} study. Latin translations were +made from Arabic versions of Aristotle, and in this way his doctrines +became more widely known to the lecture-rooms of the Catholic world. But +their derivation from infidel sources roused a prejudice against them, +still further heightened by the circumstance that an Arabian commentator, +Averroes, had interpreted the theology of the _Metaphysics_ in a +pantheistic sense. And on any sincere reading Aristotle denied the soul's +immortality which Plato had upheld. Accordingly, all through the twelfth +century Platonism still dominated religious thought, and even so late as +the early thirteenth century the study of Aristotle was still condemned by +the Church. + +Nevertheless a great revolution was already in progress. As a result of the +capture of Constantinople by the Crusaders in A.D. 1204 the Greek +manuscripts of Aristotle's writings were brought to Paris, and at a +subsequent period they were translated into Latin under the direction of +St. Thomas Aquinas, the ablest of the schoolmen, who so manipulated the +Peripatetic philosophy as to convert it from a battering-ram into a +buttress of Catholic theology--a position still officially assigned to it +at the present day. Aristotelianism, however, did not reign without a rival +even in the later Middle Ages. Aquinas was a Dominican; and the jealousy of +the competing Franciscan Order found expression in maintaining a certain +tradition of Platonism, represented in different ways by Roger Bacon +(1214-1294) and by Duns Scotus (1265-1308). In this connection we have to +note the extraordinary fertility of the British islands in eminent thinkers +during the Middle Ages. Besides the two last mentioned there is Eriugena +("born in Ireland"), John of Salisbury {5} (1115-1180), the first Humanist, +William of Ockham, and Wycliffe, the first reformer--making six in all, a +larger contribution than any other region of Europe, or indeed all the rest +of Europe put together, has made to the stars of Scholasticism. This +advantage is probably not due to any inherent genius for philosophy in the +inhabitants of these islands, but to their relative immunity from war and +to the political liberty that cannot but have been favourable to +independent thought. Five out of the six were more or less inclined to +Platonism, and their idealist or mystical tendencies were sometimes +associated with the same practicality that distinguished their master. The +sixth, commonly called Occam (died about 1349), is famous as the champion +of Nominalism--that is, of the doctrine that genera and species have no +real existence either in nature or in mind; there are only individuals more +or less resembling one another. He is the author of the famous saying--the +sole legacy of Scholasticism to common thought: "Entities ought not to be +gratuitously multiplied" (entia non sunt præter necessitatem +multiplicanda). + +The capture of Constantinople by the Crusaders had led to Aristotle's +triumph in the thirteenth century. Two hundred years later the conquering +Ottoman advance on the same city was the immediate cause of his overthrow. +For the Byzantine scholars who fled for help and refuge to Italy brought +with them the manuscripts of Plato and Plotinus, and these soon became +known to Western Europe through the Latin translations of Marsilio Ficino. +On its literary side the Platonic revival fell in admirably with the +Humanism to which the Schoolmen had long been intensely distasteful. And +the religious movement that preceded {6} Luther's Reformation found a +welcome ally in Neo-Platonic mysticism. At the same time the invention of +printing, by opening the world of books to non-academic readers, vastly +widened the possibilities of independent thought. And the Reformation, by +discrediting the scholastic theology in Northern Europe, dealt another blow +at the system with which it had been associated by Aquinas. + +It has been supposed that the discovery of America and the circumnavigation +of the globe contributed also to the impending philosophical revolution. +But the true theory of the earth's figure formed the very foundation of +Aristotle's cosmology, and was as well known to Dante as to ourselves. Made +by a fervent Catholic, acting under the patronage of the Catholic queen +_par excellence_, the discovery of Columbus increased the prestige of +Catholicism by opening a new world to its missions and adding to the wealth +of its supporters in the Old World. + +The decisive blow to medieval ideas came from another quarter--from the +Copernican astronomy. What the true theory of the earth's motion meant for +philosophy has not always been rightly understood. It seems to be commonly +supposed that the heliocentric system excited hostility because it degraded +the earth from her proud position as centre of the universe. But the +reverse is true. According to Aristotle and his scholastic followers, the +centre of the universe is the lowest and least honourable, the +circumference the highest and most distinguished position in it. And that +is why earth, as the vilest of the four elements, tends to the centre; +while fire, being the most precious, flies upward. Again, the incorruptible +æther of which the heavens are composed shows its eternal character {7} by +moving for ever round in a circle of which God, as Prime Mover, occupies +the outermost verge. And this metaphysical topography is faithfully +followed by Dante, who even improves on it by placing the worst criminals +(that is, the rebels and traitors--Satan, with Judas and Brutus and +Cassius) in the eternal ice at the very centre of the earth. Such fancies +were incompatible with the new astronomy. No longer cold and dead, our +earth might henceforth take her place among the stars, animated like +them--if animated they were--and suggesting by analogy that they too +supported teeming multitudes of reasonable inhabitants. + +But the transposition of values did not end here. Aristotle's whole +philosophy had been based on a radical antithesis between the sublunary and +the superlunary spheres--the world of growth, decay, vicissitude, and the +world of everlasting realities. In the sublunary sphere, also, it +distinguished sharply between the Forms of things, which were eternal, and +the Matter on which they were imposed, an intangible, evanescent thing +related to Form as Possibility to Actuality. We know that these two +convenient categories are logically independent of the false cosmology that +may or may not have suggested their world-wide application. But the +immediate effect of having it denied, or even doubted, was greatly to exalt +the credit of Matter or Power at the expense of Form or Act. + +The first to draw these revolutionary inferences from the Copernican theory +was Giordano Bruno (1548-1600). Born at Nola, a south Italian city not far +from Naples, Bruno entered the Dominican Order before the age of fifteen, +and on that occasion exchanged his baptismal name of Filippo for that by +which he has ever since been known. Here he became acquainted with the {8} +whole of ancient and medieval philosophy, besides the Copernican astronomy, +then not yet condemned by the Church. At the early age of eighteen he first +came into collision with the authorities; and at twenty-eight (1576) +[McIntyre, pp. 9-10] he openly questioned the chief characteristic dogmas +of Catholicism, was menaced with an action for heresy, and fled from the +convent. The pursuit must have been rather perfunctory, for Bruno found +himself free to spend two years wandering from one Italian city to another, +earning a precarious livelihood by tuition and authorship. Leaving Italy at +last, rather from a desire to push his fortunes abroad than from any fear +of molestation, and finding France too hot to hold him, he tried Geneva for +a little while, but, on being given to understand that he could only stay +on the condition of embracing Calvinism, returned to France, where he lived +first for two years as Professor of Philosophy at Toulouse, and three more +in a somewhat less official position at Paris. Thence, in the train of the +French ambassador, he passed to England, where his two years' sojourn seems +to have been the happiest and most fruitful period of his restless career. +It was cut short by his chief's return to Paris. But the philosopher's +fearless advocacy of Copernicanism made that bigoted capital impossible. +The truth, however, seems to be that Bruno never could hit it off with +anyone or any society; and the next five years, spent in trying to make +himself acceptable at one German university after another, are a record of +hopeless failure. Finally, in an evil hour, he goes to Venice at the +invitation of a young noble, Mocenigo, who, in revenge for disappointed +expectations, betrays him to the Inquisition. Questioned about his +heresies, Bruno showed perfect willingness to accept all the theological +dogmas that {9} he had formerly denied. Whether he withdrew his +retractation on being transferred from a Venetian to a Roman prison does +not appear, as the Roman depositions are not forthcoming. Neither is it +clear why so long a delay as six years (1594-1600) was granted to the +philosopher when such short work was made of other heretics. It seems most +probable that Bruno, while pliant enough on questions of religious belief, +remained inflexible in maintaining the infinity of inhabited worlds. When +the final condemnation was read out, he told the judges that he heard it +with less fear than they felt in pronouncing it. In the customary +euphemistic terms they had sent him to death by fire. At the stake, when +the crucifix was held up to him, he turned away his eyes--with what +thoughts we cannot tell. There is a monument to the heroic thinker at Nola, +and another in the Campo dei Fiori on the spot where he suffered at Rome, +raised against the strongest protests of the ecclesiastical authorities. + +The Greek-Italian philosophers--the Pythagoreans and Parmenides--had +introduced the idea of finiteness or Limitation as a necessary condition of +reality and perfection into thought. From them it passed over to Plato and +Aristotle, who made it dominant in the schools. Epicurus and Lucretius had, +indeed, carried on the older Ionian tradition of infinite atoms and +infinite worlds dispersed through infinite space; but their philosophy was +practically atheistic, and the Church condemned it as both heretical and +false. Probably the discovery of the earth's globular shape had first +suggested the idea of a finite universe to Parmenides; at any rate, the +discovery of the earth's motion suggested the idea of an infinite universe +to his Greek-souled Italian successor; or rather it was {10} the break-up +of Aristotle's spherical world by Copernicanism that threw Bruno back--as +he gives us himself to understand--on the older Ionian cosmologies, with +their assumption of infinite space and infinite worlds. In this reference +Bruno went far beyond Copernicus, and even Kepler; for both had assumed, in +deference to current opinion, that the fixed stars were equidistant from +the solar system, and formed a single sphere enclosing it on all sides. He, +on the contrary, anticipated modern astronomy in conceiving the stars as so +many suns dispersed without assignable limits through space, and each +surrounded by inhabited planets. + +Infinite space had been closely associated by Democritus and Epicurus with +infinite atoms; and the next great step taken by Bruno was to rehabilitate +atomism as a necessary concept of modern science. He figured the atoms as +very minute spheres of solid earthy matter, forming by their combinations +the framework of visible bodies. But their combinations are by no means +fortuitous, as Democritus had impiously supposed; nor do they move through +an absolute void. All space is filled with an ocean of liquid æther, which +is no other than the quintessence of which Aristotle's celestial spheres +were composed. Only in Bruno's system it takes the place of that First +Matter which is the extreme antithesis of the disembodied Form personified +in the Prime Mover, God. And here we come to that reversal of cosmic values +brought about by the reversal of the relations between the earth and sun +which Copernicus had effected. The primordial Matter, so far from passively +receiving the Forms imposed on it from without, has an infinite capacity +for evolving Forms from its own bosom; and, so far {11} from being +unspiritual, is itself the universal spirit, the creative and animating +soul of the world. The First Matter, Form, Energy, Life, and Reason are +identified with Nature, Nature with the Universe, and the Universe with +God. + +So far all is clear, if not convincing. It is otherwise with the theory of +Monads. This is only expounded in Bruno's Latin works, for the most part +ill-written and hopelessly obscure. It seems possible that by the monads +Bruno sometimes means the infinitesimal parts into which the æther of space +may conceivably be divided. Each of these possesses consciousness, and +therefore may be considered as reflecting and representing the whole +universe. A number of monads, or rather a continuous portion of the æther +surrounding and interpenetrating a group of atoms, endows them with the +forms and qualities of elementary bodies, ascending gradually through +vegetal and animal organisations to human beings. But the animating process +does not stop with man. The earth, with the other planets, the sun, and all +the stars, are also monads on the largest scale, with reasonable souls, +just as Aristotle thought. In fact, the old mythology whence he derived the +idea repeats itself in his great enemy Bruno. + +Beyond and above all these partial unities is the Monas Monadum--the +supreme unity, the infinite God who is the soul of the infinite universe. +Doubtless there is here a reminiscence of the Neo-Platonic One, the +ineffable Absolute, beyond all existence, yet endowed with the infinite +power whence all existence proceeds. Bruno had learned from Cardinal +Nicolas of Cusa--a Copernican before Copernicus--to recognise the principle +of Heracleitus that opposites are one; and in this instance he applies it +with brilliant audacity; for every infinitesimal {12} part of the +space-filling æther is no less the soul of the universe than the Monad of +Monads itself. And both agree in being non-existent in the sense of being +transfinite, since there can be no sum of infinity and no animated +mathematical points. + +From Anaximander to Plotinus there is hardly a great Greek thinker whose +influence cannot be traced in the system of Giordano Bruno. And while he +represents the philosophical Renaissance in this eminent degree, he heads +the two lines of speculation which, separately or combined, run through the +whole history of modern metaphysics--the monistic, and what is now called +the pluralistic tendency. With none, except, perhaps, with Hegel, have the +two been perfectly balanced; and in Bruno himself the leaning is distinctly +towards plurality, his Supreme Monad being a mere survival from the +Neo-Platonic One. + +FRANCIS BACON. + +Francis Bacon (1561-1626) was by profession a lawyer, by taste a scientific +inquirer, by character a seeker after wealth and power, by natural genius +an immortal master of words. He began life as the friend, adviser, and +client of Elizabeth's favourite, the Earl of Essex. When that unfortunate +courtier, in disregard of his warnings, rushed into a treasonable +enterprise, Bacon appeared as one of the most zealous of the counsel for +the prosecution. Strictly speaking, this may have been his duty as a loyal +subject of the Queen; it was hardly his duty, even on the Queen's +commission, after Essex's execution, to assist in the composition of a +pamphlet blackening the memory of his former friend and patron. In the next +reign Bacon paid assiduous court to James and his favourites. {13} + +[Illustration: FRANCIS BACON. + +(_Copyright B. P. C._)] + +{14} When the first of these, Somerset, fell and was tried on a charge of +murder, he conducted the prosecution, and, finding the evidence +insufficient, suggested to James that the prisoner should be entrapped into +a confession by dangling a false promise of forgiveness before his eyes. +Bacon owed his final exaltation to Buckingham, and as Lord Keeper allowed +himself to be made the tool of that bad man for the perversion of justice. +A suit was brought before him by a young man against a fraudulent trustee +(his own uncle) for the restitution of a sum of money. Bacon gave sentence +for the plaintiff. Buckingham then intervened with a demand that the case +should be retried. "Upon this Bacon saw the parties privately, and, +annulling all the deliberate decisions of the Court, compelled the youth to +assent to the ceasing of all proceedings, and to accept" a smaller sum than +he was entitled to (E. A. Abbott). On another occasion he exercised his +judicial authority in a way that did not square with Buckingham's wishes, +but quite legitimately and without any consciousness of giving offence; +whereupon the insolent favourite addressed him in a letter filled with +outrageous abuse, to which Bacon replied in terms of abject submission. +This meanness had its reward, for in 1618 the philosopher became Lord +Chancellor. + +After a three years' tenure Bacon was flung from his high position by a +charge of judicial corruption, to the truth of every count in which he +confessed. The question is very complicated, obscure, and much +controverted, not admitting of discussion within the limits here assigned. +On the subject of Bacon's truthfulness, however, a word must be said. The +Chancellor admitted having taken presents from suitors, but {15} denied +having ever let his judgments be influenced thereby; and his word seems to +be generally accepted as a sufficient exoneration. But its value may be +doubted in view of two statements quoted by Dean Church. Of these "one was +made in the House of Commons by Sir George Hastings, a member of the House, +who had been the channel of Awbry's gift [made to the Chancellor _pendente +lite_], that when he had told Bacon that if questioned he must admit it, +Bacon's answer was: 'George, if you do so, I must deny it, upon my +honour--upon my oath.' The other was that he had given an opinion in favour +of some claim of the Masters in Chancery, for which he received £1,200, and +with which he said that all the judges agreed--an assertion which all the +judges denied. Of these charges there is no contradiction." The denial of +Bacon that he ever allowed his judgments to be influenced by bribes, and +his assertion that he was the justest judge since his own father, cannot, +then, count for much. As to the plea that the justice of his sentences was +never challenged, who was to challenge it? The successful suitor would hold +his tongue; and the unsuccessful suitor could hardly be expected to +complete his own ruin by going to law again on the strength of the +Chancellor's condemnation. + +Bacon, at any rate, knew quite well that to take presents before judgment +was wrong and criminal, as his answer to Egerton sufficiently shows--an +answer which also fully disposes of the plea that to take such presents was +the common custom of the age. Moreover, had such been the common custom, +Bacon might have taken his trial and pleaded it as a sufficient apology or +extenuation for his own conduct. This would have been a somewhat more +dignified course {16} than the one he actually pursued, which was to plead +guilty to all the charges, throwing himself on the mercy of the Lords. It +has been suggested that he did this at the desire of his powerful patrons, +whose malpractices might have been brought to light by a public +investigation. As his punishment was immediately remitted, some arrangement +with the King and Buckingham seems probable. But for an innocent man to +have saved himself by a false acknowledgment of guilt would, as Macaulay +shows, have been still more infamous than to take bribes. + +The desperate efforts of some apologists to whitewash Bacon are apparently +due to a very exaggerated estimate of his services to mankind. Other +critics give themselves the pleasure of painting what has been called a +Rembrandt portrait, with noon on the forehead and night at the heart. And a +third class argue from a rotten morality to a rotten intelligence. In fact, +Bacon as little deserves to be called the wisest and greatest as the +meanest of mankind. He really loved humanity, and tried hard to serve it, +devoting a truly philosophical intellect to that end. The service was to +consist in an immense extension of man's power over nature, to be obtained +by a complete knowledge of her secrets; and this knowledge he hoped to win +by reforming the methods of scientific investigation. Unfortunately, +intellect alone proved unequal to that mighty task. Bacon passes, and not +without good grounds, for a great upholder of the principle that truth can +only be learned by experience. But his philosophy starts by setting that +principle at defiance. He who took all knowledge for his province omitted +from his survey the rather important subject of knowledge itself, its +limits and its laws. Had his attention {17} been drawn that way, the very +first requisite, on empirical principles, would have been to take stock of +the leading truths already ascertained. But the enormous vanity of the +amateur reformer seems to have persuaded him that these amounted to little +or nothing. The later Renaissance was an age of intense scientific +activity, conditioned, in the first instance, by a revival of Greek +learning. Already before the middle of the sixteenth century great advance +had been made in algebra, trigonometry, astronomy, mineralogy, botany, +anatomy, and physiology. Before the publication of the _Novum Organum_ +Napier had invented logarithms, Galileo was reconstituting physics, Gilbert +had created the science of magnetism, and Harvey had discovered the +circulation of the blood. These were facts that Bacon took no pains to +study; he either ignores or slights or denies the work done by his +illustrious predecessors and contemporaries. That he rejected the +Copernican theory with scorn is an exaggeration; but he never accepted it, +notwithstanding arguments that the best astronomers of his time found +convincing; and the longer he lived the more unfavourable became his +opinion of its merits. And it is certain that Tycho Brahe's wonderful mass +of observations, with the splendid generalisations based on them by Kepler, +are never mentioned in his writings. Now what really ruined Aristotelianism +was the heliocentric astronomy, as Bruno perfectly saw; and ignorance of +this left Bacon after all in the bonds of medieval philosophy. + +We have seen in studying Bruno that the very soul of Aristotle's system was +his distinction between form and matter, and this distinction Bacon +accepted without examination from scholasticism. The purpose of his {18} +life was to ascertain by what combination of forms each particular body was +constituted, and then, by artificially superinducing them on some portion +of matter, to call the desired substance into existence. His celebrated +inductive method was devised as a means to that end. To discover the forms +"we are instructed first to draw up exhaustive tables of the phenomena and +forms under investigation, and then to exclude from our list any 'form' +which does not invariably co-exist with the phenomenon of which _the_ form +is sought. For example, if we are trying to discover the form of heat it +will not do to adduce 'celestial nature'; for, though the sun's light is +hot, that of the moon is cold. After a series of such _exclusions_, Bacon +believed that a single form would finally remain to be the invariable cause +of the phenomenon investigated, and of nothing else" (F. C. S. Schiller). + +As Dr. Schiller observes, this _method of exclusions_ is not new; nor, +indeed, does Bacon claim to have originated it; at least he observes in his +_Novum Organum_ that it had been already employed by Plato to a certain +extent for the purpose of discussing definitions and ideas. And elsewhere +he praises Plato as "a man (and one that surveyed all things from a lofty +cliff) for having discerned in his doctrine of Ideas that Forms were the +true object of knowledge; howsoever he lost the fruit of this most true +opinion by considering and trying to apprehend Forms as absolutely +abstracted from matter, whence it came that he turned aside to theological +speculations." Bacon must have known that this reproach does not apply to +Aristotle; as, indeed, the very schoolmen knew that he did not--except in +the single case of God--give Forms a separate {19} existence. But, probably +from jealousy, he specially hated Aristotle, and in this particular +instance the Stagirite more particularly excited his hostility by +identifying Forms with Final Causes. These Bacon rather contemptuously +handed over to the sole cognisance of theology as consecrated virgins +bearing no fruit. As a point of scientific method this condemnation of +teleology is quite unjustified even in the eyes of inquirers who reject the +theological argument from design. To a Darwinian, purpose means survival +value, and the parts of an organism are so many utilities evolved in the +action and reaction between living beings and their environment. But Bacon +disliked any theory tending to glorify the existing arrangements of nature +as perfect and unalterable achievements, for the good reason that it +threatened to discountenance his own scheme for practically creating the +world over again with exclusive reference to the good of humanity. Thus in +his Utopia, the _New Atlantis_, there are artificial mines, producing +artificial metals, plants raised without seeds, contrivances for turning +one tree or plant into another, for prolonging the lives of animals after +the removal of particular organs, for making "a number of kinds of +serpents, worms, flies, fishes of putrefaction; whereof some are advanced +to be perfect creatures like beasts or birds"; with flying-machines, +submarines, and perpetual motions--in short, a general anticipation of +Jules Verne and Mr. H. G. Wells. + +Such dreams, however, do not entitle Bacon to be regarded as a true prophet +of modern science and modern mechanical inventions. In themselves his ideas +do not go beyond the magic of the Middle Ages, or rather of all ages. The +original thing was his {20} Method; and this Method, considered as a means +for surprising the secrets of nature, we know to be completely chimerical, +because there are no such Forms as he imagined, to be enucleated by +induction, with or without the Method of Exclusion. The truth is that the +inductive method which he borrowed from Socrates and Plato was originally +created by Athenian philosophy for the humanistic studies of law, morality, +æsthetics, and psychology. Physical science, on the other hand, should be +approached, as the Greeks rightly felt, through the door of mathematics, an +instrument of whose potency the great Chancellor notoriously had no +conception. Thus his prodigious powers would have been much more usefully +devoted to moral philosophy. As it is, the _Essays_ alone remain to show +what great things he might have done by limiting himself to the subjects +with which they deal. The famous logical and physical treatises, the _Novum +Organum_ and the _De Augmentis_, notwithstanding their wealth and splendour +of language, are to us at the present day less living than the fragments of +early Greek thought, than most of Plato, than much of Aristotle, than +Atomism as expounded by Lucretius. + +Macaulay rests his claim of the highest place among philosophers for Bacon +not on his inductive theory, to which the historian rightly denies any +novelty, but on the new purpose and direction that the search for knowledge +is assumed to have received from his teaching. On this view the whole of +modern science has been created by the desire to convert nature into an +instrument for the satisfaction of human wants--an ambition dating from the +publication of the _Novum Organum_. The claim will not stand, for two +reasons. The first is that the great movement of modern science {21} began +at least half a century before Bacon's birth, growing rapidly during his +life, but without his knowledge, and continuing its course without being +perceptibly accelerated by his intervention ever since. The one man of +science who most commonly passes for his disciple is Robert Boyle +(1627-1691). But Boyle did not read the _Novum Organum_ before he was +thirty, whereas, residing at Florence before fifteen, he received a +powerful stimulus from the study of Galileo. And his chemistry was based on +the atomic theory which Bacon rejected. + +The second reason for not accepting Macaulay's claim is that in modern +Europe no less than in ancient Greece the great advances in science have +only been made by those who loved knowledge for its own sake, or, if the +expression be preferred, simply for the gratification of their intellectual +curiosity. No doubt their discoveries have added enormously to the +utilities of life; but such advantages have been gained on the sole +condition of not making them the primary end in view. The labours of +Bacon's own contemporaries, Kepler and Gilbert, have led to the navigation +of the sea by lunar distances, and to the various industrial applications +of electro-magnetism; but they were undertaken without a dream of these +remote results. And in our own day the greatest of scientific triumphs, +which is the theory of evolution, was neither worked out with any hope of +material benefits to mankind nor has it offered any prospect of them as +yet. The same may be said of modern sidereal astronomy. From the humanist +point of view it would not be easy to justify the enormous expenditure of +energy, money, and time that this science has absorbed. The schoolmen have +been much ridiculed for discussing the question how {22} many angels could +dance on the point of a needle; but as a purely speculative problem it +surely merits as much attention as the total number of the stars, the rates +of their velocities, or the law of their distribution through space. A +schoolman might even have urged in justification of his curiosity that some +of us might feel a reasonable curiosity about the exact size--if size they +have--of beings with whom we hope to associate one day; whereas by the +confession of the astronomers themselves neither we nor our descendants can +ever hope to verify by direct measurement the precarious guesses of their +science in this branch of celestial statics and dynamics. + +THOMAS HOBBES. + +It has been shown that one momentous effect of the Copernican astronomy, as +interpreted by Giordano Bruno, was to reverse the relative importance +ascribed in Aristotle's philosophy to the two great categories of Power and +Act, giving to Power a value and dignity of which it had been stripped by +the judgment of Plato and Aristotle. Even Epicurus, when he rehabilitated +infinite space, had been careful as a moralist to urge the expediency of +placing a close limitation on human desires, denouncing the excesses of +avarice and ambition more mildly but not less decisively than the +contemporary Stoic school. Thus Lucretius describes his master as +travelling beyond the flaming walls of the world only that he may bring us +back a knowledge of the fixed barrier set by the very laws of existence to +our aspirations and hopes. + +The classic revival of the Renaissance did not bring back the Greek spirit +of moderation. On the contrary, the new world, the new astronomy, the new +monarchy, {23} and the new religion combined to create such a sense of +Power, in contradistinction to Act, as the world had never before known. +For us this new feeling has received its most triumphant artistic +expression from Shakespeare and Milton, for France from Rabelais, for Italy +from Ariosto and Michelangelo. In philosophy Bacon strikes the same note +when he values knowledge as a source of power--knowledge which for Greek +philosophy meant rather a lesson in self-restraint. And this idea receives +a further development from Bacon's chief successor in English philosophy, +Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), in whose system love of power figures as the +very essence of human nature, the self-conscious manifestation of that +Motion which is the real substance of the physical world. + +Hobbes was a precocious child, and received a good school training; but the +five years he spent at Oxford added nothing to his information, and a +continental tour with the young heir of the Cavendishes had no other effect +than to convince him of the general contempt into which the scholasticism +still taught at Oxford had fallen. On returning to England, he began his +studies over again in the Cavendish library, acquiring a thorough +familiarity with the classic literature of Greece and Rome, a deep hatred +(imbibed through Thucydides) of democracy, and a genuinely antique theory +that the State should be supreme in religious no less than in civil +matters. Amid these studies Hobbes occasionally enjoyed the society of +Bacon, then spending his last years in the retirement of Gorhambury. As +secretary and Latin translator he proved serviceable to the ex-Chancellor, +but remained quite unaffected by his inductive and experimental philosophy. +Indeed, the determining impulse of his {24} speculative activity came from +the opposite quarter. Going abroad once more as travelling tutor, at the +age of forty, he chanced on a copy of Euclid in a gentleman's library lying +open at the famous Forty-Seventh Proposition. His first impulse was to +reject the theorem as impossible; but, on going backwards from proposition +to proposition, he laid down the book not only convinced, but "in love with +geometry." + +Beginning so late in life, his ulterior studies led Hobbes into the belief +that he had squared the circle, besides the far more pernicious error of +applying the deductive method of geometry to the solution of political +problems. Could he and Bacon have exchanged philosophies, the brilliant +faculties of each might have been employed to better purpose. The +categories of Form and Matter, combined with the logic of elimination and +tentative generalisation, would have found a fitting field for their +application in the familiar facts of human nature. But those facts refused +to be treated as so many wheels, pulleys, and cords in a machine for +crushing the life out of society and transmitting the will of a single +despot unresisted through its whole extent; for such is a faithful picture +of what a well-governed community, as Hobbes conceived it, ought to be. +During his second residence abroad he had become acquainted with the +physical philosophy of Galileo--the theory that regards every change in the +external or phenomenal world as a mere rearrangement of matter and motion, +matter being an aggregate of independent molecules held together by +mechanical pressure and impact. The component parts of this aggregate +become known to us by the impressions their movements produce on our +senses, traces of which {25} are preserved in memory, and subsequently +recalled by association. Language consists of signs conventionally affixed +to such images; only the signs, standing as they do for all objects of a +certain sort, have a universal value, not possessed by the original +sensations, through which reasoning becomes possible. Hobbes had evidently +fallen in love with algebra as well as with geometry; and it is on the type +of algebraic reasoning--in other words, on the type of rigorous +deduction--that his logic is constructed. And such a view of the way in +which knowledge advances seemed amply justified by the scientific triumphs +of his age. But his principle that all motion originates in antecedent +motion, although plausible in itself and occasionally revived by ingenious +speculators, has not been verified by modern science. Gravitation, +cohesion, and chemical affinity have, so far, to be accepted as facts not +resoluble into more general facts. Hobbes died before the great discoveries +of Newton which first turned away men's minds from the purely mechanical +interpretation of energy. + +That mechanical interpretation led our philosopher to reject Aristotle's +notion of sociality as an essentially human characteristic. To him this +seemed a mere occult quality, the substitution of a word for an +explanation. The counter-view put forth in his great work, _Leviathan_, is +commonly called atomistic. But it would be gross flattery to compare the +ultimate elements of society, as Hobbes conceived them, to the molecules of +modern science, which attract as well as repel each other; or even with the +Democritean atoms, which are at least neutral. According to him, the +tendency to self-preservation, shared by men with all other beings, takes +the form of an insatiable appetite {26} for power, leading each individual +to pursue his own aggrandisement at the cost of any loss or suffering to +the rest. And he tries to prove the permanence of this impulse by referring +to the precautions against robbery taken by householders and travellers. +Aristotle had much more justly mentioned the kindnesses shown to travellers +as a proof of how widely goodwill is diffused. Our countryman, with all his +acuteness, strangely ignores the necessity as a matter of prudence of going +armed and locking the door at night, even if the robbers only amounted to +one in a thousand of the population. Modern researches have shown that +there are very primitive societies where the assumed war of all against +each is unknown, predatory conflicts being a mark of more advanced +civilisation, and the cause rather than the effect of anti-social impulses. + +Granting an original state of anarchy and internecine hostility, there is, +according to Hobbes, only one way out of it, which is a joint resolution of +the whole community to surrender their rights of individual sovereignty +into the hands of one man, who thenceforth becomes absolute ruler of the +State, with authority to defend its citizens against mutual aggressions, +and the whole community against attacks from a foreign Power. This +agreement constitutes the famous Social Contract, of which so much was to +be heard during the next century and a-half. It holds as between the +citizens themselves, but not between the subjects and their sovereign, for +that would be admitting a responsibility which there is no power to +enforce. And anyone refusing to obey the sovereign justly forfeits his +life; for he thereby returns to the State of Nature, where any man that +likes may kill his neighbour if he can. + +All this theory of an original institution of the State {27} by contract +impresses a modern reader as utterly unhistorical. But its value, if any, +does not depend on its historical truth. Even if the remote ancestors of +the seventeenth-century Europeans had surrendered all their individual +rights, with certain trifling exceptions, into the hands of an autocrat, no +sophistry could show that their mutual engagements were binding on the +subjects of Charles I. and Louis XIV. And it is really on expediency, +understood in the largest sense, that the claims of the New Monarchy are +based by Hobbes. What he maintains is that nothing short of a despotic +government exercised by one man can save society from relapsing into chaos. +But even under this amended form the theory remains amenable to historical +criticism. Had Hobbes pursued his studies beyond Thucydides, he would have +found that other polities besides the Athenian democracy broke down at the +hour of trial. Above all, Roman Imperialism, which seems to have been his +ideal, failed to secure its subjects either against internal disorder or +against foreign invasion. + +Democracy, however, was not the sole or the worst enemy dreaded by the +author of _Leviathan_ as a competitor with his "mortal god." In the +frontispiece of that work the deified monarch who holds the sword erect +with his right hand grasps the crozier with his left, thus typifying the +union of the spiritual and temporal powers in the same person. The +publicists of the Italian Renaissance, with their classical ideals, had, +indeed, been as anti-papal as the Protestants; and the political disorders +fomented by the agents of the Catholic reaction during the last hundred +years had given Hobbes an additional reason for perpetuating their point of +view. Meanwhile another menace to {28} public order had presented itself +from an opposite quarter. Calvinism had created a new spiritual power based +on the free individual interpretation of Scripture, in close alliance with +the alleged rights of conscience and with the spirit of republican liberty. +Each creed in turn had attacked the Stuart monarchy, and the second had +just effected its overthrow. Therefore, to save the State it was necessary +that religious creeds, no less than codes of conduct, should be dictated by +the secular authority, enslaving men's minds as well as their bodies. + +By the dialectic irony of the speculative movement, this attempt to fetter +opinion was turned into an instrument for its more complete emancipation. +In order to discredit the pretensions of the religious zealots, Hobbes made +a series of attacks on the foundations of their faith, mostly by way of +suggestion and innuendo--no more being possible under the conditions then +obtaining---but with such effect that, according to Macaulay, "for many +years the _Leviathan_ was the gospel of cold-blooded and hard-headed +unbelievers." That one who made religious belief a matter to be fixed by +legislation could be in any sense a Christian seems most unlikely. He +professed, with what sincerity we know not, to regard the existence of God +as something only a fool could deny. But his philosophy from beginning to +end forms a rigorously-thought-out system of materialism which any atheist, +if otherwise it satisfied him, might without inconsistency accept. + +On the meeting of the Long Parliament, Hobbes again left England for the +Continent, where he remained for eleven years. But his principles were no +more to the taste of the exiled royalists than of {29} their opponents. He +therefore returned once more to England, made his submission to the +Parliament, and spent the rest of his days, practically unmolested by +either party, under the Commonwealth and the Restoration until his death in +1679 at the age of ninety-one. + +It may be said of Hobbes, as of Bacon, that the intellect at work is so +amazing and the mass of literary performance so imposing that the illusions +of historians about the value of their contributions to the progress of +thought are excusable. Nevertheless, it cannot be too distinctly stated +that the current or academic estimate of these great men as having effected +a revolution in physical and moral science is wrong. They stand as much +apart from the true line of evolution as do the gigantic saurians of a +remote geological period whose remains excite our wonder in museums of +natural history. Their systems proved as futile as the monarchies of Philip +II. and of Louis XIV. Bacon's dreams are no more related to the coming +victories of science than Raleigh's El Dorado was to the future colonial +empire of Britain. Hobbes had better fortune than Strafford, in so far as +he kept his head on his shoulders; but the logic of his absolutism +shrivelled up under the sun of English liberty like the great Minister's +policy of Thorough. + +The theory of a Social Contract is a speculative idea of the highest +practical importance. But the idea of contract as the foundation of morals +goes back to Epicurus, and it is assumed in a more developed form by +Hooker's _Ecclesiastical Polity_. Its potency as a revolutionary instrument +comes from the reinterpretations of Locke and Rousseau, which run directly +counter to the assumptions of the _Leviathan_. {30} + +Hobbes shares with Bacon the belief that all knowledge comes from +experience, besides making it clearer than his predecessor that experience +of the world comes through external sense alone. Here also there can be no +claim to originality, for more than one school of Greek philosophy had said +the same. As an element of subsequent thought, more importance belongs to +the idea of Power, which was to receive its full development from Spinoza; +but only in association with other ideas derived from the philosopher whom +we have next to examine, the founder of modern metaphysics, Descartes. + + * * * * * + + +{31} + +CHAPTER II. + +THE METAPHYSICIANS + +DESCARTES, MALEBRANCHE, SPINOZA, LEIBNIZ. + +René Descartes (1596-1650) was a Frenchman, born in Touraine, and belonging +by family to the inferior nobility. Educated at the Jesuit college of La +Flèche, he early acquired a distaste for the scholastic philosophy, or at +least for its details; the theology of scholasticism, as we shall see, left +a deep impression on him through life. On leaving college he took up +mathematics, varied by a short plunge into the dissipations of Paris. Some +years of military service as a volunteer with the Catholic armies at the +beginning of the Thirty Years' War enabled him to travel and see the world. +Returning to Paris, he resumed his studies, but found them seriously +interrupted by the tactless bores who, as we know from Molière's amusing +comedy _Les Fâcheux,_ long continued to infest French society. To escape +their assiduities Descartes, who prized solitude before all things, fled +the country. The inheritance of an independent income enabled the +philosopher to live where he liked; and Holland became, with a few +interruptions, his chosen residence for the next twenty years (1629-49). +Even here frequent changes of residence and occasional concealment of his +address were necessary in order to elude the visits of importunate +admirers. With all his unsociability there seems to have {32} been +something singularly magnetic about the personality of Descartes; yet he +only fell in with one congenial spirit, the Princess Elizabeth, daughter of +the unfortunate Winter King and granddaughter of our James I. Possessing to +the fullest extent the intellectual brilliancy and the incomparable charm +of the Stuart family, this great lady impressed the lonely thinker as the +only person who ever understood his philosophy. + +Another royal friendship brought his career to an untimely end. Queen +Christina of Sweden, the gifted and restless daughter of Gustavus Adolphus, +heard of Descartes, and invited him to her Court. On his arrival she sent +for the pilot who had brought the illustrious stranger to Stockholm and +questioned him about his passenger. "Madame," he replied, "it is not a man +whom I conducted to your Majesty, but a demi-god. He taught me more in +three weeks of the science of seamanship and of winds and navigation than I +had learned in the sixty years I had been at sea" (Miss E. S. Haldane's +_Life of René Descartes_). The Queen fully came up to the expectations of +her visitor, in whose eyes she had no fault but an unfortunate tendency to +waste her time on learning Greek. Besides her other merits, she possessed +"a sweetness and goodness which made men devoted to her service." It soon +appeared that, as with others of the same rank, this was only the veneer of +a heartless selfishness. Christina, who was an early riser, required his +attendance in her library to give her lessons in philosophy at five o'clock +in the morning. Descartes was by habit a very late riser. Besides, he had +not even a lodging in the royal palace, but was staying at the French +Embassy, and in going there "had to pass over a long bridge which was +always bitterly cold." The cold {33} killed him. He had arrived at +Stockholm in October, and meant to leave in January; but remained at the +urgent request of the Queen, who, however, made no change in the hour of +their interviews, although that winter was one of the severest on record. +At the beginning of February, 1650, he fell ill and died of inflammation of +the lungs on the 11th, in the fifty-fourth year of his age. + +Descartes had the physical courage which Hobbes lacked; but he seems, like +Bacon, to have been a moral coward. The most striking instance of this is +that, on hearing of Galileo's condemnation for teaching the heliocentric +astronomy, he withheld from publication and had even thoughts of destroying +a work of his own in which the same doctrine was maintained. This was at a +time when he was living in a country where there could be no question of +personal danger from the Inquisition. But something of the same weakness +shows itself in his running away from France to escape those intrusions on +his studious retirement which one would think might have been checked by +letting it be known with sufficient firmness that his hours could not be +wasted on idle conversation. And we have seen how at last his life was lost +for no better reason than the dread of giving offence to Queen Christina. + +It seems strange that a character so unheroic should figure among the great +emancipators of human thought. In fact, Descartes's services to liberty +have been much exaggerated. His intellectual fame rests on three +foundations. Of these the most indubitable is the creation of analytical +geometry, the starting-point of modern mathematics. The value of his +contributions to physics has been much disputed; but, on the whole, expert +opinion seems to have decided that what was new in them was not true, and +what was true was not new. However, the place we must assign Descartes in +the history of philosophy can only be determined by our opinion of his +metaphysics. + +{34} + +[Illustration: RENÉ DESCARTES.] + +{35} As a philosopher Descartes has, to begin with, the merit of exemplary +clearness. The fault is not with him if we cannot tell what he thought and +how he came to think it. The classic _Discourse on Method_ (1637) relates +his mental history in a style of almost touching simplicity. It appears +that from an early age truth had been his paramount object, not as with +Bacon and Hobbes for its utility, but for its own sake. In search of this +ideal he read widely, but without finding what he wanted. The great and +famous works of literature might entertain or dazzle; they could not +convince. The philosophers professed to teach truth; their endless disputes +showed that they had not found it. Mathematics, on the other hand, +presented a pleasing picture of demonstrated certainty, but a certainty +that seemed to be prized only as a sure foundation for the mechanical arts. +Wearily throwing his books aside, the young man then applied himself to the +great book of life, mingling with all sorts and conditions of men to hear +what they had to say about the prime interests of existence. But the same +vanity and vexation of spirit followed him here. Men were no more agreed +among themselves than were the authorities of his college days. The truths +of religion seemed, indeed, to offer a safe refuge; but they were an +exception that proved the rule; being, as Descartes observes, a +supernatural revelation, not the natural knowledge that he wanted. + +The conflict of authorities had at least one good result, which was to +discredit the very notion of {36} authority, thus throwing the inquirer +back on his own reason as the sole remaining resource. And as mathematics +seemed, so far, to be the only satisfactory science, the most reasonable +course was to give a wider extension and application to the methods of +algebra and geometry. Four fundamental rules were thus obtained: (1) To +admit nothing as true that was not evidently so; (2) to analyse every +problem into as many distinct questions as the nature of the subject +required; (3) to ascend gradually from the simplest to the most complex +subjects; and (4) to be sure that his enumerations and surveys were so +exhaustive and complete as to let no essential element of the question +escape. + +The rules as they stand are ill-arranged, vague, and imperfect. The last +should come first and the first last. The notions of simplicity, +complexity, and truth are neither illustrated nor defined. And no pains are +taken to discriminate judgments from concepts. It may be said that the +method worked well; at least Descartes tells us that with the help of his +rules he made rapid progress in the solution of mathematical problems. We +may believe in his success without admitting that an inferior genius could +have achieved the same results by the same means. The real point is to +ascertain whether the method, whatever its utility in mathematics, could be +advantageously applied to metaphysics. And the answer seems to be that as +manipulated by its author the new system led to nothing but hopeless +fallacies. + +After reserving a provisional assent to the customs of the country where he +happens to be residing and to the creed of the Roman Church, Descartes +begins by calling in question the whole mass of beliefs he has {37} +hitherto accepted, including the reality of the external world. But the +very act of doubt implies the existence of the doubter himself. I think, +therefore I am. It has been supposed that the initial affirmation of this +self-evident principle implies that Descartes identified Being with +Thought. He did no such thing. No more is meant, to begin with, than that, +whatever else is or is not, I the thinker certainly am. This is no great +discovery; the interesting thing is to find out what it implies. A good +deal according to Descartes. First he infers that, since the act of +thinking assures him of his existence, therefore he is a substance the +whole essence of which consists in thought, which is independent of place +and of any material object--in short, an immaterial soul, entirely distinct +from the body, easier to know, and capable of existing without it. Here the +confusion of conception with judgment is apparent, and it leads to a +confusion of our thoughts about reality with the realities themselves. And +Descartes carries this loose reasoning a step further by going on to argue +that, as the certainty of his own existence has no other guarantee than the +clearness with which it is inferred from the fact of his thinking, it must +therefore be a safe rule to conclude that whatever things we conceive very +clearly and distinctly are all true. + +In his other great philosophical work, the _Meditations_, Descartes sets +out at greater length, but with less clearness, his arguments for the +immateriality of the soul. Here it is fully admitted that, besides +thinking, self-consciousness covers the functions of perceiving, feeling, +desiring, and willing; nor does it seem to be pretended that these +experiences are reducible to forms of thought. But it is claimed that they +depend on {38} thought in the sense that without thought one would not be +aware of their existence; whereas it can easily be conceived without them. +A little more introspection would show that the second part of the +assertion is not true; for there is no thought without words, and no words, +however inaudibly articulated, without a number of tactual and muscular +sensations, nor even without a series of distinct volitions. + +Another noticeable point is that, so far from obeying the methodical rule +to proceed from the simple to the complex, Descartes does just the +contrary. Starting with the whole complex content of consciousness, he +works down by a series of arbitrary rejections to what, according to him, +is the simple fact of immaterial thought. Let us see how it fares with his +attempt to reconstruct knowledge on that elementary basis. + +Returning to his postulate of universal doubt, our philosopher argues from +this to an imperfection in his nature, and thence to the idea of a perfect +being. The reasoning is most slipshod; for, even admitting that knowledge +is preferable to ignorance--which has not been proved--it does not follow +that the dogmatist is more perfect than the doubter. Indeed, one might +infer the contrary from Descartes's having passed with progressive +reflection from the one stage to the other. Overlooking the paralogism, let +us grant that he has the idea of a perfect being, and go on to the question +of how he came to possess it. One might suggest that the consciousness of +perfect self-knowledge, combined with the wish to know more of other +subjects, would be sufficient to create an ideal of omniscience, and, +proceeding in like manner from a comparison of wants with their +satisfactions, to enlarge this ideal into the {39} notion of infinite +perfection all round. Descartes, however, is not really out for truth--at +least, not in metaphysics; he is out for a justification of what the +Jesuits had taught him at La Flèche, and no Jesuit casuistry could be more +sophistical than the logic he finds good enough for the purpose. To argue, +as he does, that the idea of a perfect being, in his mind, can be explained +only by its proceeding from such a being as its creator is already +sufficiently audacious. But this feat is far surpassed by his famous +ontological proof of Theism. A triangle, he tells us, need not necessarily +exist; but, assuming there to be one, its three angles must be equal to two +right angles. With God, on the other hand, to be conceived is to be; for, +existence being a perfection, it follows, from the idea of a perfect Being, +that he must exist. The answer is more clear and distinct than any of +Descartes's demonstrations. Perfection is affirmed of existing or of +imaginary subjects, but existence is not a perfection in itself. + +A third argument for Theism remains to be considered. Descartes asks how he +came to exist. Not by his own act; for on that hypothesis he would have +given himself all the perfections that now he lacks; nor from any other +imperfect cause, for that would be to repeat the difficulty, not to solve +it. Besides, the simple continuance of his existence from moment to moment +needs an explanation. For time consists of an infinity of parts, none +depending in any way on the others; so that my having been a little while +ago is no reason why I should be now, unless there is some power by which I +am created anew. Here we must observe that Descartes is playing fast and +loose with the law of causation. By what he calls the light of nature--in +other words, the light of Greek {40} philosophy--things can no more pass +into nothing than they can come out of it. Moreover, the difficulty is the +same for my supposed Creator as for myself. We are told that thought is a +necessary perfection of the divine nature. But thinking implies time; +therefore God also exists from moment to moment. How, then, can he recover +his being any more than we can? The answer, of course, would be: because he +is perfect, and perfection involves existence. Thus the argument from +causation throws us back on the so-called ontological argument, whose +futility has already been shown. + +This very idea of perfection involves us in fresh difficulties with the law +of causation. A perfect Being might be expected to make perfect +creatures--which by hypothesis we are not. Descartes quite sees this, and +only escapes by a verbal quibble. Our imperfections, he says, come from the +share that Nothingness has in our nature. Once allow so much to the +creative power of zero, and God seems to be a rather gratuitous postulate. + +After proving to his own satisfaction the existence of the soul and of God, +Descartes returns to the starting-point of his whole inquiry--that is, the +reality of the material world and of its laws. And now his theology +supplies him with a short and easy method for getting rid of the sceptical +doubts that had troubled him at first. He has a clear and distinct idea of +his own body and of other bodies surrounding it on all sides as extended +substances communicating movements to one another. And he has a tendency to +accept whatever is clearly and distinctly conceived by him as true. But to +suppose that God created that tendency with the intention of deceiving him +would argue a want of veracity in the divine nature incompatible with its +{41} perfection. Such reasoning obviously ignores the alternative that God +might be deceiving us for our good. Or rather what we call truth might not +be an insight into the nature of things in themselves, but a correct +judgment of antecedents and consequents. Our consciousness would then be a +vast sensori-motor machinery adjusted to secure the maintenance and +perfection of life. + +Descartes, as a mathematician, places the essence of Matter or Body in +extension. Here he agrees with another mathematical philosopher, Plato, who +says the same in his _Timæus_. So far the coincidence might be accidental; +but when we find that the Frenchman, like the Greek, conceives his +materialised space as being originally divided into triangular bodies, the +evidence of unacknowledged borrowing seems irresistible--the more so that +Huyghens mentions this as customary with Descartes. + +The great author of the _Method_ and the _Meditations_--for, after +every critical deduction, his greatness as a thinker remains +undoubted--contributed nothing to ethics. Here he is content to reaffirm +the general conclusions of Greek philosophy, the necessary superiority of +mind to matter, of the soul to the body, of spirit to sense. He accepts +free-will from Aristotle without any attempt to reconcile it with the rigid +determinism of his own mechanical naturalism. At the same time there is a +remarkable anticipation of modern psychology in his doctrine of +intellectual assent as an act of the will. When our judgments go beyond +what is guaranteed by a clear and distinct perception of their truth there +is a possibility of error, and then the error is our own fault, the +precipitate conclusion having been a voluntary act. Thus human free-will +intervenes to clear God of all {42} responsibility for our delusions as +well as for our crimes. + +MALEBRANCHE. + +Pascal, we are told, could not forgive Descartes for limiting God's action +on the world to the "initial fillip" by which the process of evolution was +started. Nevertheless, Pascal's friends, the Jansenists, were content to +adopt Cartesianism as their religious philosophy, and his epigram certainly +does not apply to the next distinguished Cartesian, Arnold Geulincx +(1625-1669), a Fleming of Antwerp. Unfortunate in his life, this eminent +teacher has of all original thinkers received the least credit for his +services to metaphysics from posterity, being, outside a small circle of +students, still utterly unknown to fame. Geulincx is the author of a theory +called Occasionalism. Descartes had represented mind, which he identified +with Thought, and matter, which he identified with Extension, as two +antithetical substances with not a note in common. Nevertheless, he +supposed that communications between them took place through a part of the +brain called the pineal body. Geulincx cut through even this narrow +isthmus, denying the possibility of any machinery for transmitting sensible +images from the material world to our consciousness, or volitions from the +mind to the limbs. How, then, were the facts to be explained? According to +him, by the intervention of God. When the so-called organs of sense are +acted on by vibrations from the external world, or when a particular +movement is willed by the mind, the corresponding mental and material +modifications are miraculously produced by the exercise of his omnipotence; +and it is because these events occur _on occasion_ of signals of which they +{43} are not the effects but the consequents that the theory has received +the name of Occasionalism. + +The theory, as Geulincx formulated it, seems at first sight simply +grotesque; and from a religious point of view it has the additional +drawback of making God the immediate executor of every crime committed by +man. Nevertheless, it is merely the logical application of a principle +subsequently admitted by profound thinkers of the most opposing +schools--namely, that consciousness cannot produce or transmit energy, +combined with the belief in a God who does not exist for nothing. Even past +the middle of the nineteenth century many English and French naturalists +were persuaded that animal species to the number of 300,000 represented as +many distinct creative acts; and at least one astronomer, who was also a +philosopher, declared that the ultimate atoms of matter, running up to an +immeasurably higher figure, "bore the stamp of the manufactured article." + +The capture of Cartesianism by theology was completed by Nicolas +Malebranche (1638-1715). This accomplished writer and thinker, dedicated by +physical infirmity to a contemplative life, entered the Oratory at an early +age, and remained in it until his death. Coming across a copy of +Descartes's _Treatise on Man_ at twenty-six, he at once became a convert to +the new philosophy, and devoted the next ten years to its exclusive study. +At the end of that period he published his masterpiece, _On the +Investigation of Truth_ (_De la Recherche de la Vérité, 1674_), which at +once won him an enormous reputation. It was followed by other works of less +importance. The legend that Malebranche's end was hastened by an argument +with Berkeley has been disproved. {44} + +Without acknowledging the obligation, Malebranche accepts the conclusions +of Geulincx to the extent of denying the possibility of any communication +between mind and matter. Indeed, he goes further, and denies that one +portion of matter can act on another. But his real advance on Occasionalism +lies in the question: How, then, can we know the laws of the material +universe, or even that there is such a thing as matter at all? Once more +God intervenes to solve the difficulty, but after a fashion much less crude +than the miraculous apparatus of Geulincx. Introspection assures us that we +are thinking things, and that our minds are stored with ideas, including +the idea of God the all-perfect Being, and the idea of Extension with all +the mathematical and physical truths logically deducible therefrom. We did +not make this idea, therefore it comes from God, was in God's mind before +it was in ours. Following Plotinus, Malebranche calls this idea +intelligible Extension. It is the archetype of our material world. The same +is true of all other clear and distinct ideas; they are, as Platonism +teaches, of divine origin. But is it necessary to suppose that the ideal +contents of each separate soul were placed in it at birth by the Creator? +Surely the law of parsimony forbids. It is a simpler and easier explanation +to suppose that the divine archetypal ideas alone exists, and that we +apprehend them by a mystical communion with the divine consciousness; that, +in short, we see all things in God. And in order to make this vision +possible we must, as the Apostle says, live, move, and have our being in +God. As a mathematician would say, God must be the _locus_, the place of +souls. + +There is unquestionably something grandiose about this theory, which, +however, has the defect in orthodox {45} opinion of logically leading to +the Pantheism, held in abhorrence by Malebranche, of his greater +contemporary Spinoza. And it is a suggestive circumstance that the very +similar philosophy of the Eternal Consciousness held by our countryman +T. H. Green has been shown by the criticism of Henry Sidgwick to exclude +the personality of God. + +SPINOZA. + +With the philosopher whom I have just named we come for the first time in +modern history to a figure recalling in its sustained equality of +intellectual and moral excellence the most heroic figures of Hellenic +thought. Giordano Bruno we may, indeed, pronounce, like Lucan or Cranmer, +"by his death approved," but his submission at Venice has to be set against +his martyrdom at Rome; and if there is nothing very censurable in his +career as a wandering teacher, there is also nothing worthy of any +particular respect. Differences of environment and heredity may no doubt be +invoked to account for the difference of character; and in the philosophy +about to be considered the determining influence of such causes for the +first time finds due recognition; but on the same principle our ethical +judgments also are determined by the very constitution of things. + +Baruch de Spinoza (1632-1677), born at Amsterdam, belonged to a family of +Portuguese Jews, exiled on account of their Hebrew faith, in which also he +was brought up. Soon after reaching manhood he fell away from the +synagogue, preferring to share in the religious exercises of certain +latitudinarian Christian sects. Spies were set to report his conversation, +which soon supplied evidence of sufficiently heterodox opinions. {46} A +sentence of formal excommunication followed; but modern research has +discredited the story of an attempt to assassinate him made by an emissary +of the synagogue. After successfully resisting the claim of his sister and +his brother-in-law to shut out the apostate from his share of the paternal +inheritance, Spinoza surrendered the disputed property, but henceforth +broke off all communication with his family. Subsequently he refused an +offer of 2,000 florins, made by a wealthy friend and admirer, Simon de +Vries, as also a proposal from the same friend to leave him his whole +fortune, insisting that it should go to the legal heir, Simon's brother +Isaac. The latter, on succeeding, wished to settle an annual pension of 500 +florins on Spinoza, but the philosopher would accept no more than 300. +Books were his only luxury, material wants being supplied by polishing +glass lenses, an art in which he attained considerable proficiency. But it +was an unhealthy occupation, and probably contributed to his death by +consumption. + +Democracy was then and long afterwards associated with fanaticism and +intolerance rather than with free-thought in religion. The liberal party in +Dutch politics was the aristocratic party. Spinoza sympathised with its +leader, John de Witt; he wept bitter tears over the great statesman's +murder; and only the urgent remonstrances of his friends, who knew what +danger would be incurred by such a step, prevented him from placarding the +walls of the Hague, where he then resided, with an address reproaching the +infuriated people for their crime. + +{47} + +[Illustration: Reproduced (by permission) from _Spinoza's Short Treatise on +God, Man, and his Well-being_, by Professor A. Wolf (A. & C. Black).] + +{48} + +In 1673 the enlightened ruler of the Palatinate, a brother of Descartes's +Princess Elizabeth, offered Spinoza a professorship at Heidelberg, with +full liberty to teach his philosophy. But the pantheistic recluse wisely +refused it. Even at the present day such teaching as his would meet with +little mercy at Berlin, Cambridge, or Edinburgh. As it was, we have reason +to believe that even in free Holland only a premature death saved him from +a prosecution for blasphemy, and his great work the _Ethica_ could not with +safety be published during his lifetime. It appeared anonymously among his +posthumous works in November, 1677, without the name of the true place of +publication on the title-page. + +Spinoza was for his time no less daring as a Biblical critic than as a +metaphysician. His celebrated _Tractatus Theologico-Politicus_ has for its +primary purpose to vindicate the freedom of scientific thought against +ecclesiastical interference. And this he does by drawing a trenchant line +of demarcation between the respective offices of religion and of +philosophy. The business of the one is to form the character and to purify +the heart, of the other to guide and inform the intellect. When religion +undertakes to teach scientific truth the very ends for which it exists are +defeated. When theological dogmatism gains control of the Churches the +worst passions are developed under its influence. Instead of becoming lowly +and charitable, men become disturbers of public order, grasping intriguers, +bitter and censorious persecutors. The claims of theology to dictate our +intellectual beliefs are not only mischievous, but totally invalid. They +rest on the authority of the Bible as a revelation of God's will. But no +such supernatural revelation ever was or could be given. Such violation of +the order of nature as the miracles recorded in Scripture history would be +impossible. And the narratives recording them are discredited by {49} the +criticism which shows that various books of the Old Testament were not +written by the men whose names they bear, but long after their time. As a +Hebrew scholar Spinoza discusses the Jewish Scriptures in some detail, +showing in particular that the Pentateuch is of a later date than Moses. +His limited knowledge of Greek is offered as a reason for not handling the +New Testament with equal freedom; but some contradictions are indicated as +disallowing the infallibility claimed for it. At the same time the +perfection of Christ's character is fully acknowledged and accepted as a +moral revelation of God. + +Spinoza shared to the fullest extent, and even went beyond, Descartes's +ambition to reconstruct philosophy on a mathematical basis. The idea may +have come to him from the French thinker, but it is actually of much older +origin, being derived from Plato, the leading spirit of the Renaissance, as +Aristotle had been the oracle of the later Middle Ages. Now Plato's ideal +had been to construct a philosophy transcending the assumptions--or, as he +calls them, the hypotheses--of geometry as much as those assumptions +transcend the demonstrations of geometry; and this also was the ideal of +Spinoza. Descartes had been content to accept from tradition his ultimate +realities, Thought, Extension, and God, without showing that they must +necessarily exist; for his proof of God's existence starts from an idea in +the human mind, while Thought and Extension are not deduced at all. + +To appreciate the work of the Hebrew philosopher, of the lonely muser, bred +in the religion of Jahveh--a name traditionally interpreted as the very +expression of absolute self-existence--we must conceive him as starting +with a question deeper even than the Cartesian {50} doubt, asking not How +can I know what is? but Why should there _be_ anything whatever? And the +answer, divested of scholastic terminology, is: Because it is inconceivable +that there should be nothing, and if there is anything there must be +everything. This universe of things, which must also be everlasting, +Spinoza calls God. + +The philosophy or religion--for it is both--which identifies God with the +totality of existence was of long standing in Greece, and had been +elaborated in systematic detail by the Stoics. It has been known for the +last two centuries under the name of Pantheism, a word of Greek etymology, +but not a creation of the Greeks themselves, and, indeed, of more modern +date than Spinoza. Historians always speak of him as a Pantheist, and there +is no reason to think that he would have objected to the designation had it +been current during his lifetime. But there are important points of +distinction between him and those who preceded or followed him in the same +speculative direction. The Stoics differed from him in being materialists. +To them reality and corporeality were convertible terms. It seems likely +that Hobbes and his contemporary, the atomist Gassendi, were of the same +opinion, although they did not say it in so many words. But Descartes was a +strong spiritualist; and Spinoza followed the master's lead so far, at any +rate, as to give Thought at least equal reality with matter, which he also +identified with Extension. It has been seen what difficulties were created +by the radical Cartesian antithesis between Thought and Extension, or--to +call them by their more familiar names--mind and body, when taken together +with the intimate association shown by experience to obtain between them; +and also how {51} Geulincx and Malebranche were led on by the very spirit +of philosophy itself almost to submerge the two disparate substances in the +all-absorbing agency of God. The obvious course, then, for Spinoza, being +unfettered by the obligations of any Christian creed, was to take the last +remaining step, to resolve the dualism of Thought and Extension into the +unity of the divine substance. + +In fact, the Hebrew philosopher does this, declaring boldly that Thought +and Extension are one and the same thing--which thing is God, the only true +reality of which they are merely appearances. And, so far, he has had many +followers who strive to harmonise the opposition of what we now call +subject and object in the synthesis of the All-One. But he goes beyond +this, expanding the conception of God--or the Absolute--to a degree +undreamed of by any religion or philosophy formulated before or after his +time. God, Spinoza tells us, is "a Substance consisting of infinite +attributes, each of which expresses his absolute and eternal essence." But +of these attributes two alone, Thought and Extension, are known to us at +present, so that our ignorance infinitely exceeds our knowledge of reality. +His extant writings do not explain by what process he mounted to this, the +most dizzy height of speculation ever attained by man; but, in the absence +of definite information, some guiding considerations suggest themselves as +probable. + +Bruno, whom Spinoza is held, on strong grounds, to have read, identified +God with the supreme unifying principle of a universe extending through +infinite space. Descartes, on the other hand, conceived God as a thinking +rather than as an extended substance. But his school tended, as we saw, to +conceive God as mediating {52} between mind and body in a way that +suggested their real union through his power. Furthermore, the habit common +to all Cartesians of regarding geometrical reasoning as the most perfect +form of thought inevitably led to the conception of thought as accompanying +space wherever it went--in fact, as stretching like it to infinity. Again, +from the Cartesian point of view, that Extension which is the very essence +of the material world, while it covers space, is more than mere space; it +includes not only co-existence, but succession or time--that is, +scientifically speaking, the eternal sequence of physical causes; or, +theologically speaking, the creative activity of God. And reason or thought +had also since Aristotle been more or less identified with the law of +universal causation no less than with the laws of geometry. + +Thus, then, the ground was prepared for Spinoza, as a pantheistic monist, +to conceive God under the two attributes of Extension and Thought, each in +its own way disclosing his essence as no other than infinite Power. But why +should God have, or consist of, two attributes and no more? There is a good +reason why _we_ should know only those two. It is that we are ourselves +modes of Thought united to modes of Extension, of which our thoughts are +the revealing ideas. But it would be gross anthropomorphism to impose the +limitations of our knowledge on the infinite being of God, manifested +through those very attributes as unlimited Power. The infinite of +co-existence, which is space, the infinite of causal procession, which is +time, suggest an infinity of unimaginable but not inconceivable attributes +of which the one divine substance consists. And here at last we get the +explanation of why there should be such things as Thought and Extension at +all. They are there simply because everything is. If I grant {53} +anything--and I must, at least, grant myself--I grant existence, which, +having nothing outside itself, must fill up all the possibilities of being +which only exclude the self-contradictory from their domain. Thus, the +philosophy of Spinoza neither obliges him to believe in the monsters of +mythology nor in the miracles of Scripture, nor in the dogmas of Catholic +theology, nor even in free-will; nor, again, would it oblige him to reject +by anticipation the marvels of modern science. For, according to him, the +impossibility of really incredible things could be deduced with the +certainty of mathematical demonstration from the law of contradiction +itself. + +Hegel has given the name of acosmism, or negation of the world, to this +form of pantheism, interpreting it as a doctrine that absorbs all concrete +reality and individuality in the absolute unity of the divine essence. No +misconception could be more complete. Differentiation is the very soul of +Spinoza's system. It is, indeed, more open to the charge of excessive +dispersion than of excessive centralisation. Power, which is God's essence, +means no more than the realisation through all eternity of all +possibilities of existence, with no end or aim but just the process of +infinite production itself. There is, indeed, a nominal identification +between the material processes of Extension and the ideal processes of +Thought. But this amounts to no more than a re-statement in abstract terms +of the empirical truth that there is a close connection between body and +mind. Like the double-aspect theory, the parallelistic theory, the +materialistic theory, the theory of interaction, and the theory of more or +less complete reciprocal independence, it is a mere verbalism, telling us +nothing that we did not know before. Or, if there {54} is more, it consists +of the very questionable assumption that body and mind must come in +somewhere to fill up what would otherwise be blank possibilities of +existence. And this, like other metaphysical assumptions, is an +illegitimate generalisation from experience. The ideas of space and time as +filled-up _continua_ supply the model on which the whole universe must be +constructed. Like them, it must be infinite and eternal, but, so to speak, +at a higher power; as in them, every part must be determined by the +position of all other parts, with the determination put at a logical +instead of at a descriptive value; corresponding to their infinitely varied +differentiation of position and quantity, there must be an infinite +differentiation of concrete content; and, finally, the laws of the universe +must be demonstrable by the same _à priori_ mathematical method that has +been so successfully applied to continuous quantity. + +The geometrical form into which Spinoza has thrown his philosophy +unfortunately restricts the number of readers--always rather small--that it +might otherwise attract. People feel themselves mystified, wearied, and +cheated by the appearance, without the reality, of logical demonstration; +and the repulsion is aggravated by the barbarous scholasticism with +which--unlike Bacon, Hobbes, and Descartes--he peppers his pages. Yet, like +the Greek philosophers, he is much more modern, more on the true line of +developing thought than they are. But to get at the true kernel of his +teaching we must, like Goethe, disregard the logical husks in which it is +wrapped up. And, as it happens, Spinoza has greatly facilitated this +operation by printing his most interesting and suggestive discussions in +the form of Scholia, Explanations, and Appendices. Even {55} these are not +easy reading; but, to quote his own pathetic words, "If the way of +salvation lay ready to hand, and could be found without great toil, would +it be neglected by nearly everyone? But all glorious things are as +difficult as they are rare." + +Some of his expositors have called Spinoza a mystic; and his philosophy has +been traced, in part at least, to the mystical pantheism of certain +medieval Jews. In my opinion this is a mistake; and I will now proceed to +show that the phrases on which it rests are open to an interpretation more +consistent with the rational foundations of the whole system. + +The things that have done most to fasten the character of a mystic on +Spinoza are his identification of virtue with the knowledge and love of +God, and his theory--so suggestive of Christian theology at its highest +flight--that God loves himself with an infinite love. That, like Plato and +Matthew Arnold, he should value religion as a means of popular moralisation +might seem natural enough; but not, except from a mystical motive, that he +should apparently value morality merely as a help to the religious life. On +examination, however, it appears that the beatific vision of this pantheist +offers no experience going beyond the limits of nature and reason. Since +God and the universe are one, to know God is to know that we are, body and +soul, necessary modes of the two attributes, Extension and Thought, by +which the infinite Power which is the essence of the universe expresses +itself for us. To love God is to recognise our own vitality as a portion of +that power, welcoming it with grateful joy as a gift from the universe +whence we come. And to say that God loves himself with an infinite love is +merely to say that the attribute of Thought eternally divides itself among +an infinity of {56} thinking beings, through whose activity the universe +keeps up a delighted consciousness of itself. + +Spinoza declares by the very name of his great work that for him the +philosophical problem is essentially a problem of ethics, being, indeed, no +other than the old question, first started by Plato, how to reconcile +disinterestedness with self-interest; and his metaphysical system is really +an elaborate mechanism for proving that, on the profoundest interpretation, +their claims coincide. His great contemporary, Hobbes, had taught that the +fundamental impulse of human nature is the will for power; and Spinoza +accepts this idea to the fullest extent in proclaiming Power to be the very +stuff of which we and all other things are made. But he parts company with +the English philosopher in his theory of what it means. On his view it is +an utter illusion to suppose that to gratify such passions as pride, +avarice, vanity, and lust is to acquire or exercise power. For strength +means freedom, self-determination; and no man can be free whose happiness +depends on a fortuitous combination of external circumstances, or on the +consent of other persons whose desires are such as to set up a conflict +between his gratification and theirs. Real power means self-realisation, +the exercise of that faculty which is most purely human--that is to say, of +Thought under the form of reason. + +In pleading for the subordination of the self-seeking desires to reason +Spinoza repeats the lessons of moral philosophy in all ages and countries +since its first independent constitution. In connecting the interests of +morality with the interests of science as such, he follows the tradition of +Athenian thought. In interpreting pantheism as an ethical enthusiasm of the +universe he returns to the creed of Stoicism, and {57} strikes the keynote +of Wordsworth's loftiest poetry. In fixing each man's place in nature as +one among the infinite individuations of divine power he repeats another +Stoic idea--with this difference, however, that among the Stoics it was +intimately associated with their teleology, with the doctrine that +everything in nature has a function without whose performance the universe +would not be complete; whereas Spinoza, following Bacon and Descartes, +utterly abjures final causes as an anthropomorphism, an intrusion of human +interests into a universe whose sole perfection is to exhaust the +possibilities of existence. And herein lies his justification of evil which +the Stoics could only defend on aesthetic grounds as enhancing the beauty +of moral heroism by contrast and conflict. "If I am asked," he says, "why +God did not create all men of such a character as to be guided by reason +alone, my answer is because he had materials enough to create all things +from the highest to the lowest degree of perfection." Perfection with him +meaning reality, this account of evil--and of error also--points to the +theory of degrees of reality, revived and elaborated in our own time by Mr. +F. H. Bradley, involving a correlative theory of illusion. Now, the idea of +illusion, although older than Plato, was first applied on a great scale in +Plato's philosophy, of whose influence on seventeenth-century thought this +is not the only example. We shall find it to some extent countervailed by a +revived Aristotelian current in the work of the metaphysician who now +remains to be considered. + +LEIBNIZ. + +G. W. Leibniz (1646-1716), son of a professor at the University of Leipzig, +is marked by some of the distinguishing intellectual characters of the +German genius. {58} Far more truly than Francis Bacon, this man took all +knowledge for his province. At once a mathematician, a physicist, a +historian, a metaphysician, and a diplomatist, he went to the bottom of +whatever subject he touched, and enriched all his multifarious studies with +new views or with new facts. And as with other great countrymen of his, the +final end of all this curiosity and interest was to combine and reconcile. +One of his ambitions was to create a universal language of philosophy, by +whose means its problems were to be made a matter of mathematical +demonstration; another to harmonise ancient with modern speculation; a +third--the most chimerical of all--to compose the differences between Rome +and Protestantism; a fourth--partly realised long after his time--to unite +the German Calvinists with the Lutherans. In politics he tried, with equal +unsuccess, to build up a Confederation of the Rhine as a barrier against +Louis XIV., and to divert the ambition of Louis himself from encroachments +on his neighbours to the conquest of Egypt. + +It seems probable that no intellect of equal power was ever applied in +modern times to the service of philosophy. And this power is demonstrated, +not, as with other metaphysicians, by constructions of more or less +contestable value, however dazzling the ingenuity they may display, but by +contributions of the first order to positive science. It is now agreed that +Leibniz discovered the differential calculus independently of Newton; and, +what is more, that the formulation by which alone it has been made +available for fruitful application was his exclusive invention. In physics +he is a pioneer of the conservation of energy. In geology he starts the +theory that our planet began as a glowing molten mass derived from the sun; +and the modern {59} theory of evolution is a special application of his +theory of development. + +Intellect alone, however, does not make a great philosopher; character also +is required; and Leibniz's character was quite unworthy of his genius. +Ambitious and avaricious, a courtier and a time-server, he neither made +truth for its own sake a paramount object, nor would he keep on terms with +those who cherished a nobler ideal. After cultivating Spinoza's +acquaintance, he joined in the cry of obloquy raised after his death, and +was mean enough to stir up religious prejudice against Newton's theory of +gravitation. Of the calamity that embittered his closing days we may say +with confidence that it could not possibly have befallen Spinoza. On the +accession of the Elector of Hanover to the English crown as George I., +Leibniz sought for an invitation to the Court of St. James. Apparently the +prince had not found him very satisfactory as a State official, and had +reason to believe that Leibniz would have liked to exchange his office of +historiographer at Hanover for a better appointment at Vienna. Greatness in +other departments could not recommend one whom he knew only as a negligent +and perhaps unfaithful servant to the favour of such an illiterate master. +Anyhow, the English appointment was withheld, and the worn-out +encyclopædist succumbed to disease and vexation combined. The only mourner +at his funeral was his secretary, Eckhardt, who hastened to solicit the +reversion of the offices left vacant by his chief's decease. + +A single theory of Leibniz has attained more celebrity than any one +utterance of any other philosopher; but that fame is due to the undying +fire in which it has been enveloped by the mocking irony of Voltaire. {60} +Everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. Such is the +famous text as a satire on which _Candide_ was composed. Yet whatever value +Voltaire's objections to optimism may possess tells nearly as much against +Voltaire himself as against his unfortunate butt. For, after all, believing +as he did in a God who combined omnipotence with perfect goodness he could +not any more than Leibniz evade the obligation of reconciling the divine +character with the divine work. On _à priori_ grounds the German +philosopher seems to have an incontrovertible case. A perfect Being must +have made the best possible world. The only question is what we mean by +goodness and by possibility. Spinoza had solved the problem by identifying +goodness with existence. It is enough that the things we call evil are +possible; the infinite Power of nature would be a self-contradiction were +they not realised. Leibniz rejects the pantheistic position in terms, but +nearly admits it in practice. Evil for him means imperfection, and if God +made a world at all it was bound to be imperfect. The next step was to call +pain an imperfection, which suggests a serious logical deficiency in the +optimist; for, although in certain circumstances the production of pain +argues imperfection in the operator, we are not entitled to argue that +wherever there is pain there must be imperfection. Another plea is the +necessity of pain as a punishment for crime, or, more generally, as a +result of moral freedom. Such an argument is only open to the believers in +free-will. A world of free and responsible agents, they urge, is infinitely +more valuable than a world of automata; and it is not too dearly purchased +even at the cost of such suffering as we witness. The argument is not very +convincing; for liberty of choice {61} in a painless world is quite +conceivable. But, be it a good or bad argument, although it might appeal to +Voltaire, who believed in free-will, it could not decently be used by +Leibniz, who was a determinist of the strictest type. To make this clear we +must now turn to his metaphysical system. + +Bacon, Descartes, and Spinoza, disagreeing widely on other subjects, were +agreed in discountenancing the study of final causes: Bacon, apparently, +from dislike of the idea that the perfect adaptation of all things to the +service of man rendered superfluous any efforts to make them more +serviceable still; Descartes from his devotion to the mathematical method +which was more applicable to a system of mechanical causation; Spinoza for +the same reason, and also from his disbelief in a personal God. Leibniz, on +the contrary, felt deeply impressed by a famous passage in Plato's _Phædo,_ +where Socrates, opposing the philosophy of teleology to the philosophy of +mechanism, desiderates an explanation of nature as designed with a view to +the highest good. But Leibniz did not go so far as Plato. Mediating between +the two methods, he taught that all is done for the best, but also that all +is done through an unbroken series of efficient causes. At the same time, +these causes are only material in appearance; in reality they are spiritual +beings. There is no such thing as dead matter; the universe consists of +living forces all through. The general idea of force probably came from +that infinite Power of which, according to Spinoza, the whole universe is +at once the product and the expression; or it may have been suggested by +Plato's incidental identification of Being with Action. But Leibniz found +his type of force in human personality, which, following the lead of +Aristotle {62} rather than of Plato, he conceived as an Entelechy, or +realised Actuality, and a First Substance. After years of anxious +reflection he chose the far happier name of Monad, a term originally coined +by Bruno, but not, as would appear, directly borrowed from him by the +German metaphysician. + +According to Leibniz, the monads or ultimate elements of existence are +constituted by the two essential properties of psychic life, perception and +appetency. In this connection two points have to be made clear. What he +calls bare monads--_i.e._, the components of what is known as inorganic +matter--although percipient, are not conscious of their perceptions; in his +language they do not _apperceive_. And he endeavours to prove that such a +mentality is possible by a reference to our own experience. We hear the +roaring of waves on the seashore, but we do not hear the sound made by the +falling of each particle of water. And yet we certainly must perceive it in +some way or other, since the total volume of sound is made up of those +inaudible impacts. He overlooks the conceivable alternative that the +immediate antecedent of our auditory sensations is a cerebral disturbance, +and that this must attain a certain volume in order to produce an effect on +our consciousness. The other point is that the appetency of a monad does +not mean an active impulse, but a search for more and more perceptions, a +continuous widening of its cognitive range. In short, each monad is a +little Leibniz for ever increasing the sum of its knowledge. + +At no stage does that knowledge come from experience. The monad has no +windows, no communication of any kind with the external world. But each +reflects the whole universe, knowing what it knows by {63} mere +introspection. And each reflects all the others at a different angle, the +angles varying from one another by infinitesimal degrees, so that in their +totality they form a continuous series of differentiated individuals. And +the same law of infinitesimal differentiation is observed by the series of +progressive changes through which the monads are ever passing, so that they +keep exact step, the continuity of existence being unbroken in the order of +succession as in the order of co-existence. Evidently there is no place for +free-will in such a system; and that Leibniz, with his relentless fatalism, +should not only admit the eternal punishment of predestined sinners, but +even defend it as morally appropriate, obliges us to condemn his theology +as utterly irrational or utterly insincere. + +In this system animal and human souls are conceived as monads of superior +rank occupying a central and commanding position among a multitude of +inferior monads constituting what we call their bodies, and changing _pari +passu_ with them, the correspondence of their respective states being, +according to Leibniz, of such a peculiarly intimate character that the +phenomena of sensation and volition seem to result from a causal reaction +instead of from a mechanical adjustment such as we can imagine to exist +between two clocks so constructed and set as to strike the same hour at the +same time. This theory of the relations between body and soul is known to +philosophy as the system of pre-established harmony. + +It may be asked how every monad can possibly reflect every other monad when +we do not know what is passing in our own bodies, still less what is +passing all over the universe. The answer consists in a convenient +distinction between clear and confused {64} perceptions, the one +constituting our actual and the other our potential knowledge. A more +difficult problem is to explain how any particular monad--Leibniz or +another--can consistently be a monadologist rather than a solipsist +believing only in its own existence. Here, as usual, the _Deus ex Machina_ +comes in. Following Descartes, I think of God as a perfect Being whose idea +involves his existence, with, of course, the power, will, and wisdom to +create the best possible world--a universe of monads--which, again, by its +perfect mutual adjustments, proves that there is a God. A more serious, and +indeed absolutely insuperable, objection arises from the definition of the +monads as nothing but mutually reflecting entities. For even an infinity of +little mirrors with nothing but each other to reflect must at once collapse +into absolute vacuity. And with their disappearance their creator also +disappears. God, the supreme monad, we are told, has only clear +perceptions; but the clearness is of no avail when he has nothing to +perceive but an absolute blank. Leibniz rejected the objectivity of time +and space; yet the hollow infinity of those blank forms seems, in his +philosophy, to have reached the consciousness of itself. + + * * * * * + + +{65} + +CHAPTER III. + +THE THEORISTS OF KNOWLEDGE + +LOCKE, BERKELEY, HUME, KANT. + +Epistemology, or theory of knowledge, did not begin in modern times. Among +the Greeks it goes back, at least, to Empedocles, and figures largely in +the programmes of the later schools. And Descartes's universal doubt seems +to give the question, How can we be sure of anything? a foremost place in +speculation. But the singular assurance with which the Cartesian +metaphysicians presented their adventurous hypotheses as demonstrated +certainties showed that with them the test of truth meant whatever told for +that which, on other grounds, they believed to be true. In reality, the +thing they called reason was hardly more than a covert appeal to authority, +a suggestion that the duty of philosophy was to reconcile old beliefs with +new. And the last great dogmatist, Leibniz, was the one who practised this +method of uncritical assumption to the utmost extent. + +LOCKE. + +It is the peculiar glory of John Locke (1632-1704) to have resumed that +method of doubt which Descartes had attempted, but which his dogmatic +prepossessions had falsified almost at the first start. This illustrious +thinker is memorable not only for his services to speculation, but for the +example of a genuinely philosophic life {66} entirely devoted to truth and +good--a character in which personal sweetness, simplicity, and charm were +combined with strenuous, disinterested, and fearless devotion to the +service of the State. Locke was a Whig when Whiggism meant advanced +Liberalism in religion and politics, and when _that_ often meant a choice +between exile and death. Thus, after the fall of his patron, Lord +Shaftesbury, the philosopher had to take refuge in Holland, remaining there +for some years, lying hid even there for some time to escape an extradition +order for which the Government of James II. had applied. It was in Holland +that he wrote the _Essay Concerning Human Understanding_. + +This revolutionist in thought was no solitary recluse, but, in the best +sense, a thorough man of the world. Educated at Westminster and Christ +Church, he had, in the German poet's phrase, the supreme happiness of +combining the seriousness of an enthusiast with the sagacity of a +statesman, so that great statesmen recognised him as one of themselves. +With the triumph of the Whig cause at a time when diplomacy demanded the +utmost tact and skill, it was proposed to send Locke as Ambassador to the +Court of Brandenburg, and, as that would not have suited his sober habits, +to the Court of Vienna. Weak health obliging him to decline this also, he +received office in the Ministry at home, taking a department where business +talents were eminently required. In that capacity he bore a leading part in +the restoration of the coinage, besides inspiring the Toleration Act and +the Act for Unlicensed Printing. Even the wisest men make mistakes; and it +must be noticed with regret that Locke's theory of toleration excluded +Roman Catholics on the one side and atheists on the other--the former +because their {67} creed made persecution a duty, the latter because their +want of a creed left them no sanction for any duties whatever. To say that +Locke had not our experience does not excuse him, for in both cases the +expediency of toleration can be proved _à priori_. Romanists must be +expected to suppress a heresy whose spokesman declares that when he has the +power he will suppress their Church; and, if atheists are without moral +principle, they will propagate, under cover of orthodoxy, negations that +they are not allowed openly to profess. + +Locke was brought up by a Puritan father; and, although in after life he +wandered far from its doctrinal standards, he no doubt always retained a +sense of that close connection between religion and morality which +Puritanism implies. Telling about the train of thought that started his +great Essay, he refers it to a conversation between himself and some +friends, in which they "found themselves quickly at a stand by the +difficulties that rose on every side;" and, according to an intimate friend +of his, the discussion turned "on the principles of morality and revealed +religion." It then occurred to him that they should first ascertain "what +objects their understandings were or were not fitted to deal with." And the +mottoes prefixed to the essay prove that the results were of a decidedly +sceptical cast. Indeed, his successors, though not himself, were destined +to develop them into what is now called Agnosticism. + +We have further to note that, while his Continental rivals were +mathematicians, our English philosopher never went deeply into mathematics, +but was by calling a physician. In this he resembles Aristotle and Sextus +Empiricus among the Greeks; and so it is quite in order that, with the same +sort of training, he should {68} adopt Aristotle's method of experience as +against Platonic transcendentalism, and the sceptical relativism of Sextus +as against the dogmatism of the schools. + +Locke begins his essay with a vigorous polemic against the doctrine of +Innate Ideas. The word "idea," as he uses it, is ambiguous, serving to +denote perceptions, notions, and propositions; but this confusion is of no +practical importance, his object being to show that all our knowledge +originates in experience; whereas the reigning belief was that at least the +first principles of knowledge had a more authoritative, if not a mystical, +source. Hobbes had been beforehand with him in deriving every kind of +knowledge from experience, but had been content to assume his case; whereas +Locke supports his by a formidable array of proofs. The gist of his +argument is that intellectual and moral principles supposed to be +recognised by all mankind from their infancy are admitted only by some, and +by those only as the result of teaching. + +As we saw, the whole inquiry began with questions about religion and +morality; and it is precisely in reference to the alleged universality and +innateness of the belief in God and the moral law that Locke is most +successful. And the more modern anthropology teaches us about primitive +man, the stronger becomes the case against the transcendental side in the +controversy. Where his analysis breaks down is in dealing with the +difficult and important ideas of Space, Time, Substance, and +Causality--with the fatal result that such questions as, How is experience +itself possible? or, How from a partial experience can we draw universal +and necessary conclusions? find no place in his theory of knowledge. Of +course, his contemporaries are open to the same {69} criticism--nor, +indeed, had the time come even for the statement of such problems. +Meanwhile, the facility with which the founder of epistemology accepts +fallacies whence Spinoza had already found his way out shows how little he +was master of his means. According to Locke, it is "a certain and evident +truth that there is an eternal, most powerful, and most knowing being, +which whether anyone will please to call God it matters not." On +examination the proof appears to involve two unproved assumptions. The +first is that nothing can begin to exist without a cause. The second is +that effects must resemble their causes. And from these it is inferred that +an all-powerful being must have existed from all eternity. The alternative +is overlooked that a succession of more limited beings would answer the +purpose equally well, while it would also be more consistent with our +experience. But a far more fatal objection to Locke's theism results from +his second assumption. This, although not explicitly stated, is involved in +the assertion that for knowledge such as we possess to originate from +things without knowledge is impossible. For, on the same principle, matter +must have been made by something material, pain by something that is +pained, and evil by something that is evil. It would not even be going too +far to say that by this logic I myself must have existed from all eternity; +for to say that I was created by a not-myself would be to say that +something may come from nothing. + +We have seen how Locke refused toleration to atheists on the ground that +their denial of a divine lawgiver and judge destroys the basis of morality. +He did not, like Spinoza, believe that morality is of the nature of things. +For him it is constituted by the will of God. Possibly, if pressed, he +might have explained {70} that what atheism denies is not the rule of +right, but the sanction of that rule, the fear of supernatural retribution. +Yet being, like Spinoza and Leibniz, a determinist, he should have seen +that a creator who sets in motion the train of causes and effects +necessarily resulting in what we call good or bad human actions has the +same responsibility for those actions as if he had committed them himself. +To reward one of his passive agents and to punish another would be grossly +unjust and at the same time perfectly useless. But how do we know that he +will, on any theory of volition, reward the good and punish the bad? +"Because we have his word for it." And how do we know that he will keep his +word? "Because he is all-good." But that, on Locke's principles, is pure +assumption; and God, being quite sure that _he_ has no retribution to fear, +must be even more irresponsible than the atheist. + +The principle that nothing can come from nothing, so far from proving +theism, leads logically either to pantheism or to a much more thorough +monadism than the system of Leibniz. And, metaphysics apart, it conflicts +with a leading doctrine of the essay--that is the fundamental distinction +between the primary and the secondary qualities of matter. We think of +bodies as in themselves extended, resisting and mobile, but not in +themselves as coloured, sonorous, odorous, hot, cold, or sapid. They cause +our special sensations, but cause them by an unknown power. Again we +perceive--or think we perceive--both primary and secondary qualities in +close union as properties of a single object, and this object in which they +jointly inhere is called a substance. And to the question, What is +substance? Locke admits that he has no answer except something we know not +what. He has returned to the agnostic standpoint of the {71} Cyrenaic +school. This something, for aught we know, might have created the world. + +Continental historians regard the whole rationalistic movement of the +eighteenth century, or what in Germany is called the Enlightenment +(Aufklärung), as having been started by Locke. But the sort of arguments +that he adduces for the existence of a God prove that in theology at least +his rationalism had rather narrow limits. Both his theism and his +acceptance of Christianity on the evidence of prophecy and miracles show no +advance on medieval logic. In this respect Spinoza and Bayle (1622-1709) +were far more in line with the modern movement. Still, assuming scripture +as an authoritative revelation, Locke shows that, rationally interpreted, +it yields much less support to dogmatic orthodoxy than English Churchmen +supposed. And whatever may have been the letter of his religious teaching, +there can be little doubt that the English Deists, Toland, Shaftesbury, and +Anthony Collins, represented its true spirit more faithfully than the +philosopher himself. + +Representative government and the subordination of ecclesiastical to +secular authority--or, better still, their separation--are both good things +in themselves and favourable conditions to the life of reason. Another +condition is that children should be trained to exercise their intelligence +instead of relying blindly on authority. In these respects also Locke's +writings acted powerfully on the public opinion of the next century, +especially through the agency of French writers; France, as Macaulay justly +claims, being the interpreter between England and the world. Our present +business, however, is not with the diffusion but the development of +thought, and to trace this we must return to British philosophy. {72} + +BERKELEY. + +George Berkeley (1684-1753) was born and educated in Ireland. The fact is +of no racial or national importance, but interests us as accounting for his +having received a better training in philosophy than at that time was +possible in England. For the study of Locke, then proscribed at Oxford, had +already been introduced into Dublin when Berkeley was an undergraduate +there; and it was as a critical advance on Locke that his first +publication, the _New Theory of Vision_ (1709), was offered. Next year came +the epoch-making _Principles of Human Knowledge_, followed in 1713 by the +more popular _Dialogues_. At twenty-nine his work was done, and although he +lived forty years longer, rising to be a Bishop in the Irish Church, after +projecting a Christian Utopia for the civilisation of the North American +Indians that never came to anything, and practising "every virtue under +heaven," he made no other permanent contribution to thought. + +Berkeley is at once a theorist of knowledge and a metaphysician, combining, +in a way, the method of Locke with the method of Descartes and his +successors. The popular notion of his philosophy is that it resolved the +external world into a dream, or at least into something that has no +existence outside our minds. But this is an utter misconception, against +which Berkeley constantly protested. His quarrel was not with common sense, +but with the theorists of perception. To understand this we must return for +a moment to Locke's teaching. It will be remembered in what a tangle of +difficulties the essay had left its author. Matter had two sets of +qualities, primary and secondary, the one belonging to things in +themselves, the other existing only {73} in our minds; yet both somehow +combined in real substances independent of us, but acting on our senses. +Substance as such is an unknown and unknowable postulate; nevertheless, we +know that it was created by God, of whom our knowledge is, if anything, +inconveniently extensive. Now Berkeley, to find his way out of these +perplexities, begins by attacking the distinction between primary and +secondary qualities. For this purpose his _Theory of Vision_ was written. +It proves--or attempts to prove--that extension is not a real attribute of +things in themselves, but an intellectual construction, or what Locke would +have called an "idea of reflection." Till then people had thought that its +objectivity was firmly established by the concurrent testimony of two +senses, sight and touch. Berkeley shows, on the contrary, that visible and +tangible extension are not the same thing, that the sensations--or, as he +calls them, the ideas--of sight and touch are two different languages whose +words we learn by experience to interpret in terms of each other without +their being necessarily connected. A man born blind would not at first +sight know how to interpret the visual signs of distance, direction, and +magnitude; he would have to learn them by experience. These, in fact, are +ideal relations only existing in the mind; and so we have no right to +oppose mind as inextended to an extended or an external world. + +Having thus cleared the ground, our young idealist proceeds in his next and +greatest work, _Of the Principles of Human Knowledge_, to attack the +problem from another side. The world of objects revealed through sensation +and reflection is clearly no illusion, no creation of our own. We find it +there, changing, when it changes, without or even very much against our +will. {74} What, then, is its origin and nature? Locke's view, which is the +common view, tells us that it consists of material bodies, some animated +and some not. And matter, the supposed substance of body, is made known to +us by impressions on our organs of sense. But when we try to think of +matter apart from these sensible qualities and the relations between them +it vanishes into an empty abstraction. Now, according to Berkeley there are +no abstract ideas--_i.e._, no thoughts unassociated with some mental image +besides a mere word; and Matter or inanimate substance would be such an +idea, therefore it does not exist. There is nothing but mind and its +contents--what we call states of consciousness, what Locke and Berkeley +called ideas. Whence, then, come the objects of our consciousness, and +whither do they go when we cease to perceive them? At this point the new +metaphysical system intervenes. Berkeley says that all things subsist in +the consciousness of God, and by their subsistence his existence is proved. +The direct apprehension of a reality that is not ourselves only becomes +possible through what would be called in modern language a subjective +participation in the divine consciousness, more feebly reflected, as would +seem, in the memories, imaginations, and reasonings of our finite minds. + +In pursuing these wonderful speculations Berkeley deviated widely from the +direct line of English philosophy, and it is difficult not to believe that +the deflection was determined by the influence of Malebranche, especially +when we find that the writings of the Oratorian Father were included in his +college studies. Moreover, a parallel line of idealistic development +derived from the same source was evolving itself at {75} the same time in +English thought. John Norris (1657-1711), a correspondent of the Platonist +Henry More, an opponent of Locke, and a disciple of Malebranche, had +himself found an enthusiastic admirer in Arthur Collier (1680-1732), whose +_Clavis Universalis_ professed to be "a demonstration of the _non-existence +or impossibility of an external world_" (1713). Both Norris and Collier, +like Malebranche and Berkeley, were Churchmen; but so strong was the drift +towards idealism that Leibniz, a layman and a man of science, contributed +by his Monadology to the same current. Malebranche neither was nor could he +be a complete idealist in the sense of denying the reality of matter; for +the dogma of transubstantiation bound him, as a Catholic, to its +acceptance, while Berkeley, Collier, and Leibniz, as Protestants, were +under no such obligation. His idealism agreed more nearly with the +Neo-Platonic doctrine of Archetypes in the divine Reason among which Matter +was one. On the other hand, Berkeley probably borrowed from him the notion +of a direct contact with God, the difference being that with the Cartesian +it is conceived as an objective vision, with Locke's disciple as (if the +expression may be permitted) a subjective con-consciousness. Leibniz, +again, while abolishing Matter, retains an external world composed indeed +of spirits and so far immaterial, but existing independently of God. + +All these systems involve the negation of two fundamental scientific +principles. The first is that every change must be explained by reference +to an antecedent change to which it bears a strict quantitative relation. +The second is that no particular change can be referred to another change +as its necessary antecedent unless it can be shown by experience that a +precisely similar {76} couple of changes are, in fact, always so connected. +Let me illustrate these principles by an example. I leave a kettle full of +cold water on the fire, and on returning after a sufficient interval of +time I find the water boiling. Had I stayed by the fire and watched the +process, my kettle would--a popular proverb to the contrary +notwithstanding--have certainly boiled as soon, but also no sooner for +being helped by my consciousness. The essential thing is that energy of +combustion in the fire should be turned into energy of boiling in the +water. Now, what is Berkeley's interpretation of the facts? Fire, kettle, +water, and ebullition are what in his writings are called "ideas"--_i.e._, +phenomena occasionally in my mind, but always in God's mind. And according +to this view the necessary antecedent to the boiling of the water is not +the fire's burning, but God's consciousness of its burning, his perception +being the essence of the operation. But it is proved by experience that +neither my perception nor anyone else's ever made a single drop of water +boil. In other words, perception is not in this instance a _vera causa_. +Why, then, should the perception of any other mind, however exalted, have +that effect? + +Nor is this all. How does Berkeley know that God exists? Because, he says, +to exist is to be perceived, and therefore for the universe to exist +implies a universal Percipient. But he got the idea of God from other men, +who certainly did not come by it as a generalisation from their +perceptions; they got it by generalising from their voluntary actions, +which do produce the changes that perception cannot produce. It will be +said that volitions and the feelings that prompt them exist only in +consciousness. In whose consciousness? In that of a spirit. And what is +spirit apart from {77} sensation, thought, feeling, and volition? Simply +one of those abstract ideas whose existence Berkeley himself denied. + +HUME. + +The next step in the evolution of English thought was to consist in a +return to Locke's method, involving a complete breach with +seventeenth-century Platonism, and with the Continental metaphysics that it +had inspired. This decisive movement was effected by one in whom German +criticism has recognised the greatest of all British philosophers. David +Hume (1711-1776) was born and bred at Edinburgh, which also seems to have +been through life his favourite residence. But his great work, the +_Treatise on Human Nature_, was written during a stay in France, between +the ages of twenty-three and twenty-six. Thus his precocity was even +greater than Berkeley's. Indeed, such maturity of thought so early reached +is without a parallel in history. But Hume's style had not then acquired +the perfection--the inimitable charm, Kant calls it--of his later writings; +and, whether for this or for other reasons, the book, in his own words, +"fell dead-born from the press." In middle life the office of librarian of +the Advocates' Library at Edinburgh gave him access to the materials for +his _History of England_, which proved a source of fame and profit. A +profound historical scholar, J. S. Brewer, tells us that Hume "possessed in +a pre-eminent degree some of the highest excellences of a historian." Other +historians have treated their subjects philosophically; he furnishes the +sole instance of a great speculative genius who has also produced a +historical masterpiece of the first order. But morally it is a blot on his +fame. It is sad that a philosopher should have deliberately perverted the +truth, that one who has {78} [Illustration: DAVID HUME.] performed +priceless services to freedom of thought should have made himself the +apologist of clericalising absolutism, and, still more, that a master of +English played this part to some extent through hatred of the great English +people engendered by disappointed literary ambition. It may be mentioned, +however, as a possible extenuation that towards the middle of the +eighteenth century the highest English ability had thrown itself, with few +exceptions, on the Tory side. It must be mentioned {79} also that in +private life Hume's character was entirely admirable--cheerful, generous, +and gentle, without a frailty and without a stain. His opinions were +unpopular; but his life offered no handle for obloquy, although his +studious retirement was more than once exchanged for the responsibilities +of political office, and the freedom from pedantry so conspicuous in his +writings bears witness to habits of well-bred social intercourse. + +Hume's philosophy is best understood when we consider it as, in the first +place, a criticism of Berkeley, just as Berkeley's had been a criticism of +Locke. It will be remembered that the founder of subjective idealism +discarded the notion of material substance as an "abstract idea," an +unintelligible figment devoid of any sensuous or imaginative content. The +only true substances are the subjects of what we call experience +communicating through sensation with God, the infinite spirit whose eternal +consciousness is reality itself. Hume applied the same tests to spiritual +substance, and found that it equally disappeared under his introspective +analysis. He begins by dividing the contents of consciousness into two +classes, impressions and ideas--the second being copies of the first, and +distinguished from them by their relative faintness. Now, from these +perceptions (which he called thoughts) Descartes had passed by an immediate +inference to the ego or self, which he affirms as the primary fact of +consciousness, using it as a basis for sundry other conclusions. But Hume +stops him at once, and will not grant the existence of the metaphysical +self--that is, a simple and continued substance, as distinguished from +particular states of consciousness. We are, he declares, "nothing but a +bundle of different perceptions, which {80} succeed each other with an +inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement." "There +is properly no _simplicity_ in it [the self] at one time, nor _identity_ in +different [times]; whatever natural propensity we may have to imagine that +simplicity and identity." So much being assumed, Berkeley's whole argument +for a new theology founded on subjective idealism is bound to collapse, as +also is the argument for natural immortality derived from the supposed +simplicity and identity of the thinking substance. + +Modern critics have rightly insisted, as against Hume, that isolated +perceptions without a self are abstractions not less unintelligible than a +self without perceptions. But the metaphysical argument for human +immortality has not benefited by this more concrete interpretation of +epistemology; and probably Hume was really more interested in destroying +this than in maintaining the sceptical paradox which does not recur in his +later writings. + +A word must be added about Hume's division of perceptions into impressions +and ideas. The point left out of sight in this analysis is that impressions +of sense habitually find their reflexes not in revived sensations, but in +expressions, in motor reactions which, with human beings, mostly take the +form of words uttered or thought. These, no doubt, are associated to some +small extent with revived sensations; but they are more commonly grouped +with other words, with movements of the limbs, and with actions on the +material or human environment of the percipient. Such expressions are +incomparably easier to revive in memory, imagination, or expectation than +the impressions that originally excited them; and, indeed, it is in +connection with them that such revivals of sensation {81} as we actually +experience take place. And it is probable that to this active side of our +consciousness that we may trace those associative processes which Hume +studies next in his analysis of human knowledge. + +Putting aside principles of doubtful or secondary value, the relations +between states of consciousness that first offer themselves to view are, +according to Hume, Co-existence and Succession (united under the name of +Contiguity), Resemblance, and Causation. It is with the account he gives of +this last category that his name is inseparably associated, for from it all +subsequent speculation has taken rise. Yet primarily he seems to have had +no other object in view than to simplify the laws of knowledge by resolving +one of them into a particular case of another, and thus reducing his three +categories to two. The relation of cause and effect, he tells us, is no +more than a certain relation between antecedent and consequent in time +where the sequence is so habitual as to establish in our minds a custom of +expecting the one whenever the other occurs. The sequence is not necessary, +for one can think, without any self-contradiction, of a change which has +not been preceded by another change; nor is it, like the truths of +geometry, something that can be known _à priori_. Without experience no one +could tell that bread will nourish a man and not nourish a lion, nor even +predict how a billiard-ball will behave when another ball strikes it. +Should it be objected that the _à priori_ knowledge of a general principle +need not involve an equal knowledge of nature's operations in particular +cases, Hume would doubtless reply by saying that there is no abstract idea +of causation apart from its concrete exemplifications. + +It is possible to accept Hume's theory in principle {82} without pledging +oneself to all his incidental contentions. Causation, as a general law, may +be known only by experience, whether we can or cannot think of it as a pure +abstraction. And we may interpret it in terms of unconditional antecedence +and consequence, while discarding his apparent assumption of an inscrutable +connection between the two; a mysterious necessity for the production of +the one by the other, for which it is felt that a reason exists, but for +which our reason cannot account. It is inconceivable that our knowledge of +any given sequence could be increased, except by the disclosure of +intermediate sequences, making their continuity, in space and time, more +absolute than we had before perceived, until the whole process has been +resolved into a transference of momentum from one molecule to another--a +change for which, according to Hume, no reason can be given. Nor, on his +principles, would it help us to explain such transferences by bringing them +under the law of the Conservation of Energy. For, although this would be a +great triumph for science, his philosophy demands a reason why the quantity +of energy should remain unalterable for ever. + +It is a mistake, shared by Hume with his opponents, to suppose that the +common sense of mankind ever saw more than invariable sequence in the +relation of cause and effect, or ever interpolated a mysterious power +between them. In the famous verse, "Let there be light, and there was +light," it is the instantaneity of succession, not the interpolation of any +exerted effort, that so impresses the imagination. And when Shakespeare +wants to illustrate logical compulsion in conduct, his reference is to an +instance of invariable succession:-- {83} + + This above all,--to thine own self be true; + And it must follow, as the night the day, + Thou canst not then be false to any man. + +Indeed, I think it will be found on examination that when we associate the +idea of power, or of necessity, with causal sequences, it is not in +connection with a case of causation here and now, but rather in reference +to similar effects that may be expected from the same cause elsewhere or at +another time. And that "custom," by which Hume seeks to explain our belief +in the "power" of the cause to produce its effect as well as the +"necessity" of the connection between them, rather acts negatively by +eliminating all other antecedents as possible causes than positively by +setting up a habit of thinking about a particular antecedent and consequent +at the same time. And that is why a burnt child needs no repetition of the +experiment to be convinced that contact with fire was the cause of its +pain. The very novelty of the experiment was enough to eliminate any +explanation other than that of contact with the flame. + +The child, as it grows older, may learn to speak of the fire as having a +power to burn. But that merely means, "if I touch it, it will burn me--or +light paper if I hold the paper to it." Power, in fact, is incomplete +causation, the presence of every condition but that one which, in +Aristotelian phrase, turns potency into act. And it is in contradistinction +to that idea of possibility that the idea of necessary connection comes in. +When all the elements of the causal antecedent are combined the effect +necessarily supervenes. Furthermore, the causal antecedent is thought of as +necessary in contrast with the contingency of other antecedents whose +connection with the effect is merely accidental. Finally, {84} the idea of +production has been quoted as vitally distinguishing true causation from +invariable sequence. But various myths, of which the story of Oedipus is +the best known, show that primitive folk regard day and night as +alternately producing one another, just as Polonius quotes their sequence +as a type of logical necessity. + +Hume professed himself a Deist, but probably with no more seriousness than +when he, or when Gibbon, called Christianity "our religion." At any rate, +his philosophy destroys every argument for the existence of a Creator +advanced in his own or in the preceding century. Nor need his particular +theory of causation be invoked for the purpose. The most telling attack is +on the argument from design. The apparent adaptation of means to ends in +living organisms is quoted as evidence of their having been planned by a +conscious intelligence. But, answers Hume, such an intelligence would +itself exhibit marks of design, and so on for ever. Why not, then, stop at +the animal organism as an ultimate fact? It was Shelley's unlucky demand +for a solution of this difficulty that led to his expulsion from Oxford. + +It has been shown how the new analysis of mind cut the ground from under +Berkeley's theism, and from under the metaphysical argument for human +immortality. By denying the substantiality of the ego it also confirmed the +necessitarianism of Spinoza. Hume seemed to think he could abate the +unpopularity of this doctrine by interpreting the constant motivation of +human actions as a mere relation of antecedence and consequence. But the +decisive point was that he assimilated sequences in conscious behaviour to +the unconscious sequences in physical events. Thus, for {85} the vulgar and +the theologians, he remained what would now be called a materialist. + +KANT. + +The English philosophy of experience and the Continental philosophy of _à +priori_ spiritualism, after their brief convergence in the metaphysics of +Berkeley, parted company once more, the empirical tradition being +henceforth represented, not only by Hume, but in a more or less +anti-Christian and much more superficial form by Voltaire, Rousseau, and +the French Encyclopædists; while the Leibnizian philosophy was systematised +and taught in Germany by Wolf, and a dull but useful sort of modernised +Aristotelianism was set up under the name of "common sense" by Thomas Reid +(1710-1796) and his school in the Scottish Universities. + +The extraordinary genius who was to re-combine the parted currents in a +speculative movement of unexampled volume, velocity, and depth showed +nothing of the precocity that had distinguished Berkeley and Hume. Immanuel +Kant (1724-1804), the son of a saddler of Scottish extraction, was born at +Königsberg in Prussia, where he spent his whole life, holding a chair at +the University from 1770 to 1797. It is related that on the day of his +death a small bright cloud was seen sailing alone across the clear blue +sky, of such a remarkable appearance that a crowd assembled on the bridge +to watch it. One of them, a common soldier, exclaimed, "That is Kant's soul +going to heaven!"--a touching and beautiful tribute to the illustrious +German, whose lofty, pure, and luminous spirit it was uniquely fitted to +characterise. + +{86} + +[Illustration: KANT. + +(_Copyright B. P. C._) + +{87} Kant grew up among the Pietists, a school which played much the same +part in Germany that the Methodists and the Evangelicals played in England; +indeed, it was from them that John Wesley received his final inspiration. +The Königsberg student came in time to discard their theology while +retaining the stern Puritan morality with which it was wedded, and even, +Rationalist as he became, some of their mystical religiosity. What drew him +away to philosophy seems to have been first the study of classical +philology and then physical science, especially as presented to him in +Newton's works. And so the young man's first ambition, after settling down +as a University teacher at Königsberg, was to extend the Newtonian method +still further by explaining, on mechanical principles, the origin and +constitution of that celestial system whose movements Newton had reduced to +law, but whose beginning he had left unaccounted for except by--what was +not science--the direct fiat of omnipotence. + +Kant offered a brilliant solution of the problem in his _Natural History of +the Heavens_ (1755), a work embodying the celebrated nebular hypothesis +rediscovered forty years later by Laplace. It has been well observed that +great philosophers are mostly, if not always, what at Oxford and Cambridge +would be called "double-firsts"--that is, apart from their philosophy, they +have done first-class work in some special line of investigation, as +Descartes by creating analytical geometry, Spinoza by applying Biblical +criticisms to theology, Leibniz by discovering the differential calculus, +Locke by his theory of constitutional government, Berkeley by his theory of +vision, Hume by his contributions to history and political economy. Kant's +cosmogony may have been premature and mistaken in its details; but his idea +of the heavenly bodies as having originated from the condensation of +diffused gaseous matter still holds its {88} ground; and although the more +general idea of natural evolution as opposed to supernatural creation is +not modern but Greek, to have revived and reapplied it on so great a scale +is a service of extraordinary merit. + +The next great event in Kant's intellectual career is his rejection of +Continental apriorism in metaphysics for the empiricism of the English +school, especially as regards the idea of causation. For a few years +(1762-1765) Kant accepts Hume's theory that there is nothing in any +succession of events or in change generally to prove on grounds of pure +reason that there must be more in it than a customary sequence. To believe +that anything may happen without a cause does not involve a logical +contradiction; and at that time he believed nothing to be known _à priori_ +except that the denial of which involves such a contradiction. But on +reconsidering the basis of mathematical truth it seemed to him to be +something other than the logical laws of Identity and Contradiction. When +we say that seven and five are twelve we put something into the predicate +that was not affirmed in the subject, and also when we say that a straight +line is the shortest distance between two points. Yet the second +proposition is as certain as the first, and both are certain in the highest +degree, more certain than anything learned from experience, and needing no +experience to confirm them. + +So much being admitted, we have to recognise a fundamental division of +judgments into two classes, analytic and synthetic. Judgments in which the +predicate adds nothing to the subject are analytic. When we affirm all +matter to be extended, that is an instance of the former, for here we are +only making more explicit what was already contained in the notion of +matter. On the other hand, when we affirm that all matter is heavy, that is +an {89} instance of the latter or synthetic class, for we can think of +matter without thinking that it has weight. Furthermore, this is not only a +synthetic judgment, but it is a synthetic judgment _à posteriori_; for the +law of universal gravitation is known only by experience. But there are +also synthetic judgments _à priori_; for, as we have just seen, the +fundamental truths of arithmetic and geometry belong to this class, as do +also by consequence all the propositions logically deduced from these--that +is to say, the whole of mathematical science. + +Up to this point Kant would have carried the whole Cartesian school, and, +more generally, all the modern Platonists, along with him; while he would +have given the English empiricists and their French disciples a rather hard +nut to crack. For they would have had to choose between admitting that +mathematics was a mass of identical propositions or explaining, in the face +of Hume's criticism, what claims to absolute certainty its truths, any more +than the Law of Causation, possess. Now, the great philosophical genius of +Kant is shown by nothing more than by this, that he did not stop here. +Recognising to the same extent as Locke and Hume that all knowledge comes +from experience--at any rate, in the sense of not coming by supernatural +communication, as Malebranche and Berkeley thought--he puts the famous +question, How are synthetic judgments _à priori_ possible? Or, as it might +be paradoxically expressed, How come we to know with the most certainty the +things that we have not been taught by experience? The answer is, that we +know them by the most intimate experience of all--the underlying +consciousness that we have made them what they are. Our minds are no mere +passive recipients, in which a mass of sensations, poured in from some +external {90} source, are then arranged after an order equally originated +from without; there is a principle of spontaneity in our own subjectivity +by which the objective order of nature is created. What Kant calls the +Matter of knowledge is given from without, the Form from within. And this +process begins with the imposition of the two great fundamental Forms, +Space and Time, on the raw material of sensation by our minds. + +By space and time Kant does not mean the abstract ideas of coexistence and +succession; nor does he call them, as some critics used incorrectly to +suppose, forms of thought, but forms of intuition. We do not build them up +with the help of muscular or other feelings, but are conscious of them in a +way not admitting of any further analysis. The parts of space, no doubt, +are coexistent, but they are also connected and continuous; more than this, +positions in space do not admit of mutual substitution; the right hand and +left hand glove are perfectly symmetrical, but the one cannot be +superimposed on the other. Besides, all particular spaces are contained in +universal space, not as particular conceptions are contained in a general +conception, but as parts of that which extends to infinity, and where each +has an individual place of its own, repeating all the characters of space +in general except its illimitable extension. And the same is true of time, +with this further distinction from abstract succession, that succession may +be reversed; whereas the order of past, present, and future is irreversibly +maintained. + +The contemporary school of Reid in Scotland, and the subsequent Eclectic +school of Victor Cousin in France, would agree with Kant in maintaining +that sensuous experience will not account for our knowledge of space and +time. But they would protest, in the name {91} of common sense, against the +reduction of these apparently fundamental elements to purely subjective +forms. They would ask, with the German critic Trendelenburg, Why cannot +space and time be known intuitively and yet really exist? Kant furnishes no +direct answer to the question, but he has suggested one in another +connection. Mathematical truth is concerned with spatial and temporal +relations, and for that truth to be above suspicion and exception we must +assume that the objects with which it deals are wholly within our +grasp--that our knowledge of them is exhaustive. But there could be no such +assurance on the supposition that, besides the space and time of our +sensuous experience, another space and time existed independently of our +consciousness as attributes of things in themselves--possibly differing in +important respects from ours--as, for example, a finite, or a +non-continuous, or a four-dimensional space, and a time with a circular +instead of a progressive movement. + +This easy assumption that reality accommodates itself to our intellectual +convenience, instead of our being obliged to accommodate our theories of +knowledge to reality, runs through and vitiates the whole of Kant's +philosophy. But, taking the narrower ground of logical consistency, one +hardly sees how his principles can hold together. We are told that the +subjectivity of space and time is not presented as a plausible hypothesis, +but as a certain and indubitable truth, for in no other way can +mathematical certainty be explained. The claim is questionable, but let it +be granted. Immediately a fresh difficulty starts up. What is the source of +our certainty that space and time are subjective forms of intuition? If the +answer is, because that assumption guarantees the certainty of mathematics, +then Kant is {92} reasoning in a circle. If he appeals--as in consistency +he ought--to another order of subjectivity as the sanction of his first +transcendental argument, such reasoning involves the regress to infinity. + +Again, on Kant's theory, time is the form of intuition for the inner sense. +So when we become conscious of mental events we know them only as +phenomena; we remain ignorant of what mind is in itself. But before the +publication in 1770 of Kant's inaugural dissertation on _The Sensible and +the Intelligible World_ every one, plain men and philosophers alike, +believed that the consciousness of our successive thoughts and feelings was +the very type of reality itself; and they held this belief with a higher +degree of assurance than that given to the axioms of geometry. By what +right, then, are we asked to give up the greater for the less, to surrender +our self-assurance as a ransom for Euclid's _Elements_ or even for Newton's +_Principia_? + +Once more, surely mathematics is concerned not with space and time as such, +but with their artificial delimitations as points, lines, figures, numbers, +moments, etc. And it may be granted that these are purely subjective in the +sense of being imposed by our imagination (with the aid of sensible signs) +on the external world. What if _this_ subjectivity were the true source of +that peculiar certainty belonging to synthetic judgments _à priori_? True, +Kant counts in our judgments about the infinity and eternity of space and +time with other accepted characteristics of theirs as intuitive +certainties. But there are thinkers who find the negation of such +properties not inconceivable, so that they cannot be adduced as evidence of +a priority, still less of subjectivity. + +Eleven years after the inaugural dissertation Kant {93} published his most +important contribution to philosophy, _The Critique of Pure Reason_ (1781). +Pure Reason means the faculty by which ideas are obtained independently of +all experience, and the critic's object is to ascertain how far such ideas +are valid. As a preliminary to that inquiry the question is also mooted, +How is experience possible? It is answered by a critique of the +understanding or faculty of conception; and as conception implies +perception, this again is prefaced by a section in which Kant's theory of +space and time is repeated and reinforced. + +It will be remembered that what started the whole of the new criticism was +Hume's sceptical analysis of Causation; and the central interest of _The +Critique of Pure Reason_ lies in the effort to reconstitute the causal law +in the light of the new theory of knowledge; but so enormous is the mass of +technicalities piled up for this purpose as largely to conceal it from +view, and, on its disclosure, to give the idea of a gigantic machine set in +motion to crack a nut. And the nut after all is _not_ cracked; the shell +slips from between the grappling surfaces long before they meet. + +We have seen how Kant interpreted every judgment as a synthesis of subject +and predicate. Now, whether the synthesis be _à priori_ or _à posteriori_, +a study of the forms of judgment as enumerated in the common logic shows +that there are four, and only four, ways in which it can be effected. All +judgments fall under the following classes: Quantity, Quality, Relation, +and Modality--terms whose meaning will be presently explained. And each of +these again is tripartite. We may say (i.) that one A is B, or that some +A's are B, or that all A's are B; (ii.) that A is B, that A is not B, that +not all A's are B; (iii.) that A is B, that A {94} is B if C is D, that A +is either B, C, or D; or (iv.) that A may be B, that A is B, or that A must +be B. The reason why there are four and only four classes is that judgment +has to do with the subject in reference to the predicate, which gives +Quantity; with the predicate in reference to the subject, which gives +Quality; with the connection between the two, which gives Relation; and +with the synthesis between them in reference to our knowledge of it, which +gives Modality. + +Now, according to Kant, that there should be so many kinds of judgment and +no more implies that our understanding contributes a formal element to the +constitution of all knowledge, consisting of four combining principles, +without which experience would be impossible. He calls these Categories, +and they are enumerated in the following table:-- + + (i.) Quantity. + + Unity, Plurality, Totality. + + (ii.) Quality. + + Reality, Negation, Limitation. + + (iii.) Relation. + + Substance and Accident; Cause and Effect; Action and Reaction + (Reciprocity). + + (iv.) Modality. + + Possibility and Impossibility; Existence and Non-Existence; Necessity + and Contingency. + +A study of the Categories suggests some rather obvious criticisms on the +Critical Philosophy itself. (i.) The first two terms in each triad +evidently form an antithetical couple, of which the third term is the +synthesis. Here we have the first germ of a disease by which the systems of +Kant's successors were much more seriously infected. In the table it is +shown by {95} the intrusion of Limitation, a wholly superfluous adjunct to +Reality and Negation; in the conversion of Reciprocity into a wholly +fictitious synthesis of Substantiality with Causation; and in the complete +absurdity of making Necessity a combination of Possibility with Existence. +(ii.) Innate ideas, after they had been exploded by Locke, are reintroduced +into philosophy by a sufficiently transparent piece of legerdemain. For +assuming that the human intelligence possesses a power of organising and +drilling the sensuous appearances which without its control would appear +only as a disorderly mob, it by no means follows that they must thereby be +referred to an extraphenomenal principle. But such a principle is plainly +implied by the category of Substance. Used in a scholastic sense, it does +not mean the sensuous attributes of a thing taken altogether, but something +that underlies and supports them. And Kant himself seems to take his +category in that significance. For he claims to deduce from it the law of +the indestructibility of matter; as if I could not say snow is white +without committing myself to the assertion that the ultimate particles of +snow have existed and will exist for ever. (iii.) The substitution of +Causation for logical sequence, as implicated in the hypothetical judgment +of Relation, is perfectly scandalous; and still more scandalous is +substitution of Reciprocity or Action and Reaction for Disjunction. The +last points require to be examined a little more in detail. + +The sequence of an effect to its cause has only a verbal resemblance to the +sequence of a logical consequent to its reason. We declare categorically +that every change has a cause which precedes it. Logical sequence is, on +the other hand, as the very name of the {96} judgment shows, hypothetical, +and may possibly not represent any actual occurrence, besides being, what +causation is not, independent of time. A particular case of causation may +be hypothetical in respect to our belief that it actually occurred; never +the law of causation itself as a general truth. And the same distinction +applies with even greater force to the alleged connection between a logical +disjunction and a physical reaction. When I say A is either B or C, but not +both, there is only this much resemblance, that both cases involve the +ideas of equality and of opposition. From the admission that A is not B, I +infer that it is C, or, contrariwise, from the admission that it is B, I +infer that it is not C, and in both instances with the same certainty; but +this does not prove that the earth attracts the moon as much as the moon +attracts the earth, only in opposite directions; nor yet that in certain +instances all the heat lost by one body is gained by another. + +Kant had learned this much from Hume, that causation is essentially a +relation of antecedence and consequence in time; and apparently his way of +"categorising" the relation--_i.e._, of proving its apriority--is to +represent it as the logical form of reason and consequent masquerading, so +to speak, under the intuitional time-form. Yet he frequently speaks of our +senses as being affected by things in themselves, implying that the +resulting sensations are somehow caused by those otherwise unknown +entities. But since things in themselves do not, according to Kant, exist +in space and time, they cannot be causally related to phenomena or to +anything else. + +In his criticism of Pure Reason, properly so called--that is, of inferences +made by human faculty with {97} regard to questions transcending all +experience--Kant shows that of such things nothing can be known. The +ideality of time and space once taken as proved, this amount of agnosticism +seems to follow as a matter of course. It is idle to speculate about the +possible extent or duration of a universe that cannot be described in terms +of coexistence and succession. For each of us at the dissolution of our +bodily organism time itself, and therefore existence as alone we conceive +it, comes to an end. The law of causation, applying as it does to phenomena +alone, offers no evidence for the existence of a God who transcends +phenomena. Kant, however, is not satisfied with such a simple and summary +procedure as this. He tries to show, with most unnecessary pedantry, that +the conditional synthesis of the Understanding inevitably leads thought on +to the unconditional synthesis of the Reason only to find itself lost in a +hopeless welter of paralogisms and self-contradictions. + +At this stage we are handed over to the guidance of what Kant calls the +Practical Reason. This faculty gives a synthesis for conduct, as Pure +Reason gave a synthesis for intelligence. All reason demands uniformity, +order, law; only what in theory is recognised as true has in practice to be +imposed as right. In this way Kant arrives at his formula of absolute +morality: Act so that the principle of thy conduct may be the law for all +rational beings. He calls this the Categorical Imperative, as distinguished +from such hypothetical imperatives as: Act this way if you wish to be happy +either here or hereafter; or, act as public opinion tells you. Moreover, +the motive, as distinguished from the end of moral action, should not be +calculating self-interest nor uncalculating impulse, but simply desire to +fulfil the law as such. Previous moralists had set up {98} the greatest +happiness of the greatest number as the end of action, and such an aim does +not lie far from Kant's philosophy; but they could think of no better +motive for pursuing it than self-love or a rather undefined social +instinct; and their _summum bonum_ would take the happiness of irrational +animals into account, while Kant absolutely subordinates the interests of +these to human good. A further coincidence between the Utilitarian and the +Kantian ethics is that in the latter also the happiness of others, not +their perfection, should be the end and aim of each. Finally, the +philosophy of Pure Reason adopts from contemporary French thought as the +governing idea of political organisation what was long to be a principle of +English Utilitarianism--"the liberty of each, bounded only by the equal +liberty of all." + +Nevertheless, the old postulate of a necessary connection between virtue +and individual happiness reappears in Kant's ethical theory, and leads to +the construction of a new religious philosophy. His critique had left no +place for the old theology, nor yet for that doctrine of free-will so dear +to most theologians. Its whole object had been to vindicate against Hume +the necessity and universality of causation. Human actions then must, like +all other phenomena, form an unbroken chain of antecedents and consequents. +Nor does Kant conceal his conviction that, with sufficient knowledge and +powers of calculation, a man's whole future conduct might be foretold. +Nevertheless, under the eighteenth-century idea of man as naturally the +creature of passion or self-interest, he claims for us, as moral agents, +the power of choosing to obey duty in preference to either. And this +freedom is supposed to be made conceivable by the subjectivity of time and +causation, outside of which, {99} as a thing in itself, stands the moral +will. That morality, whether as action or mere intention, involves +succession in time is utterly ignored. Nor is this all. Assuming without +warrant that the moral law demands an ultimate coincidence between +happiness and virtue, made impossible in this life by human weakness, Kant +argues that there must be an unending future life to secure time enough for +working out a problem whose solution is infinitely remote. And, finally, +there must be an omnipotent moral God to provide facilities for undertaking +that somewhat gratuitous Psyche's task. Before Kant moral theology had +argued that the Judge of all the world must do right, apportioning +happiness to desert. It was reserved for him to argue, conversely, that for +right to be done such a Judge must exist, and that therefore he does exist. + +In appreciating the services of Kant to philosophy we must guard ourselves +against being influenced by the extravagant panegyrics of his countrymen, +whose passion for square circles he so generously gratifies. Still, after +every deduction for mere Laputian pedantry has been made, the balance of +fruitful suggestion remains vast. (i.) The antithesis of object and +subject, although not counted among the categories of his _Critique_, has +remained a prime category of thought ever since. (ii.) The idea of a +necessary limit to human knowledge, given by the very theory of that +knowledge, as distinguished from the Scepticism of the Greeks--in other +words, what we now call Agnosticism--may not be final, but it still remains +to be dealt with. (iii.) The possibility of reducing _à priori_ knowledge +to a form of unconscious experience has put an end to dogmatic metaphysics. +(iv.) The problems of Time and Space have taken a central place in +speculation; it has been {100} shown--what Hume did not see--that Causation +has the certainty of a mathematical axiom; and it has been made highly +probable that all these difficulties may find their solution in a larger +interpretation of experience. (v.) Morality has been definitely dissociated +from the appeal to selfish interests, whether in this life or in another. + +We have now to trace, within the limits prescribed by the nature of this +work, the development of philosophy under Kant's German successors. + + * * * * * + + +{101} + +CHAPTER IV. + +THE GERMAN IDEALISTS + +FICHTE, SCHELLING, HEGEL, SCHOPENHAUER, HERBART. + +The Critical Philosophy won its first success in Germany less as a new +epistemology than as what, in fact, its author meant it to be, a +rehabilitation of religious belief. The limits of Reason had been drawn so +closely only to make room for Faith. But the current of Rationalism was +running too strongly to be so summarily stopped; and so with Kant's ablest +successors faith is altogether abandoned, while the claims of reason are +pushed relentlessly through. Among these more logical thinkers the first is +J. G. Fichte (1762-1814). In him--for the third time in modern history, for +the first and last time in Germany--the hero as philosopher finds a worthy +representative. Born in Silesia, like Kant of humble parentage, and bred in +circumstances of more oppressive poverty, he also received a severely +religious and moral training as a preparation for the pastoral office. The +bounty of an aristocratic patron gave him an excellent public-school +education; but as a university student, first at Jena and then at Leipzig, +he had to earn a scanty living by private tuition, finally abandoning his +destined career to accept a post in a Swiss family at Zurich. There, as the +result of an attachment in which the love was nearly all on the lady's +side, he became engaged to a niece of the poet Klopstock, and after a long +delay, caused by money {102} difficulties, was enabled to marry her. In the +meantime he had become a convert to Kant's philosophy, winning the +admiration of the old master himself by a _Critique of all Revelation_, +written in four weeks. Published anonymously by an oversight, it was +generally attributed to Kant himself, and, on the real authorship becoming +known, won for Fichte an extraordinary Professorate of Philosophy at Jena, +where his success as a lecturer and writer gave him for a time the +leadership in German speculation (1794-1799). An untoward incident brought +this stage of his career to an end. Writing in a philosophical review, he +defined God as "the moral order of the universe." Dr. Temple long +afterwards used much the same phrase when Bishop of Exeter, finding it, +presumably, compatible with official Theism; but such was not the +impression created in Saxony. A cry of atheism arose, much to the disgust +of Fichte, whose position would have been better described as pantheistic. +But what incensed him most was the suspicion of an attempt to interfere +with the liberty of academic teaching. With his usual impetuosity he talked +about resigning his chair--with a hint that others would follow his +example--were the authorities at Weimar to permit such an outrage. Goethe, +who was then Minister, observed that no Government could allow itself to be +threatened, and Fichte was at once relieved of his post. Settling at +Berlin, he became Professor of Philosophy in the new University founded +after the French conquest of Prussia, having previously done much to revive +the national spirit by his _Addresses to the German Nation_ (1807-1808). +These were in appearance the programme of a new educational Utopia; but +their real purpose was so evident that the speaker lived in daily +expectation of being summoned {103} before a French court-martial and shot. +Unlike his countrymen, Goethe, Hegel, and Schopenhauer, Fichte passionately +resented the Napoleonic despotism, throwing himself heart and soul into the +great uprising by which it was finally overthrown. Although his wish to +accompany the victorious army as field preacher could not be gratified, the +campaign of 1813 still claimed him as one of its victims. After nursing his +heroic wife to recovery from a hospital fever caught in attendance on the +sick and wounded at Berlin, he took the infection from her and died early +in 1814, soon after hearing that Blücher had crossed the Rhine. + +G. H. Lewes, in a well-known story, has made himself and his readers merry +over a German savant who undertakes to evolve the idea of a camel out of +the depths of his moral consciousness. The phrase is commonly quoted as +"inner consciousness," but this takes away its whole point. For the +original satirist, who, I think, was not Lewes, but Heine, had in view the +philosophy of Fichte. It need hardly be said that German savants are as +careful observers and diligent collectors of facts as any others; and +Fichte in particular trusted solely to experience for the knowledge of +natural phenomena. But even as regards his general philosophy the place it +gives to morality has been misconceived even by his closest students. With +him goodwill really plays a less important part than with Kant, being not +an end in itself, but a means towards an end. And what that end is his +teaching makes quite clear. + +Kant's first critics put their finger on the weak point of his system, the +thing in itself. So, assuming it to be discarded, Fichte set to work on new +lines, the lines of pure idealism. But, though an idealist, he is not, any +more than Berkeley, a solipsist. The celebrated {104} antithesis of the ego +and the non-ego dates from him, and strikes the keynote of his whole +system. It might be thought that, as compared with the old realism, this +was a distinction without a difference. But that is not so; for, according +to Fichte, the non-ego is subjective in its origin, and that is where he +departs widely from Berkeley's theological idealism. Not that I create the +not-myself; I _assume_ it as the condition of my self-consciousness--a +remarkable feat of logic, but after all not more wonderful than that space +and time should result from the activity of the outer and inner senses. +This figment of my imagination is anyhow solid enough to beget a new +feeling of resistance and recoil, throwing the self back on itself, and +bringing with it the interpretation of that external impact by the category +of causation, of its own activity as substance, and of the whole deal +between the ego and the non-ego as interaction or reciprocity. In this way +the first triad of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis is obtained; and from +this, by a vast expenditure of ingenuity, the whole array of Kant's forms, +categories, and faculties is evolved as a coherent system of scientific +thought in obedience to a single principle--the self-realisation of the +ego, alternatively admitting and transcending a limit to its activity. + +It will be easily understood that this self-realising ego is neither +Fichte's nor anyone else's self, but a universal principle, fundamentally +the same in all. One is reminded of Descartes's self-thinking thought by +which the reality of the universe was guaranteed; but between the two there +is this vast difference, that the Frenchman's ego resembles a box +containing a variety of independent ideas, to be separately handled and +examined; the German's is a box enclosing a coiled-up spring by {105} the +expansion of which all the wheels of the philosophical machine are made go +round. From the action of the not-self on the self results the whole of +nature as we conceive it; from the reaction of the self on the not-self, +the whole mentality and morality of man--morality being understood to +include the domestic, social, political, educational, and industrial +organisation of life. The final cause, the impelling ideal of existence, is +the self-realisation of the ego, the entire absorption into its personal +energy of the non-ego, of nature, to be effected by perfect knowledge of +how the physical universe is constituted issuing in perfect subjugation of +its forces to the human will. But such a realisation of the Absolute Ego +would mean its annihilation, for, as we have seen, the antithesis between +objective and subjective is the very condition of consciousness that +without which it could neither begin nor continue to exist. Therefore the +process must go on for ever, and this necessity guarantees the eternal +duration of the human race--not, as Kant had dreamed, of the individual +soul, since for Fichte the Categorical Imperative demands a consummation +widely different from that combination of virtue with happiness which had +satisfied his master. And the agency by which it is being effected through +infinite time is not a personal God, but that moral order of the world +which Fichte regarded as the only true object of religious feeling. As for +human immortality, he seems to have first accepted, but afterwards rejected +it in favour of a mystical union with the divine. + +It has been said that morality was not with Fichte what it had been with +Kant--the highest good. Nevertheless, as a means towards the final +synthesis, morality interested him intensely, and his best work has been +{106} done in ethics. As a condition of self-realisation the primal ego +becomes personified in a multitude of free individualities. Just as in +Stoicism, each individual is conceived as having a special office to +perform in the world-process, and the State exists--ideally speaking--in +order to guarantee the necessary independence of all its citizens. For this +purpose everyone must have the right to work and the right to a living +wage. Thus Fichte appears as the first theorist of State Socialism in the +history of German thought. Probably the example of the Greek Stoics with +their communistic utopias acting on a kindred spirit, rather than any +prophetic vision of the coming century, is to be credited for this +remarkable anticipation. + +SCHELLING. + +German philosophy is prolific of self-contradictions; and so far the most +flagrant example has been offered by Fichte's _Theory of Knowledge_, +starting as it does with the idea of an impersonal ego, developing through +a process in which this selfless self demands its own negation at every +step, and determined by the prospect of a catastrophe that would be the +annihilation of consciousness itself. In fact, there seemed no need to wait +until time had run out; the self, or, as it was now called, the subject, +had absorbed all reality, only to find that the material universe, +reconstituted as the object of knowledge, was an indispensable condition of +its existence. And meanwhile the physical sciences, more particularly those +concerned with inorganic nature, were entering on a series of triumphs +unparalleled since the days of Newton. Philosophy must come to terms with +these or cease to exist. + +The task of reconciliation was first attempted by {107} F. W. J. Schelling +(1775-1854), a Suabian, and the first South German who made a name in pure +philosophy. Educated at the University of Tübingen, at an early age he +covered an encyclopædic range of studies and began authorship at nineteen, +gaining a professorship at Jena four years later. Wandering about from one +university to another, and putting forward new opinions as often as he +changed his residence, the young adventurer ceased to publish after 1813, +and remained silent till in 1841 he came forward at Berlin as the champion +of a reactionary current, practically renouncing the naturalistic pantheism +by which his early reputation had been made. But he utterly failed in the +attempt, which was finally abandoned in the fifth year from its inception. +Lewes, who saw Schelling in his old age, describes him as remarkably like +Socrates; his admirers called him a modern Plato; but he had nothing of the +deep moral earnestness that characterised either, nor indeed was morality +needed for the work that he actually did. This, to use the phrase of his +fellow-student Hegel, consisted in raising philosophy to its absolute +standpoint, in passing from the subjective moralism of the eighteenth +century to the all-comprehensive systematisation of the nineteenth. + +Schelling began as a disciple of Fichte, but he came simultaneously under +the influence of Spinoza, whose fame had been incessantly spreading through +the last generation in Germany, with some reinforcement from the revived +name of Bruno. Their teaching served to make the latent pantheism of Fichte +more explicit, while the great contemporary discoveries gave a new interest +to the study of nature, which Fichte, unlike Kant, had put in the +background, strictly subordinating it to the moral service of man. Had he +cared to evolve {108} the idea of a camel from his moral consciousness, the +operation would not have demanded several years, but only a few minutes' +thought. As thus: the moral development of humanity needed the co-operation +of such a race as the Semites. To form their character a long residence in +the Arabian deserts was needed. But for such nomads an auxiliary animal +would be needed with long legs and neck, a stomach for storing water, hump, +etc.--Q. E. D. Schelling also began by explaining the material world as a +preparation for the spiritual; only he did not employ the method of +teleological adaptation, but a method of rather fanciful analogy. As the +evolution of self-conscious reason had proceeded by a triple movement of +thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, so a parallel process had to be +discovered in the advance towards a consciousness supposed to be exhibited +in organic and inorganic nature. + +The fundamental idea of natural philosophy is polarity--opposite forces +combining to neutralise one another and then parting to be reunited at a +higher stage of evolution. Thus attraction and repulsion--represented as +space and time--by their synthesis compose matter; magnetism and +electricity produce chemical affinity; life results from a triad of +inorganic forces; in life itself productivity and irritability give birth +to sensibility. The order of the terms made little, if any, difference. +When long afterwards iron was magnetised by the electric current, Schelling +claimed for himself the credit of anticipating this discovery, although he +had placed magnetism before electricity. + +The next step was to construct a philosophy of history. This, with much +else, is included under the name of _A System of Transcendental Idealism_ +(1800) in the most finished of Schelling's literary compositions. {109} +History, according to the view here unfolded, is the gradual +self-revelation of God, or the Absolute, in whom Nature and Spirit are +united and identified, who never is nor can be, but always is to be. +Meanwhile the supreme ideal is not that ever-increasing mastery of nature +by man which Fichte contemplated, but their reconciliation as achieved by +Art. For just as natural philosophy carried an element of consciousness +into the material universe, so æstheticism recognises a corresponding +element of unconscious creation in the supreme works of artistic genius +where spirit reaches its highest and best. Here Schelling appears as the +philosopher of Romanticism, a movement that characterised German thought +from 1795 to 1805, and is known to ourselves by the faded and feeble image +of it exhibited in a certain section of English society nearly a century +later. Beginning with a more cultivated intelligence of Hellenic antiquity, +this movement rapidly grew into a new appreciation of medieval culture, +falsely supposed to have given more scope to individuality than modern +civilisation, and then into a search for ever-varying sources of excitement +or distraction in the whole history, art, and literature of past or present +times, religion being at last singled out as the vitalising principle of +all. + +Singularly enough, Fichte accepted the _Transcendental Idealism_ as an +orthodox exposition of his own philosophy. But its composition seems to +have given Schelling the consciousness of his own independence. Soon +afterwards he defined the new position as a philosophy of Identity or of +Indifference. Nature and Spirit, like Spinoza's Thought and Extension, were +all the same and all one--that is to say, in their totality or in the +Absolute. For, considered as appearances, {110} they might present +quantitative differences determined by the varying preponderance of the +objective or of the subjective side. In this way Schelling found himself +able to repeat his fanciful construction of the forces and forms of nature +in successive triads under new names. The essential departure from Fichte, +who repudiated the Philosophy of Identity with undisguised contempt, was +that it practically repudiated the idea of an eternal progress in man's +ever-growing mastery of nature. But, in spite of all disclaimers, the +master silently followed his former disciple's evolution in the direction +of a pantheistic monism. His later writings represent God no longer as the +moral order of the world, but, like Spinoza, as the world's eternal Being, +of which man's knowledge is the reflected image. Finally, both philosophers +accepted the Christian doctrines of the Fall, the Incarnation, and the +Trinity as mythical symbols of an eternal process in which God, after +becoming alienated from himself in the material universe, returns to +himself in man's consciousness of identity with the Absolute. Instead of +the rather abrupt method of position, negation, and re-affirmation known as +Thesis, Antithesis, and Synthesis, we have here the more fluid process of a +spiral movement, departing from and returning to itself. And this was to be +the very mainspring of the system that next comes up for consideration. + +HEGEL. + +{111} + +[Illustration: Hegel + +(_Copyright B. P. C._)] + +{112} G. W. F. Hegel (1770-1831), in the opinion of some good judges +Germany's greatest philosopher, was, like Schelling, a Suabian, and +intimately associated with his younger contemporary, first at Tübingen and +afterwards at Jena, where the two friends jointly conducted a philosophical +review. But they gradually drifted apart. Hegel was not a romanticist, but +a classic; not a naturalist, but a humanist. Largely influenced by Greek +thought and Greek literature, for which he continued to be an enthusiast +through life, he readily accepted, as against Kant and Fichte, the change +from a purely subjective to an objective point of view. But, although he +gave some attention to physical science, Hegel was less interested in it +than his colleague, with whose crude and fanciful metaphysics he also +failed to sympathise. With the publication of Hegel's first important work, +the _Phenomenology of Mind_ (1807), things came to a breach; for its +preface amounts to a declaration of war against the philosophy of +Romanticism. Schelling himself is not named; but there is no mistaking the +object of certain picturesque references to "exploding the Absolute on us," +and "the darkness in which every cow is black." Next year Hegel became what +we should call headmaster of a public school at Nuremberg, filling that +post for eight years, during which his greatest work, the _System of +Logic_, in three volumes, was composed and published. He then obtained a +chair of philosophy at Heidelberg, passing thence to Berlin in 1818, where +he taught until his death by cholera in 1831. David Strauss, who saw the +revered teacher a few days before the fatal seizure, describes him first as +he appeared in the lecture-room, "looking ever so old, bent and coughing"; +then in his home, "looking ten years younger, with clear blue eyes, and +showing the most beautiful white teeth when he smiled." He had published a +summary of his whole system, under the name of an _Encyclopædia of the +Philosophical Sciences_, in 1817, and a _Philosophy of Law_--which is +really a treatise on Government--in 1821. His {113} sympathies were with +bureaucratic absolutism in a modernised form, with Napoleon against the +German patriots, with the restored Prussian Government against the new +Liberalism, with English Toryism against the Whigs of the Reform Bill, and +finally with the admirers of war against the friends of peace. + +Hegel's collected works, published after his death, fill over twenty +good-sized volumes. Besides the treatises already mentioned, they include +his _Lectures on the History of Philosophy_, the _Philosophy of History_, +the _Philosophy of Religion_, _Æsthetics_, etc., made up with much literary +skill from the Professor's own notes and from the reports of his hearers. +The most permanently valuable of these is the _Æsthetics_; but any student +desirous of getting a notion of Hegelianism at first hand had better begin +with the _Philosophy of History_, of which there is a good and cheap +English translation in one of Bohn's Libraries. Some general points of view +serving to connect the system with its predecessors are all that room can +be found for here. + +As compared with Kant, Hegel is distinguished above all by his complete +abjuration of the agnostic standpoint in epistemology. "The universe is +penetrable to thought": an unknowable thing in itself does not exist. +Indeed, the intelligible reality of things is just what we know best; the +unaccountable residuum, if any, lurks in the details of their appearance. +So also in Greek philosophy Hegel holds that the truth was not in the ideal +world of Plato, but in the self-realising Forms of Aristotle. As against +Fichte, Hegel will not allow that the reconciliation of the subjective with +the objective is an infinitely "far-off divine event"; on the contrary, it +is a process being continually realised by ourselves and all about us. In +his homely expression, the very {114} animals as they eat turn their food +into consciousness, in utter disregard of prejudice. But Fichte's +condemnation of Schelling's Indifferentism is quite right. _The Absolute is +Mind_. Nature exists only as the lower stage, whence Spirit emerges to +contradict, to confront, and to explain her as the necessary preparation +for his supreme self-assertion. And Fichte was right in working out his +system by the dialectical method of contradiction and solution, as against +the dogmatism that summarily decrees the Absolute, without taking the +trouble to reason it out, in imitation of the plan pursued by the universe +in becoming conscious of itself. + +The most portentous thing about Hegel's philosophy is this notion of the +world's having, so to speak, argued itself into existence. To rationalise +the sum of being, to explain, without assumptions, why there should be +anything, and then why it should be as we know it, had been a problem +suggested by Plato and solved rather summarily by Spinoza's challenge to +conceive Infinite Power as non-existing. Hegel is more patient and +ingenious; but, after all, his superiority merely consists in spinning the +web of arbitrary dialectic so fine that we can hardly see the thread. The +root-idea is to identify, or rather to confuse, causal evolution with +logic. The chain of causes and effects that constitutes the universe is +made out to be one with the series of reasons and consequents by which the +conclusion is demonstrated. As usual, the equation is effected by a +transference of terms from each side to the other. The categories and +processes of logic are credited with a life and movement that belongs only +to the human reasoner operating with them. And the moving, interacting +masses of which the material universe consists are represented as parties +to a dialectical {115} discussion in which one denies what the other +asserts until it is discovered, on lifting the argument to a higher plane, +that after all they are agreed. Nor is this all. The world as we know it is +composed of co-existent elements grouped together or distinguished +according to their resemblances and differences as so many natural kinds; +and of successive events linked together as causes and effects. But while +there is no general law of coexistence except such as may be derived from +the collocation of the previously existing elements whence they are +derived, there _is_ a law of causal succession--namely, this, that the +quantities of mass and energy involved are conserved without loss or gain +through all time. Now, Hegel's way of rationalising or, in plainer words, +accounting for the coexistent elements and their qualities, is to bring +them under a supposed law of complementary opposition, revived from +Heracleitus, according to which everything necessarily involves the +existence, both in thought and reality, of its contradictory. And the same +principle is applied to causal succession--a proceeding which would be +fatal to the scientific law of conservation. + +There is another way of rationalising experience--namely, the theological +hypothesis of a supreme intelligence by which the world was created and is +governed with a view to the attainment of some ultimate good. And there is +a sort of teleology in Hegel evidently inspired by his religious education. +But the two do not mean the same thing. For he places conscious reason not +at the beginning but at the end of evolution. The rationality of things is +immanent, not transcendent. Purposes somehow work retrospectively so as to +determine the course of events towards a good end. That end is +self-consciousness--not yours or mine, but the {116} world-spirit's +consciousness and possession of itself. And this is reached in four ways: +in Art by intuition, in Religion by representation, in Philosophy by +conception, in History and Politics by the realisation of righteousness +through the agency of the modern State. + +Hegel looked on this world and this life of ours as the only world and the +only life. When Heine pointed to the starry skies he told the young poet +that the stars were a brilliant leprosy on the face of the heavens, and met +the appeal for future compensation with the sarcastic observation: "So you +expect a trinkgeld for nursing your sick mother and for not poisoning your +brother!" + +German historians have justly extolled the ingenuity, the subtlety, the +originality, the systematising power--unequalled since Aristotle--and the +enormous knowledge of their country's chief idealist. But this, after all, +amounts to no more than claiming for Hegel that much of what he said is +true and that much is new. The vital question is whether what is new is +also true--and this is more than they seem prepared to maintain. + +SCHOPENHAUER. + +The leaders of the party known in the fourth and fifth decades of the last +century as Young Germany, among whom Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) was the +most brilliant and famous, were more or less associated with the Hegelian +school. They were, however, what Hegel was not, political revolutionists +with a tendency to Socialism; while their religious rationalism, unlike +his, was openly proclaimed. The temporary collapse in 1849 of the movement +they initiated brought discredit on idealism as represented by Germany's +classic philosophers, which also had been seriously damaged by the luminous +criticism of Trendelenburg, the neo-Aristotelian professor at Berlin +(1802-1872). + +{117} + +[Illustration: SCHOPENHAUER] + +{118} At this crisis attention was drawn to the long-neglected writings of +Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), which then attained a vogue that they +never since have lost. The son of a Hamburg banker and of a literary lady +whose novels enjoyed some reputation in their day, he was placed from the +beginning in a position of greater material and social independence than +usually falls to the lot of German thinkers; and to this, combined with the +fact that he failed entirely as a university teacher, it is partly due that +he wrote about philosophy not like a pedant, but like a man of the world. +At the same time the German professors, resenting the intrusion of an +outsider on their privileged domain, were strong enough to prevent the +reading public from ever hearing of Schopenhauer's existence until an +article in the _Westminster Review_ (April, 1853) astonished Germany by the +revelation that she possessed a thinker whom the man in the street could +understand. + +Schopenhauer found his earliest teachers of philosophy in Plato and Kant. +He then attended Fichte's lectures at Berlin. At some uncertain +date--probably soon after taking his doctor's degree in 1813--at the +suggestion of an Orientalist he took up the study of the Vedanta system. +All these various influences converged to impress him with the belief that +the things of sense are a delusive appearance under which a fundamental +reality lies concealed. According to Hegel, the reality is reason; but the +Romanticists, with Schelling at their head, never accepted his conclusion, +thinking of the absolute rather as a blind, unconscious substance; still +less could it please {119} Schopenhauer, who sought for the supreme good +under the form of happiness conceived as pleasure unalloyed by pain. A +gloomy and desponding temperament combined, as in the case of Byron and +Rousseau, with passionately sensuous instincts and anti-social habits, +debarred him from attaining it. The loss of a large part of his private +fortune, and the world's refusal to recognise his genius, completed what +natural temperament had begun; and it only remained for the philosophy of +the Upanishads to give a theoretic sanction to the resulting state of mind +by teaching that all existence is in itself an evil--a position which +placed him in still more thoroughgoing antagonism to Hegel. + +It will be remembered that Kant's criticism had denied the human mind all +knowledge of things in themselves, and that the post-Kantian systems had +been so many efforts to get at the Absolute in its despite. But none had +stated the question at issue so clearly as Schopenhauer put it, or answered +it in such luminous terms. Like theirs, his solution is idealist; but the +idealism is constructed on new lines. If we know nothing else, we know +ourselves; only it has to be ascertained what exactly we are. Hegel said +that the essence of consciousness is reason, and that reason is the very +stuff of which the world is made. No, replies Schopenhauer, that is a +one-sided scholastic view. Much the most important part of ourselves is +_not_ reason, but that very unreasonable thing called will--that aimless, +hopeless, infinite, insatiable craving which is the source of all our +activity and of all our misery as well. _This_ is the thing-in-itself, the +timeless, inextended entity behind all phenomena, come to the consciousness +of itself, but also of its utter futility, in man. {120} + +The cosmic will presents itself to us objectively under the form of the +great natural forces--gravitation, heat, light, electricity, chemical +affinity, etc.; then as the organising power of life in vegetables and +animals; finally as human self-consciousness and sociability. These, +Schopenhauer says, are what is really meant by the Platonic ideas, and they +figure in his philosophy as first differentiations of the primordial will, +coming between its absolute unity and the individualised objects and events +that fill all space and time. It is the function of architecture, plastic +art, painting, and poetry to give each of these dynamic ideas, singly or in +combination, its adequate interpretation for the æsthetic sense. One art +alone brings us a direct revelation of the real world, and that is music. +Musical compositions have the power to express not any mere ideal +embodiment of the underlying will, but the will itself in all its majesty +and unending tragic despair. + +Schopenhauer's theory of knowledge is given in the essay by which he +obtained his doctor's degree, _On the Four-fold Root of the Sufficient +Reason_. Notwithstanding this rather alarming title, it is a singularly +clear and readable work. The standpoint is a simplification of Kant's +_Critique_. The objects of consciousness offer themselves to the thinking, +acting subject as grouped presentations in which there is "nothing sudden, +nothing single." (1) When a new object appears to us, it must have a cause, +physical, physiological, or psychological; and this we call the reason why +it becomes. (2) Objects are referred to concepts of more or less +generality, according to the logical rules of definition, classification, +and inference; that is the reason of their being known. (3) Objects are +mathematically determined by their position relatively to {121} other +objects in space and time; that is the reason of their being. (4) Practical +objects or ends of action are determined by motives; the motive is the +reason why one thing rather than another is done. + +The last "sufficient reason" takes us to ethics. Schopenhauer agrees with +Kant in holding that actions considered as phenomena are strictly +determined by motives, so much so that a complete knowledge of a man's +character and environment would enable us to predict his whole course of +conduct through life. Nevertheless, each man, as a timeless subject, is and +knows himself to be free. To reconcile these apparently conflicting +positions we must accept Plato's theory that each individual's whole fate +has been determined by an ante-natal or transcendental choice for which he +always continues responsible. Nevertheless, cases of religious "conversion" +and the like prove that the eternal reality of the Will occasionally +asserts itself in radical transformations of character and conduct. + +In ethics Schopenhauer distinguishes between two ideals which may be called +"relative" and "absolute" good. Relative good agrees with the standard of +what in England is known as Universalistic Hedonism--the greatest pleasure +combined with the least pain for all sensitive beings, each agent counting +for no more than one. Personally passionate, selfish, and brutal, +Schopenhauer still had a righteous abhorrence of cruelty to animals; +whereas Kant had no such feeling. But positive happiness is a delusion, and +no humanity can appreciably diminish the amount of pain produced by vital +competition--recognised by our philosopher before Darwin--in the world. +Therefore Buddhism is right, and the higher morality bids us extirpate the +{122} will-to-live altogether by ascetic practices and meditation on the +universal vanity of things. Suicide is not allowed, for while annihilating +the intelligence it would not exclude some fresh incarnation of the will. +And the last dying wish of Schopenhauer was that the end of this life might +be the end of all living for him. + +HERBART. + +J. F. Herbart (1776-1841) occupies a peculiar position among German +idealists. Like the others, he distinguishes between reality and +appearance; and, like Schopenhauer in particular, he altogether rejects +Hegel's identification of reality with reason. But, alone among +post-Kantian metaphysicians, he is a pluralist. According to him, +things-in-themselves, the eternal existents underlying all phenomena, are +not one, but many. So far his philosophy is a return to the pre-Kantian +system of Wolf and Leibniz; but whereas the monads of Leibniz were credited +with an inward principle of evolution carrying them for ever onward through +an infinite series of progressive changes, Herbart pushes his metaphysical +logic to the length of denying all change and all movement to the eternal +entities of which reality is made up. + +Herbart is entitled to the credit--whatever it may be worth--of devising a +system unlike every other in history; for while Hegel has a predecessor in +Heracleitus, his rival combines the Eleatic immobilism with a pluralism +that is all his own. It is not, however, on these paradoxes that his +reputation rests, but on more solid services as a psychologist and an +educationalist. Without any acquaintance, as would seem, with the work +doing in Britain, Herbart discarded the old faculty psychology, conceiving +mentality as made up {123} of "presentations," among which a constant +competition for the field of consciousness is going on; and it is to this +view that such terms as "inhibition" and "threshold of consciousness" are +due. And the enormous prominence now given to the idea of value in ethics +may be traced back to the teaching of a thinker whom he greatly influenced, +F. E. Beneke (1798-1854). + + * * * * * + + +{124} + +CHAPTER V. + +THE HUMANISTS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY + +The philosophical movement of the nineteenth century, after the collapse of +German idealism, has not been dominated by any single master or any single +direction to anything like the same extent as its predecessors. But if we +are called on to select the dominant note by which all its products have +been more or less coloured and characterised, none more impressive than the +note of Humanism can be named. As applied to the culture of the +Renaissance, humanism meant a tendency to concentrate interest on this +world rather than on the next, using classic literature as the best means +of understanding what man had been and again might be. At the period on +which we are entering human interests again become ascendant; but they +assume the widest possible range, claiming for their dominion the whole of +experience--all that has ever been done or known or imagined or dreamed or +felt. Hegel's inventory, in a sense, embraced all this; but Hegel had a way +of packing his trunk that sometimes crushed the contents out of +recognition, and a way of opening it that few could understand. Besides, +much was left out of the trunk that could ill be spared by mankind. + +Aristotle has well said that the soul is in a way everything; and as such +its analysis, under the name of {125} psychology, has entered largely into +the philosophy of the century. Theory of knowledge, together with logic, +has figured copiously in academic courses, with the result of putting what +is actually known before the student in a new and interesting light; but +with the result also of developing so much pedantry and scepticism as to +give many besides dull fools the impression that divine philosophy is both +crabbed and harsh. + +THE FRENCH ECLECTICS. + +In the two centuries after Descartes France, so great in science, history, +and literature, had produced no original philosopher, although general +ideas derived from English thought were extensively circulated for the +purpose of discrediting the old order in Church and State. When this work +had been done with a thoroughness going far beyond the intention of the +first reformers a reaction set in, and the demand arose for something more +conservative than the so-called sensualism and materialistic atheism of the +pre-revolutionary times. A certain originality and speculative +disinterestedness must be allowed to Maine de Biran (1766-1824), who, some +years after Fichte--but, as would seem, independently of him--referred to +man's voluntary activity as a source of _à priori_ knowledge. A greater +immediate impression was produced by Royer-Collard (1763-1845), who, as +Professor at the Sorbonne in 1811, imported the common-sense spiritualism +of Reid (1710-1796) as an antidote to the then reigning theories of +Condillac (1715-1780), who, improving on Locke, abolished reflection as a +distinct source of our ideas. Then came Victor Cousin (1792-1867), a +brilliant rhetorician, and, after Madame de Staël, the first to popularise +German philosophy in France. As {126} Professor at the Sorbonne in the last +years of the Bourbon monarchy he distinctly taught a pantheistic Absolutism +compounded of Schelling and Hegel; but, whether from conviction or +opportunism, this was silently withdrawn, and a so-called eclectic +philosophy put in its place. According to Cousin, in all countries and all +ages, from ancient India to modern Europe, speculation has developed under +the four contrasted forms of sensualism, idealism, scepticism, and +mysticism. Each is true in what it asserts, false in what it denies, and +the right method is to preserve the positive while rejecting the negative +elements of all four. But neither the master nor his disciples have ever +consistently answered the vital question, what those elements are. + +HAMILTON AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED. + +Among other valuable contributions to the history of philosophy, Victor +Cousin had lectured very agreeably on the philosophy of Kant, accepting the +master's arguments for the apriorism of space and time, but rejecting his +reduction of them to mere subjective forms as against common sense. He had +not gone into Kant's destructive criticism of all metaphysics, and this was +now to be turned against him by an unexpected assailant. Sir William +Hamilton (1788-1856), afterwards widely celebrated as Professor of Logic +and Metaphysics at Edinburgh, began his philosophical career by an essay on +"The Philosophy of the Conditioned" in the _Edinburgh Review_ for October, +1829, controverting the Absolutism both of Cousin and of his master, +Schelling. The reviewer had acquired some not very accurate knowledge of +Kant in Germany ten years before; and he uses this, with other rather +flimsy {127} erudition, to establish the principle that _to think is to +condition_, and that therefore the Absolute cannot be thought--cannot be +conceived. Hamilton enjoyed the reputation of having read "all that mortal +man had ever written about philosophy"; but this evidently did not include +Hegel, who certainly had performed the feat declared to be impossible. +Thirty years later the philosophy of the conditioned attained a sudden but +transient notoriety, thanks to the use made of it by Hamilton's disciple, +H. L. Mansel, in his Bampton Lectures on _The Limits of Religious Thought_ +(1858). The object of these was to prove that, as we know nothing about +Things-in-themselves, nothing told about God in the Bible or the Creeds can +be rejected _à priori_ as incredible. As an apology, the book failed +utterly, its only effect being to prepare public opinion for the +Agnosticism of Herbert Spencer and Huxley. + +AUGUSTE COMTE. + +The brilliant audiences that hung spell-bound on the lips of Victor Cousin +as he unrolled before them the Infinite, the Finite, and the relation +between the two, little knew that France's only great philosopher since +Descartes was working in obscurity among them. Auguste Comte (1798-1857), +the founder of Positivism, belonged to a Catholic and Legitimist family. By +profession a mathematical teacher, he fell early under the influence of the +celebrated St. Simon, a mystical socialist who exercised a powerful +attraction on others besides Comte. The connection lasted four years, when +they quarrelled; indeed Comte's character was such as to make permanent +co-operation with him impossible, except on terms of absolute agreement +with his opinions and submission to his will. At a {128} subsequent period +he obtained some fairly well-paid employment at the École Polytechnique, +but lost it again owing to the injurious terms in which he spoke of his +colleagues. In his later years he lived on a small annuity made up by +contributions from his admirers. + +[Illustration: AUGUSTE COMTE.] + +{129} + +Auguste Comte disliked and despised Plato, altogether preferring Aristotle +to him as a philosopher; but it is fundamentally as a Platonist, not as an +Aristotelian, that he should himself be classed--in this sense, that he +valued knowledge above all as the means towards reconstituting society on +the basis of an ideal life. And this is the first reason why his philosophy +is called positive--to distinguish it as reconstructive from the purely +negative thought of the Revolution. The second reason is to distinguish it +as dealing with real facts from the figments of theology and the +abstractions of metaphysics. Positive science explains natural events +neither by the intervention of supernatural beings nor by the mutual +relations of hypostasised concepts, but by verifiable laws of succession +and resemblance. Turgot was the first to distinguish the theological, +metaphysical, and mechanical interpretations as successive stages of a +historical evolution (1750); Hume was the first to single out the relations +of orderly succession and resemblance as the essential elements of real +knowledge (1739); Comte, with the synthetic genius of the nineteenth +century, first combined these isolated suggestions with a wealth of other +ideas into a vast theory of human progress set out in the fifth and sixth +volumes of his _Philosophie Positive_--the best sketch of universal history +ever written. + +The positive sciences fall into two great divisions--the concrete, dealing +with the actual phenomena as presented in space and time; the abstract, +which alone concern philosophy, dealing with their laws. The most important +of the abstract sciences is Sociology, claimed by Comte as his own special +creation. The study of this demands a previous knowledge of biology, +psychology {130} being dismissed as a metaphysical delusion and phrenology +put in its place. The science of life presupposes Chemistry, before which +comes Physics, presupposing Astronomy, and, as the basis of all, +Mathematics, divided into the calculus and geometry. At a later period +Morality was placed as a seventh fundamental science at the head of the +whole hierarchy. + +At a first glance some serious flaws reveal themselves in the imposing +logic of this scheme. Astronomy as a concrete science ought to have been +excluded from the series, its admission being apparently due to the +historical circumstance that the most general laws of physics were +ascertained through the study of celestial phenomena. But on the same +ground geology can no longer be excluded, as its records led to the +recognition of the evolution of life; or should evolution be referred to +the concrete sciences of zoology and botany, by parity of reasoning human +progress should be treated as a branch of universal history--which, in +fact, is what Comte makes it in his fifth and sixth volumes. It would have +been better had he also studied social statics on the historical method. As +it is, the volume in which the conditions of social equilibrium are +supposed to be established contains only one chapter on the subject, and +that is very meagre, consisting of some rather superficial observations on +family life and the division of labour. No doubt the matter receives a far +more thorough discussion in the author's later work, _Politique Positive_. +But this merely embodies his own plan of reorganisation for the society of +the future, and therefore should count not as science, but as art. + +The Positivist theory of social dynamics is that all {131} branches of +knowledge pass through three successive stages already described as the +theological, the metaphysical, and the scientific. And this advance is +accompanied by a parallel evolution on the governmental side from the +military to the industrial régime, with a revolutionary or transitional +period answering to metaphysical philosophy. To this scheme it might be +objected that the parallelism is merely accidental. A scientific view of +nature and a profound knowledge of her laws is no doubt far more conducive +to industry than a superstitious view; but it is also more favourable to +the successful prosecution of war, which, indeed, always has been an +industry like another. Nor, to judge by modern experience, does it look as +if a government placed in the hands of a country's chief capitalists--which +was what Comte proposed--would be less militant in its general disposition +than the parliamentary governments which he condemns as "metaphysical." In +fact, it is by theologians and metaphysicians that our modern horror of war +has been inspired rather than by scientists. + +The great idea of Comte's life, that the positive sciences, philosophically +systematised, are destined to supply the basis of a new religion surpassing +Catholicism in its social efficacy, seems a delusion really inherited from +one of his pet aversions, Plato. It arose from a profound misconception of +what Catholicism had done, and a misconception, equally profound, of the +means by which its priesthood worked. In spite of Comte's denials, the +leverage was got not by appeals to the heart, but by appeals to that future +judgment with which the preaching of righteousness and temperance was +associated by St. Paul, his supposed precursor in religion, as Aristotle +was his precursor in philosophy. {132} + +The worship of Humanity, or, as it has been better called, the Service of +Man, is a great and inspiring thought. Only it is not a religion, but a +metaphysical idea, derived by Comte from the philosophers of the eighteenth +century, and by them through imperial Rome from the Humanists and Stoics of +ancient Athens. + +J. S. MILL. + +John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) was, like Comte, a Platonist in the sense of +valuing knowledge chiefly as an instrument of social reform. He was indeed +bred up by his father, James Mill (1773-1836), and by Jeremy Bentham as a +prophet of the new Utilitarianism as Comte was, to some extent, trained by +St. Simon to substitute a new order for that which the Revolution had +destroyed. Mill, however, had been educated on the lines of Greek liberty +rather than in the tradition of Roman authority; while both were largely +affected by the Romanticism current in their youth. The worship of women, +revived from the age of chivalry, entered into the romantic movement; and +it may be mentioned in this connection that Mill calls Mrs. Taylor, the +lady with whom he fell in love at twenty-four and married eighteen years +later, "the inspirer and in part the author of all" that was best in his +writings; while Comte refers his religious conversion to Madame Clotilde de +Vaux, the object of his adoration in middle life. It seems probable, +however, from the little we know of Mrs. Taylor--whom Carlyle credits with +"the keenest insight and the royallest volition"--that her influence was +the reverse of Clotilde's. If anything, she attached Mill still more firmly +to the cause of pure reason. + +It has been mentioned how Kant's metaphysical {133} agnosticism was played +out by Hamilton against Cousin. A little later Whewell, the Cambridge +historian of physical science, imported Kant's theory of necessary truth in +opposition to the empiricism of popular English thought, and Kant's +Categorical Imperative in still more express contradiction to Bentham's +utilitarian morality. Now Mill, educated as he had been on the +associationist psychology and in the central line of the English +epistemological tradition, rejected the German apriorism as false in +itself, while more particularly hating it as, in his opinion, a dangerous +enemy to all social progress. For to him what people called their +intuitions, whether theoretic or practical, were merely the time-honoured +prejudices in which they had been brought up, and the contradictory of +which they could not conceive. Comte similarly interpreted the metaphysical +stage of thought as the erection into immutable principles of certain +abstract ideas whose value--if they had any--was merely relative and +provisional. Mill, with his knowledge of history, might have remembered +that past thought, beginning with Plato, shows no such connection between +intuitionism and immobility or reaction, while such experientialists as +Hobbes and Hume have been political Tories. But in his own time the _à +priori_ philosophy went hand in hand with conservatism in Church and State, +so he set himself to explode it in his _System of Logic_ (1843). + +Mill's _Logic_, the most important English contribution to philosophy since +Hume, is based on Hume's theory of knowledge, amended and supplemented by +some German and French ideas. It is conceded to Kant that mathematical +truths are synthetic, not analytic. It is not contained in the idea of two +and {134} two that they make four, nor in the idea of two straight lines +that they cannot enclose a space. Such propositions are real additions to +our knowledge; but it is only experience that justifies us in accepting +them. What constitutes their peculiar certainty is that they can be +verified by trial on imagined numbers and lines, without reference to +external objects. But by what right we generalise from mental experience to +all experience Mill does not explain. Hume's analysis of causation into +antecedence and sequence of phenomena is accepted by Mill as it was +accepted by Kant; but the law that every change must have a cause is +affirmed, in adhesion to Dr. Thomas Brown (1778-1820), with more +distinctness than by Hume. As Laplace put it, the whole present state of +the universe is a product of its whole preceding state. But we only know +this truth by experience; and we can conceive a state of things where +phenomena succeed one another by a different law or without any law at all. +Mill himself was ready to believe that causation did not obtain at some +very remote point of space; though what difference remoteness could make, +except we suppose it to be causal--which would be a reassertion of the +law--he does not explain; nor yet what warrant we have for assuming that +causation holds through all time, or at any future moment of time. + +Next to the law of universal causation inductive science rests on the +doctrine of natural kinds. The material universe is known to consist of a +number of substances--namely, the chemical elements and their combinations, +so constituted that a certain set of characteristic properties are +invariably associated with an indefinite number of other properties. Thus, +if in a strange country a certain mineral answers the usual {135} tests for +arsenic, we know that a given dose of it will destroy life; and we are +equally certain that if the spectroscopic examination of a new star shows +the characteristic lines of iron, a metal possessing all the properties of +iron as we find it in our mines is present in that distant luminary. +According to Mill, we are justified in drawing that sweeping inference on +the strength of a single well-authenticated observation, because we know by +innumerable observations on terrestrial substances that natural kinds +possessing such index qualities do exist, whereas there is not a single +instance of a substance possessing those qualities without the rest. + +For Mill, as for Hume, reality means states of consciousness and the +relations between them. Matter he defines as a permanent possibility of +sensation; mind as a permanent possibility of thought and feeling. But the +latter definition is admittedly not satisfactory. For a stream of thoughts +and feelings which is proved by memory to have the consciousness of itself +seems to be something more than a mere stream. All explanations must end in +an ultimate inexplicability. God may be conceived as a series of thoughts +and feelings prolonged through eternity; and it is a logically defensible +hypothesis that the order of nature was designed by such a being, although +the amount of suffering endured by living creatures excludes the notion of +a Creator at once beneficent and omnipotent. And if the Darwinian theory +were established, the case for a designing intelligence would collapse. +Personally Mill believed neither in a God nor in a future life. + +In morals Mill may be considered the creator of what Henry Sidgwick, in his +_Methods of Ethics_ (1874), called Universalistic Hedonism. The English +moralists of the {136} eighteenth century had set up the greatest happiness +of the greatest number as the ideal end of action; but they did not hold +that each individual could be expected to pursue anything but his own +happiness; the object of Bentham (1748-1832) being to make the two +coincide. Kant showed that the rule of right excluded any such +accommodation, and a crisis in his own life led Mill to adopt the same +conclusion. Afterwards he rather confused the issues by distinguishing +between higher and lower pleasures, leaving experts to decide which were +the pleasures to be preferred. The universalistic standard settles the +question summarily by estimating pleasures according to their social +utility. + +Mill fully sympathised with Comte's demand for social reorganisation as a +means towards the moral end. But, with his English and Protestant +traditions, he had no faith in the creation of a new spiritual power with +an elaborate religious code and ritual as the best machinery for the +purpose. In his opinion, the claims of the individual to extended liberty +of thought and action, not their restriction, were what first needed +attention. Second to this--if second at all--came the necessity for +reforming representative government on the lines of an enlarged franchise +and a readjusted electoral system with plural suffrage determined by merit, +votes for women, and a contrivance for giving minorities a weight +proportioned to their numbers. The problem of poverty was to be dealt with +by restrictions on the increase of population and on the amount of +inheritable property, the maximum of which ought not to exceed a modest +competence. + +Among the noble characters presented by the history of philosophy we may +distinguish between the heroic and the saintly types. To the former in +modern {137} times belong Giordano Bruno, Fichte, and to some extent Comte; +to the latter, Spinoza, Berkeley, and Kant. To the second class we may +surely add John Stuart Mill, whom Gladstone called "the saint of +rationalism," and of whom Auguste Laugel said, "He was not sincere--he was +sincerity itself." + +HERBERT SPENCER. + +Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) was the son of a Nonconformist country +schoolmaster, but was educated chiefly by his uncle Thomas, an Evangelical +clergyman of the Church of England. A radical reformer of the old school, +Thomas Spencer seems to have indoctrinated his youthful charge with the +germinal principles afterwards generalised into a whole cosmic philosophy. +He had a passion for justice realised under the form of liberty, individual +responsibility, and self-help. In his opinion, until it was modified by +private misfortunes, everything served everybody right. Beginning as an +economical administrator of the new Poor Law, he at last became an advocate +of its total abolition; and, alone among fifteen thousand clergymen, he was +an active member of the Anti-Corn Law League, besides supporting the +separation of Church and State. At twenty-two Herbert Spencer accepted and +summed up this policy under the form of a general hostility to State +interference with individual liberty, supporting it by a reference to the +reign of Natural Law in all orders of existence. In his first great work, +_Social Statics_, the principle of _laissez-faire_ received its full +systematic development as the restriction of State action to the defence of +liberty against internal and external aggression, the raising of taxes for +any other purpose being unjust, as is also private ownership of {138} land, +which is by nature the common heritage of all. Spencer subsequently came to +abandon land nationalisation, probably from alarm at its socialistic +implications. + +[Illustration: HERBERT SPENCER.] + +The doctrine of natural law and liberty carried with it for Spencer a +strong repugnance not only to protectionism in politics, but also to +miracles in theology. The profession of journalism brought him into touch +{139} with a freethinking set in London. Whether under their influence, or +Shelley's, or by some spontaneous process, his religious convictions +evaporated by twenty-eight into the agnosticism which thenceforth remained +their permanent expression. There might or not be a First Cause; if there +was, we know nothing about it. At this stage Lyell's attempted refutation +of Lamarck converted Spencer to the belief in man's derivation from some +lower animal by a process of gradual adaptation. Thus the scion of an +educationalist family came to interpret the whole history of life on our +planet as an educative process. + +It seemed, however, as if there was one fatal exception to the scheme of +naturalistic optimism. The Rev. Thomas Malthus had originally published his +_Essay on Population_ (1798) as a telling answer to the "infidel" Godwin's +_Political Justice_ (1793), the bolder precursor of _Social Statics_. The +argument was that the tendency of population to outrun the means of +subsistence put human perfectibility out of the question. It had been +suggested by the idealists, Mill among the number, that the difficulty +might be obviated by habitual self-restraint on the part of married people. +But Spencer, with great ingenuity, made the difficulty its own solution. +The pressure of population on the means of subsistence is the source of all +progress; and of progress not only in discoveries and inventions, but also, +through its increased exercise, in the instrument which effects them--that +is, the human brain. Now, it is a principle of Aristotle's, revived by +modern biology, that individuation is antagonistic to reproduction; and +increasing individuation is the very law of developing life, shown above +all in the growing power of life's chief instrument, which is thought's +organ, the brain. For, as Spencer proceeded {140} to show in his next work, +the _Principles of Psychology_, life means a continuous series of +adjustments of internal to external relations. Therefore the rate of +multiplication must go on falling with the growth of intellectual and moral +power until it only just suffices to balance the loss by death. The next +step was to revive Laplace's nebular hypothesis, and to connect it through +Lyell's uniformitarian geology with Lamarck's developmental biology, +thereby extending the same evolutionary process through the whole history +of the universe. + +Nor was this all. Milne-Edwards, by another return to Aristotle, had +pointed to the "physiological division of labour" as a mark of ascending +organic perfection, to which Spencer adds integration of structure as its +obverse side, at the same time extending the world-law, already made +familiar in part through its industrial applications by Adam Smith, to all +orders of social activity. Finally, differentiation and integration were +stretched back from living to lifeless matter, thus bringing astronomy and +geology, which had already entered into the causal series of cosmic +transformations, under one common law of evolution; while at the same time, +seeing it to be generally admitted that inorganic changes originated from +the operation of purely mechanical forces, they suggested that mechanism, +without teleology, could adequately explain organic evolution also. + +Finally came the great discovery of Darwin and Wallace, with its extension +of Malthus's law to the whole world of living things. Spencer had just +touched, without grasping, the same idea years before. He now gladly +accepted Natural Selection as supplementing without superseding Lamarck's +theory of spontaneous adaptation. {141} + +To complete even in outline the vast sweep of his projected Synthetic +Philosophy two steps more remained for Spencer to take. The law of +evolution had to be brought under the recently-discovered law of the +Conservation of Energy, or, as he called it, the Persistence of Force, and +the whole of unified science had to be reconciled with religion. The first +problem was solved by interpreting evolution as a redistribution of matter +and motion--a process in which, of course, energy is neither lost nor +gained. The second problem was solved by reducing faith and knowledge to +the common denominator of Agnosticism--a method that found more favour with +Positivists (in the wide sense) than with Christian believers. + +Herbert Spencer was disappointed to find that people took more interest in +the portico (as he called it in a letter to the present writer)--that is to +say, the metaphysical introduction to his philosophical edifice--than in +its interior. He probably had some suspicion that the portico was mere lath +and plaster, while he felt sure that the columns and architraves behind it +were of granite. The public, however, besides their perennial interest in +religion, might be excused for giving more attention to even a baroque +exterior with some novelty about it than to the formalised eclecticism of +what stood behind it. Unfortunately, they soon found that the alleged +reconciliation was a palpable sham. Religion is nothing if not a +revelation, and an unknowable God is no God at all. Even the pretended +proofs of that poor residual deity involved their author in the transparent +self-contradiction of calling the universe the manifestation of an +Unknowable Power. Then the relations between this Power (such as it was) +and the Energy (or Force) whose conservation (or persistence) was the very +first {142} of First Principles seemed hard to adjust. Either energy is +created, or it is not. In the one case, what becomes of its eternity? in +the other case, what need is there to assume a Power (knowable or not) +behind it? Science will not shrink back before such a phantom, nor will +Religion adore it. + +Such faulty building in the portico prepares us for somewhat unsteady +masonry within; and in fact none holds together except what has been +transported bodily from other temples. In the past history of the universe, +considered as a "rearrangement of matter and motion," disintegration and +assimilation play quite as great a part as integration and differentiation. +Such formulas have no advantage over the metaphysical systematisation of +Aristotle, and they give us as little power either to predict or to direct. +Will war be abolished at some future time, or property equalised or +abolished, or morality exalted, or religion superseded? Spencer was ready +with his answer; but the law of evolution could not prove it true. +Nevertheless, his name will long be associated with evolution as a +world-wide process, though neither in the way of original discovery nor of +complete generalisation, and far less of successful application to modern +problems; but rather of diffusion and popularisation, even as other +valuable ideas have been impressed on the public mind by other philosophies +at a vast expense of ingenuity, knowledge, and labour, but not at greater +expense than the eventual gain has been worth. + +THE ENGLISH HEGELIANS. + +Hegel's philosophy first drew attention in England through its supposed +connection with Strauss's mythic theory of the Gospels and Baur's theory of +New {143} Testament literature as a product of party conflicts and +compromises in the primitive Church. Rightly interpreted as a system of +Pantheism, it was decried and ridiculed by orthodox theologians in the name +of religion and common sense, while cherished by the advanced Broad Church +as a means of symbolising away the creeds they continued to repeat. Then +the triumph of Spencer's Agnosticism in the middle Victorian period +(1864-1874) suggested an appeal to a logic whose object had been to resolve +the negations of eighteenth-century enlightenment in the synthesis of a +higher unity. The first pronunciation in this sense was _The Secret of +Hegel_ (1865), by Dr. Hutchison Stirling (1820-1909), a writer of geniality +and genius, who, writing from the Hegelian standpoint, tried to represent +the English rationalists of the day as a superficial and retrograde school. +It was a bold but unsuccessful attempt to plant the banner of the Hegelian +Right on British soil. By attacking Darwinism Stirling put himself out of +touch with the general movement of thought. Professor William Wallace +(1844-1897), John Caird (1820-1898), and his brother Edward Caird +(1835-1908) inclined more or less to the Left, as also does Lord Haldane +(_b._ 1865) in his _Gifford Lectures_ (1903); and all have the advantage +over Stirling of writing in a clearer if less picturesque style. + +T. H. Green (1836-1882) is sometimes quoted as a Hegelian, but his +intellectual affinities were rather with Fichte. According to him, reality +is the thought of an Eternal Consciousness, of which personality need not +be predicated, while the endless duration of personal spirits seems to be +denied. Another idealist, F. H. Bradley (_b._ 1846)--perhaps the greatest +living English {144} thinker--develops in his _Appearance and Reality_ +(1893) a metaphysical system which, though Absolutist in form, is, to me at +least, in substance practically indistinguishable from the dogmatic +Agnosticism of Herbert Spencer, and even more destructive of the popular +Theism. Finally the writings of Dr. J. E. McTaggart (_b._ 1866), teaching +as they do a doctrine of developmental personal immortality without a God, +show a tendency to combine Hegel with Lotze. + +THE GERMAN ECLECTICS. + +By general consent the most serious and influential of German systematic +thinkers since Hegel is R. H. Lotze (1817-1881). His philosophy is built up +of materials derived in varying proportions from all his German +predecessors, the most distinctive idea being pluralism, probably suggested +in the first instance by Herbart, whom he succeeded as Professor at +Göttingen. But Lotze discards the rigid monads of his master for the more +intelligible soul-substances of Leibniz--or rather of Bruno--whose example +he also follows in his attempt to combine pluralism with monism. Very +strenuous efforts are made to give the unifying principle the character of +a personal God; but the suspicion of a leaning to Pantheism is not +altogether eluded. + +More original and far more uncompromising is the work of Ed. v. Hartmann +(1842-1906). Personally he enjoyed the twofold distinction--whatever it may +be worth--of having served as an officer for a short time in the Prussian +army, and of never having taught in a university. His great work, published +at twenty-seven, appeared under the telling title of the _Philosophy of the +Unconscious_. It won immediate popularity, and reached its eleventh edition +in 1904. Hartmann adopts, {145} with some slight attenuation, +Schopenhauer's pessimism, and his metaphysics with a considerable +emendation. In this new version the world is still conceived as Will and +Representation; but whereas for Schopenhauer the intellective side had been +subordinated to the volitional, with Hartmann the two are co-equal and +intimately united, together forming that "Unconscious" which is the new +Absolute. In this way Reason again becomes, what it had been with Hegel, a +great cosmic principle; only as the optimistic universe had argued itself +_into_ existence, so conversely the pessimistic universe has to argue +itself _out of_ existence. As in the process of developing differentiation, +the volitional and intellective sides draw apart, the Unconscious becomes +self-conscious, and thus awakens to the terrible mistake it committed in +willing to be. Thenceforth the whole of evolution is determined by the +master-thought of how not to be. The problem is how to annul the creative +Will. And the solution is to divide it into two halves so opposed that the +one shall be the negation and destruction of the other. There will be then, +not indeed a certainty, but an equal chance of definitive self-annihilation +and eternal repose. Thus, the immediate duty for mankind, as also their +predestined task, is the furtherance of scientific and industrial progress +as a means towards this consummation, which is likewise their predestined +end. A religious colouring is given to the process by representing it as an +inverted Christian scheme in which man figures as the redeemer of +God--_i.e._ the Absolute--from the unspeakable torments to which he is now +condemned by the impossibility of satisfying his will. + +Like Hartmann, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), the greatest writer of +modern Germany, took his start from {146} Schopenhauer, but broke with +pessimism at an early date, having come to disbelieve in the hedonism on +which it is founded. His restless vanity drove him to improve on Darwinism +by interpreting evolution as the means towards creating what he called the +Superman--that is, a race as much superior to us as we are to the apes. +Progress, however, is not to be in the direction of a higher morality, but +of greater power--the Will-to-Power, not the Will-to-Live, being the +essence of what is. Later in life Nietzsche revived the Stoic doctrine that +events move, and have moved through all time, in a series of recurring +cycles, each being the exact repetition of its predecessor. It is a +worthless idea, and Nietzsche, who had been a Greek professor, must have +known where he got it; but the megalomania to which he eventually succumbed +prevented his recognising the debt. By a merited irony of fate this +worshipper of the Napoleonic type will survive only as a literary moralist +in the history of thought. + +The modern revolt against metaphysical systemisation, with or without a +theological colouring, took in Germany the form of two distinct +philosophical currents. The first is scientific materialism, or, as some of +its advocates prefer to call it, energism. This began about 1850, but +boasts two great living representatives, the biologist Haeckel and the +chemist Ostwald. In their practical aims these men are idealists; but their +admission of space and time as objective realities beyond which there is +nothing, and their repudiation of agnosticism, distinguish them from the +French and English Positivists. The other and more powerful school is known +as Neo-Kantianism. It numbers numerous adherents in the German +universities, and also in those of France and Italy, representing various +{147} shades of opinion united by a common reference to Kant's first +Critique, dissociated from its concessions to deism, as the true +starting-point of modern thought. + +THE LATEST DEVELOPMENTS. + +Since the beginning of the twentieth century the interest in philosophy and +the ability devoted to its cultivation have shown no sign of diminution. +Two new doctrines in particular have become subjects of world-wide +discussion. I refer to the theory of knowledge called Pragmatism, and to +the metaphysics of Professor Henri Bergson. Both are of so revolutionary, +so contentious, and so elusive a character as to preclude any discussion or +even outline of the new solutions for old problems which they claim to +provide. But I would recommend the study of both, and especially of +Bergson, to all who imagine that the possibilities of speculation are +exhausted, or that we are any nearer finality and agreement than when +Heracleitus first glorified war as the father of all things, and +contradiction as the central spring of life. + + * * * * * + + +{149} + +BIBLIOGRAPHY + +Kuno Fischer. _Geschichte der neuern Philosophie._ Nine vols. Fourth ed.; +Heidelberg, 1897-1904. (Comes down to Schopenhauer.) + +Erdmann. _Geschichte der Philosophie._ Vol. ii. Fourth ed.; Berlin, 1896. +(Comes down to Lotze; third ed.; trans. by W. S. Hough; London, 1889.) + +Windelband. _Geschichte der neuern Philosophie._ Two vols. Fifth ed. (Comes +down to Herbart and Beneke. There is an English trans. of Windelband's +_General History of Philosophy_, by J. H. Tufts, New York, 1893. In his +contribution to the General History of Philosophy in the _Kultur der +Gegenwart_, Berlin, 1909, Windelband includes a brief but useful summary of +Pragmatism and Bergson.) + +Levy-Bruhl. _History of Modern Philosophy in France._ Trans. by Miss +Coblence. London, 1890. + +Forsyth, T. M. _English Philosophy: A Study of its Methods and General +Development._ London, 1910. (A. & C. Black.) + +Giordano Bruno. _Opere Italiane._ Ed. P. Lagarde. Göttingen, 1888. + +---- _Opera latine conscripta._ Naples and Florence, 1879-91. + +McIntyre, J. L. _Life of Giordano Bruno._ London, 1903. + +Bacon, Francis. _Works and Life._ Ed. by Ellis and Spedding. Fourteen vols. +1864-74.--Works. One vol. Ed. by Ellis, Spedding, and Robertson. +(Routledge.)--_Novum Organum._ Ed. by T. Fowler. Oxford, 1878. + +Abbott, Edwin. _Francis Bacon._ London, 1885. + +Church, R. W. _Bacon_ (English Men of Letters). London, 1889. + +Hobbes, Thomas. _Works English and Latin._ Ed. Sir Wm. Molesworth. Sixteen +vols. London, 1839-45. + +Robertson, G. C. _Hobbes._ London, 1886 (Blackwood's Philosophical +Classics). + +Stephen, Sir Leslie. _Hobbes._ London, 1903 (English Men of Letters). + +---- _English Thought in the Eighteenth Century._ Second ed.; two vols. +London, 1881. + +---- _The English Utilitarians._ Three vols. London, 1900. {150} + +Descartes. _Oeuvres._ Ed. V. Cousin. Eleven vols. Paris, 1824-1828. A new +edition is in course of publication.--English trans. of the _Method and the +Meditations_ in the Scott Library. London, 1901.--_Life_, by Elizabeth +Haldane. London, 1905. + +Malebranche. _Oeuvres._ Three vols. Ed. Jules Simon. Paris, 1871. + +Spinoza. _Opera._ Ed. Van Vloten and Land. Two vols. The Hague, 1882-83. + +---- _Life and Philosophy._ By Sir Fr. Pollock. London, 1880; second ed., +1899. + +---- _A Study of._ By James Martineau. London, 1883. + +----_'s Ethics, A Study of._ By H. H. Joachim. Oxford, 1901. + +---- Trans. of his principal works. By Elwes in Bohn's Library. Two vols., +1883-86. Also Everyman's Library. (Dent.) + +---- _Ethics._ Trans. by Hale White, revised by Amelia Stirling. London, +1899. + +---- _Leben und Lehre._ Von J. Frendenthal. 1904. + +Leibniz. _Philosophische Schriften._ Seven vols. Ed. C. J. Gerhardt. +Berlin, 1875-90.--_The Philosophy of Leibniz._ By Bertrand Russell. +Cambridge, 1900. + +Locke, John. _Works._ Nine vols. London, 1824. + +---- _Essay Concerning Human Understanding._ Two vols.; in Bohn's Library. +London, 1877. + +---- _Life of._ By Fox Bourne. Two vols. London, 1876. + +---- By Thomas Fowler. London, 1880 (English Men of Letters). + +---- By Prof. A. C. Fraser; in Blackwood's Phil. Classics. 1890. + +Berkeley, George. _Works and Life._ Ed. A. C. Fraser. Four vols. Oxford, +1871. + +---- By Fraser (Philosophical Classics). 1881. + +Hume, David. _Philosophical Works._ Four vols. Ed. Green and Grose. London, +1874-75. + +---- By T. H. Huxley (English Men of Letters). New edition. London, 1894. + +Kant. _Werke._ Ed. Rosenkranz and Schubert. Twelve vols. 1838-40. Two new +editions, including the correspondence, are now in course of publication at +Berlin. There are English translations of all the principal works. + +---- _Life and Doctrine._ By F. Paulsen; trans. by Creighton and Lefevre. +London, 1908. + +Fichte, J. G. _Werke._ Eleven vols. 1834-46. Trans. of his more popular +works by Dr. W. Smith. Two vols. London, 1890. + +Adamson. _Fichte._ In Blackwood's Phil. Classics. 1901. {151} + +Schelling, F. W. J. _Werke._ Fourteen vols. Stuttgart, 1856-61. + +Watson, Prof. J. _Schelling's Transcendental Idealism_, Chicago, 1882. + +Hegel, G. W. F. _Werke._ Nineteen vols. in twenty-one. Leipzig, 1832-87. + +Hegel. By Prof. E. Caird (Philosophical Classics for English Readers.) +Edinburgh, 1883. Hegel's Philosophies of _Law, Religion, History, Mind, his +History of Philosophy_, and the smaller _Logic_, have been translated into +English. + +Schopenhauer. _Werke._ Six volumes in the Reclam Series. Leipzig, 1892. + +Ribot. _La Philosophie de Schopenhauer._ Ninth ed.; Paris, 1909. + +Wallace, Prof. W. _Life of Schopenhauer_ (Great Writers Series). London, +1890. + +Whittaker, Thomas. "Schopenhauer," in _Philosophies Ancient and Modern_. +London, 1908. + +Schopenhauer's _World as Will and Idea._ Trans. by Haldane and Kemp. Three +vols. London, 1884-86.--Essays. Trans. by Belfort Bax (Bohn's Library). +London, 1891. + +Schopenhauer. _Studies._ Consisting of translations by T. Bailey Saunders. +Seven vols. London, 1889-96.--Other essays translated by Madame Hillebrand +(London, 1889) and by A. B. Ballock (London, 1903) + +Herbart, J. F. _Werke._ Ed. Kehrbach. Fifteen vols. 1887 _ff._ + +Wagner. _Vollständige Darstellung d. Lehre Herbarts._ 1896. + +Hayward, F. H. _The Student's Herbart._ 1902. + +Hamilton, Sir W. _Discussions on Philosophy._ Second ed. London, 1853. + +Comte, Auguste. _Cours de Philosophie Positive._ Five vols. Paris, +1830-42.--_Politique Positive._ Four vols. Paris, 1851-54. + +Caird, Edward. _The Social Philosophy of Auguste Comte._ Glasgow, 1885. + +Levy-Bruhl. _The Philosophy of Auguste Comte._ English trans. London, 1903. + +Whewell, Wm. _Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences._ London, 1840. + +Mill, J. S. _A System of Logic._ Two vols. London, 1843.--_On Liberty._ +London, 1859.--_Utilitarianism._ London, 1863.--_Examination of Sir William +Hamilton's Philosophy._ London, 1865. + +Whittaker, T. "Comte and Mill," in _Philosophies Ancient and Modern._ +London, 1908. + +Spencer, Herbert. _First Principles._ London, 1862.--_Essays._ Three vols. +London, 1891.--_Autobiography._ London, 1904. + +Macpherson, Hector. _Herbert Spencer._ London, 1900. {152} + +Green, T. H. _Prolegomena to Ethics._ Oxford, 1884. + +Green, T. H. _Works._ Three vols. London, 1885-1900. + +Bradley, F. H. _Appearance and Reality._ Third ed. London, 1889. + +Lotze, H. _Mikrocosmus._ 1856-64.--_System der Philosophie._ +1874-79.--English trans. of the _Microc._ Two vols. Edinburgh, 1885.--Of +the _Metaphysics._ Two vols. Oxford. 1884. + +Jones, Sir Henry. _The Philosophy of Lotze._ Glasgow, 1895. + +Hartmann, Ed. von. _Die Philosophie des Unbewussten._ 1869. English trans. +by W. C. Coupland. Three vols. London, 1884. + +Nietzsche, Fr. _Werke._ Leipzig, 1895 _ff._ English trans. in fourteen +vols. Edinburgh. (T. N. Foulis.)--D. Halévy, _La Vie de Nietzsche._ Paris, +1909. + +Russell, Bertrand. _The Problems of Philosophy_ (Home University Library). +London, 1912. + + * * * * * + + +{153} + +INDEX + + Abbott, E. A., quoted, 14 + Agnosticism, 67, 70, 141, 143, 144 + Anaximander, 12 + Aquinas, St. Thomas, 4 + Aristotle, 3, 5, 6, 7, 19, 25, 49, 52, 129, 139, 142 + Arnold, Matthew, 55 + Athens, 1 _f._ + Atomism, revival of, 10, 21 + Averroes, 4 + + Bacon, Roger, 4 + Bacon, Francis, 12 _ff._, 24, 29, 32, 61 + Baur, F. C., 142 + Bayle, Pierre, 71 + Beneke, F. E., 123 + Bergson, Henri, 147 + Berkeley, Bishop, 43, 72 _ff._; + _Theory of Vision_, 73; + Idealism, 73 _ff._, 89 + Boyle, Robert, 21 + Bradley, F. H., 57, 143 + Brahe, Tycho, 17 + Brown, Dr. Thomas, 134 + Bruno, Giordano, 7 _ff._, 22, 45, 51, 107 + Byron, 119 + + Caird, Edward, 143 + Caird, John, _ib._ + Calvinism, 28 + Catholicism and philosophy, 2 _ff._ + Causation. _See_ Hume, Kant, Hegel, Mill + Christianity. _See_ Catholicism + Christina, Queen, 32 _f._ + Church, Dean, quoted, 15 + Collier, Arthur, 75 + Collins, Anthony, 71 + Columbus, 6 + Comte, Auguste, 127 _ff._; + classification of the sciences, 130; + _Politique Positive_, _ib._; + philosophy of history, 131, 133 + Condillac, 125 + Copernicanism, 6 _f._ + Cousin, Victor, 90 + + Dante, 6 _f._ + Darwin, Charles, 140 + Democritus, 10 + Descartes, 30, 31 _ff._; + on belief, 41, 49, 61, 65, 87 + Duns Scotus, 4 + + Eclectics, French, 125 _f._; + German, 144 + Ego, the Absolute, 105 + Elizabeth, Princess, 32 + Empedocles, 65 + Epicurus, 9, 22, 29 + Epistemology, 65 + Eriugena, John Scotus, 3, 4 + _Ethica_, Spinoza's, 48 + + Fichte, J. G., 101 _ff._; + his definition of God, 102; + as German patriot, 102 _f._; + his idealism, 103 _ff._; + ethical standpoint, 106; + later teaching, 110 + Ficino, Marsilio, 5 + Final causes in modern philosophy, 61; + in Plato, _ib._ + Form and Matter, 10, 18, 24 + + Galileo, 17, 24 + Gassendi, 50 + Geulincx, 42, 44, 51 + Gilbert, 17, 21 + Godwin, William, 139 + Goethe, 102, 105 + Green, T. H., 143 + + Haeckel, Ernst, 146 + Haldane, Lord, 143 + Haldane, Miss E. S., + quoted, 32 + Hamilton, Sir William, 126 f., 132 + Hartmann, Ed. von, 144 f. + Harvey, 17 + Hegel, G. F. W., 24; + on Spinoza, 53, 103, 107, 110 _ff._; + _Phenomenology of Mind_, 112; + _Science of Logic_, _ib._; + _Encyclopædia_, _ib._; + _Philosophy of Law_, _ib._; + _Æsthetics_, 113; + _Philosophy of History_, _ib._; + his didactic method, 113 _ff._; + negation of supernatural religion, 116, 118, 124, 126 + Hegelians, the English, 142 _ff._ + Heine, 103, 116 + Heracleitus, 11, 147 + Herbart, J. F., 122, 144 + Hobbes, Thomas, 22 _ff._, 50, 56, 68 + Hooker, Richard, and the Social Contract, 29 + Humanism in the nineteenth century, 124 + Hume, David, 77 _ff._; + character as a historian, 77; + theory of causation, 81 _ff._; + attitude towards theism, 84, 89; + a precursor of Comte, 129; + and of Mill, 133 _ff._ + Huxley, T. H., 127 + Huyghens on Descartes, 41 + + Induction, Baconian, 20 + Innate ideas, 68, 95 + + John of Salisbury, 4 + Justinian, 1 + + Kant, Immanuel, 85 ff.; + his nebular hypothesis, 87; + on synthetic and analytic judgments, 87 _ff._; + on space and time, 90 _ff._; + _Critique of Pure Reason_, 93 _ff._; + on causation, 95 _f._; + moral and religious philosophy, 97 ff., 118, 119, 132, 133, 134, 147 + Kepler, 10, 17, 21 + Klopstock, 101 + + {154} + Lamarck, 139, 140 + Laplace, 87 + Leibniz, G. W., 57 _ff._; + optimism, 59 _ff._; + monadology, 62; + determinism, 63; + pre-established harmony, _ib._, 144 + Lewes, G. H., 103, 107 + Locke, John, 29, 65 _ff._; + on toleration, 67; + his proof of theism, 69; + moral inconsistency, 69 _f._, 72, 87, 89 + Lotze, R. H., 144 + Lucretius, 9, 20, 22 + Luther, 6 + Lyell, Sir Charles, 139 + + Macaulay on Bacon, 16; + on Hobbes, 28, 71 + McTaggart, Dr. J. E., 144 + Maine de Biran, 125 + Malebranche, 42 _ff._, 51, 74, 89 + Malthus, 137 + Mansel, H. L., 127 + Materialists, German, 146 + Mill, J. S., 132 _ff._; + _System of Logic_, 133; + metaphysics, 135; + theology, _ib._; + ethics, 135 _f._; + politics, 136; + character, 137 + Milne-Edwards, 140 + Monadism, 11, 70 + + Napier, 17 + Neo-Kantianism, 146 + Neo-Platonism, 2 f. + Newton, Isaac, 58, 59 + Nicolas of Cusa, 11 + Nietzsche, Friedrich, 145 _f._ + Norris, John, 75 + + Occam, 5 + Occasionalism, 42 + Ostwald, 146 + + Pantheism, 45,50 + Parmenides, 9 + Pascal, 42 + Plotinus, 2, 5, 12, 44 + Positivism. See Comte + Power, idea of, in Spinoza, 52; + how connected with causation, 83 + Pragmatism, 147 + Proclus, 3 + Pythagoreans, 9 + + Reality, degrees of, 57 + Reid, Thomas, 85, 125 + Renaissance, scientific activity of the, 17 + Rousseau, 29, 119 + + St. Simon, 127 + Schelling, F. W. J., 106 _ff._; + natural philosophy, 108; + _Transcendental Idealism_, 108 _f._; + romanticism, 109; + Absolutism, 110, 126 + Schiller, F. C. S., quoted, 18 + Schopenhauer, Arthur, 103, 118 _ff._; + pessimism, 119; + metaphysics, 119 _ff._; + ethics, 121 _f._, 145 + Sextus Empiricus, 67 + Shaftesbury, Lord, author of the _Characteristics_, 71 + Shelley, 139 + Sidgwick, Henry, 135 + Smith, Adam, 140 + Social Contract, 26 + Spencer, Herbert, 127, 137 ff.; + _Social Statics_, 137; + _Psychology_, 140; + _Synthetic Philosophy_, 141; + on religion, _ib._; + formula of evolution, 142, 144 + Spencer, Rev. Thomas, 137 + Spinoza, 30, 45 _ff._; + _Tractatus Theologico-Politicus_, 48; + not a mystic, 55; + ethics, 56 _f._; + return to Stoicism, 56, 59, 61, 69, 87, 106, 110 + Staël, Madame de, 125 + Stirling, Dr. Hutchison, 143 + Strauss, David, 112, 142 + + Taylor, Mrs., and J. S. Mill, 132 + Temple, Archbishop, 102 + Theism. _See_ Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, Fichte, Mill + _Timæus_, Plato's, 41 + Toland, 71 + Turgot, 129 + + Vaux, Clotilde de, and Comte, 132 + Voltaire and optimism, 59 + Vries, Simon de and Spinoza, 46 + + Wallace, A. R., 140 + Wallace, Prof. William, 143 + Whewell, William, 133 + Wordsworth, 57 + Wycliffe, 5 + + + + + * * * * * + + + + +Transcriber's note: + +The following changes were made: + +Page 38. "passed with progressive reflection": 'progress-sive' on line +break in original. + +Page 57. 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