{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_34283/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_34283","id":"gutenberg_34283","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/34283","summary":null,"tags":["Category: History - Early Modern (c. 1450-1750)","Category: History - Modern (1750+)","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Philosophy, Modern -- History"],"text":"E-text prepared by Steven Gibbs, Keith Edkins, and the Online Distributed\nProofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)\n\n\n\nNote: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this\n      file which includes the original illustrations.\n      See 34283-h.htm or 34283-h.zip:\n      (https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/34283/pg34283-images.html)\n      or\n      (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/34283/34283-h.zip)\n\n\nTranscriber's note:\n\n      Page numbers in curly braces (example: {25}) have been\n      included in the text to enable the reader to use the\n      index.\n\n      A few typographical errors have been corrected; they\n      are listed at the end of the text.\n\n\n\n[Illustration: GIORDANO BRUNO.\n\nFrom the Statue in the Campo dei Fiori, Rome.]\n\nHISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY\n\nby\n\nA. W. BENN,\n\nAuthor of \"The History of English Rationalism in the\nNineteenth Century,\" Etc.\n\n\n[Illustration: GIORDANO BRUNO.\n\nFrom the Statue in the Campo dei Fiori, Rome.]\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n[ISSUED FOR THE RATIONALIST PRESS ASSOCIATION, LIMITED]\n\nLondon:\nWatts & Co.,\n17 Johnson's Court, Fleet Street, E.C.\n1912\n\nPrinted by Watts and Co.,\nJohnson's Court, Fleet Street,\nLondon, E.C.\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n  CHAPTER I.                                  PAGE\n  THE PHILOSOPHICAL RENAISSANCE                  1\n\n  CHAPTER II.\n  THE METAPHYSICIANS                            31\n\n  CHAPTER III.\n  THE THEORISTS OF KNOWLEDGE                    65\n\n  CHAPTER IV.\n  THE GERMAN IDEALISTS                         101\n\n  CHAPTER V.\n  THE HUMANISTS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY      124\n\n  BIBLIOGRAPHY                                 149\n\n  INDEX                                        153\n\nLIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS\n\n  GIORDANO BRUNO      _Frontispiece_\n\n                         PAGE\n  FRANCIS BACON           13\n\n  RENE DESCARTES          34\n\n  BENEDICTUS SPINOZA      47\n\n  DAVID HUME              78\n\n  IMMANUEL KANT           86\n\n  G. W. F. HEGEL         111\n\n  ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER    117\n\n  AUGUSTE COMTE          128\n\n  HERBERT SPENCER        138\n\n\n\n\n{1}\n\nCHAPTER I.\n\nTHE PHILOSOPHICAL RENAISSANCE\n\nFor a thousand years after the schools of Athens were closed by Justinian\nphilosophy made no real advance; no essentially new ideas about the\nconstitution of nature, the workings of mind, or the ends of life were put\nforward. It would be false to say that during this period no progress was\nmade. The civilisation of the Roman Empire was extended far beyond its\nancient frontiers; and, although much ground was lost in Asia and Africa,\nmore than the equivalent was gained in Northern Europe. Within Europe also\nthe gradual abolition of slavery and the increasing dignity of peaceful\nlabour gave a wider diffusion to culture, combined with a larger sense of\nhuman fellowship than any but the best minds of Greece and Rome had felt.\nWhether the status of women was really raised may be doubted; but the ideas\nand sentiments of women began to exercise an influence on social\nintercourse unknown before. And the arts of war and peace were in some ways\nalmost revolutionised.\n\nThis remarkable phenomenon of movement in everything except ideas has been\nexplained by the influence of Christianity, or rather of Catholicism. There\nis truth in the contention, but it is not the whole truth. The Church\nentered into a heritage that she did not create; she defined and\naccentuated tendencies that {2} long before her advent had secretly been at\nwork. In the West that diffusion of civilisation which is her historic\nboast had been begun and carried far by the Rome whence her very name is\ntaken. In the East the title of orthodox by which the Greek Church is\ndistinguished betrays the presence of that Greek thought which moulded her\ndogmas into logical shape. What is more, the very idea of right belief as a\nvital and saving thing came to Christianity from Platonism, accompanied by\nthe persuasion that wrong belief was immoral and its promulgation a crime\nto be visited by the penalty of death.\n\nEcclesiastical intolerance has been made responsible for the speculative\nstagnation of the Middle Ages, and it has been explained as an effect of\nthe belief in the future punishment of heresy by eternal torments. But in\ntruth the persecuting spirit was responsible for the dogma, not the dogma\nfor persecution. And we must look for the underlying cause of the whole\nevil in the premature union of metaphysics with religion and morality first\neffected by Plato, or rather by the genius of Athens working through Plato.\nIndeed, on a closer examination we shall find that the slowing-down of\nspeculation had begun long before the advent of Christianity, and coincides\nwith the establishment of its headquarters at Athens, where also the first\npermanent schools of philosophy were established. These schools were\ndistinctly religious in their character; and none was so set against\ninnovation as that of Epicurus, falsely supposed to have been a home of\nfreethought. In the last Greek system of philosophy, Neo-Platonism,\ntheology reigned supreme; and during the two and a-half centuries of its\nexistence no real advance on the teaching of Plotinus was made. {3}\n\nNeo-Platonism when first constituted had incorporated a large Aristotelian\nelement, the expulsion of which had been accomplished by its last great\nmaster, Proclus; and Christendom took over metaphysics under what seemed a\nPlatonic form--the more welcome as Plato passed for giving its creeds the\nindependent support of pure reason. This support extended beyond a future\nlife and went down to the deepest mysteries of revealed faith. For,\naccording to the Platonic doctrine of ideas, it was quite in order that\nthere should be a divine unity existing independently of the three divine\npersons composing it; that the idea of humanity should be combined with one\nof these persons; and that the same idea, being both one with and distinct\nfrom Adam, should involve all mankind in the guilt of his transgression.\nThus the Church started with a strong prejudice in favour of Plato which\ncontinued to operate for many centuries, although the first great\nschoolman, John Scotus Eriugena (810-877), incurred a condemnation for\nheresy by adopting the pantheistic metaphysics of Neo-Platonism.\n\nAs the Platonic doctrine of ideas came to life again in the realism, as it\nwas called, of scholastic philosophy, so the conflicting view of his old\nopponent Aristotle was revived under the form of conceptualism. According\nto this theory the genera and species of the objective world correspond to\nreal and permanent distinctions in the nature of things; but, apart from\nthe conceptions by which they are represented in the intellect of God and\nman, those distinctions have no separate existence. Aristotle's philosophy\nwas first brought into Europe by the Mohammedan conquerors of Spain, which\nbecame an important centre of learning in the earlier Middle Ages. Not a\nfew Christian scholars went there to {4} study. Latin translations were\nmade from Arabic versions of Aristotle, and in this way his doctrines\nbecame more widely known to the lecture-rooms of the Catholic world. But\ntheir derivation from infidel sources roused a prejudice against them,\nstill further heightened by the circumstance that an Arabian commentator,\nAverroes, had interpreted the theology of the _Metaphysics_ in a\npantheistic sense. And on any sincere reading Aristotle denied the soul's\nimmortality which Plato had upheld. Accordingly, all through the twelfth\ncentury Platonism still dominated religious thought, and even so late as\nthe early thirteenth century the study of Aristotle was still condemned by\nthe Church.\n\nNevertheless a great revolution was already in progress. As a result of the\ncapture of Constantinople by the Crusaders in A.D. 1204 the Greek\nmanuscripts of Aristotle's writings were brought to Paris, and at a\nsubsequent period they were translated into Latin under the direction of\nSt. Thomas Aquinas, the ablest of the schoolmen, who so manipulated the\nPeripatetic philosophy as to convert it from a battering-ram into a\nbuttress of Catholic theology--a position still officially assigned to it\nat the present day. Aristotelianism, however, did not reign without a rival\neven in the later Middle Ages. Aquinas was a Dominican; and the jealousy of\nthe competing Franciscan Order found expression in maintaining a certain\ntradition of Platonism, represented in different ways by Roger Bacon\n(1214-1294) and by Duns Scotus (1265-1308). In this connection we have to\nnote the extraordinary fertility of the British islands in eminent thinkers\nduring the Middle Ages. Besides the two last mentioned there is Eriugena\n(\"born in Ireland\"), John of Salisbury {5} (1115-1180), the first Humanist,\nWilliam of Ockham, and Wycliffe, the first reformer--making six in all, a\nlarger contribution than any other region of Europe, or indeed all the rest\nof Europe put together, has made to the stars of Scholasticism. This\nadvantage is probably not due to any inherent genius for philosophy in the\ninhabitants of these islands, but to their relative immunity from war and\nto the political liberty that cannot but have been favourable to\nindependent thought. Five out of the six were more or less inclined to\nPlatonism, and their idealist or mystical tendencies were sometimes\nassociated with the same practicality that distinguished their master. The\nsixth, commonly called Occam (died about 1349), is famous as the champion\nof Nominalism--that is, of the doctrine that genera and species have no\nreal existence either in nature or in mind; there are only individuals more\nor less resembling one another. He is the author of the famous saying--the\nsole legacy of Scholasticism to common thought: \"Entities ought not to be\ngratuitously multiplied\" (entia non sunt praeter necessitatem\nmultiplicanda).\n\nThe capture of Constantinople by the Crusaders had led to Aristotle's\ntriumph in the thirteenth century. Two hundred years later the conquering\nOttoman advance on the same city was the immediate cause of his overthrow.\nFor the Byzantine scholars who fled for help and refuge to Italy brought\nwith them the manuscripts of Plato and Plotinus, and these soon became\nknown to Western Europe through the Latin translations of Marsilio Ficino.\nOn its literary side the Platonic revival fell in admirably with the\nHumanism to which the Schoolmen had long been intensely distasteful. And\nthe religious movement that preceded {6} Luther's Reformation found a\nwelcome ally in Neo-Platonic mysticism. At the same time the invention of\nprinting, by opening the world of books to non-academic readers, vastly\nwidened the possibilities of independent thought. And the Reformation, by\ndiscrediting the scholastic theology in Northern Europe, dealt another blow\nat the system with which it had been associated by Aquinas.\n\nIt has been supposed that the discovery of America and the circumnavigation\nof the globe contributed also to the impending philosophical revolution.\nBut the true theory of the earth's figure formed the very foundation of\nAristotle's cosmology, and was as well known to Dante as to ourselves. Made\nby a fervent Catholic, acting under the patronage of the Catholic queen\n_par excellence_, the discovery of Columbus increased the prestige of\nCatholicism by opening a new world to its missions and adding to the wealth\nof its supporters in the Old World.\n\nThe decisive blow to medieval ideas came from another quarter--from the\nCopernican astronomy. What the true theory of the earth's motion meant for\nphilosophy has not always been rightly understood. It seems to be commonly\nsupposed that the heliocentric system excited hostility because it degraded\nthe earth from her proud position as centre of the universe. But the\nreverse is true. According to Aristotle and his scholastic followers, the\ncentre of the universe is the lowest and least honourable, the\ncircumference the highest and most distinguished position in it. And that\nis why earth, as the vilest of the four elements, tends to the centre;\nwhile fire, being the most precious, flies upward. Again, the incorruptible\naether of which the heavens are composed shows its eternal character {7} by\nmoving for ever round in a circle of which God, as Prime Mover, occupies\nthe outermost verge. And this metaphysical topography is faithfully\nfollowed by Dante, who even improves on it by placing the worst criminals\n(that is, the rebels and traitors--Satan, with Judas and Brutus and\nCassius) in the eternal ice at the very centre of the earth. Such fancies\nwere incompatible with the new astronomy. No longer cold and dead, our\nearth might henceforth take her place among the stars, animated like\nthem--if animated they were--and suggesting by analogy that they too\nsupported teeming multitudes of reasonable inhabitants.\n\nBut the transposition of values did not end here. Aristotle's whole\nphilosophy had been based on a radical antithesis between the sublunary and\nthe superlunary spheres--the world of growth, decay, vicissitude, and the\nworld of everlasting realities. In the sublunary sphere, also, it\ndistinguished sharply between the Forms of things, which were eternal, and\nthe Matter on which they were imposed, an intangible, evanescent thing\nrelated to Form as Possibility to Actuality. We know that these two\nconvenient categories are logically independent of the false cosmology that\nmay or may not have suggested their world-wide application. But the\nimmediate effect of having it denied, or even doubted, was greatly to exalt\nthe credit of Matter or Power at the expense of Form or Act.\n\nThe first to draw these revolutionary inferences from the Copernican theory\nwas Giordano Bruno (1548-1600). Born at Nola, a south Italian city not far\nfrom Naples, Bruno entered the Dominican Order before the age of fifteen,\nand on that occasion exchanged his baptismal name of Filippo for that by\nwhich he has ever since been known. Here he became acquainted with the {8}\nwhole of ancient and medieval philosophy, besides the Copernican astronomy,\nthen not yet condemned by the Church. At the early age of eighteen he first\ncame into collision with the authorities; and at twenty-eight (1576)\n[McIntyre, pp. 9-10] he openly questioned the chief characteristic dogmas\nof Catholicism, was menaced with an action for heresy, and fled from the\nconvent. The pursuit must have been rather perfunctory, for Bruno found\nhimself free to spend two years wandering from one Italian city to another,\nearning a precarious livelihood by tuition and authorship. Leaving Italy at\nlast, rather from a desire to push his fortunes abroad than from any fear\nof molestation, and finding France too hot to hold him, he tried Geneva for\na little while, but, on being given to understand that he could only stay\non the condition of embracing Calvinism, returned to France, where he lived\nfirst for two years as Professor of Philosophy at Toulouse, and three more\nin a somewhat less official position at Paris. Thence, in the train of the\nFrench ambassador, he passed to England, where his two years' sojourn seems\nto have been the happiest and most fruitful period of his restless career.\nIt was cut short by his chief's return to Paris. But the philosopher's\nfearless advocacy of Copernicanism made that bigoted capital impossible.\nThe truth, however, seems to be that Bruno never could hit it off with\nanyone or any society; and the next five years, spent in trying to make\nhimself acceptable at one German university after another, are a record of\nhopeless failure. Finally, in an evil hour, he goes to Venice at the\ninvitation of a young noble, Mocenigo, who, in revenge for disappointed\nexpectations, betrays him to the Inquisition. Questioned about his\nheresies, Bruno showed perfect willingness to accept all the theological\ndogmas that {9} he had formerly denied. Whether he withdrew his\nretractation on being transferred from a Venetian to a Roman prison does\nnot appear, as the Roman depositions are not forthcoming. Neither is it\nclear why so long a delay as six years (1594-1600) was granted to the\nphilosopher when such short work was made of other heretics. It seems most\nprobable that Bruno, while pliant enough on questions of religious belief,\nremained inflexible in maintaining the infinity of inhabited worlds. When\nthe final condemnation was read out, he told the judges that he heard it\nwith less fear than they felt in pronouncing it. In the customary\neuphemistic terms they had sent him to death by fire. At the stake, when\nthe crucifix was held up to him, he turned away his eyes--with what\nthoughts we cannot tell. There is a monument to the heroic thinker at Nola,\nand another in the Campo dei Fiori on the spot where he suffered at Rome,\nraised against the strongest protests of the ecclesiastical authorities.\n\nThe Greek-Italian philosophers--the Pythagoreans and Parmenides--had\nintroduced the idea of finiteness or Limitation as a necessary condition of\nreality and perfection into thought. From them it passed over to Plato and\nAristotle, who made it dominant in the schools. Epicurus and Lucretius had,\nindeed, carried on the older Ionian tradition of infinite atoms and\ninfinite worlds dispersed through infinite space; but their philosophy was\npractically atheistic, and the Church condemned it as both heretical and\nfalse. Probably the discovery of the earth's globular shape had first\nsuggested the idea of a finite universe to Parmenides; at any rate, the\ndiscovery of the earth's motion suggested the idea of an infinite universe\nto his Greek-souled Italian successor; or rather it was {10} the break-up\nof Aristotle's spherical world by Copernicanism that threw Bruno back--as\nhe gives us himself to understand--on the older Ionian cosmologies, with\ntheir assumption of infinite space and infinite worlds. In this reference\nBruno went far beyond Copernicus, and even Kepler; for both had assumed, in\ndeference to current opinion, that the fixed stars were equidistant from\nthe solar system, and formed a single sphere enclosing it on all sides. He,\non the contrary, anticipated modern astronomy in conceiving the stars as so\nmany suns dispersed without assignable limits through space, and each\nsurrounded by inhabited planets.\n\nInfinite space had been closely associated by Democritus and Epicurus with\ninfinite atoms; and the next great step taken by Bruno was to rehabilitate\natomism as a necessary concept of modern science. He figured the atoms as\nvery minute spheres of solid earthy matter, forming by their combinations\nthe framework of visible bodies. But their combinations are by no means\nfortuitous, as Democritus had impiously supposed; nor do they move through\nan absolute void. All space is filled with an ocean of liquid aether, which\nis no other than the quintessence of which Aristotle's celestial spheres\nwere composed. Only in Bruno's system it takes the place of that First\nMatter which is the extreme antithesis of the disembodied Form personified\nin the Prime Mover, God. And here we come to that reversal of cosmic values\nbrought about by the reversal of the relations between the earth and sun\nwhich Copernicus had effected. The primordial Matter, so far from passively\nreceiving the Forms imposed on it from without, has an infinite capacity\nfor evolving Forms from its own bosom; and, so far {11} from being\nunspiritual, is itself the universal spirit, the creative and animating\nsoul of the world. The First Matter, Form, Energy, Life, and Reason are\nidentified with Nature, Nature with the Universe, and the Universe with\nGod.\n\nSo far all is clear, if not convincing. It is otherwise with the theory of\nMonads. This is only expounded in Bruno's Latin works, for the most part\nill-written and hopelessly obscure. It seems possible that by the monads\nBruno sometimes means the infinitesimal parts into which the aether of\nspace may conceivably be divided. Each of these possesses consciousness,\nand therefore may be considered as reflecting and representing the whole\nuniverse. A number of monads, or rather a continuous portion of the aether\nsurrounding and interpenetrating a group of atoms, endows them with the\nforms and qualities of elementary bodies, ascending gradually through\nvegetal and animal organisations to human beings. But the animating process\ndoes not stop with man. The earth, with the other planets, the sun, and all\nthe stars, are also monads on the largest scale, with reasonable souls,\njust as Aristotle thought. In fact, the old mythology whence he derived the\nidea repeats itself in his great enemy Bruno.\n\nBeyond and above all these partial unities is the Monas Monadum--the\nsupreme unity, the infinite God who is the soul of the infinite universe.\nDoubtless there is here a reminiscence of the Neo-Platonic One, the\nineffable Absolute, beyond all existence, yet endowed with the infinite\npower whence all existence proceeds. Bruno had learned from Cardinal\nNicolas of Cusa--a Copernican before Copernicus--to recognise the principle\nof Heracleitus that opposites are one; and in this instance he applies it\nwith brilliant audacity; for every infinitesimal {12} part of the\nspace-filling aether is no less the soul of the universe than the Monad of\nMonads itself. And both agree in being non-existent in the sense of being\ntransfinite, since there can be no sum of infinity and no animated\nmathematical points.\n\nFrom Anaximander to Plotinus there is hardly a great Greek thinker whose\ninfluence cannot be traced in the system of Giordano Bruno. And while he\nrepresents the philosophical Renaissance in this eminent degree, he heads\nthe two lines of speculation which, separately or combined, run through the\nwhole history of modern metaphysics--the monistic, and what is now called\nthe pluralistic tendency. With none, except, perhaps, with Hegel, have the\ntwo been perfectly balanced; and in Bruno himself the leaning is distinctly\ntowards plurality, his Supreme Monad being a mere survival from the\nNeo-Platonic One.\n\nFRANCIS BACON.\n\nFrancis Bacon (1561-1626) was by profession a lawyer, by taste a scientific\ninquirer, by character a seeker after wealth and power, by natural genius\nan immortal master of words. He began life as the friend, adviser, and\nclient of Elizabeth's favourite, the Earl of Essex. When that unfortunate\ncourtier, in disregard of his warnings, rushed into a treasonable\nenterprise, Bacon appeared as one of the most zealous of the counsel for\nthe prosecution. Strictly speaking, this may have been his duty as a loyal\nsubject of the Queen; it was hardly his duty, even on the Queen's\ncommission, after Essex's execution, to assist in the composition of a\npamphlet blackening the memory of his former friend and patron. In the next\nreign Bacon paid assiduous court to James and his favourites. {13}\n\n[Illustration: FRANCIS BACON.\n\n(_Copyright B. P. C._)]\n\n{14} When the first of these, Somerset, fell and was tried on a charge of\nmurder, he conducted the prosecution, and, finding the evidence\ninsufficient, suggested to James that the prisoner should be entrapped into\na confession by dangling a false promise of forgiveness before his eyes.\nBacon owed his final exaltation to Buckingham, and as Lord Keeper allowed\nhimself to be made the tool of that bad man for the perversion of justice.\nA suit was brought before him by a young man against a fraudulent trustee\n(his own uncle) for the restitution of a sum of money. Bacon gave sentence\nfor the plaintiff. Buckingham then intervened with a demand that the case\nshould be retried. \"Upon this Bacon saw the parties privately, and,\nannulling all the deliberate decisions of the Court, compelled the youth to\nassent to the ceasing of all proceedings, and to accept\" a smaller sum than\nhe was entitled to (E. A. Abbott). On another occasion he exercised his\njudicial authority in a way that did not square with Buckingham's wishes,\nbut quite legitimately and without any consciousness of giving offence;\nwhereupon the insolent favourite addressed him in a letter filled with\noutrageous abuse, to which Bacon replied in terms of abject submission.\nThis meanness had its reward, for in 1618 the philosopher became Lord\nChancellor.\n\nAfter a three years' tenure Bacon was flung from his high position by a\ncharge of judicial corruption, to the truth of every count in which he\nconfessed. The question is very complicated, obscure, and much\ncontroverted, not admitting of discussion within the limits here assigned.\nOn the subject of Bacon's truthfulness, however, a word must be said. The\nChancellor admitted having taken presents from suitors, but {15} denied\nhaving ever let his judgments be influenced thereby; and his word seems to\nbe generally accepted as a sufficient exoneration. But its value may be\ndoubted in view of two statements quoted by Dean Church. Of these \"one was\nmade in the House of Commons by Sir George Hastings, a member of the House,\nwho had been the channel of Awbry's gift [made to the Chancellor _pendente\nlite_], that when he had told Bacon that if questioned he must admit it,\nBacon's answer was: 'George, if you do so, I must deny it, upon my\nhonour--upon my oath.' The other was that he had given an opinion in favour\nof some claim of the Masters in Chancery, for which he received L1,200, and\nwith which he said that all the judges agreed--an assertion which all the\njudges denied. Of these charges there is no contradiction.\" The denial of\nBacon that he ever allowed his judgments to be influenced by bribes, and\nhis assertion that he was the justest judge since his own father, cannot,\nthen, count for much. As to the plea that the justice of his sentences was\nnever challenged, who was to challenge it? The successful suitor would hold\nhis tongue; and the unsuccessful suitor could hardly be expected to\ncomplete his own ruin by going to law again on the strength of the\nChancellor's condemnation.\n\nBacon, at any rate, knew quite well that to take presents before judgment\nwas wrong and criminal, as his answer to Egerton sufficiently shows--an\nanswer which also fully disposes of the plea that to take such presents was\nthe common custom of the age. Moreover, had such been the common custom,\nBacon might have taken his trial and pleaded it as a sufficient apology or\nextenuation for his own conduct. This would have been a somewhat more\ndignified course {16} than the one he actually pursued, which was to plead\nguilty to all the charges, throwing himself on the mercy of the Lords. It\nhas been suggested that he did this at the desire of his powerful patrons,\nwhose malpractices might have been brought to light by a public\ninvestigation. As his punishment was immediately remitted, some arrangement\nwith the King and Buckingham seems probable. But for an innocent man to\nhave saved himself by a false acknowledgment of guilt would, as Macaulay\nshows, have been still more infamous than to take bribes.\n\nThe desperate efforts of some apologists to whitewash Bacon are apparently\ndue to a very exaggerated estimate of his services to mankind. Other\ncritics give themselves the pleasure of painting what has been called a\nRembrandt portrait, with noon on the forehead and night at the heart. And a\nthird class argue from a rotten morality to a rotten intelligence. In fact,\nBacon as little deserves to be called the wisest and greatest as the\nmeanest of mankind. He really loved humanity, and tried hard to serve it,\ndevoting a truly philosophical intellect to that end. The service was to\nconsist in an immense extension of man's power over nature, to be obtained\nby a complete knowledge of her secrets; and this knowledge he hoped to win\nby reforming the methods of scientific investigation. Unfortunately,\nintellect alone proved unequal to that mighty task. Bacon passes, and not\nwithout good grounds, for a great upholder of the principle that truth can\nonly be learned by experience. But his philosophy starts by setting that\nprinciple at defiance. He who took all knowledge for his province omitted\nfrom his survey the rather important subject of knowledge itself, its\nlimits and its laws. Had his attention {17} been drawn that way, the very\nfirst requisite, on empirical principles, would have been to take stock of\nthe leading truths already ascertained. But the enormous vanity of the\namateur reformer seems to have persuaded him that these amounted to little\nor nothing. The later Renaissance was an age of intense scientific\nactivity, conditioned, in the first instance, by a revival of Greek\nlearning. Already before the middle of the sixteenth century great advance\nhad been made in algebra, trigonometry, astronomy, mineralogy, botany,\nanatomy, and physiology. Before the publication of the _Novum Organum_\nNapier had invented logarithms, Galileo was reconstituting physics, Gilbert\nhad created the science of magnetism, and Harvey had discovered the\ncirculation of the blood. These were facts that Bacon took no pains to\nstudy; he either ignores or slights or denies the work done by his\nillustrious predecessors and contemporaries. That he rejected the\nCopernican theory with scorn is an exaggeration; but he never accepted it,\nnotwithstanding arguments that the best astronomers of his time found\nconvincing; and the longer he lived the more unfavourable became his\nopinion of its merits. And it is certain that Tycho Brahe's wonderful mass\nof observations, with the splendid generalisations based on them by Kepler,\nare never mentioned in his writings. Now what really ruined Aristotelianism\nwas the heliocentric astronomy, as Bruno perfectly saw; and ignorance of\nthis left Bacon after all in the bonds of medieval philosophy.\n\nWe have seen in studying Bruno that the very soul of Aristotle's system was\nhis distinction between form and matter, and this distinction Bacon\naccepted without examination from scholasticism. The purpose of his {18}\nlife was to ascertain by what combination of forms each particular body was\nconstituted, and then, by artificially superinducing them on some portion\nof matter, to call the desired substance into existence. His celebrated\ninductive method was devised as a means to that end. To discover the forms\n\"we are instructed first to draw up exhaustive tables of the phenomena and\nforms under investigation, and then to exclude from our list any 'form'\nwhich does not invariably co-exist with the phenomenon of which _the_ form\nis sought. For example, if we are trying to discover the form of heat it\nwill not do to adduce 'celestial nature'; for, though the sun's light is\nhot, that of the moon is cold. After a series of such _exclusions_, Bacon\nbelieved that a single form would finally remain to be the invariable cause\nof the phenomenon investigated, and of nothing else\" (F. C. S. Schiller).\n\nAs Dr. Schiller observes, this _method of exclusions_ is not new; nor,\nindeed, does Bacon claim to have originated it; at least he observes in his\n_Novum Organum_ that it had been already employed by Plato to a certain\nextent for the purpose of discussing definitions and ideas. And elsewhere\nhe praises Plato as \"a man (and one that surveyed all things from a lofty\ncliff) for having discerned in his doctrine of Ideas that Forms were the\ntrue object of knowledge; howsoever he lost the fruit of this most true\nopinion by considering and trying to apprehend Forms as absolutely\nabstracted from matter, whence it came that he turned aside to theological\nspeculations.\" Bacon must have known that this reproach does not apply to\nAristotle; as, indeed, the very schoolmen knew that he did not--except in\nthe single case of God--give Forms a separate {19} existence. But, probably\nfrom jealousy, he specially hated Aristotle, and in this particular\ninstance the Stagirite more particularly excited his hostility by\nidentifying Forms with Final Causes. These Bacon rather contemptuously\nhanded over to the sole cognisance of theology as consecrated virgins\nbearing no fruit. As a point of scientific method this condemnation of\nteleology is quite unjustified even in the eyes of inquirers who reject the\ntheological argument from design. To a Darwinian, purpose means survival\nvalue, and the parts of an organism are so many utilities evolved in the\naction and reaction between living beings and their environment. But Bacon\ndisliked any theory tending to glorify the existing arrangements of nature\nas perfect and unalterable achievements, for the good reason that it\nthreatened to discountenance his own scheme for practically creating the\nworld over again with exclusive reference to the good of humanity. Thus in\nhis Utopia, the _New Atlantis_, there are artificial mines, producing\nartificial metals, plants raised without seeds, contrivances for turning\none tree or plant into another, for prolonging the lives of animals after\nthe removal of particular organs, for making \"a number of kinds of\nserpents, worms, flies, fishes of putrefaction; whereof some are advanced\nto be perfect creatures like beasts or birds\"; with flying-machines,\nsubmarines, and perpetual motions--in short, a general anticipation of\nJules Verne and Mr. H. G. Wells.\n\nSuch dreams, however, do not entitle Bacon to be regarded as a true prophet\nof modern science and modern mechanical inventions. In themselves his ideas\ndo not go beyond the magic of the Middle Ages, or rather of all ages. The\noriginal thing was his {20} Method; and this Method, considered as a means\nfor surprising the secrets of nature, we know to be completely chimerical,\nbecause there are no such Forms as he imagined, to be enucleated by\ninduction, with or without the Method of Exclusion. The truth is that the\ninductive method which he borrowed from Socrates and Plato was originally\ncreated by Athenian philosophy for the humanistic studies of law, morality,\naesthetics, and psychology. Physical science, on the other hand, should be\napproached, as the Greeks rightly felt, through the door of mathematics, an\ninstrument of whose potency the great Chancellor notoriously had no\nconception. Thus his prodigious powers would have been much more usefully\ndevoted to moral philosophy. As it is, the _Essays_ alone remain to show\nwhat great things he might have done by limiting himself to the subjects\nwith which they deal. The famous logical and physical treatises, the _Novum\nOrganum_ and the _De Augmentis_, notwithstanding their wealth and splendour\nof language, are to us at the present day less living than the fragments of\nearly Greek thought, than most of Plato, than much of Aristotle, than\nAtomism as expounded by Lucretius.\n\nMacaulay rests his claim of the highest place among philosophers for Bacon\nnot on his inductive theory, to which the historian rightly denies any\nnovelty, but on the new purpose and direction that the search for knowledge\nis assumed to have received from his teaching. On this view the whole of\nmodern science has been created by the desire to convert nature into an\ninstrument for the satisfaction of human wants--an ambition dating from the\npublication of the _Novum Organum_. The claim will not stand, for two\nreasons. The first is that the great movement of modern science {21} began\nat least half a century before Bacon's birth, growing rapidly during his\nlife, but without his knowledge, and continuing its course without being\nperceptibly accelerated by his intervention ever since. The one man of\nscience who most commonly passes for his disciple is Robert Boyle\n(1627-1691). But Boyle did not read the _Novum Organum_ before he was\nthirty, whereas, residing at Florence before fifteen, he received a\npowerful stimulus from the study of Galileo. And his chemistry was based on\nthe atomic theory which Bacon rejected.\n\nThe second reason for not accepting Macaulay's claim is that in modern\nEurope no less than in ancient Greece the great advances in science have\nonly been made by those who loved knowledge for its own sake, or, if the\nexpression be preferred, simply for the gratification of their intellectual\ncuriosity. No doubt their discoveries have added enormously to the\nutilities of life; but such advantages have been gained on the sole\ncondition of not making them the primary end in view. The labours of\nBacon's own contemporaries, Kepler and Gilbert, have led to the navigation\nof the sea by lunar distances, and to the various industrial applications\nof electro-magnetism; but they were undertaken without a dream of these\nremote results. And in our own day the greatest of scientific triumphs,\nwhich is the theory of evolution, was neither worked out with any hope of\nmaterial benefits to mankind nor has it offered any prospect of them as\nyet. The same may be said of modern sidereal astronomy. From the humanist\npoint of view it would not be easy to justify the enormous expenditure of\nenergy, money, and time that this science has absorbed. The schoolmen have\nbeen much ridiculed for discussing the question how {22} many angels could\ndance on the point of a needle; but as a purely speculative problem it\nsurely merits as much attention as the total number of the stars, the rates\nof their velocities, or the law of their distribution through space. A\nschoolman might even have urged in justification of his curiosity that some\nof us might feel a reasonable curiosity about the exact size--if size they\nhave--of beings with whom we hope to associate one day; whereas by the\nconfession of the astronomers themselves neither we nor our descendants can\never hope to verify by direct measurement the precarious guesses of their\nscience in this branch of celestial statics and dynamics.\n\nTHOMAS HOBBES.\n\nIt has been shown that one momentous effect of the Copernican astronomy, as\ninterpreted by Giordano Bruno, was to reverse the relative importance\nascribed in Aristotle's philosophy to the two great categories of Power and\nAct, giving to Power a value and dignity of which it had been stripped by\nthe judgment of Plato and Aristotle. Even Epicurus, when he rehabilitated\ninfinite space, had been careful as a moralist to urge the expediency of\nplacing a close limitation on human desires, denouncing the excesses of\navarice and ambition more mildly but not less decisively than the\ncontemporary Stoic school. Thus Lucretius describes his master as\ntravelling beyond the flaming walls of the world only that he may bring us\nback a knowledge of the fixed barrier set by the very laws of existence to\nour aspirations and hopes.\n\nThe classic revival of the Renaissance did not bring back the Greek spirit\nof moderation. On the contrary, the new world, the new astronomy, the new\nmonarchy, {23} and the new religion combined to create such a sense of\nPower, in contradistinction to Act, as the world had never before known.\nFor us this new feeling has received its most triumphant artistic\nexpression from Shakespeare and Milton, for France from Rabelais, for Italy\nfrom Ariosto and Michelangelo. In philosophy Bacon strikes the same note\nwhen he values knowledge as a source of power--knowledge which for Greek\nphilosophy meant rather a lesson in self-restraint. And this idea receives\na further development from Bacon's chief successor in English philosophy,\nThomas Hobbes (1588-1679), in whose system love of power figures as the\nvery essence of human nature, the self-conscious manifestation of that\nMotion which is the real substance of the physical world.\n\nHobbes was a precocious child, and received a good school training; but the\nfive years he spent at Oxford added nothing to his information, and a\ncontinental tour with the young heir of the Cavendishes had no other effect\nthan to convince him of the general contempt into which the scholasticism\nstill taught at Oxford had fallen. On returning to England, he began his\nstudies over again in the Cavendish library, acquiring a thorough\nfamiliarity with the classic literature of Greece and Rome, a deep hatred\n(imbibed through Thucydides) of democracy, and a genuinely antique theory\nthat the State should be supreme in religious no less than in civil\nmatters. Amid these studies Hobbes occasionally enjoyed the society of\nBacon, then spending his last years in the retirement of Gorhambury. As\nsecretary and Latin translator he proved serviceable to the ex-Chancellor,\nbut remained quite unaffected by his inductive and experimental philosophy.\nIndeed, the determining impulse of his {24} speculative activity came from\nthe opposite quarter. Going abroad once more as travelling tutor, at the\nage of forty, he chanced on a copy of Euclid in a gentleman's library lying\nopen at the famous Forty-Seventh Proposition. His first impulse was to\nreject the theorem as impossible; but, on going backwards from proposition\nto proposition, he laid down the book not only convinced, but \"in love with\ngeometry.\"\n\nBeginning so late in life, his ulterior studies led Hobbes into the belief\nthat he had squared the circle, besides the far more pernicious error of\napplying the deductive method of geometry to the solution of political\nproblems. Could he and Bacon have exchanged philosophies, the brilliant\nfaculties of each might have been employed to better purpose. The\ncategories of Form and Matter, combined with the logic of elimination and\ntentative generalisation, would have found a fitting field for their\napplication in the familiar facts of human nature. But those facts refused\nto be treated as so many wheels, pulleys, and cords in a machine for\ncrushing the life out of society and transmitting the will of a single\ndespot unresisted through its whole extent; for such is a faithful picture\nof what a well-governed community, as Hobbes conceived it, ought to be.\nDuring his second residence abroad he had become acquainted with the\nphysical philosophy of Galileo--the theory that regards every change in the\nexternal or phenomenal world as a mere rearrangement of matter and motion,\nmatter being an aggregate of independent molecules held together by\nmechanical pressure and impact. The component parts of this aggregate\nbecome known to us by the impressions their movements produce on our\nsenses, traces of which {25} are preserved in memory, and subsequently\nrecalled by association. Language consists of signs conventionally affixed\nto such images; only the signs, standing as they do for all objects of a\ncertain sort, have a universal value, not possessed by the original\nsensations, through which reasoning becomes possible. Hobbes had evidently\nfallen in love with algebra as well as with geometry; and it is on the type\nof algebraic reasoning--in other words, on the type of rigorous\ndeduction--that his logic is constructed. And such a view of the way in\nwhich knowledge advances seemed amply justified by the scientific triumphs\nof his age. But his principle that all motion originates in antecedent\nmotion, although plausible in itself and occasionally revived by ingenious\nspeculators, has not been verified by modern science. Gravitation,\ncohesion, and chemical affinity have, so far, to be accepted as facts not\nresoluble into more general facts. Hobbes died before the great discoveries\nof Newton which first turned away men's minds from the purely mechanical\ninterpretation of energy.\n\nThat mechanical interpretation led our philosopher to reject Aristotle's\nnotion of sociality as an essentially human characteristic. To him this\nseemed a mere occult quality, the substitution of a word for an\nexplanation. The counter-view put forth in his great work, _Leviathan_, is\ncommonly called atomistic. But it would be gross flattery to compare the\nultimate elements of society, as Hobbes conceived them, to the molecules of\nmodern science, which attract as well as repel each other; or even with the\nDemocritean atoms, which are at least neutral. According to him, the\ntendency to self-preservation, shared by men with all other beings, takes\nthe form of an insatiable appetite {26} for power, leading each individual\nto pursue his own aggrandisement at the cost of any loss or suffering to\nthe rest. And he tries to prove the permanence of this impulse by referring\nto the precautions against robbery taken by householders and travellers.\nAristotle had much more justly mentioned the kindnesses shown to travellers\nas a proof of how widely goodwill is diffused. Our countryman, with all his\nacuteness, strangely ignores the necessity as a matter of prudence of going\narmed and locking the door at night, even if the robbers only amounted to\none in a thousand of the population. Modern researches have shown that\nthere are very primitive societies where the assumed war of all against\neach is unknown, predatory conflicts being a mark of more advanced\ncivilisation, and the cause rather than the effect of anti-social impulses.\n\nGranting an original state of anarchy and internecine hostility, there is,\naccording to Hobbes, only one way out of it, which is a joint resolution of\nthe whole community to surrender their rights of individual sovereignty\ninto the hands of one man, who thenceforth becomes absolute ruler of the\nState, with authority to defend its citizens against mutual aggressions,\nand the whole community against attacks from a foreign Power. This\nagreement constitutes the famous Social Contract, of which so much was to\nbe heard during the next century and a-half. It holds as between the\ncitizens themselves, but not between the subjects and their sovereign, for\nthat would be admitting a responsibility which there is no power to\nenforce. And anyone refusing to obey the sovereign justly forfeits his\nlife; for he thereby returns to the State of Nature, where any man that\nlikes may kill his neighbour if he can.\n\nAll this theory of an original institution of the State {27} by contract\nimpresses a modern reader as utterly unhistorical. But its value, if any,\ndoes not depend on its historical truth. Even if the remote ancestors of\nthe seventeenth-century Europeans had surrendered all their individual\nrights, with certain trifling exceptions, into the hands of an autocrat, no\nsophistry could show that their mutual engagements were binding on the\nsubjects of Charles I. and Louis XIV. And it is really on expediency,\nunderstood in the largest sense, that the claims of the New Monarchy are\nbased by Hobbes. What he maintains is that nothing short of a despotic\ngovernment exercised by one man can save society from relapsing into chaos.\nBut even under this amended form the theory remains amenable to historical\ncriticism. Had Hobbes pursued his studies beyond Thucydides, he would have\nfound that other polities besides the Athenian democracy broke down at the\nhour of trial. Above all, Roman Imperialism, which seems to have been his\nideal, failed to secure its subjects either against internal disorder or\nagainst foreign invasion.\n\nDemocracy, however, was not the sole or the worst enemy dreaded by the\nauthor of _Leviathan_ as a competitor with his \"mortal god.\" In the\nfrontispiece of that work the deified monarch who holds the sword erect\nwith his right hand grasps the crozier with his left, thus typifying the\nunion of the spiritual and temporal powers in the same person. The\npublicists of the Italian Renaissance, with their classical ideals, had,\nindeed, been as anti-papal as the Protestants; and the political disorders\nfomented by the agents of the Catholic reaction during the last hundred\nyears had given Hobbes an additional reason for perpetuating their point of\nview. Meanwhile another menace to {28} public order had presented itself\nfrom an opposite quarter. Calvinism had created a new spiritual power based\non the free individual interpretation of Scripture, in close alliance with\nthe alleged rights of conscience and with the spirit of republican liberty.\nEach creed in turn had attacked the Stuart monarchy, and the second had\njust effected its overthrow. Therefore, to save the State it was necessary\nthat religious creeds, no less than codes of conduct, should be dictated by\nthe secular authority, enslaving men's minds as well as their bodies.\n\nBy the dialectic irony of the speculative movement, this attempt to fetter\nopinion was turned into an instrument for its more complete emancipation.\nIn order to discredit the pretensions of the religious zealots, Hobbes made\na series of attacks on the foundations of their faith, mostly by way of\nsuggestion and innuendo--no more being possible under the conditions then\nobtaining---but with such effect that, according to Macaulay, \"for many\nyears the _Leviathan_ was the gospel of cold-blooded and hard-headed\nunbelievers.\" That one who made religious belief a matter to be fixed by\nlegislation could be in any sense a Christian seems most unlikely. He\nprofessed, with what sincerity we know not, to regard the existence of God\nas something only a fool could deny. But his philosophy from beginning to\nend forms a rigorously-thought-out system of materialism which any atheist,\nif otherwise it satisfied him, might without inconsistency accept.\n\nOn the meeting of the Long Parliament, Hobbes again left England for the\nContinent, where he remained for eleven years. But his principles were no\nmore to the taste of the exiled royalists than of {29} their opponents. He\ntherefore returned once more to England, made his submission to the\nParliament, and spent the rest of his days, practically unmolested by\neither party, under the Commonwealth and the Restoration until his death in\n1679 at the age of ninety-one.\n\nIt may be said of Hobbes, as of Bacon, that the intellect at work is so\namazing and the mass of literary performance so imposing that the illusions\nof historians about the value of their contributions to the progress of\nthought are excusable. Nevertheless, it cannot be too distinctly stated\nthat the current or academic estimate of these great men as having effected\na revolution in physical and moral science is wrong. They stand as much\napart from the true line of evolution as do the gigantic saurians of a\nremote geological period whose remains excite our wonder in museums of\nnatural history. Their systems proved as futile as the monarchies of Philip\nII. and of Louis XIV. Bacon's dreams are no more related to the coming\nvictories of science than Raleigh's El Dorado was to the future colonial\nempire of Britain. Hobbes had better fortune than Strafford, in so far as\nhe kept his head on his shoulders; but the logic of his absolutism\nshrivelled up under the sun of English liberty like the great Minister's\npolicy of Thorough.\n\nThe theory of a Social Contract is a speculative idea of the highest\npractical importance. But the idea of contract as the foundation of morals\ngoes back to Epicurus, and it is assumed in a more developed form by\nHooker's _Ecclesiastical Polity_. Its potency as a revolutionary instrument\ncomes from the reinterpretations of Locke and Rousseau, which run directly\ncounter to the assumptions of the _Leviathan_. {30}\n\nHobbes shares with Bacon the belief that all knowledge comes from\nexperience, besides making it clearer than his predecessor that experience\nof the world comes through external sense alone. Here also there can be no\nclaim to originality, for more than one school of Greek philosophy had said\nthe same. As an element of subsequent thought, more importance belongs to\nthe idea of Power, which was to receive its full development from Spinoza;\nbut only in association with other ideas derived from the philosopher whom\nwe have next to examine, the founder of modern metaphysics, Descartes.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n{31}\n\nCHAPTER II.\n\nTHE METAPHYSICIANS\n\nDESCARTES, MALEBRANCHE, SPINOZA, LEIBNIZ.\n\nRene Descartes (1596-1650) was a Frenchman, born in Touraine, and belonging\nby family to the inferior nobility. Educated at the Jesuit college of La\nFleche, he early acquired a distaste for the scholastic philosophy, or at\nleast for its details; the theology of scholasticism, as we shall see, left\na deep impression on him through life. On leaving college he took up\nmathematics, varied by a short plunge into the dissipations of Paris. Some\nyears of military service as a volunteer with the Catholic armies at the\nbeginning of the Thirty Years' War enabled him to travel and see the world.\nReturning to Paris, he resumed his studies, but found them seriously\ninterrupted by the tactless bores who, as we know from Moliere's amusing\ncomedy _Les Facheux,_ long continued to infest French society. To escape\ntheir assiduities Descartes, who prized solitude before all things, fled\nthe country. The inheritance of an independent income enabled the\nphilosopher to live where he liked; and Holland became, with a few\ninterruptions, his chosen residence for the next twenty years (1629-49).\nEven here frequent changes of residence and occasional concealment of his\naddress were necessary in order to elude the visits of importunate\nadmirers. With all his unsociability there seems to have {32} been\nsomething singularly magnetic about the personality of Descartes; yet he\nonly fell in with one congenial spirit, the Princess Elizabeth, daughter of\nthe unfortunate Winter King and granddaughter of our James I. Possessing to\nthe fullest extent the intellectual brilliancy and the incomparable charm\nof the Stuart family, this great lady impressed the lonely thinker as the\nonly person who ever understood his philosophy.\n\nAnother royal friendship brought his career to an untimely end. Queen\nChristina of Sweden, the gifted and restless daughter of Gustavus Adolphus,\nheard of Descartes, and invited him to her Court. On his arrival she sent\nfor the pilot who had brought the illustrious stranger to Stockholm and\nquestioned him about his passenger. \"Madame,\" he replied, \"it is not a man\nwhom I conducted to your Majesty, but a demi-god. He taught me more in\nthree weeks of the science of seamanship and of winds and navigation than I\nhad learned in the sixty years I had been at sea\" (Miss E. S. Haldane's\n_Life of Rene Descartes_). The Queen fully came up to the expectations of\nher visitor, in whose eyes she had no fault but an unfortunate tendency to\nwaste her time on learning Greek. Besides her other merits, she possessed\n\"a sweetness and goodness which made men devoted to her service.\" It soon\nappeared that, as with others of the same rank, this was only the veneer of\na heartless selfishness. Christina, who was an early riser, required his\nattendance in her library to give her lessons in philosophy at five o'clock\nin the morning. Descartes was by habit a very late riser. Besides, he had\nnot even a lodging in the royal palace, but was staying at the French\nEmbassy, and in going there \"had to pass over a long bridge which was\nalways bitterly cold.\" The cold {33} killed him. He had arrived at\nStockholm in October, and meant to leave in January; but remained at the\nurgent request of the Queen, who, however, made no change in the hour of\ntheir interviews, although that winter was one of the severest on record.\nAt the beginning of February, 1650, he fell ill and died of inflammation of\nthe lungs on the 11th, in the fifty-fourth year of his age.\n\nDescartes had the physical courage which Hobbes lacked; but he seems, like\nBacon, to have been a moral coward. The most striking instance of this is\nthat, on hearing of Galileo's condemnation for teaching the heliocentric\nastronomy, he withheld from publication and had even thoughts of destroying\na work of his own in which the same doctrine was maintained. This was at a\ntime when he was living in a country where there could be no question of\npersonal danger from the Inquisition. But something of the same weakness\nshows itself in his running away from France to escape those intrusions on\nhis studious retirement which one would think might have been checked by\nletting it be known with sufficient firmness that his hours could not be\nwasted on idle conversation. And we have seen how at last his life was lost\nfor no better reason than the dread of giving offence to Queen Christina.\n\nIt seems strange that a character so unheroic should figure among the great\nemancipators of human thought. In fact, Descartes's services to liberty\nhave been much exaggerated. His intellectual fame rests on three\nfoundations. Of these the most indubitable is the creation of analytical\ngeometry, the starting-point of modern mathematics. The value of his\ncontributions to physics has been much disputed; but, on the whole, expert\nopinion seems to have decided that what was new in them was not true, and\nwhat was true was not new. However, the place we must assign Descartes in\nthe history of philosophy can only be determined by our opinion of his\nmetaphysics.\n\n{34}\n\n[Illustration: RENE DESCARTES.]\n\n{35} As a philosopher Descartes has, to begin with, the merit of exemplary\nclearness. The fault is not with him if we cannot tell what he thought and\nhow he came to think it. The classic _Discourse on Method_ (1637) relates\nhis mental history in a style of almost touching simplicity. It appears\nthat from an early age truth had been his paramount object, not as with\nBacon and Hobbes for its utility, but for its own sake. In search of this\nideal he read widely, but without finding what he wanted. The great and\nfamous works of literature might entertain or dazzle; they could not\nconvince. The philosophers professed to teach truth; their endless disputes\nshowed that they had not found it. Mathematics, on the other hand,\npresented a pleasing picture of demonstrated certainty, but a certainty\nthat seemed to be prized only as a sure foundation for the mechanical arts.\nWearily throwing his books aside, the young man then applied himself to the\ngreat book of life, mingling with all sorts and conditions of men to hear\nwhat they had to say about the prime interests of existence. But the same\nvanity and vexation of spirit followed him here. Men were no more agreed\namong themselves than were the authorities of his college days. The truths\nof religion seemed, indeed, to offer a safe refuge; but they were an\nexception that proved the rule; being, as Descartes observes, a\nsupernatural revelation, not the natural knowledge that he wanted.\n\nThe conflict of authorities had at least one good result, which was to\ndiscredit the very notion of {36} authority, thus throwing the inquirer\nback on his own reason as the sole remaining resource. And as mathematics\nseemed, so far, to be the only satisfactory science, the most reasonable\ncourse was to give a wider extension and application to the methods of\nalgebra and geometry. Four fundamental rules were thus obtained: (1) To\nadmit nothing as true that was not evidently so; (2) to analyse every\nproblem into as many distinct questions as the nature of the subject\nrequired; (3) to ascend gradually from the simplest to the most complex\nsubjects; and (4) to be sure that his enumerations and surveys were so\nexhaustive and complete as to let no essential element of the question\nescape.\n\nThe rules as they stand are ill-arranged, vague, and imperfect. The last\nshould come first and the first last. The notions of simplicity,\ncomplexity, and truth are neither illustrated nor defined. And no pains are\ntaken to discriminate judgments from concepts. It may be said that the\nmethod worked well; at least Descartes tells us that with the help of his\nrules he made rapid progress in the solution of mathematical problems. We\nmay believe in his success without admitting that an inferior genius could\nhave achieved the same results by the same means. The real point is to\nascertain whether the method, whatever its utility in mathematics, could be\nadvantageously applied to metaphysics. And the answer seems to be that as\nmanipulated by its author the new system led to nothing but hopeless\nfallacies.\n\nAfter reserving a provisional assent to the customs of the country where he\nhappens to be residing and to the creed of the Roman Church, Descartes\nbegins by calling in question the whole mass of beliefs he has {37}\nhitherto accepted, including the reality of the external world. But the\nvery act of doubt implies the existence of the doubter himself. I think,\ntherefore I am. It has been supposed that the initial affirmation of this\nself-evident principle implies that Descartes identified Being with\nThought. He did no such thing. No more is meant, to begin with, than that,\nwhatever else is or is not, I the thinker certainly am. This is no great\ndiscovery; the interesting thing is to find out what it implies. A good\ndeal according to Descartes. First he infers that, since the act of\nthinking assures him of his existence, therefore he is a substance the\nwhole essence of which consists in thought, which is independent of place\nand of any material object--in short, an immaterial soul, entirely distinct\nfrom the body, easier to know, and capable of existing without it. Here the\nconfusion of conception with judgment is apparent, and it leads to a\nconfusion of our thoughts about reality with the realities themselves. And\nDescartes carries this loose reasoning a step further by going on to argue\nthat, as the certainty of his own existence has no other guarantee than the\nclearness with which it is inferred from the fact of his thinking, it must\ntherefore be a safe rule to conclude that whatever things we conceive very\nclearly and distinctly are all true.\n\nIn his other great philosophical work, the _Meditations_, Descartes sets\nout at greater length, but with less clearness, his arguments for the\nimmateriality of the soul. Here it is fully admitted that, besides\nthinking, self-consciousness covers the functions of perceiving, feeling,\ndesiring, and willing; nor does it seem to be pretended that these\nexperiences are reducible to forms of thought. But it is claimed that they\ndepend on {38} thought in the sense that without thought one would not be\naware of their existence; whereas it can easily be conceived without them.\nA little more introspection would show that the second part of the\nassertion is not true; for there is no thought without words, and no words,\nhowever inaudibly articulated, without a number of tactual and muscular\nsensations, nor even without a series of distinct volitions.\n\nAnother noticeable point is that, so far from obeying the methodical rule\nto proceed from the simple to the complex, Descartes does just the\ncontrary. Starting with the whole complex content of consciousness, he\nworks down by a series of arbitrary rejections to what, according to him,\nis the simple fact of immaterial thought. Let us see how it fares with his\nattempt to reconstruct knowledge on that elementary basis.\n\nReturning to his postulate of universal doubt, our philosopher argues from\nthis to an imperfection in his nature, and thence to the idea of a perfect\nbeing. The reasoning is most slipshod; for, even admitting that knowledge\nis preferable to ignorance--which has not been proved--it does not follow\nthat the dogmatist is more perfect than the doubter. Indeed, one might\ninfer the contrary from Descartes's having passed with progressive\nreflection from the one stage to the other. Overlooking the paralogism, let\nus grant that he has the idea of a perfect being, and go on to the question\nof how he came to possess it. One might suggest that the consciousness of\nperfect self-knowledge, combined with the wish to know more of other\nsubjects, would be sufficient to create an ideal of omniscience, and,\nproceeding in like manner from a comparison of wants with their\nsatisfactions, to enlarge this ideal into the {39} notion of infinite\nperfection all round. Descartes, however, is not really out for truth--at\nleast, not in metaphysics; he is out for a justification of what the\nJesuits had taught him at La Fleche, and no Jesuit casuistry could be more\nsophistical than the logic he finds good enough for the purpose. To argue,\nas he does, that the idea of a perfect being, in his mind, can be explained\nonly by its proceeding from such a being as its creator is already\nsufficiently audacious. But this feat is far surpassed by his famous\nontological proof of Theism. A triangle, he tells us, need not necessarily\nexist; but, assuming there to be one, its three angles must be equal to two\nright angles. With God, on the other hand, to be conceived is to be; for,\nexistence being a perfection, it follows, from the idea of a perfect Being,\nthat he must exist. The answer is more clear and distinct than any of\nDescartes's demonstrations. Perfection is affirmed of existing or of\nimaginary subjects, but existence is not a perfection in itself.\n\nA third argument for Theism remains to be considered. Descartes asks how he\ncame to exist. Not by his own act; for on that hypothesis he would have\ngiven himself all the perfections that now he lacks; nor from any other\nimperfect cause, for that would be to repeat the difficulty, not to solve\nit. Besides, the simple continuance of his existence from moment to moment\nneeds an explanation. For time consists of an infinity of parts, none\ndepending in any way on the others; so that my having been a little while\nago is no reason why I should be now, unless there is some power by which I\nam created anew. Here we must observe that Descartes is playing fast and\nloose with the law of causation. By what he calls the light of nature--in\nother words, the light of Greek {40} philosophy--things can no more pass\ninto nothing than they can come out of it. Moreover, the difficulty is the\nsame for my supposed Creator as for myself. We are told that thought is a\nnecessary perfection of the divine nature. But thinking implies time;\ntherefore God also exists from moment to moment. How, then, can he recover\nhis being any more than we can? The answer, of course, would be: because he\nis perfect, and perfection involves existence. Thus the argument from\ncausation throws us back on the so-called ontological argument, whose\nfutility has already been shown.\n\nThis very idea of perfection involves us in fresh difficulties with the law\nof causation. A perfect Being might be expected to make perfect\ncreatures--which by hypothesis we are not. Descartes quite sees this, and\nonly escapes by a verbal quibble. Our imperfections, he says, come from the\nshare that Nothingness has in our nature. Once allow so much to the\ncreative power of zero, and God seems to be a rather gratuitous postulate.\n\nAfter proving to his own satisfaction the existence of the soul and of God,\nDescartes returns to the starting-point of his whole inquiry--that is, the\nreality of the material world and of its laws. And now his theology\nsupplies him with a short and easy method for getting rid of the sceptical\ndoubts that had troubled him at first. He has a clear and distinct idea of\nhis own body and of other bodies surrounding it on all sides as extended\nsubstances communicating movements to one another. And he has a tendency to\naccept whatever is clearly and distinctly conceived by him as true. But to\nsuppose that God created that tendency with the intention of deceiving him\nwould argue a want of veracity in the divine nature incompatible with its\n{41} perfection. Such reasoning obviously ignores the alternative that God\nmight be deceiving us for our good. Or rather what we call truth might not\nbe an insight into the nature of things in themselves, but a correct\njudgment of antecedents and consequents. Our consciousness would then be a\nvast sensori-motor machinery adjusted to secure the maintenance and\nperfection of life.\n\nDescartes, as a mathematician, places the essence of Matter or Body in\nextension. Here he agrees with another mathematical philosopher, Plato, who\nsays the same in his _Timaeus_. So far the coincidence might be accidental;\nbut when we find that the Frenchman, like the Greek, conceives his\nmaterialised space as being originally divided into triangular bodies, the\nevidence of unacknowledged borrowing seems irresistible--the more so that\nHuyghens mentions this as customary with Descartes.\n\nThe great author of the _Method_ and the _Meditations_--for, after\nevery critical deduction, his greatness as a thinker remains\nundoubted--contributed nothing to ethics. Here he is content to reaffirm\nthe general conclusions of Greek philosophy, the necessary superiority of\nmind to matter, of the soul to the body, of spirit to sense. He accepts\nfree-will from Aristotle without any attempt to reconcile it with the rigid\ndeterminism of his own mechanical naturalism. At the same time there is a\nremarkable anticipation of modern psychology in his doctrine of\nintellectual assent as an act of the will. When our judgments go beyond\nwhat is guaranteed by a clear and distinct perception of their truth there\nis a possibility of error, and then the error is our own fault, the\nprecipitate conclusion having been a voluntary act. Thus human free-will\nintervenes to clear God of all {42} responsibility for our delusions as\nwell as for our crimes.\n\nMALEBRANCHE.\n\nPascal, we are told, could not forgive Descartes for limiting God's action\non the world to the \"initial fillip\" by which the process of evolution was\nstarted. Nevertheless, Pascal's friends, the Jansenists, were content to\nadopt Cartesianism as their religious philosophy, and his epigram certainly\ndoes not apply to the next distinguished Cartesian, Arnold Geulincx\n(1625-1669), a Fleming of Antwerp. Unfortunate in his life, this eminent\nteacher has of all original thinkers received the least credit for his\nservices to metaphysics from posterity, being, outside a small circle of\nstudents, still utterly unknown to fame. Geulincx is the author of a theory\ncalled Occasionalism. Descartes had represented mind, which he identified\nwith Thought, and matter, which he identified with Extension, as two\nantithetical substances with not a note in common. Nevertheless, he\nsupposed that communications between them took place through a part of the\nbrain called the pineal body. Geulincx cut through even this narrow\nisthmus, denying the possibility of any machinery for transmitting sensible\nimages from the material world to our consciousness, or volitions from the\nmind to the limbs. How, then, were the facts to be explained? According to\nhim, by the intervention of God. When the so-called organs of sense are\nacted on by vibrations from the external world, or when a particular\nmovement is willed by the mind, the corresponding mental and material\nmodifications are miraculously produced by the exercise of his omnipotence;\nand it is because these events occur _on occasion_ of signals of which they\n{43} are not the effects but the consequents that the theory has received\nthe name of Occasionalism.\n\nThe theory, as Geulincx formulated it, seems at first sight simply\ngrotesque; and from a religious point of view it has the additional\ndrawback of making God the immediate executor of every crime committed by\nman. Nevertheless, it is merely the logical application of a principle\nsubsequently admitted by profound thinkers of the most opposing\nschools--namely, that consciousness cannot produce or transmit energy,\ncombined with the belief in a God who does not exist for nothing. Even past\nthe middle of the nineteenth century many English and French naturalists\nwere persuaded that animal species to the number of 300,000 represented as\nmany distinct creative acts; and at least one astronomer, who was also a\nphilosopher, declared that the ultimate atoms of matter, running up to an\nimmeasurably higher figure, \"bore the stamp of the manufactured article.\"\n\nThe capture of Cartesianism by theology was completed by Nicolas\nMalebranche (1638-1715). This accomplished writer and thinker, dedicated by\nphysical infirmity to a contemplative life, entered the Oratory at an early\nage, and remained in it until his death. Coming across a copy of\nDescartes's _Treatise on Man_ at twenty-six, he at once became a convert to\nthe new philosophy, and devoted the next ten years to its exclusive study.\nAt the end of that period he published his masterpiece, _On the\nInvestigation of Truth_ (_De la Recherche de la Verite, 1674_), which at\nonce won him an enormous reputation. It was followed by other works of less\nimportance. The legend that Malebranche's end was hastened by an argument\nwith Berkeley has been disproved. {44}\n\nWithout acknowledging the obligation, Malebranche accepts the conclusions\nof Geulincx to the extent of denying the possibility of any communication\nbetween mind and matter. Indeed, he goes further, and denies that one\nportion of matter can act on another. But his real advance on Occasionalism\nlies in the question: How, then, can we know the laws of the material\nuniverse, or even that there is such a thing as matter at all? Once more\nGod intervenes to solve the difficulty, but after a fashion much less crude\nthan the miraculous apparatus of Geulincx. Introspection assures us that we\nare thinking things, and that our minds are stored with ideas, including\nthe idea of God the all-perfect Being, and the idea of Extension with all\nthe mathematical and physical truths logically deducible therefrom. We did\nnot make this idea, therefore it comes from God, was in God's mind before\nit was in ours. Following Plotinus, Malebranche calls this idea\nintelligible Extension. It is the archetype of our material world. The same\nis true of all other clear and distinct ideas; they are, as Platonism\nteaches, of divine origin. But is it necessary to suppose that the ideal\ncontents of each separate soul were placed in it at birth by the Creator?\nSurely the law of parsimony forbids. It is a simpler and easier explanation\nto suppose that the divine archetypal ideas alone exists, and that we\napprehend them by a mystical communion with the divine consciousness; that,\nin short, we see all things in God. And in order to make this vision\npossible we must, as the Apostle says, live, move, and have our being in\nGod. As a mathematician would say, God must be the _locus_, the place of\nsouls.\n\nThere is unquestionably something grandiose about this theory, which,\nhowever, has the defect in orthodox {45} opinion of logically leading to\nthe Pantheism, held in abhorrence by Malebranche, of his greater\ncontemporary Spinoza. And it is a suggestive circumstance that the very\nsimilar philosophy of the Eternal Consciousness held by our countryman\nT. H. Green has been shown by the criticism of Henry Sidgwick to exclude\nthe personality of God.\n\nSPINOZA.\n\nWith the philosopher whom I have just named we come for the first time in\nmodern history to a figure recalling in its sustained equality of\nintellectual and moral excellence the most heroic figures of Hellenic\nthought. Giordano Bruno we may, indeed, pronounce, like Lucan or Cranmer,\n\"by his death approved,\" but his submission at Venice has to be set against\nhis martyrdom at Rome; and if there is nothing very censurable in his\ncareer as a wandering teacher, there is also nothing worthy of any\nparticular respect. Differences of environment and heredity may no doubt be\ninvoked to account for the difference of character; and in the philosophy\nabout to be considered the determining influence of such causes for the\nfirst time finds due recognition; but on the same principle our ethical\njudgments also are determined by the very constitution of things.\n\nBaruch de Spinoza (1632-1677), born at Amsterdam, belonged to a family of\nPortuguese Jews, exiled on account of their Hebrew faith, in which also he\nwas brought up. Soon after reaching manhood he fell away from the\nsynagogue, preferring to share in the religious exercises of certain\nlatitudinarian Christian sects. Spies were set to report his conversation,\nwhich soon supplied evidence of sufficiently heterodox opinions. {46} A\nsentence of formal excommunication followed; but modern research has\ndiscredited the story of an attempt to assassinate him made by an emissary\nof the synagogue. After successfully resisting the claim of his sister and\nhis brother-in-law to shut out the apostate from his share of the paternal\ninheritance, Spinoza surrendered the disputed property, but henceforth\nbroke off all communication with his family. Subsequently he refused an\noffer of 2,000 florins, made by a wealthy friend and admirer, Simon de\nVries, as also a proposal from the same friend to leave him his whole\nfortune, insisting that it should go to the legal heir, Simon's brother\nIsaac. The latter, on succeeding, wished to settle an annual pension of 500\nflorins on Spinoza, but the philosopher would accept no more than 300.\nBooks were his only luxury, material wants being supplied by polishing\nglass lenses, an art in which he attained considerable proficiency. But it\nwas an unhealthy occupation, and probably contributed to his death by\nconsumption.\n\nDemocracy was then and long afterwards associated with fanaticism and\nintolerance rather than with free-thought in religion. The liberal party in\nDutch politics was the aristocratic party. Spinoza sympathised with its\nleader, John de Witt; he wept bitter tears over the great statesman's\nmurder; and only the urgent remonstrances of his friends, who knew what\ndanger would be incurred by such a step, prevented him from placarding the\nwalls of the Hague, where he then resided, with an address reproaching the\ninfuriated people for their crime.\n\n{47}\n\n[Illustration: Reproduced (by permission) from _Spinoza's Short Treatise on\nGod, Man, and his Well-being_, by Professor A. Wolf (A. & C. Black).]\n\n{48}\n\nIn 1673 the enlightened ruler of the Palatinate, a brother of Descartes's\nPrincess Elizabeth, offered Spinoza a professorship at Heidelberg, with\nfull liberty to teach his philosophy. But the pantheistic recluse wisely\nrefused it. Even at the present day such teaching as his would meet with\nlittle mercy at Berlin, Cambridge, or Edinburgh. As it was, we have reason\nto believe that even in free Holland only a premature death saved him from\na prosecution for blasphemy, and his great work the _Ethica_ could not with\nsafety be published during his lifetime. It appeared anonymously among his\nposthumous works in November, 1677, without the name of the true place of\npublication on the title-page.\n\nSpinoza was for his time no less daring as a Biblical critic than as a\nmetaphysician. His celebrated _Tractatus Theologico-Politicus_ has for its\nprimary purpose to vindicate the freedom of scientific thought against\necclesiastical interference. And this he does by drawing a trenchant line\nof demarcation between the respective offices of religion and of\nphilosophy. The business of the one is to form the character and to purify\nthe heart, of the other to guide and inform the intellect. When religion\nundertakes to teach scientific truth the very ends for which it exists are\ndefeated. When theological dogmatism gains control of the Churches the\nworst passions are developed under its influence. Instead of becoming lowly\nand charitable, men become disturbers of public order, grasping intriguers,\nbitter and censorious persecutors. The claims of theology to dictate our\nintellectual beliefs are not only mischievous, but totally invalid. They\nrest on the authority of the Bible as a revelation of God's will. But no\nsuch supernatural revelation ever was or could be given. Such violation of\nthe order of nature as the miracles recorded in Scripture history would be\nimpossible. And the narratives recording them are discredited by {49} the\ncriticism which shows that various books of the Old Testament were not\nwritten by the men whose names they bear, but long after their time. As a\nHebrew scholar Spinoza discusses the Jewish Scriptures in some detail,\nshowing in particular that the Pentateuch is of a later date than Moses.\nHis limited knowledge of Greek is offered as a reason for not handling the\nNew Testament with equal freedom; but some contradictions are indicated as\ndisallowing the infallibility claimed for it. At the same time the\nperfection of Christ's character is fully acknowledged and accepted as a\nmoral revelation of God.\n\nSpinoza shared to the fullest extent, and even went beyond, Descartes's\nambition to reconstruct philosophy on a mathematical basis. The idea may\nhave come to him from the French thinker, but it is actually of much older\norigin, being derived from Plato, the leading spirit of the Renaissance, as\nAristotle had been the oracle of the later Middle Ages. Now Plato's ideal\nhad been to construct a philosophy transcending the assumptions--or, as he\ncalls them, the hypotheses--of geometry as much as those assumptions\ntranscend the demonstrations of geometry; and this also was the ideal of\nSpinoza. Descartes had been content to accept from tradition his ultimate\nrealities, Thought, Extension, and God, without showing that they must\nnecessarily exist; for his proof of God's existence starts from an idea in\nthe human mind, while Thought and Extension are not deduced at all.\n\nTo appreciate the work of the Hebrew philosopher, of the lonely muser, bred\nin the religion of Jahveh--a name traditionally interpreted as the very\nexpression of absolute self-existence--we must conceive him as starting\nwith a question deeper even than the Cartesian {50} doubt, asking not How\ncan I know what is? but Why should there _be_ anything whatever? And the\nanswer, divested of scholastic terminology, is: Because it is inconceivable\nthat there should be nothing, and if there is anything there must be\neverything. This universe of things, which must also be everlasting,\nSpinoza calls God.\n\nThe philosophy or religion--for it is both--which identifies God with the\ntotality of existence was of long standing in Greece, and had been\nelaborated in systematic detail by the Stoics. It has been known for the\nlast two centuries under the name of Pantheism, a word of Greek etymology,\nbut not a creation of the Greeks themselves, and, indeed, of more modern\ndate than Spinoza. Historians always speak of him as a Pantheist, and there\nis no reason to think that he would have objected to the designation had it\nbeen current during his lifetime. But there are important points of\ndistinction between him and those who preceded or followed him in the same\nspeculative direction. The Stoics differed from him in being materialists.\nTo them reality and corporeality were convertible terms. It seems likely\nthat Hobbes and his contemporary, the atomist Gassendi, were of the same\nopinion, although they did not say it in so many words. But Descartes was a\nstrong spiritualist; and Spinoza followed the master's lead so far, at any\nrate, as to give Thought at least equal reality with matter, which he also\nidentified with Extension. It has been seen what difficulties were created\nby the radical Cartesian antithesis between Thought and Extension, or--to\ncall them by their more familiar names--mind and body, when taken together\nwith the intimate association shown by experience to obtain between them;\nand also how {51} Geulincx and Malebranche were led on by the very spirit\nof philosophy itself almost to submerge the two disparate substances in the\nall-absorbing agency of God. The obvious course, then, for Spinoza, being\nunfettered by the obligations of any Christian creed, was to take the last\nremaining step, to resolve the dualism of Thought and Extension into the\nunity of the divine substance.\n\nIn fact, the Hebrew philosopher does this, declaring boldly that Thought\nand Extension are one and the same thing--which thing is God, the only true\nreality of which they are merely appearances. And, so far, he has had many\nfollowers who strive to harmonise the opposition of what we now call\nsubject and object in the synthesis of the All-One. But he goes beyond\nthis, expanding the conception of God--or the Absolute--to a degree\nundreamed of by any religion or philosophy formulated before or after his\ntime. God, Spinoza tells us, is \"a Substance consisting of infinite\nattributes, each of which expresses his absolute and eternal essence.\" But\nof these attributes two alone, Thought and Extension, are known to us at\npresent, so that our ignorance infinitely exceeds our knowledge of reality.\nHis extant writings do not explain by what process he mounted to this, the\nmost dizzy height of speculation ever attained by man; but, in the absence\nof definite information, some guiding considerations suggest themselves as\nprobable.\n\nBruno, whom Spinoza is held, on strong grounds, to have read, identified\nGod with the supreme unifying principle of a universe extending through\ninfinite space. Descartes, on the other hand, conceived God as a thinking\nrather than as an extended substance. But his school tended, as we saw, to\nconceive God as mediating {52} between mind and body in a way that\nsuggested their real union through his power. Furthermore, the habit common\nto all Cartesians of regarding geometrical reasoning as the most perfect\nform of thought inevitably led to the conception of thought as accompanying\nspace wherever it went--in fact, as stretching like it to infinity. Again,\nfrom the Cartesian point of view, that Extension which is the very essence\nof the material world, while it covers space, is more than mere space; it\nincludes not only co-existence, but succession or time--that is,\nscientifically speaking, the eternal sequence of physical causes; or,\ntheologically speaking, the creative activity of God. And reason or thought\nhad also since Aristotle been more or less identified with the law of\nuniversal causation no less than with the laws of geometry.\n\nThus, then, the ground was prepared for Spinoza, as a pantheistic monist,\nto conceive God under the two attributes of Extension and Thought, each in\nits own way disclosing his essence as no other than infinite Power. But why\nshould God have, or consist of, two attributes and no more? There is a good\nreason why _we_ should know only those two. It is that we are ourselves\nmodes of Thought united to modes of Extension, of which our thoughts are\nthe revealing ideas. But it would be gross anthropomorphism to impose the\nlimitations of our knowledge on the infinite being of God, manifested\nthrough those very attributes as unlimited Power. The infinite of\nco-existence, which is space, the infinite of causal procession, which is\ntime, suggest an infinity of unimaginable but not inconceivable attributes\nof which the one divine substance consists. And here at last we get the\nexplanation of why there should be such things as Thought and Extension at\nall. They are there simply because everything is. If I grant {53}\nanything--and I must, at least, grant myself--I grant existence, which,\nhaving nothing outside itself, must fill up all the possibilities of being\nwhich only exclude the self-contradictory from their domain. Thus, the\nphilosophy of Spinoza neither obliges him to believe in the monsters of\nmythology nor in the miracles of Scripture, nor in the dogmas of Catholic\ntheology, nor even in free-will; nor, again, would it oblige him to reject\nby anticipation the marvels of modern science. For, according to him, the\nimpossibility of really incredible things could be deduced with the\ncertainty of mathematical demonstration from the law of contradiction\nitself.\n\nHegel has given the name of acosmism, or negation of the world, to this\nform of pantheism, interpreting it as a doctrine that absorbs all concrete\nreality and individuality in the absolute unity of the divine essence. No\nmisconception could be more complete. Differentiation is the very soul of\nSpinoza's system. It is, indeed, more open to the charge of excessive\ndispersion than of excessive centralisation. Power, which is God's essence,\nmeans no more than the realisation through all eternity of all\npossibilities of existence, with no end or aim but just the process of\ninfinite production itself. There is, indeed, a nominal identification\nbetween the material processes of Extension and the ideal processes of\nThought. But this amounts to no more than a re-statement in abstract terms\nof the empirical truth that there is a close connection between body and\nmind. Like the double-aspect theory, the parallelistic theory, the\nmaterialistic theory, the theory of interaction, and the theory of more or\nless complete reciprocal independence, it is a mere verbalism, telling us\nnothing that we did not know before. Or, if there {54} is more, it consists\nof the very questionable assumption that body and mind must come in\nsomewhere to fill up what would otherwise be blank possibilities of\nexistence. And this, like other metaphysical assumptions, is an\nillegitimate generalisation from experience. The ideas of space and time as\nfilled-up _continua_ supply the model on which the whole universe must be\nconstructed. Like them, it must be infinite and eternal, but, so to speak,\nat a higher power; as in them, every part must be determined by the\nposition of all other parts, with the determination put at a logical\ninstead of at a descriptive value; corresponding to their infinitely varied\ndifferentiation of position and quantity, there must be an infinite\ndifferentiation of concrete content; and, finally, the laws of the universe\nmust be demonstrable by the same _a priori_ mathematical method that has\nbeen so successfully applied to continuous quantity.\n\nThe geometrical form into which Spinoza has thrown his philosophy\nunfortunately restricts the number of readers--always rather small--that it\nmight otherwise attract. People feel themselves mystified, wearied, and\ncheated by the appearance, without the reality, of logical demonstration;\nand the repulsion is aggravated by the barbarous scholasticism with\nwhich--unlike Bacon, Hobbes, and Descartes--he peppers his pages. Yet, like\nthe Greek philosophers, he is much more modern, more on the true line of\ndeveloping thought than they are. But to get at the true kernel of his\nteaching we must, like Goethe, disregard the logical husks in which it is\nwrapped up. And, as it happens, Spinoza has greatly facilitated this\noperation by printing his most interesting and suggestive discussions in\nthe form of Scholia, Explanations, and Appendices. Even {55} these are not\neasy reading; but, to quote his own pathetic words, \"If the way of\nsalvation lay ready to hand, and could be found without great toil, would\nit be neglected by nearly everyone? But all glorious things are as\ndifficult as they are rare.\"\n\nSome of his expositors have called Spinoza a mystic; and his philosophy has\nbeen traced, in part at least, to the mystical pantheism of certain\nmedieval Jews. In my opinion this is a mistake; and I will now proceed to\nshow that the phrases on which it rests are open to an interpretation more\nconsistent with the rational foundations of the whole system.\n\nThe things that have done most to fasten the character of a mystic on\nSpinoza are his identification of virtue with the knowledge and love of\nGod, and his theory--so suggestive of Christian theology at its highest\nflight--that God loves himself with an infinite love. That, like Plato and\nMatthew Arnold, he should value religion as a means of popular moralisation\nmight seem natural enough; but not, except from a mystical motive, that he\nshould apparently value morality merely as a help to the religious life. On\nexamination, however, it appears that the beatific vision of this pantheist\noffers no experience going beyond the limits of nature and reason. Since\nGod and the universe are one, to know God is to know that we are, body and\nsoul, necessary modes of the two attributes, Extension and Thought, by\nwhich the infinite Power which is the essence of the universe expresses\nitself for us. To love God is to recognise our own vitality as a portion of\nthat power, welcoming it with grateful joy as a gift from the universe\nwhence we come. And to say that God loves himself with an infinite love is\nmerely to say that the attribute of Thought eternally divides itself among\nan infinity of {56} thinking beings, through whose activity the universe\nkeeps up a delighted consciousness of itself.\n\nSpinoza declares by the very name of his great work that for him the\nphilosophical problem is essentially a problem of ethics, being, indeed, no\nother than the old question, first started by Plato, how to reconcile\ndisinterestedness with self-interest; and his metaphysical system is really\nan elaborate mechanism for proving that, on the profoundest interpretation,\ntheir claims coincide. His great contemporary, Hobbes, had taught that the\nfundamental impulse of human nature is the will for power; and Spinoza\naccepts this idea to the fullest extent in proclaiming Power to be the very\nstuff of which we and all other things are made. But he parts company with\nthe English philosopher in his theory of what it means. On his view it is\nan utter illusion to suppose that to gratify such passions as pride,\navarice, vanity, and lust is to acquire or exercise power. For strength\nmeans freedom, self-determination; and no man can be free whose happiness\ndepends on a fortuitous combination of external circumstances, or on the\nconsent of other persons whose desires are such as to set up a conflict\nbetween his gratification and theirs. Real power means self-realisation,\nthe exercise of that faculty which is most purely human--that is to say, of\nThought under the form of reason.\n\nIn pleading for the subordination of the self-seeking desires to reason\nSpinoza repeats the lessons of moral philosophy in all ages and countries\nsince its first independent constitution. In connecting the interests of\nmorality with the interests of science as such, he follows the tradition of\nAthenian thought. In interpreting pantheism as an ethical enthusiasm of the\nuniverse he returns to the creed of Stoicism, and {57} strikes the keynote\nof Wordsworth's loftiest poetry. In fixing each man's place in nature as\none among the infinite individuations of divine power he repeats another\nStoic idea--with this difference, however, that among the Stoics it was\nintimately associated with their teleology, with the doctrine that\neverything in nature has a function without whose performance the universe\nwould not be complete; whereas Spinoza, following Bacon and Descartes,\nutterly abjures final causes as an anthropomorphism, an intrusion of human\ninterests into a universe whose sole perfection is to exhaust the\npossibilities of existence. And herein lies his justification of evil which\nthe Stoics could only defend on aesthetic grounds as enhancing the beauty\nof moral heroism by contrast and conflict. \"If I am asked,\" he says, \"why\nGod did not create all men of such a character as to be guided by reason\nalone, my answer is because he had materials enough to create all things\nfrom the highest to the lowest degree of perfection.\" Perfection with him\nmeaning reality, this account of evil--and of error also--points to the\ntheory of degrees of reality, revived and elaborated in our own time by Mr.\nF. H. Bradley, involving a correlative theory of illusion. Now, the idea of\nillusion, although older than Plato, was first applied on a great scale in\nPlato's philosophy, of whose influence on seventeenth-century thought this\nis not the only example. We shall find it to some extent countervailed by a\nrevived Aristotelian current in the work of the metaphysician who now\nremains to be considered.\n\nLEIBNIZ.\n\nG. W. Leibniz (1646-1716), son of a professor at the University of Leipzig,\nis marked by some of the distinguishing intellectual characters of the\nGerman genius. {58} Far more truly than Francis Bacon, this man took all\nknowledge for his province. At once a mathematician, a physicist, a\nhistorian, a metaphysician, and a diplomatist, he went to the bottom of\nwhatever subject he touched, and enriched all his multifarious studies with\nnew views or with new facts. And as with other great countrymen of his, the\nfinal end of all this curiosity and interest was to combine and reconcile.\nOne of his ambitions was to create a universal language of philosophy, by\nwhose means its problems were to be made a matter of mathematical\ndemonstration; another to harmonise ancient with modern speculation; a\nthird--the most chimerical of all--to compose the differences between Rome\nand Protestantism; a fourth--partly realised long after his time--to unite\nthe German Calvinists with the Lutherans. In politics he tried, with equal\nunsuccess, to build up a Confederation of the Rhine as a barrier against\nLouis XIV., and to divert the ambition of Louis himself from encroachments\non his neighbours to the conquest of Egypt.\n\nIt seems probable that no intellect of equal power was ever applied in\nmodern times to the service of philosophy. And this power is demonstrated,\nnot, as with other metaphysicians, by constructions of more or less\ncontestable value, however dazzling the ingenuity they may display, but by\ncontributions of the first order to positive science. It is now agreed that\nLeibniz discovered the differential calculus independently of Newton; and,\nwhat is more, that the formulation by which alone it has been made\navailable for fruitful application was his exclusive invention. In physics\nhe is a pioneer of the conservation of energy. In geology he starts the\ntheory that our planet began as a glowing molten mass derived from the sun;\nand the modern {59} theory of evolution is a special application of his\ntheory of development.\n\nIntellect alone, however, does not make a great philosopher; character also\nis required; and Leibniz's character was quite unworthy of his genius.\nAmbitious and avaricious, a courtier and a time-server, he neither made\ntruth for its own sake a paramount object, nor would he keep on terms with\nthose who cherished a nobler ideal. After cultivating Spinoza's\nacquaintance, he joined in the cry of obloquy raised after his death, and\nwas mean enough to stir up religious prejudice against Newton's theory of\ngravitation. Of the calamity that embittered his closing days we may say\nwith confidence that it could not possibly have befallen Spinoza. On the\naccession of the Elector of Hanover to the English crown as George I.,\nLeibniz sought for an invitation to the Court of St. James. Apparently the\nprince had not found him very satisfactory as a State official, and had\nreason to believe that Leibniz would have liked to exchange his office of\nhistoriographer at Hanover for a better appointment at Vienna. Greatness in\nother departments could not recommend one whom he knew only as a negligent\nand perhaps unfaithful servant to the favour of such an illiterate master.\nAnyhow, the English appointment was withheld, and the worn-out\nencyclopaedist succumbed to disease and vexation combined. The only mourner\nat his funeral was his secretary, Eckhardt, who hastened to solicit the\nreversion of the offices left vacant by his chief's decease.\n\nA single theory of Leibniz has attained more celebrity than any one\nutterance of any other philosopher; but that fame is due to the undying\nfire in which it has been enveloped by the mocking irony of Voltaire. {60}\nEverything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. Such is the\nfamous text as a satire on which _Candide_ was composed. Yet whatever value\nVoltaire's objections to optimism may possess tells nearly as much against\nVoltaire himself as against his unfortunate butt. For, after all, believing\nas he did in a God who combined omnipotence with perfect goodness he could\nnot any more than Leibniz evade the obligation of reconciling the divine\ncharacter with the divine work. On _a priori_ grounds the German\nphilosopher seems to have an incontrovertible case. A perfect Being must\nhave made the best possible world. The only question is what we mean by\ngoodness and by possibility. Spinoza had solved the problem by identifying\ngoodness with existence. It is enough that the things we call evil are\npossible; the infinite Power of nature would be a self-contradiction were\nthey not realised. Leibniz rejects the pantheistic position in terms, but\nnearly admits it in practice. Evil for him means imperfection, and if God\nmade a world at all it was bound to be imperfect. The next step was to call\npain an imperfection, which suggests a serious logical deficiency in the\noptimist; for, although in certain circumstances the production of pain\nargues imperfection in the operator, we are not entitled to argue that\nwherever there is pain there must be imperfection. Another plea is the\nnecessity of pain as a punishment for crime, or, more generally, as a\nresult of moral freedom. Such an argument is only open to the believers in\nfree-will. A world of free and responsible agents, they urge, is infinitely\nmore valuable than a world of automata; and it is not too dearly purchased\neven at the cost of such suffering as we witness. The argument is not very\nconvincing; for liberty of choice {61} in a painless world is quite\nconceivable. But, be it a good or bad argument, although it might appeal to\nVoltaire, who believed in free-will, it could not decently be used by\nLeibniz, who was a determinist of the strictest type. To make this clear we\nmust now turn to his metaphysical system.\n\nBacon, Descartes, and Spinoza, disagreeing widely on other subjects, were\nagreed in discountenancing the study of final causes: Bacon, apparently,\nfrom dislike of the idea that the perfect adaptation of all things to the\nservice of man rendered superfluous any efforts to make them more\nserviceable still; Descartes from his devotion to the mathematical method\nwhich was more applicable to a system of mechanical causation; Spinoza for\nthe same reason, and also from his disbelief in a personal God. Leibniz, on\nthe contrary, felt deeply impressed by a famous passage in Plato's\n_Phaedo,_ where Socrates, opposing the philosophy of teleology to the\nphilosophy of mechanism, desiderates an explanation of nature as designed\nwith a view to the highest good. But Leibniz did not go so far as Plato.\nMediating between the two methods, he taught that all is done for the best,\nbut also that all is done through an unbroken series of efficient causes.\nAt the same time, these causes are only material in appearance; in reality\nthey are spiritual beings. There is no such thing as dead matter; the\nuniverse consists of living forces all through. The general idea of force\nprobably came from that infinite Power of which, according to Spinoza, the\nwhole universe is at once the product and the expression; or it may have\nbeen suggested by Plato's incidental identification of Being with Action.\nBut Leibniz found his type of force in human personality, which, following\nthe lead of Aristotle {62} rather than of Plato, he conceived as an\nEntelechy, or realised Actuality, and a First Substance. After years of\nanxious reflection he chose the far happier name of Monad, a term\noriginally coined by Bruno, but not, as would appear, directly borrowed\nfrom him by the German metaphysician.\n\nAccording to Leibniz, the monads or ultimate elements of existence are\nconstituted by the two essential properties of psychic life, perception and\nappetency. In this connection two points have to be made clear. What he\ncalls bare monads--_i.e._, the components of what is known as inorganic\nmatter--although percipient, are not conscious of their perceptions; in his\nlanguage they do not _apperceive_. And he endeavours to prove that such a\nmentality is possible by a reference to our own experience. We hear the\nroaring of waves on the seashore, but we do not hear the sound made by the\nfalling of each particle of water. And yet we certainly must perceive it in\nsome way or other, since the total volume of sound is made up of those\ninaudible impacts. He overlooks the conceivable alternative that the\nimmediate antecedent of our auditory sensations is a cerebral disturbance,\nand that this must attain a certain volume in order to produce an effect on\nour consciousness. The other point is that the appetency of a monad does\nnot mean an active impulse, but a search for more and more perceptions, a\ncontinuous widening of its cognitive range. In short, each monad is a\nlittle Leibniz for ever increasing the sum of its knowledge.\n\nAt no stage does that knowledge come from experience. The monad has no\nwindows, no communication of any kind with the external world. But each\nreflects the whole universe, knowing what it knows by {63} mere\nintrospection. And each reflects all the others at a different angle, the\nangles varying from one another by infinitesimal degrees, so that in their\ntotality they form a continuous series of differentiated individuals. And\nthe same law of infinitesimal differentiation is observed by the series of\nprogressive changes through which the monads are ever passing, so that they\nkeep exact step, the continuity of existence being unbroken in the order of\nsuccession as in the order of co-existence. Evidently there is no place for\nfree-will in such a system; and that Leibniz, with his relentless fatalism,\nshould not only admit the eternal punishment of predestined sinners, but\neven defend it as morally appropriate, obliges us to condemn his theology\nas utterly irrational or utterly insincere.\n\nIn this system animal and human souls are conceived as monads of superior\nrank occupying a central and commanding position among a multitude of\ninferior monads constituting what we call their bodies, and changing _pari\npassu_ with them, the correspondence of their respective states being,\naccording to Leibniz, of such a peculiarly intimate character that the\nphenomena of sensation and volition seem to result from a causal reaction\ninstead of from a mechanical adjustment such as we can imagine to exist\nbetween two clocks so constructed and set as to strike the same hour at the\nsame time. This theory of the relations between body and soul is known to\nphilosophy as the system of pre-established harmony.\n\nIt may be asked how every monad can possibly reflect every other monad when\nwe do not know what is passing in our own bodies, still less what is\npassing all over the universe. The answer consists in a convenient\ndistinction between clear and confused {64} perceptions, the one\nconstituting our actual and the other our potential knowledge. A more\ndifficult problem is to explain how any particular monad--Leibniz or\nanother--can consistently be a monadologist rather than a solipsist\nbelieving only in its own existence. Here, as usual, the _Deus ex Machina_\ncomes in. Following Descartes, I think of God as a perfect Being whose idea\ninvolves his existence, with, of course, the power, will, and wisdom to\ncreate the best possible world--a universe of monads--which, again, by its\nperfect mutual adjustments, proves that there is a God. A more serious, and\nindeed absolutely insuperable, objection arises from the definition of the\nmonads as nothing but mutually reflecting entities. For even an infinity of\nlittle mirrors with nothing but each other to reflect must at once collapse\ninto absolute vacuity. And with their disappearance their creator also\ndisappears. God, the supreme monad, we are told, has only clear\nperceptions; but the clearness is of no avail when he has nothing to\nperceive but an absolute blank. Leibniz rejected the objectivity of time\nand space; yet the hollow infinity of those blank forms seems, in his\nphilosophy, to have reached the consciousness of itself.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n{65}\n\nCHAPTER III.\n\nTHE THEORISTS OF KNOWLEDGE\n\nLOCKE, BERKELEY, HUME, KANT.\n\nEpistemology, or theory of knowledge, did not begin in modern times. Among\nthe Greeks it goes back, at least, to Empedocles, and figures largely in\nthe programmes of the later schools. And Descartes's universal doubt seems\nto give the question, How can we be sure of anything? a foremost place in\nspeculation. But the singular assurance with which the Cartesian\nmetaphysicians presented their adventurous hypotheses as demonstrated\ncertainties showed that with them the test of truth meant whatever told for\nthat which, on other grounds, they believed to be true. In reality, the\nthing they called reason was hardly more than a covert appeal to authority,\na suggestion that the duty of philosophy was to reconcile old beliefs with\nnew. And the last great dogmatist, Leibniz, was the one who practised this\nmethod of uncritical assumption to the utmost extent.\n\nLOCKE.\n\nIt is the peculiar glory of John Locke (1632-1704) to have resumed that\nmethod of doubt which Descartes had attempted, but which his dogmatic\nprepossessions had falsified almost at the first start. This illustrious\nthinker is memorable not only for his services to speculation, but for the\nexample of a genuinely philosophic life {66} entirely devoted to truth and\ngood--a character in which personal sweetness, simplicity, and charm were\ncombined with strenuous, disinterested, and fearless devotion to the\nservice of the State. Locke was a Whig when Whiggism meant advanced\nLiberalism in religion and politics, and when _that_ often meant a choice\nbetween exile and death. Thus, after the fall of his patron, Lord\nShaftesbury, the philosopher had to take refuge in Holland, remaining there\nfor some years, lying hid even there for some time to escape an extradition\norder for which the Government of James II. had applied. It was in Holland\nthat he wrote the _Essay Concerning Human Understanding_.\n\nThis revolutionist in thought was no solitary recluse, but, in the best\nsense, a thorough man of the world. Educated at Westminster and Christ\nChurch, he had, in the German poet's phrase, the supreme happiness of\ncombining the seriousness of an enthusiast with the sagacity of a\nstatesman, so that great statesmen recognised him as one of themselves.\nWith the triumph of the Whig cause at a time when diplomacy demanded the\nutmost tact and skill, it was proposed to send Locke as Ambassador to the\nCourt of Brandenburg, and, as that would not have suited his sober habits,\nto the Court of Vienna. Weak health obliging him to decline this also, he\nreceived office in the Ministry at home, taking a department where business\ntalents were eminently required. In that capacity he bore a leading part in\nthe restoration of the coinage, besides inspiring the Toleration Act and\nthe Act for Unlicensed Printing. Even the wisest men make mistakes; and it\nmust be noticed with regret that Locke's theory of toleration excluded\nRoman Catholics on the one side and atheists on the other--the former\nbecause their {67} creed made persecution a duty, the latter because their\nwant of a creed left them no sanction for any duties whatever. To say that\nLocke had not our experience does not excuse him, for in both cases the\nexpediency of toleration can be proved _a priori_. Romanists must be\nexpected to suppress a heresy whose spokesman declares that when he has the\npower he will suppress their Church; and, if atheists are without moral\nprinciple, they will propagate, under cover of orthodoxy, negations that\nthey are not allowed openly to profess.\n\nLocke was brought up by a Puritan father; and, although in after life he\nwandered far from its doctrinal standards, he no doubt always retained a\nsense of that close connection between religion and morality which\nPuritanism implies. Telling about the train of thought that started his\ngreat Essay, he refers it to a conversation between himself and some\nfriends, in which they \"found themselves quickly at a stand by the\ndifficulties that rose on every side;\" and, according to an intimate friend\nof his, the discussion turned \"on the principles of morality and revealed\nreligion.\" It then occurred to him that they should first ascertain \"what\nobjects their understandings were or were not fitted to deal with.\" And the\nmottoes prefixed to the essay prove that the results were of a decidedly\nsceptical cast. Indeed, his successors, though not himself, were destined\nto develop them into what is now called Agnosticism.\n\nWe have further to note that, while his Continental rivals were\nmathematicians, our English philosopher never went deeply into mathematics,\nbut was by calling a physician. In this he resembles Aristotle and Sextus\nEmpiricus among the Greeks; and so it is quite in order that, with the same\nsort of training, he should {68} adopt Aristotle's method of experience as\nagainst Platonic transcendentalism, and the sceptical relativism of Sextus\nas against the dogmatism of the schools.\n\nLocke begins his essay with a vigorous polemic against the doctrine of\nInnate Ideas. The word \"idea,\" as he uses it, is ambiguous, serving to\ndenote perceptions, notions, and propositions; but this confusion is of no\npractical importance, his object being to show that all our knowledge\noriginates in experience; whereas the reigning belief was that at least the\nfirst principles of knowledge had a more authoritative, if not a mystical,\nsource. Hobbes had been beforehand with him in deriving every kind of\nknowledge from experience, but had been content to assume his case; whereas\nLocke supports his by a formidable array of proofs. The gist of his\nargument is that intellectual and moral principles supposed to be\nrecognised by all mankind from their infancy are admitted only by some, and\nby those only as the result of teaching.\n\nAs we saw, the whole inquiry began with questions about religion and\nmorality; and it is precisely in reference to the alleged universality and\ninnateness of the belief in God and the moral law that Locke is most\nsuccessful. And the more modern anthropology teaches us about primitive\nman, the stronger becomes the case against the transcendental side in the\ncontroversy. Where his analysis breaks down is in dealing with the\ndifficult and important ideas of Space, Time, Substance, and\nCausality--with the fatal result that such questions as, How is experience\nitself possible? or, How from a partial experience can we draw universal\nand necessary conclusions? find no place in his theory of knowledge. Of\ncourse, his contemporaries are open to the same {69} criticism--nor,\nindeed, had the time come even for the statement of such problems.\nMeanwhile, the facility with which the founder of epistemology accepts\nfallacies whence Spinoza had already found his way out shows how little he\nwas master of his means. According to Locke, it is \"a certain and evident\ntruth that there is an eternal, most powerful, and most knowing being,\nwhich whether anyone will please to call God it matters not.\" On\nexamination the proof appears to involve two unproved assumptions. The\nfirst is that nothing can begin to exist without a cause. The second is\nthat effects must resemble their causes. And from these it is inferred that\nan all-powerful being must have existed from all eternity. The alternative\nis overlooked that a succession of more limited beings would answer the\npurpose equally well, while it would also be more consistent with our\nexperience. But a far more fatal objection to Locke's theism results from\nhis second assumption. This, although not explicitly stated, is involved in\nthe assertion that for knowledge such as we possess to originate from\nthings without knowledge is impossible. For, on the same principle, matter\nmust have been made by something material, pain by something that is\npained, and evil by something that is evil. It would not even be going too\nfar to say that by this logic I myself must have existed from all eternity;\nfor to say that I was created by a not-myself would be to say that\nsomething may come from nothing.\n\nWe have seen how Locke refused toleration to atheists on the ground that\ntheir denial of a divine lawgiver and judge destroys the basis of morality.\nHe did not, like Spinoza, believe that morality is of the nature of things.\nFor him it is constituted by the will of God. Possibly, if pressed, he\nmight have explained {70} that what atheism denies is not the rule of\nright, but the sanction of that rule, the fear of supernatural retribution.\nYet being, like Spinoza and Leibniz, a determinist, he should have seen\nthat a creator who sets in motion the train of causes and effects\nnecessarily resulting in what we call good or bad human actions has the\nsame responsibility for those actions as if he had committed them himself.\nTo reward one of his passive agents and to punish another would be grossly\nunjust and at the same time perfectly useless. But how do we know that he\nwill, on any theory of volition, reward the good and punish the bad?\n\"Because we have his word for it.\" And how do we know that he will keep his\nword? \"Because he is all-good.\" But that, on Locke's principles, is pure\nassumption; and God, being quite sure that _he_ has no retribution to fear,\nmust be even more irresponsible than the atheist.\n\nThe principle that nothing can come from nothing, so far from proving\ntheism, leads logically either to pantheism or to a much more thorough\nmonadism than the system of Leibniz. And, metaphysics apart, it conflicts\nwith a leading doctrine of the essay--that is the fundamental distinction\nbetween the primary and the secondary qualities of matter. We think of\nbodies as in themselves extended, resisting and mobile, but not in\nthemselves as coloured, sonorous, odorous, hot, cold, or sapid. They cause\nour special sensations, but cause them by an unknown power. Again we\nperceive--or think we perceive--both primary and secondary qualities in\nclose union as properties of a single object, and this object in which they\njointly inhere is called a substance. And to the question, What is\nsubstance? Locke admits that he has no answer except something we know not\nwhat. He has returned to the agnostic standpoint of the {71} Cyrenaic\nschool. This something, for aught we know, might have created the world.\n\nContinental historians regard the whole rationalistic movement of the\neighteenth century, or what in Germany is called the Enlightenment\n(Aufklaerung), as having been started by Locke. But the sort of arguments\nthat he adduces for the existence of a God prove that in theology at least\nhis rationalism had rather narrow limits. Both his theism and his\nacceptance of Christianity on the evidence of prophecy and miracles show no\nadvance on medieval logic. In this respect Spinoza and Bayle (1622-1709)\nwere far more in line with the modern movement. Still, assuming scripture\nas an authoritative revelation, Locke shows that, rationally interpreted,\nit yields much less support to dogmatic orthodoxy than English Churchmen\nsupposed. And whatever may have been the letter of his religious teaching,\nthere can be little doubt that the English Deists, Toland, Shaftesbury, and\nAnthony Collins, represented its true spirit more faithfully than the\nphilosopher himself.\n\nRepresentative government and the subordination of ecclesiastical to\nsecular authority--or, better still, their separation--are both good things\nin themselves and favourable conditions to the life of reason. Another\ncondition is that children should be trained to exercise their intelligence\ninstead of relying blindly on authority. In these respects also Locke's\nwritings acted powerfully on the public opinion of the next century,\nespecially through the agency of French writers; France, as Macaulay justly\nclaims, being the interpreter between England and the world. Our present\nbusiness, however, is not with the diffusion but the development of\nthought, and to trace this we must return to British philosophy. {72}\n\nBERKELEY.\n\nGeorge Berkeley (1684-1753) was born and educated in Ireland. The fact is\nof no racial or national importance, but interests us as accounting for his\nhaving received a better training in philosophy than at that time was\npossible in England. For the study of Locke, then proscribed at Oxford, had\nalready been introduced into Dublin when Berkeley was an undergraduate\nthere; and it was as a critical advance on Locke that his first\npublication, the _New Theory of Vision_ (1709), was offered. Next year came\nthe epoch-making _Principles of Human Knowledge_, followed in 1713 by the\nmore popular _Dialogues_. At twenty-nine his work was done, and although he\nlived forty years longer, rising to be a Bishop in the Irish Church, after\nprojecting a Christian Utopia for the civilisation of the North American\nIndians that never came to anything, and practising \"every virtue under\nheaven,\" he made no other permanent contribution to thought.\n\nBerkeley is at once a theorist of knowledge and a metaphysician, combining,\nin a way, the method of Locke with the method of Descartes and his\nsuccessors. The popular notion of his philosophy is that it resolved the\nexternal world into a dream, or at least into something that has no\nexistence outside our minds. But this is an utter misconception, against\nwhich Berkeley constantly protested. His quarrel was not with common sense,\nbut with the theorists of perception. To understand this we must return for\na moment to Locke's teaching. It will be remembered in what a tangle of\ndifficulties the essay had left its author. Matter had two sets of\nqualities, primary and secondary, the one belonging to things in\nthemselves, the other existing only {73} in our minds; yet both somehow\ncombined in real substances independent of us, but acting on our senses.\nSubstance as such is an unknown and unknowable postulate; nevertheless, we\nknow that it was created by God, of whom our knowledge is, if anything,\ninconveniently extensive. Now Berkeley, to find his way out of these\nperplexities, begins by attacking the distinction between primary and\nsecondary qualities. For this purpose his _Theory of Vision_ was written.\nIt proves--or attempts to prove--that extension is not a real attribute of\nthings in themselves, but an intellectual construction, or what Locke would\nhave called an \"idea of reflection.\" Till then people had thought that its\nobjectivity was firmly established by the concurrent testimony of two\nsenses, sight and touch. Berkeley shows, on the contrary, that visible and\ntangible extension are not the same thing, that the sensations--or, as he\ncalls them, the ideas--of sight and touch are two different languages whose\nwords we learn by experience to interpret in terms of each other without\ntheir being necessarily connected. A man born blind would not at first\nsight know how to interpret the visual signs of distance, direction, and\nmagnitude; he would have to learn them by experience. These, in fact, are\nideal relations only existing in the mind; and so we have no right to\noppose mind as inextended to an extended or an external world.\n\nHaving thus cleared the ground, our young idealist proceeds in his next and\ngreatest work, _Of the Principles of Human Knowledge_, to attack the\nproblem from another side. The world of objects revealed through sensation\nand reflection is clearly no illusion, no creation of our own. We find it\nthere, changing, when it changes, without or even very much against our\nwill. {74} What, then, is its origin and nature? Locke's view, which is the\ncommon view, tells us that it consists of material bodies, some animated\nand some not. And matter, the supposed substance of body, is made known to\nus by impressions on our organs of sense. But when we try to think of\nmatter apart from these sensible qualities and the relations between them\nit vanishes into an empty abstraction. Now, according to Berkeley there are\nno abstract ideas--_i.e._, no thoughts unassociated with some mental image\nbesides a mere word; and Matter or inanimate substance would be such an\nidea, therefore it does not exist. There is nothing but mind and its\ncontents--what we call states of consciousness, what Locke and Berkeley\ncalled ideas. Whence, then, come the objects of our consciousness, and\nwhither do they go when we cease to perceive them? At this point the new\nmetaphysical system intervenes. Berkeley says that all things subsist in\nthe consciousness of God, and by their subsistence his existence is proved.\nThe direct apprehension of a reality that is not ourselves only becomes\npossible through what would be called in modern language a subjective\nparticipation in the divine consciousness, more feebly reflected, as would\nseem, in the memories, imaginations, and reasonings of our finite minds.\n\nIn pursuing these wonderful speculations Berkeley deviated widely from the\ndirect line of English philosophy, and it is difficult not to believe that\nthe deflection was determined by the influence of Malebranche, especially\nwhen we find that the writings of the Oratorian Father were included in his\ncollege studies. Moreover, a parallel line of idealistic development\nderived from the same source was evolving itself at {75} the same time in\nEnglish thought. John Norris (1657-1711), a correspondent of the Platonist\nHenry More, an opponent of Locke, and a disciple of Malebranche, had\nhimself found an enthusiastic admirer in Arthur Collier (1680-1732), whose\n_Clavis Universalis_ professed to be \"a demonstration of the _non-existence\nor impossibility of an external world_\" (1713). Both Norris and Collier,\nlike Malebranche and Berkeley, were Churchmen; but so strong was the drift\ntowards idealism that Leibniz, a layman and a man of science, contributed\nby his Monadology to the same current. Malebranche neither was nor could he\nbe a complete idealist in the sense of denying the reality of matter; for\nthe dogma of transubstantiation bound him, as a Catholic, to its\nacceptance, while Berkeley, Collier, and Leibniz, as Protestants, were\nunder no such obligation. His idealism agreed more nearly with the\nNeo-Platonic doctrine of Archetypes in the divine Reason among which Matter\nwas one. On the other hand, Berkeley probably borrowed from him the notion\nof a direct contact with God, the difference being that with the Cartesian\nit is conceived as an objective vision, with Locke's disciple as (if the\nexpression may be permitted) a subjective con-consciousness. Leibniz,\nagain, while abolishing Matter, retains an external world composed indeed\nof spirits and so far immaterial, but existing independently of God.\n\nAll these systems involve the negation of two fundamental scientific\nprinciples. The first is that every change must be explained by reference\nto an antecedent change to which it bears a strict quantitative relation.\nThe second is that no particular change can be referred to another change\nas its necessary antecedent unless it can be shown by experience that a\nprecisely similar {76} couple of changes are, in fact, always so connected.\nLet me illustrate these principles by an example. I leave a kettle full of\ncold water on the fire, and on returning after a sufficient interval of\ntime I find the water boiling. Had I stayed by the fire and watched the\nprocess, my kettle would--a popular proverb to the contrary\nnotwithstanding--have certainly boiled as soon, but also no sooner for\nbeing helped by my consciousness. The essential thing is that energy of\ncombustion in the fire should be turned into energy of boiling in the\nwater. Now, what is Berkeley's interpretation of the facts? Fire, kettle,\nwater, and ebullition are what in his writings are called \"ideas\"--_i.e._,\nphenomena occasionally in my mind, but always in God's mind. And according\nto this view the necessary antecedent to the boiling of the water is not\nthe fire's burning, but God's consciousness of its burning, his perception\nbeing the essence of the operation. But it is proved by experience that\nneither my perception nor anyone else's ever made a single drop of water\nboil. In other words, perception is not in this instance a _vera causa_.\nWhy, then, should the perception of any other mind, however exalted, have\nthat effect?\n\nNor is this all. How does Berkeley know that God exists? Because, he says,\nto exist is to be perceived, and therefore for the universe to exist\nimplies a universal Percipient. But he got the idea of God from other men,\nwho certainly did not come by it as a generalisation from their\nperceptions; they got it by generalising from their voluntary actions,\nwhich do produce the changes that perception cannot produce. It will be\nsaid that volitions and the feelings that prompt them exist only in\nconsciousness. In whose consciousness? In that of a spirit. And what is\nspirit apart from {77} sensation, thought, feeling, and volition? Simply\none of those abstract ideas whose existence Berkeley himself denied.\n\nHUME.\n\nThe next step in the evolution of English thought was to consist in a\nreturn to Locke's method, involving a complete breach with\nseventeenth-century Platonism, and with the Continental metaphysics that it\nhad inspired. This decisive movement was effected by one in whom German\ncriticism has recognised the greatest of all British philosophers. David\nHume (1711-1776) was born and bred at Edinburgh, which also seems to have\nbeen through life his favourite residence. But his great work, the\n_Treatise on Human Nature_, was written during a stay in France, between\nthe ages of twenty-three and twenty-six. Thus his precocity was even\ngreater than Berkeley's. Indeed, such maturity of thought so early reached\nis without a parallel in history. But Hume's style had not then acquired\nthe perfection--the inimitable charm, Kant calls it--of his later writings;\nand, whether for this or for other reasons, the book, in his own words,\n\"fell dead-born from the press.\" In middle life the office of librarian of\nthe Advocates' Library at Edinburgh gave him access to the materials for\nhis _History of England_, which proved a source of fame and profit. A\nprofound historical scholar, J. S. Brewer, tells us that Hume \"possessed in\na pre-eminent degree some of the highest excellences of a historian.\" Other\nhistorians have treated their subjects philosophically; he furnishes the\nsole instance of a great speculative genius who has also produced a\nhistorical masterpiece of the first order. But morally it is a blot on his\nfame. It is sad that a philosopher should have deliberately perverted the\ntruth, that one who has {78} [Illustration: DAVID HUME.] performed\npriceless services to freedom of thought should have made himself the\napologist of clericalising absolutism, and, still more, that a master of\nEnglish played this part to some extent through hatred of the great English\npeople engendered by disappointed literary ambition. It may be mentioned,\nhowever, as a possible extenuation that towards the middle of the\neighteenth century the highest English ability had thrown itself, with few\nexceptions, on the Tory side. It must be mentioned {79} also that in\nprivate life Hume's character was entirely admirable--cheerful, generous,\nand gentle, without a frailty and without a stain. His opinions were\nunpopular; but his life offered no handle for obloquy, although his\nstudious retirement was more than once exchanged for the responsibilities\nof political office, and the freedom from pedantry so conspicuous in his\nwritings bears witness to habits of well-bred social intercourse.\n\nHume's philosophy is best understood when we consider it as, in the first\nplace, a criticism of Berkeley, just as Berkeley's had been a criticism of\nLocke. It will be remembered that the founder of subjective idealism\ndiscarded the notion of material substance as an \"abstract idea,\" an\nunintelligible figment devoid of any sensuous or imaginative content. The\nonly true substances are the subjects of what we call experience\ncommunicating through sensation with God, the infinite spirit whose eternal\nconsciousness is reality itself. Hume applied the same tests to spiritual\nsubstance, and found that it equally disappeared under his introspective\nanalysis. He begins by dividing the contents of consciousness into two\nclasses, impressions and ideas--the second being copies of the first, and\ndistinguished from them by their relative faintness. Now, from these\nperceptions (which he called thoughts) Descartes had passed by an immediate\ninference to the ego or self, which he affirms as the primary fact of\nconsciousness, using it as a basis for sundry other conclusions. But Hume\nstops him at once, and will not grant the existence of the metaphysical\nself--that is, a simple and continued substance, as distinguished from\nparticular states of consciousness. We are, he declares, \"nothing but a\nbundle of different perceptions, which {80} succeed each other with an\ninconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement.\" \"There\nis properly no _simplicity_ in it [the self] at one time, nor _identity_ in\ndifferent [times]; whatever natural propensity we may have to imagine that\nsimplicity and identity.\" So much being assumed, Berkeley's whole argument\nfor a new theology founded on subjective idealism is bound to collapse, as\nalso is the argument for natural immortality derived from the supposed\nsimplicity and identity of the thinking substance.\n\nModern critics have rightly insisted, as against Hume, that isolated\nperceptions without a self are abstractions not less unintelligible than a\nself without perceptions. But the metaphysical argument for human\nimmortality has not benefited by this more concrete interpretation of\nepistemology; and probably Hume was really more interested in destroying\nthis than in maintaining the sceptical paradox which does not recur in his\nlater writings.\n\nA word must be added about Hume's division of perceptions into impressions\nand ideas. The point left out of sight in this analysis is that impressions\nof sense habitually find their reflexes not in revived sensations, but in\nexpressions, in motor reactions which, with human beings, mostly take the\nform of words uttered or thought. These, no doubt, are associated to some\nsmall extent with revived sensations; but they are more commonly grouped\nwith other words, with movements of the limbs, and with actions on the\nmaterial or human environment of the percipient. Such expressions are\nincomparably easier to revive in memory, imagination, or expectation than\nthe impressions that originally excited them; and, indeed, it is in\nconnection with them that such revivals of sensation {81} as we actually\nexperience take place. And it is probable that to this active side of our\nconsciousness that we may trace those associative processes which Hume\nstudies next in his analysis of human knowledge.\n\nPutting aside principles of doubtful or secondary value, the relations\nbetween states of consciousness that first offer themselves to view are,\naccording to Hume, Co-existence and Succession (united under the name of\nContiguity), Resemblance, and Causation. It is with the account he gives of\nthis last category that his name is inseparably associated, for from it all\nsubsequent speculation has taken rise. Yet primarily he seems to have had\nno other object in view than to simplify the laws of knowledge by resolving\none of them into a particular case of another, and thus reducing his three\ncategories to two. The relation of cause and effect, he tells us, is no\nmore than a certain relation between antecedent and consequent in time\nwhere the sequence is so habitual as to establish in our minds a custom of\nexpecting the one whenever the other occurs. The sequence is not necessary,\nfor one can think, without any self-contradiction, of a change which has\nnot been preceded by another change; nor is it, like the truths of\ngeometry, something that can be known _a priori_. Without experience no one\ncould tell that bread will nourish a man and not nourish a lion, nor even\npredict how a billiard-ball will behave when another ball strikes it.\nShould it be objected that the _a priori_ knowledge of a general principle\nneed not involve an equal knowledge of nature's operations in particular\ncases, Hume would doubtless reply by saying that there is no abstract idea\nof causation apart from its concrete exemplifications.\n\nIt is possible to accept Hume's theory in principle {82} without pledging\noneself to all his incidental contentions. Causation, as a general law, may\nbe known only by experience, whether we can or cannot think of it as a pure\nabstraction. And we may interpret it in terms of unconditional antecedence\nand consequence, while discarding his apparent assumption of an inscrutable\nconnection between the two; a mysterious necessity for the production of\nthe one by the other, for which it is felt that a reason exists, but for\nwhich our reason cannot account. It is inconceivable that our knowledge of\nany given sequence could be increased, except by the disclosure of\nintermediate sequences, making their continuity, in space and time, more\nabsolute than we had before perceived, until the whole process has been\nresolved into a transference of momentum from one molecule to another--a\nchange for which, according to Hume, no reason can be given. Nor, on his\nprinciples, would it help us to explain such transferences by bringing them\nunder the law of the Conservation of Energy. For, although this would be a\ngreat triumph for science, his philosophy demands a reason why the quantity\nof energy should remain unalterable for ever.\n\nIt is a mistake, shared by Hume with his opponents, to suppose that the\ncommon sense of mankind ever saw more than invariable sequence in the\nrelation of cause and effect, or ever interpolated a mysterious power\nbetween them. In the famous verse, \"Let there be light, and there was\nlight,\" it is the instantaneity of succession, not the interpolation of any\nexerted effort, that so impresses the imagination. And when Shakespeare\nwants to illustrate logical compulsion in conduct, his reference is to an\ninstance of invariable succession:-- {83}\n\n  This above all,--to thine own self be true;\n  And it must follow, as the night the day,\n  Thou canst not then be false to any man.\n\nIndeed, I think it will be found on examination that when we associate the\nidea of power, or of necessity, with causal sequences, it is not in\nconnection with a case of causation here and now, but rather in reference\nto similar effects that may be expected from the same cause elsewhere or at\nanother time. And that \"custom,\" by which Hume seeks to explain our belief\nin the \"power\" of the cause to produce its effect as well as the\n\"necessity\" of the connection between them, rather acts negatively by\neliminating all other antecedents as possible causes than positively by\nsetting up a habit of thinking about a particular antecedent and consequent\nat the same time. And that is why a burnt child needs no repetition of the\nexperiment to be convinced that contact with fire was the cause of its\npain. The very novelty of the experiment was enough to eliminate any\nexplanation other than that of contact with the flame.\n\nThe child, as it grows older, may learn to speak of the fire as having a\npower to burn. But that merely means, \"if I touch it, it will burn me--or\nlight paper if I hold the paper to it.\" Power, in fact, is incomplete\ncausation, the presence of every condition but that one which, in\nAristotelian phrase, turns potency into act. And it is in contradistinction\nto that idea of possibility that the idea of necessary connection comes in.\nWhen all the elements of the causal antecedent are combined the effect\nnecessarily supervenes. Furthermore, the causal antecedent is thought of as\nnecessary in contrast with the contingency of other antecedents whose\nconnection with the effect is merely accidental. Finally, {84} the idea of\nproduction has been quoted as vitally distinguishing true causation from\ninvariable sequence. But various myths, of which the story of Oedipus is\nthe best known, show that primitive folk regard day and night as\nalternately producing one another, just as Polonius quotes their sequence\nas a type of logical necessity.\n\nHume professed himself a Deist, but probably with no more seriousness than\nwhen he, or when Gibbon, called Christianity \"our religion.\" At any rate,\nhis philosophy destroys every argument for the existence of a Creator\nadvanced in his own or in the preceding century. Nor need his particular\ntheory of causation be invoked for the purpose. The most telling attack is\non the argument from design. The apparent adaptation of means to ends in\nliving organisms is quoted as evidence of their having been planned by a\nconscious intelligence. But, answers Hume, such an intelligence would\nitself exhibit marks of design, and so on for ever. Why not, then, stop at\nthe animal organism as an ultimate fact? It was Shelley's unlucky demand\nfor a solution of this difficulty that led to his expulsion from Oxford.\n\nIt has been shown how the new analysis of mind cut the ground from under\nBerkeley's theism, and from under the metaphysical argument for human\nimmortality. By denying the substantiality of the ego it also confirmed the\nnecessitarianism of Spinoza. Hume seemed to think he could abate the\nunpopularity of this doctrine by interpreting the constant motivation of\nhuman actions as a mere relation of antecedence and consequence. But the\ndecisive point was that he assimilated sequences in conscious behaviour to\nthe unconscious sequences in physical events. Thus, for {85} the vulgar and\nthe theologians, he remained what would now be called a materialist.\n\nKANT.\n\nThe English philosophy of experience and the Continental philosophy of _a\npriori_ spiritualism, after their brief convergence in the metaphysics of\nBerkeley, parted company once more, the empirical tradition being\nhenceforth represented, not only by Hume, but in a more or less\nanti-Christian and much more superficial form by Voltaire, Rousseau, and\nthe French Encyclopaedists; while the Leibnizian philosophy was\nsystematised and taught in Germany by Wolf, and a dull but useful sort of\nmodernised Aristotelianism was set up under the name of \"common sense\" by\nThomas Reid (1710-1796) and his school in the Scottish Universities.\n\nThe extraordinary genius who was to re-combine the parted currents in a\nspeculative movement of unexampled volume, velocity, and depth showed\nnothing of the precocity that had distinguished Berkeley and Hume. Immanuel\nKant (1724-1804), the son of a saddler of Scottish extraction, was born at\nKoenigsberg in Prussia, where he spent his whole life, holding a chair at\nthe University from 1770 to 1797. It is related that on the day of his\ndeath a small bright cloud was seen sailing alone across the clear blue\nsky, of such a remarkable appearance that a crowd assembled on the bridge\nto watch it. One of them, a common soldier, exclaimed, \"That is Kant's soul\ngoing to heaven!\"--a touching and beautiful tribute to the illustrious\nGerman, whose lofty, pure, and luminous spirit it was uniquely fitted to\ncharacterise.\n\n{86}\n\n[Illustration: KANT.\n\n(_Copyright B. P. C._)\n\n{87} Kant grew up among the Pietists, a school which played much the same\npart in Germany that the Methodists and the Evangelicals played in England;\nindeed, it was from them that John Wesley received his final inspiration.\nThe Koenigsberg student came in time to discard their theology while\nretaining the stern Puritan morality with which it was wedded, and even,\nRationalist as he became, some of their mystical religiosity. What drew him\naway to philosophy seems to have been first the study of classical\nphilology and then physical science, especially as presented to him in\nNewton's works. And so the young man's first ambition, after settling down\nas a University teacher at Koenigsberg, was to extend the Newtonian method\nstill further by explaining, on mechanical principles, the origin and\nconstitution of that celestial system whose movements Newton had reduced to\nlaw, but whose beginning he had left unaccounted for except by--what was\nnot science--the direct fiat of omnipotence.\n\nKant offered a brilliant solution of the problem in his _Natural History of\nthe Heavens_ (1755), a work embodying the celebrated nebular hypothesis\nrediscovered forty years later by Laplace. It has been well observed that\ngreat philosophers are mostly, if not always, what at Oxford and Cambridge\nwould be called \"double-firsts\"--that is, apart from their philosophy, they\nhave done first-class work in some special line of investigation, as\nDescartes by creating analytical geometry, Spinoza by applying Biblical\ncriticisms to theology, Leibniz by discovering the differential calculus,\nLocke by his theory of constitutional government, Berkeley by his theory of\nvision, Hume by his contributions to history and political economy. Kant's\ncosmogony may have been premature and mistaken in its details; but his idea\nof the heavenly bodies as having originated from the condensation of\ndiffused gaseous matter still holds its {88} ground; and although the more\ngeneral idea of natural evolution as opposed to supernatural creation is\nnot modern but Greek, to have revived and reapplied it on so great a scale\nis a service of extraordinary merit.\n\nThe next great event in Kant's intellectual career is his rejection of\nContinental apriorism in metaphysics for the empiricism of the English\nschool, especially as regards the idea of causation. For a few years\n(1762-1765) Kant accepts Hume's theory that there is nothing in any\nsuccession of events or in change generally to prove on grounds of pure\nreason that there must be more in it than a customary sequence. To believe\nthat anything may happen without a cause does not involve a logical\ncontradiction; and at that time he believed nothing to be known _a priori_\nexcept that the denial of which involves such a contradiction. But on\nreconsidering the basis of mathematical truth it seemed to him to be\nsomething other than the logical laws of Identity and Contradiction. When\nwe say that seven and five are twelve we put something into the predicate\nthat was not affirmed in the subject, and also when we say that a straight\nline is the shortest distance between two points. Yet the second\nproposition is as certain as the first, and both are certain in the highest\ndegree, more certain than anything learned from experience, and needing no\nexperience to confirm them.\n\nSo much being admitted, we have to recognise a fundamental division of\njudgments into two classes, analytic and synthetic. Judgments in which the\npredicate adds nothing to the subject are analytic. When we affirm all\nmatter to be extended, that is an instance of the former, for here we are\nonly making more explicit what was already contained in the notion of\nmatter. On the other hand, when we affirm that all matter is heavy, that is\nan {89} instance of the latter or synthetic class, for we can think of\nmatter without thinking that it has weight. Furthermore, this is not only a\nsynthetic judgment, but it is a synthetic judgment _a posteriori_; for the\nlaw of universal gravitation is known only by experience. But there are\nalso synthetic judgments _a priori_; for, as we have just seen, the\nfundamental truths of arithmetic and geometry belong to this class, as do\nalso by consequence all the propositions logically deduced from these--that\nis to say, the whole of mathematical science.\n\nUp to this point Kant would have carried the whole Cartesian school, and,\nmore generally, all the modern Platonists, along with him; while he would\nhave given the English empiricists and their French disciples a rather hard\nnut to crack. For they would have had to choose between admitting that\nmathematics was a mass of identical propositions or explaining, in the face\nof Hume's criticism, what claims to absolute certainty its truths, any more\nthan the Law of Causation, possess. Now, the great philosophical genius of\nKant is shown by nothing more than by this, that he did not stop here.\nRecognising to the same extent as Locke and Hume that all knowledge comes\nfrom experience--at any rate, in the sense of not coming by supernatural\ncommunication, as Malebranche and Berkeley thought--he puts the famous\nquestion, How are synthetic judgments _a priori_ possible? Or, as it might\nbe paradoxically expressed, How come we to know with the most certainty the\nthings that we have not been taught by experience? The answer is, that we\nknow them by the most intimate experience of all--the underlying\nconsciousness that we have made them what they are. Our minds are no mere\npassive recipients, in which a mass of sensations, poured in from some\nexternal {90} source, are then arranged after an order equally originated\nfrom without; there is a principle of spontaneity in our own subjectivity\nby which the objective order of nature is created. What Kant calls the\nMatter of knowledge is given from without, the Form from within. And this\nprocess begins with the imposition of the two great fundamental Forms,\nSpace and Time, on the raw material of sensation by our minds.\n\nBy space and time Kant does not mean the abstract ideas of coexistence and\nsuccession; nor does he call them, as some critics used incorrectly to\nsuppose, forms of thought, but forms of intuition. We do not build them up\nwith the help of muscular or other feelings, but are conscious of them in a\nway not admitting of any further analysis. The parts of space, no doubt,\nare coexistent, but they are also connected and continuous; more than this,\npositions in space do not admit of mutual substitution; the right hand and\nleft hand glove are perfectly symmetrical, but the one cannot be\nsuperimposed on the other. Besides, all particular spaces are contained in\nuniversal space, not as particular conceptions are contained in a general\nconception, but as parts of that which extends to infinity, and where each\nhas an individual place of its own, repeating all the characters of space\nin general except its illimitable extension. And the same is true of time,\nwith this further distinction from abstract succession, that succession may\nbe reversed; whereas the order of past, present, and future is irreversibly\nmaintained.\n\nThe contemporary school of Reid in Scotland, and the subsequent Eclectic\nschool of Victor Cousin in France, would agree with Kant in maintaining\nthat sensuous experience will not account for our knowledge of space and\ntime. But they would protest, in the name {91} of common sense, against the\nreduction of these apparently fundamental elements to purely subjective\nforms. They would ask, with the German critic Trendelenburg, Why cannot\nspace and time be known intuitively and yet really exist? Kant furnishes no\ndirect answer to the question, but he has suggested one in another\nconnection. Mathematical truth is concerned with spatial and temporal\nrelations, and for that truth to be above suspicion and exception we must\nassume that the objects with which it deals are wholly within our\ngrasp--that our knowledge of them is exhaustive. But there could be no such\nassurance on the supposition that, besides the space and time of our\nsensuous experience, another space and time existed independently of our\nconsciousness as attributes of things in themselves--possibly differing in\nimportant respects from ours--as, for example, a finite, or a\nnon-continuous, or a four-dimensional space, and a time with a circular\ninstead of a progressive movement.\n\nThis easy assumption that reality accommodates itself to our intellectual\nconvenience, instead of our being obliged to accommodate our theories of\nknowledge to reality, runs through and vitiates the whole of Kant's\nphilosophy. But, taking the narrower ground of logical consistency, one\nhardly sees how his principles can hold together. We are told that the\nsubjectivity of space and time is not presented as a plausible hypothesis,\nbut as a certain and indubitable truth, for in no other way can\nmathematical certainty be explained. The claim is questionable, but let it\nbe granted. Immediately a fresh difficulty starts up. What is the source of\nour certainty that space and time are subjective forms of intuition? If the\nanswer is, because that assumption guarantees the certainty of mathematics,\nthen Kant is {92} reasoning in a circle. If he appeals--as in consistency\nhe ought--to another order of subjectivity as the sanction of his first\ntranscendental argument, such reasoning involves the regress to infinity.\n\nAgain, on Kant's theory, time is the form of intuition for the inner sense.\nSo when we become conscious of mental events we know them only as\nphenomena; we remain ignorant of what mind is in itself. But before the\npublication in 1770 of Kant's inaugural dissertation on _The Sensible and\nthe Intelligible World_ every one, plain men and philosophers alike,\nbelieved that the consciousness of our successive thoughts and feelings was\nthe very type of reality itself; and they held this belief with a higher\ndegree of assurance than that given to the axioms of geometry. By what\nright, then, are we asked to give up the greater for the less, to surrender\nour self-assurance as a ransom for Euclid's _Elements_ or even for Newton's\n_Principia_?\n\nOnce more, surely mathematics is concerned not with space and time as such,\nbut with their artificial delimitations as points, lines, figures, numbers,\nmoments, etc. And it may be granted that these are purely subjective in the\nsense of being imposed by our imagination (with the aid of sensible signs)\non the external world. What if _this_ subjectivity were the true source of\nthat peculiar certainty belonging to synthetic judgments _a priori_? True,\nKant counts in our judgments about the infinity and eternity of space and\ntime with other accepted characteristics of theirs as intuitive\ncertainties. But there are thinkers who find the negation of such\nproperties not inconceivable, so that they cannot be adduced as evidence of\na priority, still less of subjectivity.\n\nEleven years after the inaugural dissertation Kant {93} published his most\nimportant contribution to philosophy, _The Critique of Pure Reason_ (1781).\nPure Reason means the faculty by which ideas are obtained independently of\nall experience, and the critic's object is to ascertain how far such ideas\nare valid. As a preliminary to that inquiry the question is also mooted,\nHow is experience possible? It is answered by a critique of the\nunderstanding or faculty of conception; and as conception implies\nperception, this again is prefaced by a section in which Kant's theory of\nspace and time is repeated and reinforced.\n\nIt will be remembered that what started the whole of the new criticism was\nHume's sceptical analysis of Causation; and the central interest of _The\nCritique of Pure Reason_ lies in the effort to reconstitute the causal law\nin the light of the new theory of knowledge; but so enormous is the mass of\ntechnicalities piled up for this purpose as largely to conceal it from\nview, and, on its disclosure, to give the idea of a gigantic machine set in\nmotion to crack a nut. And the nut after all is _not_ cracked; the shell\nslips from between the grappling surfaces long before they meet.\n\nWe have seen how Kant interpreted every judgment as a synthesis of subject\nand predicate. Now, whether the synthesis be _a priori_ or _a posteriori_,\na study of the forms of judgment as enumerated in the common logic shows\nthat there are four, and only four, ways in which it can be effected. All\njudgments fall under the following classes: Quantity, Quality, Relation,\nand Modality--terms whose meaning will be presently explained. And each of\nthese again is tripartite. We may say (i.) that one A is B, or that some\nA's are B, or that all A's are B; (ii.) that A is B, that A is not B, that\nnot all A's are B; (iii.) that A is B, that A {94} is B if C is D, that A\nis either B, C, or D; or (iv.) that A may be B, that A is B, or that A must\nbe B. The reason why there are four and only four classes is that judgment\nhas to do with the subject in reference to the predicate, which gives\nQuantity; with the predicate in reference to the subject, which gives\nQuality; with the connection between the two, which gives Relation; and\nwith the synthesis between them in reference to our knowledge of it, which\ngives Modality.\n\nNow, according to Kant, that there should be so many kinds of judgment and\nno more implies that our understanding contributes a formal element to the\nconstitution of all knowledge, consisting of four combining principles,\nwithout which experience would be impossible. He calls these Categories,\nand they are enumerated in the following table:--\n\n    (i.) Quantity.\n\n    Unity, Plurality, Totality.\n\n    (ii.) Quality.\n\n    Reality, Negation, Limitation.\n\n    (iii.) Relation.\n\n    Substance and Accident; Cause and Effect; Action and Reaction\n    (Reciprocity).\n\n    (iv.) Modality.\n\n    Possibility and Impossibility; Existence and Non-Existence; Necessity\n    and Contingency.\n\nA study of the Categories suggests some rather obvious criticisms on the\nCritical Philosophy itself. (i.) The first two terms in each triad\nevidently form an antithetical couple, of which the third term is the\nsynthesis. Here we have the first germ of a disease by which the systems of\nKant's successors were much more seriously infected. In the table it is\nshown by {95} the intrusion of Limitation, a wholly superfluous adjunct to\nReality and Negation; in the conversion of Reciprocity into a wholly\nfictitious synthesis of Substantiality with Causation; and in the complete\nabsurdity of making Necessity a combination of Possibility with Existence.\n(ii.) Innate ideas, after they had been exploded by Locke, are reintroduced\ninto philosophy by a sufficiently transparent piece of legerdemain. For\nassuming that the human intelligence possesses a power of organising and\ndrilling the sensuous appearances which without its control would appear\nonly as a disorderly mob, it by no means follows that they must thereby be\nreferred to an extraphenomenal principle. But such a principle is plainly\nimplied by the category of Substance. Used in a scholastic sense, it does\nnot mean the sensuous attributes of a thing taken altogether, but something\nthat underlies and supports them. And Kant himself seems to take his\ncategory in that significance. For he claims to deduce from it the law of\nthe indestructibility of matter; as if I could not say snow is white\nwithout committing myself to the assertion that the ultimate particles of\nsnow have existed and will exist for ever. (iii.) The substitution of\nCausation for logical sequence, as implicated in the hypothetical judgment\nof Relation, is perfectly scandalous; and still more scandalous is\nsubstitution of Reciprocity or Action and Reaction for Disjunction. The\nlast points require to be examined a little more in detail.\n\nThe sequence of an effect to its cause has only a verbal resemblance to the\nsequence of a logical consequent to its reason. We declare categorically\nthat every change has a cause which precedes it. Logical sequence is, on\nthe other hand, as the very name of the {96} judgment shows, hypothetical,\nand may possibly not represent any actual occurrence, besides being, what\ncausation is not, independent of time. A particular case of causation may\nbe hypothetical in respect to our belief that it actually occurred; never\nthe law of causation itself as a general truth. And the same distinction\napplies with even greater force to the alleged connection between a logical\ndisjunction and a physical reaction. When I say A is either B or C, but not\nboth, there is only this much resemblance, that both cases involve the\nideas of equality and of opposition. From the admission that A is not B, I\ninfer that it is C, or, contrariwise, from the admission that it is B, I\ninfer that it is not C, and in both instances with the same certainty; but\nthis does not prove that the earth attracts the moon as much as the moon\nattracts the earth, only in opposite directions; nor yet that in certain\ninstances all the heat lost by one body is gained by another.\n\nKant had learned this much from Hume, that causation is essentially a\nrelation of antecedence and consequence in time; and apparently his way of\n\"categorising\" the relation--_i.e._, of proving its apriority--is to\nrepresent it as the logical form of reason and consequent masquerading, so\nto speak, under the intuitional time-form. Yet he frequently speaks of our\nsenses as being affected by things in themselves, implying that the\nresulting sensations are somehow caused by those otherwise unknown\nentities. But since things in themselves do not, according to Kant, exist\nin space and time, they cannot be causally related to phenomena or to\nanything else.\n\nIn his criticism of Pure Reason, properly so called--that is, of inferences\nmade by human faculty with {97} regard to questions transcending all\nexperience--Kant shows that of such things nothing can be known. The\nideality of time and space once taken as proved, this amount of agnosticism\nseems to follow as a matter of course. It is idle to speculate about the\npossible extent or duration of a universe that cannot be described in terms\nof coexistence and succession. For each of us at the dissolution of our\nbodily organism time itself, and therefore existence as alone we conceive\nit, comes to an end. The law of causation, applying as it does to phenomena\nalone, offers no evidence for the existence of a God who transcends\nphenomena. Kant, however, is not satisfied with such a simple and summary\nprocedure as this. He tries to show, with most unnecessary pedantry, that\nthe conditional synthesis of the Understanding inevitably leads thought on\nto the unconditional synthesis of the Reason only to find itself lost in a\nhopeless welter of paralogisms and self-contradictions.\n\nAt this stage we are handed over to the guidance of what Kant calls the\nPractical Reason. This faculty gives a synthesis for conduct, as Pure\nReason gave a synthesis for intelligence. All reason demands uniformity,\norder, law; only what in theory is recognised as true has in practice to be\nimposed as right. In this way Kant arrives at his formula of absolute\nmorality: Act so that the principle of thy conduct may be the law for all\nrational beings. He calls this the Categorical Imperative, as distinguished\nfrom such hypothetical imperatives as: Act this way if you wish to be happy\neither here or hereafter; or, act as public opinion tells you. Moreover,\nthe motive, as distinguished from the end of moral action, should not be\ncalculating self-interest nor uncalculating impulse, but simply desire to\nfulfil the law as such. Previous moralists had set up {98} the greatest\nhappiness of the greatest number as the end of action, and such an aim does\nnot lie far from Kant's philosophy; but they could think of no better\nmotive for pursuing it than self-love or a rather undefined social\ninstinct; and their _summum bonum_ would take the happiness of irrational\nanimals into account, while Kant absolutely subordinates the interests of\nthese to human good. A further coincidence between the Utilitarian and the\nKantian ethics is that in the latter also the happiness of others, not\ntheir perfection, should be the end and aim of each. Finally, the\nphilosophy of Pure Reason adopts from contemporary French thought as the\ngoverning idea of political organisation what was long to be a principle of\nEnglish Utilitarianism--\"the liberty of each, bounded only by the equal\nliberty of all.\"\n\nNevertheless, the old postulate of a necessary connection between virtue\nand individual happiness reappears in Kant's ethical theory, and leads to\nthe construction of a new religious philosophy. His critique had left no\nplace for the old theology, nor yet for that doctrine of free-will so dear\nto most theologians. Its whole object had been to vindicate against Hume\nthe necessity and universality of causation. Human actions then must, like\nall other phenomena, form an unbroken chain of antecedents and consequents.\nNor does Kant conceal his conviction that, with sufficient knowledge and\npowers of calculation, a man's whole future conduct might be foretold.\nNevertheless, under the eighteenth-century idea of man as naturally the\ncreature of passion or self-interest, he claims for us, as moral agents,\nthe power of choosing to obey duty in preference to either. And this\nfreedom is supposed to be made conceivable by the subjectivity of time and\ncausation, outside of which, {99} as a thing in itself, stands the moral\nwill. That morality, whether as action or mere intention, involves\nsuccession in time is utterly ignored. Nor is this all. Assuming without\nwarrant that the moral law demands an ultimate coincidence between\nhappiness and virtue, made impossible in this life by human weakness, Kant\nargues that there must be an unending future life to secure time enough for\nworking out a problem whose solution is infinitely remote. And, finally,\nthere must be an omnipotent moral God to provide facilities for undertaking\nthat somewhat gratuitous Psyche's task. Before Kant moral theology had\nargued that the Judge of all the world must do right, apportioning\nhappiness to desert. It was reserved for him to argue, conversely, that for\nright to be done such a Judge must exist, and that therefore he does exist.\n\nIn appreciating the services of Kant to philosophy we must guard ourselves\nagainst being influenced by the extravagant panegyrics of his countrymen,\nwhose passion for square circles he so generously gratifies. Still, after\nevery deduction for mere Laputian pedantry has been made, the balance of\nfruitful suggestion remains vast. (i.) The antithesis of object and\nsubject, although not counted among the categories of his _Critique_, has\nremained a prime category of thought ever since. (ii.) The idea of a\nnecessary limit to human knowledge, given by the very theory of that\nknowledge, as distinguished from the Scepticism of the Greeks--in other\nwords, what we now call Agnosticism--may not be final, but it still remains\nto be dealt with. (iii.) The possibility of reducing _a priori_ knowledge\nto a form of unconscious experience has put an end to dogmatic metaphysics.\n(iv.) The problems of Time and Space have taken a central place in\nspeculation; it has been {100} shown--what Hume did not see--that Causation\nhas the certainty of a mathematical axiom; and it has been made highly\nprobable that all these difficulties may find their solution in a larger\ninterpretation of experience. (v.) Morality has been definitely dissociated\nfrom the appeal to selfish interests, whether in this life or in another.\n\nWe have now to trace, within the limits prescribed by the nature of this\nwork, the development of philosophy under Kant's German successors.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n{101}\n\nCHAPTER IV.\n\nTHE GERMAN IDEALISTS\n\nFICHTE, SCHELLING, HEGEL, SCHOPENHAUER, HERBART.\n\nThe Critical Philosophy won its first success in Germany less as a new\nepistemology than as what, in fact, its author meant it to be, a\nrehabilitation of religious belief. The limits of Reason had been drawn so\nclosely only to make room for Faith. But the current of Rationalism was\nrunning too strongly to be so summarily stopped; and so with Kant's ablest\nsuccessors faith is altogether abandoned, while the claims of reason are\npushed relentlessly through. Among these more logical thinkers the first is\nJ. G. Fichte (1762-1814). In him--for the third time in modern history, for\nthe first and last time in Germany--the hero as philosopher finds a worthy\nrepresentative. Born in Silesia, like Kant of humble parentage, and bred in\ncircumstances of more oppressive poverty, he also received a severely\nreligious and moral training as a preparation for the pastoral office. The\nbounty of an aristocratic patron gave him an excellent public-school\neducation; but as a university student, first at Jena and then at Leipzig,\nhe had to earn a scanty living by private tuition, finally abandoning his\ndestined career to accept a post in a Swiss family at Zurich. There, as the\nresult of an attachment in which the love was nearly all on the lady's\nside, he became engaged to a niece of the poet Klopstock, and after a long\ndelay, caused by money {102} difficulties, was enabled to marry her. In the\nmeantime he had become a convert to Kant's philosophy, winning the\nadmiration of the old master himself by a _Critique of all Revelation_,\nwritten in four weeks. Published anonymously by an oversight, it was\ngenerally attributed to Kant himself, and, on the real authorship becoming\nknown, won for Fichte an extraordinary Professorate of Philosophy at Jena,\nwhere his success as a lecturer and writer gave him for a time the\nleadership in German speculation (1794-1799). An untoward incident brought\nthis stage of his career to an end. Writing in a philosophical review, he\ndefined God as \"the moral order of the universe.\" Dr. Temple long\nafterwards used much the same phrase when Bishop of Exeter, finding it,\npresumably, compatible with official Theism; but such was not the\nimpression created in Saxony. A cry of atheism arose, much to the disgust\nof Fichte, whose position would have been better described as pantheistic.\nBut what incensed him most was the suspicion of an attempt to interfere\nwith the liberty of academic teaching. With his usual impetuosity he talked\nabout resigning his chair--with a hint that others would follow his\nexample--were the authorities at Weimar to permit such an outrage. Goethe,\nwho was then Minister, observed that no Government could allow itself to be\nthreatened, and Fichte was at once relieved of his post. Settling at\nBerlin, he became Professor of Philosophy in the new University founded\nafter the French conquest of Prussia, having previously done much to revive\nthe national spirit by his _Addresses to the German Nation_ (1807-1808).\nThese were in appearance the programme of a new educational Utopia; but\ntheir real purpose was so evident that the speaker lived in daily\nexpectation of being summoned {103} before a French court-martial and shot.\nUnlike his countrymen, Goethe, Hegel, and Schopenhauer, Fichte passionately\nresented the Napoleonic despotism, throwing himself heart and soul into the\ngreat uprising by which it was finally overthrown. Although his wish to\naccompany the victorious army as field preacher could not be gratified, the\ncampaign of 1813 still claimed him as one of its victims. After nursing his\nheroic wife to recovery from a hospital fever caught in attendance on the\nsick and wounded at Berlin, he took the infection from her and died early\nin 1814, soon after hearing that Bluecher had crossed the Rhine.\n\nG. H. Lewes, in a well-known story, has made himself and his readers merry\nover a German savant who undertakes to evolve the idea of a camel out of\nthe depths of his moral consciousness. The phrase is commonly quoted as\n\"inner consciousness,\" but this takes away its whole point. For the\noriginal satirist, who, I think, was not Lewes, but Heine, had in view the\nphilosophy of Fichte. It need hardly be said that German savants are as\ncareful observers and diligent collectors of facts as any others; and\nFichte in particular trusted solely to experience for the knowledge of\nnatural phenomena. But even as regards his general philosophy the place it\ngives to morality has been misconceived even by his closest students. With\nhim goodwill really plays a less important part than with Kant, being not\nan end in itself, but a means towards an end. And what that end is his\nteaching makes quite clear.\n\nKant's first critics put their finger on the weak point of his system, the\nthing in itself. So, assuming it to be discarded, Fichte set to work on new\nlines, the lines of pure idealism. But, though an idealist, he is not, any\nmore than Berkeley, a solipsist. The celebrated {104} antithesis of the ego\nand the non-ego dates from him, and strikes the keynote of his whole\nsystem. It might be thought that, as compared with the old realism, this\nwas a distinction without a difference. But that is not so; for, according\nto Fichte, the non-ego is subjective in its origin, and that is where he\ndeparts widely from Berkeley's theological idealism. Not that I create the\nnot-myself; I _assume_ it as the condition of my self-consciousness--a\nremarkable feat of logic, but after all not more wonderful than that space\nand time should result from the activity of the outer and inner senses.\nThis figment of my imagination is anyhow solid enough to beget a new\nfeeling of resistance and recoil, throwing the self back on itself, and\nbringing with it the interpretation of that external impact by the category\nof causation, of its own activity as substance, and of the whole deal\nbetween the ego and the non-ego as interaction or reciprocity. In this way\nthe first triad of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis is obtained; and from\nthis, by a vast expenditure of ingenuity, the whole array of Kant's forms,\ncategories, and faculties is evolved as a coherent system of scientific\nthought in obedience to a single principle--the self-realisation of the\nego, alternatively admitting and transcending a limit to its activity.\n\nIt will be easily understood that this self-realising ego is neither\nFichte's nor anyone else's self, but a universal principle, fundamentally\nthe same in all. One is reminded of Descartes's self-thinking thought by\nwhich the reality of the universe was guaranteed; but between the two there\nis this vast difference, that the Frenchman's ego resembles a box\ncontaining a variety of independent ideas, to be separately handled and\nexamined; the German's is a box enclosing a coiled-up spring by {105} the\nexpansion of which all the wheels of the philosophical machine are made go\nround. From the action of the not-self on the self results the whole of\nnature as we conceive it; from the reaction of the self on the not-self,\nthe whole mentality and morality of man--morality being understood to\ninclude the domestic, social, political, educational, and industrial\norganisation of life. The final cause, the impelling ideal of existence, is\nthe self-realisation of the ego, the entire absorption into its personal\nenergy of the non-ego, of nature, to be effected by perfect knowledge of\nhow the physical universe is constituted issuing in perfect subjugation of\nits forces to the human will. But such a realisation of the Absolute Ego\nwould mean its annihilation, for, as we have seen, the antithesis between\nobjective and subjective is the very condition of consciousness that\nwithout which it could neither begin nor continue to exist. Therefore the\nprocess must go on for ever, and this necessity guarantees the eternal\nduration of the human race--not, as Kant had dreamed, of the individual\nsoul, since for Fichte the Categorical Imperative demands a consummation\nwidely different from that combination of virtue with happiness which had\nsatisfied his master. And the agency by which it is being effected through\ninfinite time is not a personal God, but that moral order of the world\nwhich Fichte regarded as the only true object of religious feeling. As for\nhuman immortality, he seems to have first accepted, but afterwards rejected\nit in favour of a mystical union with the divine.\n\nIt has been said that morality was not with Fichte what it had been with\nKant--the highest good. Nevertheless, as a means towards the final\nsynthesis, morality interested him intensely, and his best work has been\n{106} done in ethics. As a condition of self-realisation the primal ego\nbecomes personified in a multitude of free individualities. Just as in\nStoicism, each individual is conceived as having a special office to\nperform in the world-process, and the State exists--ideally speaking--in\norder to guarantee the necessary independence of all its citizens. For this\npurpose everyone must have the right to work and the right to a living\nwage. Thus Fichte appears as the first theorist of State Socialism in the\nhistory of German thought. Probably the example of the Greek Stoics with\ntheir communistic utopias acting on a kindred spirit, rather than any\nprophetic vision of the coming century, is to be credited for this\nremarkable anticipation.\n\nSCHELLING.\n\nGerman philosophy is prolific of self-contradictions; and so far the most\nflagrant example has been offered by Fichte's _Theory of Knowledge_,\nstarting as it does with the idea of an impersonal ego, developing through\na process in which this selfless self demands its own negation at every\nstep, and determined by the prospect of a catastrophe that would be the\nannihilation of consciousness itself. In fact, there seemed no need to wait\nuntil time had run out; the self, or, as it was now called, the subject,\nhad absorbed all reality, only to find that the material universe,\nreconstituted as the object of knowledge, was an indispensable condition of\nits existence. And meanwhile the physical sciences, more particularly those\nconcerned with inorganic nature, were entering on a series of triumphs\nunparalleled since the days of Newton. Philosophy must come to terms with\nthese or cease to exist.\n\nThe task of reconciliation was first attempted by {107} F. W. J. Schelling\n(1775-1854), a Suabian, and the first South German who made a name in pure\nphilosophy. Educated at the University of Tuebingen, at an early age he\ncovered an encyclopaedic range of studies and began authorship at nineteen,\ngaining a professorship at Jena four years later. Wandering about from one\nuniversity to another, and putting forward new opinions as often as he\nchanged his residence, the young adventurer ceased to publish after 1813,\nand remained silent till in 1841 he came forward at Berlin as the champion\nof a reactionary current, practically renouncing the naturalistic pantheism\nby which his early reputation had been made. But he utterly failed in the\nattempt, which was finally abandoned in the fifth year from its inception.\nLewes, who saw Schelling in his old age, describes him as remarkably like\nSocrates; his admirers called him a modern Plato; but he had nothing of the\ndeep moral earnestness that characterised either, nor indeed was morality\nneeded for the work that he actually did. This, to use the phrase of his\nfellow-student Hegel, consisted in raising philosophy to its absolute\nstandpoint, in passing from the subjective moralism of the eighteenth\ncentury to the all-comprehensive systematisation of the nineteenth.\n\nSchelling began as a disciple of Fichte, but he came simultaneously under\nthe influence of Spinoza, whose fame had been incessantly spreading through\nthe last generation in Germany, with some reinforcement from the revived\nname of Bruno. Their teaching served to make the latent pantheism of Fichte\nmore explicit, while the great contemporary discoveries gave a new interest\nto the study of nature, which Fichte, unlike Kant, had put in the\nbackground, strictly subordinating it to the moral service of man. Had he\ncared to evolve {108} the idea of a camel from his moral consciousness, the\noperation would not have demanded several years, but only a few minutes'\nthought. As thus: the moral development of humanity needed the co-operation\nof such a race as the Semites. To form their character a long residence in\nthe Arabian deserts was needed. But for such nomads an auxiliary animal\nwould be needed with long legs and neck, a stomach for storing water, hump,\netc.--Q. E. D. Schelling also began by explaining the material world as a\npreparation for the spiritual; only he did not employ the method of\nteleological adaptation, but a method of rather fanciful analogy. As the\nevolution of self-conscious reason had proceeded by a triple movement of\nthesis, antithesis, and synthesis, so a parallel process had to be\ndiscovered in the advance towards a consciousness supposed to be exhibited\nin organic and inorganic nature.\n\nThe fundamental idea of natural philosophy is polarity--opposite forces\ncombining to neutralise one another and then parting to be reunited at a\nhigher stage of evolution. Thus attraction and repulsion--represented as\nspace and time--by their synthesis compose matter; magnetism and\nelectricity produce chemical affinity; life results from a triad of\ninorganic forces; in life itself productivity and irritability give birth\nto sensibility. The order of the terms made little, if any, difference.\nWhen long afterwards iron was magnetised by the electric current, Schelling\nclaimed for himself the credit of anticipating this discovery, although he\nhad placed magnetism before electricity.\n\nThe next step was to construct a philosophy of history. This, with much\nelse, is included under the name of _A System of Transcendental Idealism_\n(1800) in the most finished of Schelling's literary compositions. {109}\nHistory, according to the view here unfolded, is the gradual\nself-revelation of God, or the Absolute, in whom Nature and Spirit are\nunited and identified, who never is nor can be, but always is to be.\nMeanwhile the supreme ideal is not that ever-increasing mastery of nature\nby man which Fichte contemplated, but their reconciliation as achieved by\nArt. For just as natural philosophy carried an element of consciousness\ninto the material universe, so aestheticism recognises a corresponding\nelement of unconscious creation in the supreme works of artistic genius\nwhere spirit reaches its highest and best. Here Schelling appears as the\nphilosopher of Romanticism, a movement that characterised German thought\nfrom 1795 to 1805, and is known to ourselves by the faded and feeble image\nof it exhibited in a certain section of English society nearly a century\nlater. Beginning with a more cultivated intelligence of Hellenic antiquity,\nthis movement rapidly grew into a new appreciation of medieval culture,\nfalsely supposed to have given more scope to individuality than modern\ncivilisation, and then into a search for ever-varying sources of excitement\nor distraction in the whole history, art, and literature of past or present\ntimes, religion being at last singled out as the vitalising principle of\nall.\n\nSingularly enough, Fichte accepted the _Transcendental Idealism_ as an\northodox exposition of his own philosophy. But its composition seems to\nhave given Schelling the consciousness of his own independence. Soon\nafterwards he defined the new position as a philosophy of Identity or of\nIndifference. Nature and Spirit, like Spinoza's Thought and Extension, were\nall the same and all one--that is to say, in their totality or in the\nAbsolute. For, considered as appearances, {110} they might present\nquantitative differences determined by the varying preponderance of the\nobjective or of the subjective side. In this way Schelling found himself\nable to repeat his fanciful construction of the forces and forms of nature\nin successive triads under new names. The essential departure from Fichte,\nwho repudiated the Philosophy of Identity with undisguised contempt, was\nthat it practically repudiated the idea of an eternal progress in man's\never-growing mastery of nature. But, in spite of all disclaimers, the\nmaster silently followed his former disciple's evolution in the direction\nof a pantheistic monism. His later writings represent God no longer as the\nmoral order of the world, but, like Spinoza, as the world's eternal Being,\nof which man's knowledge is the reflected image. Finally, both philosophers\naccepted the Christian doctrines of the Fall, the Incarnation, and the\nTrinity as mythical symbols of an eternal process in which God, after\nbecoming alienated from himself in the material universe, returns to\nhimself in man's consciousness of identity with the Absolute. Instead of\nthe rather abrupt method of position, negation, and re-affirmation known as\nThesis, Antithesis, and Synthesis, we have here the more fluid process of a\nspiral movement, departing from and returning to itself. And this was to be\nthe very mainspring of the system that next comes up for consideration.\n\nHEGEL.\n\n{111}\n\n[Illustration: Hegel\n\n(_Copyright B. P. C._)]\n\n{112} G. W. F. Hegel (1770-1831), in the opinion of some good judges\nGermany's greatest philosopher, was, like Schelling, a Suabian, and\nintimately associated with his younger contemporary, first at Tuebingen and\nafterwards at Jena, where the two friends jointly conducted a philosophical\nreview. But they gradually drifted apart. Hegel was not a romanticist, but\na classic; not a naturalist, but a humanist. Largely influenced by Greek\nthought and Greek literature, for which he continued to be an enthusiast\nthrough life, he readily accepted, as against Kant and Fichte, the change\nfrom a purely subjective to an objective point of view. But, although he\ngave some attention to physical science, Hegel was less interested in it\nthan his colleague, with whose crude and fanciful metaphysics he also\nfailed to sympathise. With the publication of Hegel's first important work,\nthe _Phenomenology of Mind_ (1807), things came to a breach; for its\npreface amounts to a declaration of war against the philosophy of\nRomanticism. Schelling himself is not named; but there is no mistaking the\nobject of certain picturesque references to \"exploding the Absolute on us,\"\nand \"the darkness in which every cow is black.\" Next year Hegel became what\nwe should call headmaster of a public school at Nuremberg, filling that\npost for eight years, during which his greatest work, the _System of\nLogic_, in three volumes, was composed and published. He then obtained a\nchair of philosophy at Heidelberg, passing thence to Berlin in 1818, where\nhe taught until his death by cholera in 1831. David Strauss, who saw the\nrevered teacher a few days before the fatal seizure, describes him first as\nhe appeared in the lecture-room, \"looking ever so old, bent and coughing\";\nthen in his home, \"looking ten years younger, with clear blue eyes, and\nshowing the most beautiful white teeth when he smiled.\" He had published a\nsummary of his whole system, under the name of an _Encyclopaedia of the\nPhilosophical Sciences_, in 1817, and a _Philosophy of Law_--which is\nreally a treatise on Government--in 1821. His {113} sympathies were with\nbureaucratic absolutism in a modernised form, with Napoleon against the\nGerman patriots, with the restored Prussian Government against the new\nLiberalism, with English Toryism against the Whigs of the Reform Bill, and\nfinally with the admirers of war against the friends of peace.\n\nHegel's collected works, published after his death, fill over twenty\ngood-sized volumes. Besides the treatises already mentioned, they include\nhis _Lectures on the History of Philosophy_, the _Philosophy of History_,\nthe _Philosophy of Religion_, _Aesthetics_, etc., made up with much\nliterary skill from the Professor's own notes and from the reports of his\nhearers. The most permanently valuable of these is the _Aesthetics_; but\nany student desirous of getting a notion of Hegelianism at first hand had\nbetter begin with the _Philosophy of History_, of which there is a good and\ncheap English translation in one of Bohn's Libraries. Some general points\nof view serving to connect the system with its predecessors are all that\nroom can be found for here.\n\nAs compared with Kant, Hegel is distinguished above all by his complete\nabjuration of the agnostic standpoint in epistemology. \"The universe is\npenetrable to thought\": an unknowable thing in itself does not exist.\nIndeed, the intelligible reality of things is just what we know best; the\nunaccountable residuum, if any, lurks in the details of their appearance.\nSo also in Greek philosophy Hegel holds that the truth was not in the ideal\nworld of Plato, but in the self-realising Forms of Aristotle. As against\nFichte, Hegel will not allow that the reconciliation of the subjective with\nthe objective is an infinitely \"far-off divine event\"; on the contrary, it\nis a process being continually realised by ourselves and all about us. In\nhis homely expression, the very {114} animals as they eat turn their food\ninto consciousness, in utter disregard of prejudice. But Fichte's\ncondemnation of Schelling's Indifferentism is quite right. _The Absolute is\nMind_. Nature exists only as the lower stage, whence Spirit emerges to\ncontradict, to confront, and to explain her as the necessary preparation\nfor his supreme self-assertion. And Fichte was right in working out his\nsystem by the dialectical method of contradiction and solution, as against\nthe dogmatism that summarily decrees the Absolute, without taking the\ntrouble to reason it out, in imitation of the plan pursued by the universe\nin becoming conscious of itself.\n\nThe most portentous thing about Hegel's philosophy is this notion of the\nworld's having, so to speak, argued itself into existence. To rationalise\nthe sum of being, to explain, without assumptions, why there should be\nanything, and then why it should be as we know it, had been a problem\nsuggested by Plato and solved rather summarily by Spinoza's challenge to\nconceive Infinite Power as non-existing. Hegel is more patient and\ningenious; but, after all, his superiority merely consists in spinning the\nweb of arbitrary dialectic so fine that we can hardly see the thread. The\nroot-idea is to identify, or rather to confuse, causal evolution with\nlogic. The chain of causes and effects that constitutes the universe is\nmade out to be one with the series of reasons and consequents by which the\nconclusion is demonstrated. As usual, the equation is effected by a\ntransference of terms from each side to the other. The categories and\nprocesses of logic are credited with a life and movement that belongs only\nto the human reasoner operating with them. And the moving, interacting\nmasses of which the material universe consists are represented as parties\nto a dialectical {115} discussion in which one denies what the other\nasserts until it is discovered, on lifting the argument to a higher plane,\nthat after all they are agreed. Nor is this all. The world as we know it is\ncomposed of co-existent elements grouped together or distinguished\naccording to their resemblances and differences as so many natural kinds;\nand of successive events linked together as causes and effects. But while\nthere is no general law of coexistence except such as may be derived from\nthe collocation of the previously existing elements whence they are\nderived, there _is_ a law of causal succession--namely, this, that the\nquantities of mass and energy involved are conserved without loss or gain\nthrough all time. Now, Hegel's way of rationalising or, in plainer words,\naccounting for the coexistent elements and their qualities, is to bring\nthem under a supposed law of complementary opposition, revived from\nHeracleitus, according to which everything necessarily involves the\nexistence, both in thought and reality, of its contradictory. And the same\nprinciple is applied to causal succession--a proceeding which would be\nfatal to the scientific law of conservation.\n\nThere is another way of rationalising experience--namely, the theological\nhypothesis of a supreme intelligence by which the world was created and is\ngoverned with a view to the attainment of some ultimate good. And there is\na sort of teleology in Hegel evidently inspired by his religious education.\nBut the two do not mean the same thing. For he places conscious reason not\nat the beginning but at the end of evolution. The rationality of things is\nimmanent, not transcendent. Purposes somehow work retrospectively so as to\ndetermine the course of events towards a good end. That end is\nself-consciousness--not yours or mine, but the {116} world-spirit's\nconsciousness and possession of itself. And this is reached in four ways:\nin Art by intuition, in Religion by representation, in Philosophy by\nconception, in History and Politics by the realisation of righteousness\nthrough the agency of the modern State.\n\nHegel looked on this world and this life of ours as the only world and the\nonly life. When Heine pointed to the starry skies he told the young poet\nthat the stars were a brilliant leprosy on the face of the heavens, and met\nthe appeal for future compensation with the sarcastic observation: \"So you\nexpect a trinkgeld for nursing your sick mother and for not poisoning your\nbrother!\"\n\nGerman historians have justly extolled the ingenuity, the subtlety, the\noriginality, the systematising power--unequalled since Aristotle--and the\nenormous knowledge of their country's chief idealist. But this, after all,\namounts to no more than claiming for Hegel that much of what he said is\ntrue and that much is new. The vital question is whether what is new is\nalso true--and this is more than they seem prepared to maintain.\n\nSCHOPENHAUER.\n\nThe leaders of the party known in the fourth and fifth decades of the last\ncentury as Young Germany, among whom Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) was the\nmost brilliant and famous, were more or less associated with the Hegelian\nschool. They were, however, what Hegel was not, political revolutionists\nwith a tendency to Socialism; while their religious rationalism, unlike\nhis, was openly proclaimed. The temporary collapse in 1849 of the movement\nthey initiated brought discredit on idealism as represented by Germany's\nclassic philosophers, which also had been seriously damaged by the luminous\ncriticism of Trendelenburg, the neo-Aristotelian professor at Berlin\n(1802-1872).\n\n{117}\n\n[Illustration: SCHOPENHAUER]\n\n{118} At this crisis attention was drawn to the long-neglected writings of\nArthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), which then attained a vogue that they\nnever since have lost. The son of a Hamburg banker and of a literary lady\nwhose novels enjoyed some reputation in their day, he was placed from the\nbeginning in a position of greater material and social independence than\nusually falls to the lot of German thinkers; and to this, combined with the\nfact that he failed entirely as a university teacher, it is partly due that\nhe wrote about philosophy not like a pedant, but like a man of the world.\nAt the same time the German professors, resenting the intrusion of an\noutsider on their privileged domain, were strong enough to prevent the\nreading public from ever hearing of Schopenhauer's existence until an\narticle in the _Westminster Review_ (April, 1853) astonished Germany by the\nrevelation that she possessed a thinker whom the man in the street could\nunderstand.\n\nSchopenhauer found his earliest teachers of philosophy in Plato and Kant.\nHe then attended Fichte's lectures at Berlin. At some uncertain\ndate--probably soon after taking his doctor's degree in 1813--at the\nsuggestion of an Orientalist he took up the study of the Vedanta system.\nAll these various influences converged to impress him with the belief that\nthe things of sense are a delusive appearance under which a fundamental\nreality lies concealed. According to Hegel, the reality is reason; but the\nRomanticists, with Schelling at their head, never accepted his conclusion,\nthinking of the absolute rather as a blind, unconscious substance; still\nless could it please {119} Schopenhauer, who sought for the supreme good\nunder the form of happiness conceived as pleasure unalloyed by pain. A\ngloomy and desponding temperament combined, as in the case of Byron and\nRousseau, with passionately sensuous instincts and anti-social habits,\ndebarred him from attaining it. The loss of a large part of his private\nfortune, and the world's refusal to recognise his genius, completed what\nnatural temperament had begun; and it only remained for the philosophy of\nthe Upanishads to give a theoretic sanction to the resulting state of mind\nby teaching that all existence is in itself an evil--a position which\nplaced him in still more thoroughgoing antagonism to Hegel.\n\nIt will be remembered that Kant's criticism had denied the human mind all\nknowledge of things in themselves, and that the post-Kantian systems had\nbeen so many efforts to get at the Absolute in its despite. But none had\nstated the question at issue so clearly as Schopenhauer put it, or answered\nit in such luminous terms. Like theirs, his solution is idealist; but the\nidealism is constructed on new lines. If we know nothing else, we know\nourselves; only it has to be ascertained what exactly we are. Hegel said\nthat the essence of consciousness is reason, and that reason is the very\nstuff of which the world is made. No, replies Schopenhauer, that is a\none-sided scholastic view. Much the most important part of ourselves is\n_not_ reason, but that very unreasonable thing called will--that aimless,\nhopeless, infinite, insatiable craving which is the source of all our\nactivity and of all our misery as well. _This_ is the thing-in-itself, the\ntimeless, inextended entity behind all phenomena, come to the consciousness\nof itself, but also of its utter futility, in man. {120}\n\nThe cosmic will presents itself to us objectively under the form of the\ngreat natural forces--gravitation, heat, light, electricity, chemical\naffinity, etc.; then as the organising power of life in vegetables and\nanimals; finally as human self-consciousness and sociability. These,\nSchopenhauer says, are what is really meant by the Platonic ideas, and they\nfigure in his philosophy as first differentiations of the primordial will,\ncoming between its absolute unity and the individualised objects and events\nthat fill all space and time. It is the function of architecture, plastic\nart, painting, and poetry to give each of these dynamic ideas, singly or in\ncombination, its adequate interpretation for the aesthetic sense. One art\nalone brings us a direct revelation of the real world, and that is music.\nMusical compositions have the power to express not any mere ideal\nembodiment of the underlying will, but the will itself in all its majesty\nand unending tragic despair.\n\nSchopenhauer's theory of knowledge is given in the essay by which he\nobtained his doctor's degree, _On the Four-fold Root of the Sufficient\nReason_. Notwithstanding this rather alarming title, it is a singularly\nclear and readable work. The standpoint is a simplification of Kant's\n_Critique_. The objects of consciousness offer themselves to the thinking,\nacting subject as grouped presentations in which there is \"nothing sudden,\nnothing single.\" (1) When a new object appears to us, it must have a cause,\nphysical, physiological, or psychological; and this we call the reason why\nit becomes. (2) Objects are referred to concepts of more or less\ngenerality, according to the logical rules of definition, classification,\nand inference; that is the reason of their being known. (3) Objects are\nmathematically determined by their position relatively to {121} other\nobjects in space and time; that is the reason of their being. (4) Practical\nobjects or ends of action are determined by motives; the motive is the\nreason why one thing rather than another is done.\n\nThe last \"sufficient reason\" takes us to ethics. Schopenhauer agrees with\nKant in holding that actions considered as phenomena are strictly\ndetermined by motives, so much so that a complete knowledge of a man's\ncharacter and environment would enable us to predict his whole course of\nconduct through life. Nevertheless, each man, as a timeless subject, is and\nknows himself to be free. To reconcile these apparently conflicting\npositions we must accept Plato's theory that each individual's whole fate\nhas been determined by an ante-natal or transcendental choice for which he\nalways continues responsible. Nevertheless, cases of religious \"conversion\"\nand the like prove that the eternal reality of the Will occasionally\nasserts itself in radical transformations of character and conduct.\n\nIn ethics Schopenhauer distinguishes between two ideals which may be called\n\"relative\" and \"absolute\" good. Relative good agrees with the standard of\nwhat in England is known as Universalistic Hedonism--the greatest pleasure\ncombined with the least pain for all sensitive beings, each agent counting\nfor no more than one. Personally passionate, selfish, and brutal,\nSchopenhauer still had a righteous abhorrence of cruelty to animals;\nwhereas Kant had no such feeling. But positive happiness is a delusion, and\nno humanity can appreciably diminish the amount of pain produced by vital\ncompetition--recognised by our philosopher before Darwin--in the world.\nTherefore Buddhism is right, and the higher morality bids us extirpate the\n{122} will-to-live altogether by ascetic practices and meditation on the\nuniversal vanity of things. Suicide is not allowed, for while annihilating\nthe intelligence it would not exclude some fresh incarnation of the will.\nAnd the last dying wish of Schopenhauer was that the end of this life might\nbe the end of all living for him.\n\nHERBART.\n\nJ. F. Herbart (1776-1841) occupies a peculiar position among German\nidealists. Like the others, he distinguishes between reality and\nappearance; and, like Schopenhauer in particular, he altogether rejects\nHegel's identification of reality with reason. But, alone among\npost-Kantian metaphysicians, he is a pluralist. According to him,\nthings-in-themselves, the eternal existents underlying all phenomena, are\nnot one, but many. So far his philosophy is a return to the pre-Kantian\nsystem of Wolf and Leibniz; but whereas the monads of Leibniz were credited\nwith an inward principle of evolution carrying them for ever onward through\nan infinite series of progressive changes, Herbart pushes his metaphysical\nlogic to the length of denying all change and all movement to the eternal\nentities of which reality is made up.\n\nHerbart is entitled to the credit--whatever it may be worth--of devising a\nsystem unlike every other in history; for while Hegel has a predecessor in\nHeracleitus, his rival combines the Eleatic immobilism with a pluralism\nthat is all his own. It is not, however, on these paradoxes that his\nreputation rests, but on more solid services as a psychologist and an\neducationalist. Without any acquaintance, as would seem, with the work\ndoing in Britain, Herbart discarded the old faculty psychology, conceiving\nmentality as made up {123} of \"presentations,\" among which a constant\ncompetition for the field of consciousness is going on; and it is to this\nview that such terms as \"inhibition\" and \"threshold of consciousness\" are\ndue. And the enormous prominence now given to the idea of value in ethics\nmay be traced back to the teaching of a thinker whom he greatly influenced,\nF. E. Beneke (1798-1854).\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n{124}\n\nCHAPTER V.\n\nTHE HUMANISTS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY\n\nThe philosophical movement of the nineteenth century, after the collapse of\nGerman idealism, has not been dominated by any single master or any single\ndirection to anything like the same extent as its predecessors. But if we\nare called on to select the dominant note by which all its products have\nbeen more or less coloured and characterised, none more impressive than the\nnote of Humanism can be named. As applied to the culture of the\nRenaissance, humanism meant a tendency to concentrate interest on this\nworld rather than on the next, using classic literature as the best means\nof understanding what man had been and again might be. At the period on\nwhich we are entering human interests again become ascendant; but they\nassume the widest possible range, claiming for their dominion the whole of\nexperience--all that has ever been done or known or imagined or dreamed or\nfelt. Hegel's inventory, in a sense, embraced all this; but Hegel had a way\nof packing his trunk that sometimes crushed the contents out of\nrecognition, and a way of opening it that few could understand. Besides,\nmuch was left out of the trunk that could ill be spared by mankind.\n\nAristotle has well said that the soul is in a way everything; and as such\nits analysis, under the name of {125} psychology, has entered largely into\nthe philosophy of the century. Theory of knowledge, together with logic,\nhas figured copiously in academic courses, with the result of putting what\nis actually known before the student in a new and interesting light; but\nwith the result also of developing so much pedantry and scepticism as to\ngive many besides dull fools the impression that divine philosophy is both\ncrabbed and harsh.\n\nTHE FRENCH ECLECTICS.\n\nIn the two centuries after Descartes France, so great in science, history,\nand literature, had produced no original philosopher, although general\nideas derived from English thought were extensively circulated for the\npurpose of discrediting the old order in Church and State. When this work\nhad been done with a thoroughness going far beyond the intention of the\nfirst reformers a reaction set in, and the demand arose for something more\nconservative than the so-called sensualism and materialistic atheism of the\npre-revolutionary times. A certain originality and speculative\ndisinterestedness must be allowed to Maine de Biran (1766-1824), who, some\nyears after Fichte--but, as would seem, independently of him--referred to\nman's voluntary activity as a source of _a priori_ knowledge. A greater\nimmediate impression was produced by Royer-Collard (1763-1845), who, as\nProfessor at the Sorbonne in 1811, imported the common-sense spiritualism\nof Reid (1710-1796) as an antidote to the then reigning theories of\nCondillac (1715-1780), who, improving on Locke, abolished reflection as a\ndistinct source of our ideas. Then came Victor Cousin (1792-1867), a\nbrilliant rhetorician, and, after Madame de Stael, the first to popularise\nGerman philosophy in France. As {126} Professor at the Sorbonne in the last\nyears of the Bourbon monarchy he distinctly taught a pantheistic Absolutism\ncompounded of Schelling and Hegel; but, whether from conviction or\nopportunism, this was silently withdrawn, and a so-called eclectic\nphilosophy put in its place. According to Cousin, in all countries and all\nages, from ancient India to modern Europe, speculation has developed under\nthe four contrasted forms of sensualism, idealism, scepticism, and\nmysticism. Each is true in what it asserts, false in what it denies, and\nthe right method is to preserve the positive while rejecting the negative\nelements of all four. But neither the master nor his disciples have ever\nconsistently answered the vital question, what those elements are.\n\nHAMILTON AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE CONDITIONED.\n\nAmong other valuable contributions to the history of philosophy, Victor\nCousin had lectured very agreeably on the philosophy of Kant, accepting the\nmaster's arguments for the apriorism of space and time, but rejecting his\nreduction of them to mere subjective forms as against common sense. He had\nnot gone into Kant's destructive criticism of all metaphysics, and this was\nnow to be turned against him by an unexpected assailant. Sir William\nHamilton (1788-1856), afterwards widely celebrated as Professor of Logic\nand Metaphysics at Edinburgh, began his philosophical career by an essay on\n\"The Philosophy of the Conditioned\" in the _Edinburgh Review_ for October,\n1829, controverting the Absolutism both of Cousin and of his master,\nSchelling. The reviewer had acquired some not very accurate knowledge of\nKant in Germany ten years before; and he uses this, with other rather\nflimsy {127} erudition, to establish the principle that _to think is to\ncondition_, and that therefore the Absolute cannot be thought--cannot be\nconceived. Hamilton enjoyed the reputation of having read \"all that mortal\nman had ever written about philosophy\"; but this evidently did not include\nHegel, who certainly had performed the feat declared to be impossible.\nThirty years later the philosophy of the conditioned attained a sudden but\ntransient notoriety, thanks to the use made of it by Hamilton's disciple,\nH. L. Mansel, in his Bampton Lectures on _The Limits of Religious Thought_\n(1858). The object of these was to prove that, as we know nothing about\nThings-in-themselves, nothing told about God in the Bible or the Creeds can\nbe rejected _a priori_ as incredible. As an apology, the book failed\nutterly, its only effect being to prepare public opinion for the\nAgnosticism of Herbert Spencer and Huxley.\n\nAUGUSTE COMTE.\n\nThe brilliant audiences that hung spell-bound on the lips of Victor Cousin\nas he unrolled before them the Infinite, the Finite, and the relation\nbetween the two, little knew that France's only great philosopher since\nDescartes was working in obscurity among them. Auguste Comte (1798-1857),\nthe founder of Positivism, belonged to a Catholic and Legitimist family. By\nprofession a mathematical teacher, he fell early under the influence of the\ncelebrated St. Simon, a mystical socialist who exercised a powerful\nattraction on others besides Comte. The connection lasted four years, when\nthey quarrelled; indeed Comte's character was such as to make permanent\nco-operation with him impossible, except on terms of absolute agreement\nwith his opinions and submission to his will. At a {128} subsequent period\nhe obtained some fairly well-paid employment at the Ecole Polytechnique,\nbut lost it again owing to the injurious terms in which he spoke of his\ncolleagues. In his later years he lived on a small annuity made up by\ncontributions from his admirers.\n\n[Illustration: AUGUSTE COMTE.]\n\n{129}\n\nAuguste Comte disliked and despised Plato, altogether preferring Aristotle\nto him as a philosopher; but it is fundamentally as a Platonist, not as an\nAristotelian, that he should himself be classed--in this sense, that he\nvalued knowledge above all as the means towards reconstituting society on\nthe basis of an ideal life. And this is the first reason why his philosophy\nis called positive--to distinguish it as reconstructive from the purely\nnegative thought of the Revolution. The second reason is to distinguish it\nas dealing with real facts from the figments of theology and the\nabstractions of metaphysics. Positive science explains natural events\nneither by the intervention of supernatural beings nor by the mutual\nrelations of hypostasised concepts, but by verifiable laws of succession\nand resemblance. Turgot was the first to distinguish the theological,\nmetaphysical, and mechanical interpretations as successive stages of a\nhistorical evolution (1750); Hume was the first to single out the relations\nof orderly succession and resemblance as the essential elements of real\nknowledge (1739); Comte, with the synthetic genius of the nineteenth\ncentury, first combined these isolated suggestions with a wealth of other\nideas into a vast theory of human progress set out in the fifth and sixth\nvolumes of his _Philosophie Positive_--the best sketch of universal history\never written.\n\nThe positive sciences fall into two great divisions--the concrete, dealing\nwith the actual phenomena as presented in space and time; the abstract,\nwhich alone concern philosophy, dealing with their laws. The most important\nof the abstract sciences is Sociology, claimed by Comte as his own special\ncreation. The study of this demands a previous knowledge of biology,\npsychology {130} being dismissed as a metaphysical delusion and phrenology\nput in its place. The science of life presupposes Chemistry, before which\ncomes Physics, presupposing Astronomy, and, as the basis of all,\nMathematics, divided into the calculus and geometry. At a later period\nMorality was placed as a seventh fundamental science at the head of the\nwhole hierarchy.\n\nAt a first glance some serious flaws reveal themselves in the imposing\nlogic of this scheme. Astronomy as a concrete science ought to have been\nexcluded from the series, its admission being apparently due to the\nhistorical circumstance that the most general laws of physics were\nascertained through the study of celestial phenomena. But on the same\nground geology can no longer be excluded, as its records led to the\nrecognition of the evolution of life; or should evolution be referred to\nthe concrete sciences of zoology and botany, by parity of reasoning human\nprogress should be treated as a branch of universal history--which, in\nfact, is what Comte makes it in his fifth and sixth volumes. It would have\nbeen better had he also studied social statics on the historical method. As\nit is, the volume in which the conditions of social equilibrium are\nsupposed to be established contains only one chapter on the subject, and\nthat is very meagre, consisting of some rather superficial observations on\nfamily life and the division of labour. No doubt the matter receives a far\nmore thorough discussion in the author's later work, _Politique Positive_.\nBut this merely embodies his own plan of reorganisation for the society of\nthe future, and therefore should count not as science, but as art.\n\nThe Positivist theory of social dynamics is that all {131} branches of\nknowledge pass through three successive stages already described as the\ntheological, the metaphysical, and the scientific. And this advance is\naccompanied by a parallel evolution on the governmental side from the\nmilitary to the industrial regime, with a revolutionary or transitional\nperiod answering to metaphysical philosophy. To this scheme it might be\nobjected that the parallelism is merely accidental. A scientific view of\nnature and a profound knowledge of her laws is no doubt far more conducive\nto industry than a superstitious view; but it is also more favourable to\nthe successful prosecution of war, which, indeed, always has been an\nindustry like another. Nor, to judge by modern experience, does it look as\nif a government placed in the hands of a country's chief capitalists--which\nwas what Comte proposed--would be less militant in its general disposition\nthan the parliamentary governments which he condemns as \"metaphysical.\" In\nfact, it is by theologians and metaphysicians that our modern horror of war\nhas been inspired rather than by scientists.\n\nThe great idea of Comte's life, that the positive sciences, philosophically\nsystematised, are destined to supply the basis of a new religion surpassing\nCatholicism in its social efficacy, seems a delusion really inherited from\none of his pet aversions, Plato. It arose from a profound misconception of\nwhat Catholicism had done, and a misconception, equally profound, of the\nmeans by which its priesthood worked. In spite of Comte's denials, the\nleverage was got not by appeals to the heart, but by appeals to that future\njudgment with which the preaching of righteousness and temperance was\nassociated by St. Paul, his supposed precursor in religion, as Aristotle\nwas his precursor in philosophy. {132}\n\nThe worship of Humanity, or, as it has been better called, the Service of\nMan, is a great and inspiring thought. Only it is not a religion, but a\nmetaphysical idea, derived by Comte from the philosophers of the eighteenth\ncentury, and by them through imperial Rome from the Humanists and Stoics of\nancient Athens.\n\nJ. S. MILL.\n\nJohn Stuart Mill (1806-1873) was, like Comte, a Platonist in the sense of\nvaluing knowledge chiefly as an instrument of social reform. He was indeed\nbred up by his father, James Mill (1773-1836), and by Jeremy Bentham as a\nprophet of the new Utilitarianism as Comte was, to some extent, trained by\nSt. Simon to substitute a new order for that which the Revolution had\ndestroyed. Mill, however, had been educated on the lines of Greek liberty\nrather than in the tradition of Roman authority; while both were largely\naffected by the Romanticism current in their youth. The worship of women,\nrevived from the age of chivalry, entered into the romantic movement; and\nit may be mentioned in this connection that Mill calls Mrs. Taylor, the\nlady with whom he fell in love at twenty-four and married eighteen years\nlater, \"the inspirer and in part the author of all\" that was best in his\nwritings; while Comte refers his religious conversion to Madame Clotilde de\nVaux, the object of his adoration in middle life. It seems probable,\nhowever, from the little we know of Mrs. Taylor--whom Carlyle credits with\n\"the keenest insight and the royallest volition\"--that her influence was\nthe reverse of Clotilde's. If anything, she attached Mill still more firmly\nto the cause of pure reason.\n\nIt has been mentioned how Kant's metaphysical {133} agnosticism was played\nout by Hamilton against Cousin. A little later Whewell, the Cambridge\nhistorian of physical science, imported Kant's theory of necessary truth in\nopposition to the empiricism of popular English thought, and Kant's\nCategorical Imperative in still more express contradiction to Bentham's\nutilitarian morality. Now Mill, educated as he had been on the\nassociationist psychology and in the central line of the English\nepistemological tradition, rejected the German apriorism as false in\nitself, while more particularly hating it as, in his opinion, a dangerous\nenemy to all social progress. For to him what people called their\nintuitions, whether theoretic or practical, were merely the time-honoured\nprejudices in which they had been brought up, and the contradictory of\nwhich they could not conceive. Comte similarly interpreted the metaphysical\nstage of thought as the erection into immutable principles of certain\nabstract ideas whose value--if they had any--was merely relative and\nprovisional. Mill, with his knowledge of history, might have remembered\nthat past thought, beginning with Plato, shows no such connection between\nintuitionism and immobility or reaction, while such experientialists as\nHobbes and Hume have been political Tories. But in his own time the _a\npriori_ philosophy went hand in hand with conservatism in Church and State,\nso he set himself to explode it in his _System of Logic_ (1843).\n\nMill's _Logic_, the most important English contribution to philosophy since\nHume, is based on Hume's theory of knowledge, amended and supplemented by\nsome German and French ideas. It is conceded to Kant that mathematical\ntruths are synthetic, not analytic. It is not contained in the idea of two\nand {134} two that they make four, nor in the idea of two straight lines\nthat they cannot enclose a space. Such propositions are real additions to\nour knowledge; but it is only experience that justifies us in accepting\nthem. What constitutes their peculiar certainty is that they can be\nverified by trial on imagined numbers and lines, without reference to\nexternal objects. But by what right we generalise from mental experience to\nall experience Mill does not explain. Hume's analysis of causation into\nantecedence and sequence of phenomena is accepted by Mill as it was\naccepted by Kant; but the law that every change must have a cause is\naffirmed, in adhesion to Dr. Thomas Brown (1778-1820), with more\ndistinctness than by Hume. As Laplace put it, the whole present state of\nthe universe is a product of its whole preceding state. But we only know\nthis truth by experience; and we can conceive a state of things where\nphenomena succeed one another by a different law or without any law at all.\nMill himself was ready to believe that causation did not obtain at some\nvery remote point of space; though what difference remoteness could make,\nexcept we suppose it to be causal--which would be a reassertion of the\nlaw--he does not explain; nor yet what warrant we have for assuming that\ncausation holds through all time, or at any future moment of time.\n\nNext to the law of universal causation inductive science rests on the\ndoctrine of natural kinds. The material universe is known to consist of a\nnumber of substances--namely, the chemical elements and their combinations,\nso constituted that a certain set of characteristic properties are\ninvariably associated with an indefinite number of other properties. Thus,\nif in a strange country a certain mineral answers the usual {135} tests for\narsenic, we know that a given dose of it will destroy life; and we are\nequally certain that if the spectroscopic examination of a new star shows\nthe characteristic lines of iron, a metal possessing all the properties of\niron as we find it in our mines is present in that distant luminary.\nAccording to Mill, we are justified in drawing that sweeping inference on\nthe strength of a single well-authenticated observation, because we know by\ninnumerable observations on terrestrial substances that natural kinds\npossessing such index qualities do exist, whereas there is not a single\ninstance of a substance possessing those qualities without the rest.\n\nFor Mill, as for Hume, reality means states of consciousness and the\nrelations between them. Matter he defines as a permanent possibility of\nsensation; mind as a permanent possibility of thought and feeling. But the\nlatter definition is admittedly not satisfactory. For a stream of thoughts\nand feelings which is proved by memory to have the consciousness of itself\nseems to be something more than a mere stream. All explanations must end in\nan ultimate inexplicability. God may be conceived as a series of thoughts\nand feelings prolonged through eternity; and it is a logically defensible\nhypothesis that the order of nature was designed by such a being, although\nthe amount of suffering endured by living creatures excludes the notion of\na Creator at once beneficent and omnipotent. And if the Darwinian theory\nwere established, the case for a designing intelligence would collapse.\nPersonally Mill believed neither in a God nor in a future life.\n\nIn morals Mill may be considered the creator of what Henry Sidgwick, in his\n_Methods of Ethics_ (1874), called Universalistic Hedonism. The English\nmoralists of the {136} eighteenth century had set up the greatest happiness\nof the greatest number as the ideal end of action; but they did not hold\nthat each individual could be expected to pursue anything but his own\nhappiness; the object of Bentham (1748-1832) being to make the two\ncoincide. Kant showed that the rule of right excluded any such\naccommodation, and a crisis in his own life led Mill to adopt the same\nconclusion. Afterwards he rather confused the issues by distinguishing\nbetween higher and lower pleasures, leaving experts to decide which were\nthe pleasures to be preferred. The universalistic standard settles the\nquestion summarily by estimating pleasures according to their social\nutility.\n\nMill fully sympathised with Comte's demand for social reorganisation as a\nmeans towards the moral end. But, with his English and Protestant\ntraditions, he had no faith in the creation of a new spiritual power with\nan elaborate religious code and ritual as the best machinery for the\npurpose. In his opinion, the claims of the individual to extended liberty\nof thought and action, not their restriction, were what first needed\nattention. Second to this--if second at all--came the necessity for\nreforming representative government on the lines of an enlarged franchise\nand a readjusted electoral system with plural suffrage determined by merit,\nvotes for women, and a contrivance for giving minorities a weight\nproportioned to their numbers. The problem of poverty was to be dealt with\nby restrictions on the increase of population and on the amount of\ninheritable property, the maximum of which ought not to exceed a modest\ncompetence.\n\nAmong the noble characters presented by the history of philosophy we may\ndistinguish between the heroic and the saintly types. To the former in\nmodern {137} times belong Giordano Bruno, Fichte, and to some extent Comte;\nto the latter, Spinoza, Berkeley, and Kant. To the second class we may\nsurely add John Stuart Mill, whom Gladstone called \"the saint of\nrationalism,\" and of whom Auguste Laugel said, \"He was not sincere--he was\nsincerity itself.\"\n\nHERBERT SPENCER.\n\nHerbert Spencer (1820-1903) was the son of a Nonconformist country\nschoolmaster, but was educated chiefly by his uncle Thomas, an Evangelical\nclergyman of the Church of England. A radical reformer of the old school,\nThomas Spencer seems to have indoctrinated his youthful charge with the\ngerminal principles afterwards generalised into a whole cosmic philosophy.\nHe had a passion for justice realised under the form of liberty, individual\nresponsibility, and self-help. In his opinion, until it was modified by\nprivate misfortunes, everything served everybody right. Beginning as an\neconomical administrator of the new Poor Law, he at last became an advocate\nof its total abolition; and, alone among fifteen thousand clergymen, he was\nan active member of the Anti-Corn Law League, besides supporting the\nseparation of Church and State. At twenty-two Herbert Spencer accepted and\nsummed up this policy under the form of a general hostility to State\ninterference with individual liberty, supporting it by a reference to the\nreign of Natural Law in all orders of existence. In his first great work,\n_Social Statics_, the principle of _laissez-faire_ received its full\nsystematic development as the restriction of State action to the defence of\nliberty against internal and external aggression, the raising of taxes for\nany other purpose being unjust, as is also private ownership of {138} land,\nwhich is by nature the common heritage of all. Spencer subsequently came to\nabandon land nationalisation, probably from alarm at its socialistic\nimplications.\n\n[Illustration: HERBERT SPENCER.]\n\nThe doctrine of natural law and liberty carried with it for Spencer a\nstrong repugnance not only to protectionism in politics, but also to\nmiracles in theology. The profession of journalism brought him into touch\n{139} with a freethinking set in London. Whether under their influence, or\nShelley's, or by some spontaneous process, his religious convictions\nevaporated by twenty-eight into the agnosticism which thenceforth remained\ntheir permanent expression. There might or not be a First Cause; if there\nwas, we know nothing about it. At this stage Lyell's attempted refutation\nof Lamarck converted Spencer to the belief in man's derivation from some\nlower animal by a process of gradual adaptation. Thus the scion of an\neducationalist family came to interpret the whole history of life on our\nplanet as an educative process.\n\nIt seemed, however, as if there was one fatal exception to the scheme of\nnaturalistic optimism. The Rev. Thomas Malthus had originally published his\n_Essay on Population_ (1798) as a telling answer to the \"infidel\" Godwin's\n_Political Justice_ (1793), the bolder precursor of _Social Statics_. The\nargument was that the tendency of population to outrun the means of\nsubsistence put human perfectibility out of the question. It had been\nsuggested by the idealists, Mill among the number, that the difficulty\nmight be obviated by habitual self-restraint on the part of married people.\nBut Spencer, with great ingenuity, made the difficulty its own solution.\nThe pressure of population on the means of subsistence is the source of all\nprogress; and of progress not only in discoveries and inventions, but also,\nthrough its increased exercise, in the instrument which effects them--that\nis, the human brain. Now, it is a principle of Aristotle's, revived by\nmodern biology, that individuation is antagonistic to reproduction; and\nincreasing individuation is the very law of developing life, shown above\nall in the growing power of life's chief instrument, which is thought's\norgan, the brain. For, as Spencer proceeded {140} to show in his next work,\nthe _Principles of Psychology_, life means a continuous series of\nadjustments of internal to external relations. Therefore the rate of\nmultiplication must go on falling with the growth of intellectual and moral\npower until it only just suffices to balance the loss by death. The next\nstep was to revive Laplace's nebular hypothesis, and to connect it through\nLyell's uniformitarian geology with Lamarck's developmental biology,\nthereby extending the same evolutionary process through the whole history\nof the universe.\n\nNor was this all. Milne-Edwards, by another return to Aristotle, had\npointed to the \"physiological division of labour\" as a mark of ascending\norganic perfection, to which Spencer adds integration of structure as its\nobverse side, at the same time extending the world-law, already made\nfamiliar in part through its industrial applications by Adam Smith, to all\norders of social activity. Finally, differentiation and integration were\nstretched back from living to lifeless matter, thus bringing astronomy and\ngeology, which had already entered into the causal series of cosmic\ntransformations, under one common law of evolution; while at the same time,\nseeing it to be generally admitted that inorganic changes originated from\nthe operation of purely mechanical forces, they suggested that mechanism,\nwithout teleology, could adequately explain organic evolution also.\n\nFinally came the great discovery of Darwin and Wallace, with its extension\nof Malthus's law to the whole world of living things. Spencer had just\ntouched, without grasping, the same idea years before. He now gladly\naccepted Natural Selection as supplementing without superseding Lamarck's\ntheory of spontaneous adaptation. {141}\n\nTo complete even in outline the vast sweep of his projected Synthetic\nPhilosophy two steps more remained for Spencer to take. The law of\nevolution had to be brought under the recently-discovered law of the\nConservation of Energy, or, as he called it, the Persistence of Force, and\nthe whole of unified science had to be reconciled with religion. The first\nproblem was solved by interpreting evolution as a redistribution of matter\nand motion--a process in which, of course, energy is neither lost nor\ngained. The second problem was solved by reducing faith and knowledge to\nthe common denominator of Agnosticism--a method that found more favour with\nPositivists (in the wide sense) than with Christian believers.\n\nHerbert Spencer was disappointed to find that people took more interest in\nthe portico (as he called it in a letter to the present writer)--that is to\nsay, the metaphysical introduction to his philosophical edifice--than in\nits interior. He probably had some suspicion that the portico was mere lath\nand plaster, while he felt sure that the columns and architraves behind it\nwere of granite. The public, however, besides their perennial interest in\nreligion, might be excused for giving more attention to even a baroque\nexterior with some novelty about it than to the formalised eclecticism of\nwhat stood behind it. Unfortunately, they soon found that the alleged\nreconciliation was a palpable sham. Religion is nothing if not a\nrevelation, and an unknowable God is no God at all. Even the pretended\nproofs of that poor residual deity involved their author in the transparent\nself-contradiction of calling the universe the manifestation of an\nUnknowable Power. Then the relations between this Power (such as it was)\nand the Energy (or Force) whose conservation (or persistence) was the very\nfirst {142} of First Principles seemed hard to adjust. Either energy is\ncreated, or it is not. In the one case, what becomes of its eternity? in\nthe other case, what need is there to assume a Power (knowable or not)\nbehind it? Science will not shrink back before such a phantom, nor will\nReligion adore it.\n\nSuch faulty building in the portico prepares us for somewhat unsteady\nmasonry within; and in fact none holds together except what has been\ntransported bodily from other temples. In the past history of the universe,\nconsidered as a \"rearrangement of matter and motion,\" disintegration and\nassimilation play quite as great a part as integration and differentiation.\nSuch formulas have no advantage over the metaphysical systematisation of\nAristotle, and they give us as little power either to predict or to direct.\nWill war be abolished at some future time, or property equalised or\nabolished, or morality exalted, or religion superseded? Spencer was ready\nwith his answer; but the law of evolution could not prove it true.\nNevertheless, his name will long be associated with evolution as a\nworld-wide process, though neither in the way of original discovery nor of\ncomplete generalisation, and far less of successful application to modern\nproblems; but rather of diffusion and popularisation, even as other\nvaluable ideas have been impressed on the public mind by other philosophies\nat a vast expense of ingenuity, knowledge, and labour, but not at greater\nexpense than the eventual gain has been worth.\n\nTHE ENGLISH HEGELIANS.\n\nHegel's philosophy first drew attention in England through its supposed\nconnection with Strauss's mythic theory of the Gospels and Baur's theory of\nNew {143} Testament literature as a product of party conflicts and\ncompromises in the primitive Church. Rightly interpreted as a system of\nPantheism, it was decried and ridiculed by orthodox theologians in the name\nof religion and common sense, while cherished by the advanced Broad Church\nas a means of symbolising away the creeds they continued to repeat. Then\nthe triumph of Spencer's Agnosticism in the middle Victorian period\n(1864-1874) suggested an appeal to a logic whose object had been to resolve\nthe negations of eighteenth-century enlightenment in the synthesis of a\nhigher unity. The first pronunciation in this sense was _The Secret of\nHegel_ (1865), by Dr. Hutchison Stirling (1820-1909), a writer of geniality\nand genius, who, writing from the Hegelian standpoint, tried to represent\nthe English rationalists of the day as a superficial and retrograde school.\nIt was a bold but unsuccessful attempt to plant the banner of the Hegelian\nRight on British soil. By attacking Darwinism Stirling put himself out of\ntouch with the general movement of thought. Professor William Wallace\n(1844-1897), John Caird (1820-1898), and his brother Edward Caird\n(1835-1908) inclined more or less to the Left, as also does Lord Haldane\n(_b._ 1865) in his _Gifford Lectures_ (1903); and all have the advantage\nover Stirling of writing in a clearer if less picturesque style.\n\nT. H. Green (1836-1882) is sometimes quoted as a Hegelian, but his\nintellectual affinities were rather with Fichte. According to him, reality\nis the thought of an Eternal Consciousness, of which personality need not\nbe predicated, while the endless duration of personal spirits seems to be\ndenied. Another idealist, F. H. Bradley (_b._ 1846)--perhaps the greatest\nliving English {144} thinker--develops in his _Appearance and Reality_\n(1893) a metaphysical system which, though Absolutist in form, is, to me at\nleast, in substance practically indistinguishable from the dogmatic\nAgnosticism of Herbert Spencer, and even more destructive of the popular\nTheism. Finally the writings of Dr. J. E. McTaggart (_b._ 1866), teaching\nas they do a doctrine of developmental personal immortality without a God,\nshow a tendency to combine Hegel with Lotze.\n\nTHE GERMAN ECLECTICS.\n\nBy general consent the most serious and influential of German systematic\nthinkers since Hegel is R. H. Lotze (1817-1881). His philosophy is built up\nof materials derived in varying proportions from all his German\npredecessors, the most distinctive idea being pluralism, probably suggested\nin the first instance by Herbart, whom he succeeded as Professor at\nGoettingen. But Lotze discards the rigid monads of his master for the more\nintelligible soul-substances of Leibniz--or rather of Bruno--whose example\nhe also follows in his attempt to combine pluralism with monism. Very\nstrenuous efforts are made to give the unifying principle the character of\na personal God; but the suspicion of a leaning to Pantheism is not\naltogether eluded.\n\nMore original and far more uncompromising is the work of Ed. v. Hartmann\n(1842-1906). Personally he enjoyed the twofold distinction--whatever it may\nbe worth--of having served as an officer for a short time in the Prussian\narmy, and of never having taught in a university. His great work, published\nat twenty-seven, appeared under the telling title of the _Philosophy of the\nUnconscious_. It won immediate popularity, and reached its eleventh edition\nin 1904. Hartmann adopts, {145} with some slight attenuation,\nSchopenhauer's pessimism, and his metaphysics with a considerable\nemendation. In this new version the world is still conceived as Will and\nRepresentation; but whereas for Schopenhauer the intellective side had been\nsubordinated to the volitional, with Hartmann the two are co-equal and\nintimately united, together forming that \"Unconscious\" which is the new\nAbsolute. In this way Reason again becomes, what it had been with Hegel, a\ngreat cosmic principle; only as the optimistic universe had argued itself\n_into_ existence, so conversely the pessimistic universe has to argue\nitself _out of_ existence. As in the process of developing differentiation,\nthe volitional and intellective sides draw apart, the Unconscious becomes\nself-conscious, and thus awakens to the terrible mistake it committed in\nwilling to be. Thenceforth the whole of evolution is determined by the\nmaster-thought of how not to be. The problem is how to annul the creative\nWill. And the solution is to divide it into two halves so opposed that the\none shall be the negation and destruction of the other. There will be then,\nnot indeed a certainty, but an equal chance of definitive self-annihilation\nand eternal repose. Thus, the immediate duty for mankind, as also their\npredestined task, is the furtherance of scientific and industrial progress\nas a means towards this consummation, which is likewise their predestined\nend. A religious colouring is given to the process by representing it as an\ninverted Christian scheme in which man figures as the redeemer of\nGod--_i.e._ the Absolute--from the unspeakable torments to which he is now\ncondemned by the impossibility of satisfying his will.\n\nLike Hartmann, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), the greatest writer of\nmodern Germany, took his start from {146} Schopenhauer, but broke with\npessimism at an early date, having come to disbelieve in the hedonism on\nwhich it is founded. His restless vanity drove him to improve on Darwinism\nby interpreting evolution as the means towards creating what he called the\nSuperman--that is, a race as much superior to us as we are to the apes.\nProgress, however, is not to be in the direction of a higher morality, but\nof greater power--the Will-to-Power, not the Will-to-Live, being the\nessence of what is. Later in life Nietzsche revived the Stoic doctrine that\nevents move, and have moved through all time, in a series of recurring\ncycles, each being the exact repetition of its predecessor. It is a\nworthless idea, and Nietzsche, who had been a Greek professor, must have\nknown where he got it; but the megalomania to which he eventually succumbed\nprevented his recognising the debt. By a merited irony of fate this\nworshipper of the Napoleonic type will survive only as a literary moralist\nin the history of thought.\n\nThe modern revolt against metaphysical systemisation, with or without a\ntheological colouring, took in Germany the form of two distinct\nphilosophical currents. The first is scientific materialism, or, as some of\nits advocates prefer to call it, energism. This began about 1850, but\nboasts two great living representatives, the biologist Haeckel and the\nchemist Ostwald. In their practical aims these men are idealists; but their\nadmission of space and time as objective realities beyond which there is\nnothing, and their repudiation of agnosticism, distinguish them from the\nFrench and English Positivists. The other and more powerful school is known\nas Neo-Kantianism. It numbers numerous adherents in the German\nuniversities, and also in those of France and Italy, representing various\n{147} shades of opinion united by a common reference to Kant's first\nCritique, dissociated from its concessions to deism, as the true\nstarting-point of modern thought.\n\nTHE LATEST DEVELOPMENTS.\n\nSince the beginning of the twentieth century the interest in philosophy and\nthe ability devoted to its cultivation have shown no sign of diminution.\nTwo new doctrines in particular have become subjects of world-wide\ndiscussion. I refer to the theory of knowledge called Pragmatism, and to\nthe metaphysics of Professor Henri Bergson. Both are of so revolutionary,\nso contentious, and so elusive a character as to preclude any discussion or\neven outline of the new solutions for old problems which they claim to\nprovide. But I would recommend the study of both, and especially of\nBergson, to all who imagine that the possibilities of speculation are\nexhausted, or that we are any nearer finality and agreement than when\nHeracleitus first glorified war as the father of all things, and\ncontradiction as the central spring of life.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n{149}\n\nBIBLIOGRAPHY\n\nKuno Fischer. _Geschichte der neuern Philosophie._ Nine vols. Fourth ed.;\nHeidelberg, 1897-1904. (Comes down to Schopenhauer.)\n\nErdmann. _Geschichte der Philosophie._ Vol. ii. Fourth ed.; Berlin, 1896.\n(Comes down to Lotze; third ed.; trans. by W. S. Hough; London, 1889.)\n\nWindelband. _Geschichte der neuern Philosophie._ Two vols. Fifth ed. (Comes\ndown to Herbart and Beneke. There is an English trans. of Windelband's\n_General History of Philosophy_, by J. H. Tufts, New York, 1893. In his\ncontribution to the General History of Philosophy in the _Kultur der\nGegenwart_, Berlin, 1909, Windelband includes a brief but useful summary of\nPragmatism and Bergson.)\n\nLevy-Bruhl. _History of Modern Philosophy in France._ Trans. by Miss\nCoblence. London, 1890.\n\nForsyth, T. M. _English Philosophy: A Study of its Methods and General\nDevelopment._ London, 1910. (A. & C. Black.)\n\nGiordano Bruno. _Opere Italiane._ Ed. P. Lagarde. Goettingen, 1888.\n\n---- _Opera latine conscripta._ Naples and Florence, 1879-91.\n\nMcIntyre, J. L. _Life of Giordano Bruno._ London, 1903.\n\nBacon, Francis. _Works and Life._ Ed. by Ellis and Spedding. Fourteen vols.\n1864-74.--Works. One vol. Ed. by Ellis, Spedding, and Robertson.\n(Routledge.)--_Novum Organum._ Ed. by T. Fowler. Oxford, 1878.\n\nAbbott, Edwin. _Francis Bacon._ London, 1885.\n\nChurch, R. W. _Bacon_ (English Men of Letters). London, 1889.\n\nHobbes, Thomas. _Works English and Latin._ Ed. Sir Wm. Molesworth. Sixteen\nvols. London, 1839-45.\n\nRobertson, G. C. _Hobbes._ London, 1886 (Blackwood's Philosophical\nClassics).\n\nStephen, Sir Leslie. _Hobbes._ London, 1903 (English Men of Letters).\n\n---- _English Thought in the Eighteenth Century._ Second ed.; two vols.\nLondon, 1881.\n\n---- _The English Utilitarians._ Three vols. London, 1900. {150}\n\nDescartes. _Oeuvres._ Ed. V. Cousin. Eleven vols. Paris, 1824-1828. A new\nedition is in course of publication.--English trans. of the _Method and the\nMeditations_ in the Scott Library. London, 1901.--_Life_, by Elizabeth\nHaldane. London, 1905.\n\nMalebranche. _Oeuvres._ Three vols. Ed. Jules Simon. Paris, 1871.\n\nSpinoza. _Opera._ Ed. Van Vloten and Land. Two vols. The Hague, 1882-83.\n\n---- _Life and Philosophy._ By Sir Fr. Pollock. London, 1880; second ed.,\n1899.\n\n---- _A Study of._ By James Martineau. London, 1883.\n\n----_'s Ethics, A Study of._ By H. H. Joachim. Oxford, 1901.\n\n---- Trans. of his principal works. By Elwes in Bohn's Library. Two vols.,\n1883-86. Also Everyman's Library. (Dent.)\n\n---- _Ethics._ Trans. by Hale White, revised by Amelia Stirling. London,\n1899.\n\n---- _Leben und Lehre._ Von J. Frendenthal. 1904.\n\nLeibniz. _Philosophische Schriften._ Seven vols. Ed. C. J. Gerhardt.\nBerlin, 1875-90.--_The Philosophy of Leibniz._ By Bertrand Russell.\nCambridge, 1900.\n\nLocke, John. _Works._ Nine vols. London, 1824.\n\n---- _Essay Concerning Human Understanding._ Two vols.; in Bohn's Library.\nLondon, 1877.\n\n---- _Life of._ By Fox Bourne. Two vols. London, 1876.\n\n---- By Thomas Fowler. London, 1880 (English Men of Letters).\n\n---- By Prof. A. C. Fraser; in Blackwood's Phil. Classics. 1890.\n\nBerkeley, George. _Works and Life._ Ed. A. C. Fraser. Four vols. Oxford,\n1871.\n\n---- By Fraser (Philosophical Classics). 1881.\n\nHume, David. _Philosophical Works._ Four vols. Ed. Green and Grose. London,\n1874-75.\n\n---- By T. H. Huxley (English Men of Letters). New edition. London, 1894.\n\nKant. _Werke._ Ed. Rosenkranz and Schubert. Twelve vols. 1838-40. Two new\neditions, including the correspondence, are now in course of publication at\nBerlin. There are English translations of all the principal works.\n\n---- _Life and Doctrine._ By F. Paulsen; trans. by Creighton and Lefevre.\nLondon, 1908.\n\nFichte, J. G. _Werke._ Eleven vols. 1834-46. Trans. of his more popular\nworks by Dr. W. Smith. Two vols. London, 1890.\n\nAdamson. _Fichte._ In Blackwood's Phil. Classics. 1901. {151}\n\nSchelling, F. W. J. _Werke._ Fourteen vols. Stuttgart, 1856-61.\n\nWatson, Prof. J. _Schelling's Transcendental Idealism_, Chicago, 1882.\n\nHegel, G. W. F. _Werke._ Nineteen vols. in twenty-one. Leipzig, 1832-87.\n\nHegel. By Prof. E. Caird (Philosophical Classics for English Readers.)\nEdinburgh, 1883. Hegel's Philosophies of _Law, Religion, History, Mind, his\nHistory of Philosophy_, and the smaller _Logic_, have been translated into\nEnglish.\n\nSchopenhauer. _Werke._ Six volumes in the Reclam Series. Leipzig, 1892.\n\nRibot. _La Philosophie de Schopenhauer._ Ninth ed.; Paris, 1909.\n\nWallace, Prof. W. _Life of Schopenhauer_ (Great Writers Series). London,\n1890.\n\nWhittaker, Thomas. \"Schopenhauer,\" in _Philosophies Ancient and Modern_.\nLondon, 1908.\n\nSchopenhauer's _World as Will and Idea._ Trans. by Haldane and Kemp. Three\nvols. London, 1884-86.--Essays. Trans. by Belfort Bax (Bohn's Library).\nLondon, 1891.\n\nSchopenhauer. _Studies._ Consisting of translations by T. Bailey Saunders.\nSeven vols. London, 1889-96.--Other essays translated by Madame Hillebrand\n(London, 1889) and by A. B. Ballock (London, 1903)\n\nHerbart, J. F. _Werke._ Ed. Kehrbach. Fifteen vols. 1887 _ff._\n\nWagner. _Vollstaendige Darstellung d. Lehre Herbarts._ 1896.\n\nHayward, F. H. _The Student's Herbart._ 1902.\n\nHamilton, Sir W. _Discussions on Philosophy._ Second ed. London, 1853.\n\nComte, Auguste. _Cours de Philosophie Positive._ Five vols. Paris,\n1830-42.--_Politique Positive._ Four vols. Paris, 1851-54.\n\nCaird, Edward. _The Social Philosophy of Auguste Comte._ Glasgow, 1885.\n\nLevy-Bruhl. _The Philosophy of Auguste Comte._ English trans. London, 1903.\n\nWhewell, Wm. _Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences._ London, 1840.\n\nMill, J. S. _A System of Logic._ Two vols. London, 1843.--_On Liberty._\nLondon, 1859.--_Utilitarianism._ London, 1863.--_Examination of Sir William\nHamilton's Philosophy._ London, 1865.\n\nWhittaker, T. \"Comte and Mill,\" in _Philosophies Ancient and Modern._\nLondon, 1908.\n\nSpencer, Herbert. _First Principles._ London, 1862.--_Essays._ Three vols.\nLondon, 1891.--_Autobiography._ London, 1904.\n\nMacpherson, Hector. _Herbert Spencer._ London, 1900. {152}\n\nGreen, T. H. _Prolegomena to Ethics._ Oxford, 1884.\n\nGreen, T. H. _Works._ Three vols. London, 1885-1900.\n\nBradley, F. H. _Appearance and Reality._ Third ed. London, 1889.\n\nLotze, H. _Mikrocosmus._ 1856-64.--_System der Philosophie._\n1874-79.--English trans. of the _Microc._ Two vols. Edinburgh, 1885.--Of\nthe _Metaphysics._ Two vols. Oxford. 1884.\n\nJones, Sir Henry. _The Philosophy of Lotze._ Glasgow, 1895.\n\nHartmann, Ed. von. _Die Philosophie des Unbewussten._ 1869. English trans.\nby W. C. Coupland. Three vols. London, 1884.\n\nNietzsche, Fr. _Werke._ Leipzig, 1895 _ff._ English trans. in fourteen\nvols. Edinburgh. (T. N. Foulis.)--D. Halevy, _La Vie de Nietzsche._ Paris,\n1909.\n\nRussell, Bertrand. _The Problems of Philosophy_ (Home University Library).\nLondon, 1912.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n{153}\n\nINDEX\n\n  Abbott, E. A., quoted, 14\n  Agnosticism, 67, 70, 141, 143, 144\n  Anaximander, 12\n  Aquinas, St. Thomas, 4\n  Aristotle, 3, 5, 6, 7, 19, 25, 49, 52, 129, 139, 142\n  Arnold, Matthew, 55\n  Athens, 1 _f._\n  Atomism, revival of, 10, 21\n  Averroes, 4\n\n  Bacon, Roger, 4\n  Bacon, Francis, 12 _ff._, 24, 29, 32, 61\n  Baur, F. C., 142\n  Bayle, Pierre, 71\n  Beneke, F. E., 123\n  Bergson, Henri, 147\n  Berkeley, Bishop, 43, 72 _ff._;\n    _Theory of Vision_, 73;\n    Idealism, 73 _ff._, 89\n  Boyle, Robert, 21\n  Bradley, F. H., 57, 143\n  Brahe, Tycho, 17\n  Brown, Dr. Thomas, 134\n  Bruno, Giordano, 7 _ff._, 22, 45, 51, 107\n  Byron, 119\n\n  Caird, Edward, 143\n  Caird, John, _ib._\n  Calvinism, 28\n  Catholicism and philosophy, 2 _ff._\n  Causation. _See_ Hume, Kant, Hegel, Mill\n  Christianity. _See_ Catholicism\n  Christina, Queen, 32 _f._\n  Church, Dean, quoted, 15\n  Collier, Arthur, 75\n  Collins, Anthony, 71\n  Columbus, 6\n  Comte, Auguste, 127 _ff._;\n    classification of the sciences, 130;\n    _Politique Positive_, _ib._;\n    philosophy of history, 131, 133\n  Condillac, 125\n  Copernicanism, 6 _f._\n  Cousin, Victor, 90\n\n  Dante, 6 _f._\n  Darwin, Charles, 140\n  Democritus, 10\n  Descartes, 30, 31 _ff._;\n    on belief, 41, 49, 61, 65, 87\n  Duns Scotus, 4\n\n  Eclectics, French, 125 _f._;\n    German, 144\n  Ego, the Absolute, 105\n  Elizabeth, Princess, 32\n  Empedocles, 65\n  Epicurus, 9, 22, 29\n  Epistemology, 65\n  Eriugena, John Scotus, 3, 4\n  _Ethica_, Spinoza's, 48\n\n  Fichte, J. G., 101 _ff._;\n    his definition of God, 102;\n    as German patriot, 102 _f._;\n    his  idealism, 103 _ff._;\n    ethical standpoint, 106;\n    later teaching, 110\n  Ficino, Marsilio, 5\n  Final causes in modern philosophy, 61;\n    in Plato, _ib._\n  Form and Matter, 10, 18, 24\n\n  Galileo, 17, 24\n  Gassendi, 50\n  Geulincx, 42, 44, 51\n  Gilbert, 17, 21\n  Godwin, William, 139\n  Goethe, 102, 105\n  Green, T. H., 143\n\n  Haeckel, Ernst, 146\n  Haldane, Lord, 143\n  Haldane, Miss E. S.,\n    quoted, 32\n  Hamilton, Sir William, 126 f., 132\n  Hartmann, Ed. von, 144 f.\n  Harvey, 17\n  Hegel, G. F. W., 24;\n    on Spinoza, 53, 103, 107, 110 _ff._;\n    _Phenomenology of Mind_, 112;\n    _Science of Logic_, _ib._;\n    _Encyclopaedia_, _ib._;\n    _Philosophy of Law_, _ib._;\n    _Aesthetics_, 113;\n    _Philosophy of History_, _ib._;\n    his didactic method, 113 _ff._;\n    negation of supernatural religion, 116, 118, 124, 126\n  Hegelians, the English, 142 _ff._\n  Heine, 103, 116\n  Heracleitus, 11, 147\n  Herbart, J. F., 122, 144\n  Hobbes, Thomas, 22 _ff._, 50, 56, 68\n  Hooker, Richard, and the Social Contract, 29\n  Humanism in the nineteenth century, 124\n  Hume, David, 77 _ff._;\n    character as a historian, 77;\n    theory of causation, 81 _ff._;\n    attitude towards theism, 84, 89;\n    a precursor of Comte, 129;\n    and of Mill, 133 _ff._\n  Huxley, T. H., 127\n  Huyghens on Descartes, 41\n\n  Induction, Baconian, 20\n  Innate ideas, 68, 95\n\n  John of Salisbury, 4\n  Justinian, 1\n\n  Kant, Immanuel, 85 ff.;\n    his nebular hypothesis, 87;\n    on synthetic and analytic judgments, 87 _ff._;\n    on space and time, 90 _ff._;\n    _Critique of Pure Reason_, 93 _ff._;\n    on causation, 95 _f._;\n    moral and religious philosophy, 97 ff., 118, 119, 132, 133, 134, 147\n  Kepler, 10, 17, 21\n  Klopstock, 101\n\n  {154}\n  Lamarck, 139, 140\n  Laplace, 87\n  Leibniz, G. W., 57 _ff._;\n    optimism, 59 _ff._;\n    monadology, 62;\n    determinism, 63;\n    pre-established harmony, _ib._, 144\n  Lewes, G. H., 103, 107\n  Locke, John, 29, 65 _ff._;\n    on toleration, 67;\n    his proof of theism, 69;\n    moral inconsistency, 69 _f._, 72, 87, 89\n  Lotze, R. H., 144\n  Lucretius, 9, 20, 22\n  Luther, 6\n  Lyell, Sir Charles, 139\n\n  Macaulay on Bacon, 16;\n    on Hobbes, 28, 71\n  McTaggart, Dr. J. E., 144\n  Maine de Biran, 125\n  Malebranche, 42 _ff._, 51, 74, 89\n  Malthus, 137\n  Mansel, H. L., 127\n  Materialists, German, 146\n  Mill, J. S., 132 _ff._;\n    _System of Logic_, 133;\n    metaphysics, 135;\n    theology, _ib._;\n    ethics, 135 _f._;\n    politics, 136;\n    character, 137\n  Milne-Edwards, 140\n  Monadism, 11, 70\n\n  Napier, 17\n  Neo-Kantianism, 146\n  Neo-Platonism, 2 f.\n  Newton, Isaac, 58, 59\n  Nicolas of Cusa, 11\n  Nietzsche, Friedrich, 145 _f._\n  Norris, John, 75\n\n  Occam, 5\n  Occasionalism, 42\n  Ostwald, 146\n\n  Pantheism, 45,50\n  Parmenides, 9\n  Pascal, 42\n  Plotinus, 2, 5, 12, 44\n  Positivism. See Comte\n  Power, idea of, in Spinoza, 52;\n    how connected with causation, 83\n  Pragmatism, 147\n  Proclus, 3\n  Pythagoreans, 9\n\n  Reality, degrees of, 57\n  Reid, Thomas, 85, 125\n  Renaissance,  scientific activity of the, 17\n  Rousseau, 29, 119\n\n  St. Simon, 127\n  Schelling, F. W. J., 106 _ff._;\n    natural philosophy, 108;\n    _Transcendental Idealism_, 108 _f._;\n    romanticism, 109;\n    Absolutism, 110, 126\n  Schiller, F. C. S., quoted, 18\n  Schopenhauer, Arthur, 103, 118 _ff._;\n    pessimism, 119;\n    metaphysics, 119 _ff._;\n    ethics, 121 _f._, 145\n  Sextus Empiricus, 67\n  Shaftesbury, Lord, author of the _Characteristics_, 71\n  Shelley, 139\n  Sidgwick, Henry, 135\n  Smith, Adam, 140\n  Social Contract, 26\n  Spencer, Herbert, 127, 137 ff.;\n    _Social Statics_, 137;\n    _Psychology_, 140;\n    _Synthetic Philosophy_, 141;\n    on religion, _ib._;\n    formula of evolution, 142, 144\n  Spencer, Rev. Thomas, 137\n  Spinoza, 30, 45 _ff._;\n    _Tractatus Theologico-Politicus_, 48;\n    not a mystic, 55;\n    ethics, 56 _f._;\n    return to Stoicism, 56, 59, 61, 69, 87, 106, 110\n  Stael, Madame de, 125\n  Stirling, Dr. Hutchison, 143\n  Strauss, David, 112, 142\n\n  Taylor, Mrs., and J. S. Mill, 132\n  Temple, Archbishop, 102\n  Theism. _See_ Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, Fichte, Mill\n  _Timaeus_, Plato's, 41\n  Toland, 71\n  Turgot, 129\n\n  Vaux, Clotilde de, and Comte, 132\n  Voltaire and optimism, 59\n  Vries, Simon de and Spinoza, 46\n\n  Wallace, A. R., 140\n  Wallace, Prof. William, 143\n  Whewell, William, 133\n  Wordsworth, 57\n  Wycliffe, 5\n\n\n\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\nTranscriber's note:\n\nThe following changes were made:\n\nPage 38. \"passed with progressive reflection\": 'progress-sive' on line\nbreak in original.\n\nPage 57. \"only defend on aesthetic grounds\": 'grounps' in original.","title":"History of Modern Philosophy","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":40882}