{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_9304/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_9304","id":"gutenberg_9304","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9304","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Philosophy","Philosophy -- Introductions"],"text":"Produced by Ted Garvin, Thomas Hutchinson and PG Distributed\nProofreaders\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nINITIATION INTO PHILOSOPHY\n\n\nBy Emile Faguet\n\nOf the French Academy\n\n\nAuthor of \"The Cult Of Incompetence,\"\n\"Initiation Into Literature,\" etc.\n\n\nTranslated from the French by Sir Homer Gordon, Bart.\n\n1914\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE\n\nThis volume, as indicated by the title, is designed to show the way to the\nbeginner, to satisfy and more especially to excite his initial\ncuriosity. It affords an adequate idea of the march of facts and of\nideas. The reader is led, somewhat rapidly, from the remote origins to the\nmost recent efforts of the human mind.\n\nIt should be a convenient repertory to which the mind may revert in order\nto see broadly the general opinion of an epoch--and what connected it with\nthose that followed or preceded it. It aims above all at being _a\nframe_ in which can conveniently be inscribed, in the course of further\nstudies, new conceptions more detailed and more thoroughly examined.\n\nIt will have fulfilled its design should it incite to research and\nmeditation, and if it prepares for them correctly.\n\nE. FAGUET.\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\nPART I\nANTIQUITY\n\n\nCHAPTER I\nBEFORE SOCRATES\n\nPhilosophical Interpreters of the Universe,\nof the Creation and Constitution of the World.\n\n\nCHAPTER II\nTHE SOPHISTS\n\nLogicians and Professors of Logic,\nand of the Analysis of Ideas, and of Discussion.\n\n\nCHAPTER III\nSOCRATES\n\nPhilosophy Entirely Reduced to Morality, and Morality\nConsidered as the End of all Intellectual Activity.\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\nPLATO\n\nPlato, like Socrates, is Pre-eminently a Moralist, but\nhe Reverts to General Consideration of the Universe,\nand Deals with Politics and Legislation.\n\n\nCHAPTER V\nARISTOTLE\n\nA Man of Encyclopaedic Learning; as Philosopher,\nmore especially Moralist and Logician.\n\n\nCHAPTER VI\nVARIOUS SCHOOLS\n\nThe Development in Various Schools of the General\nIdeas of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.\n\n\nCHAPTER VII\nEPICUREANISM\n\nEpicureanism Believes that the Duty of Man is to\nseek Happiness, and that Happiness Consists in Wisdom.\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII\nSTOICISM\n\nThe Passions are Diseases which can and must be Extirpated.\n\n\nCHAPTER IX\nECLECTICS AND SCEPTICS\n\nPhilosophers who Wished to Belong to No School.\nPhilosophers who Decried All Schools and All Doctrines.\n\n\nCHAPTER X\nNEOPLATONISM\n\nReversion to Metaphysics. Imaginative Metaphysicians\nafter the Manner of Plato, but in Excess.\n\n\nCHAPTER XI\nCHRISTIANITY\n\nPhilosophic Ideas which Christianity Welcomed, Adopted, or Created;\nHow it must Give a Fresh Aspect to All Philosophy,\neven that Foreign to Itself.\n\n\n\nPART II\nIN THE MIDDLE AGES\n\n\nCHAPTER I\nFROM THE FIFTH CENTURY TO THE THIRTEENTH\n\nPhilosophy is only an Interpreter of Dogma. When it is Declared Contrary to\nDogma by the Authority of Religion, it is a Heresy. Orthodox and Heterodox\nInterpretations. Some Independent Philosophers.\n\n\nCHAPTER II\nTHE THIRTEENTH CENTURY\n\nInfluence of Aristotle. His Adoption by the Church.\nReligious Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas.\n\n\nCHAPTER III\nTHE FOURTEENTH AND FIFTEENTH CENTURIES\n\nDecadence of Scholasticism. Forebodings of the Coming Era.\nGreat Moralists. The Kabbala. Sorcery.\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\nTHE SIXTEENTH CENTURY\n\nIt Is Fairly Accurate to Consider that from the Point of View\nof Philosophy, the Middle Ages Lasted until Descartes.\nFree-thinkers More or Less Disguised.\nPartisans of Reason Apart from Faith, of Observation, and of Experiment.\n\n\n\nPART III\nMODERN TIMES\n\n\nCHAPTER I\nTHE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY\n\nDescartes. Cartesianism.\n\n\nCHAPTER II\nCARTESIANS\n\nAll the Seventeenth Century was under the Influence of Descartes.\nPort-Royal, Bossuet, Fenelon, Malebranche, Spinoza, Leibnitz.\n\n\nCHAPTER III\nTHE ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.\n\nLocke: His Ideas on Human Liberty, Morality,\nGeneral Politics, and Religious Politics.\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\nTHE ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS OF THE EIGHTEENTH\nCENTURY\n\nBerkeley: A Highly Idealist Philosophy\nwhich Regarded Matter as Non-existent.\nDavid Hume: Sceptical Philosophy.\nThe Scottish School: Philosophy of Common Sense.\n\n\nCHAPTER V\nTHE FRENCH PHILOSOPHERS OF THE EIGHTEENTH\nCENTURY\n\nVoltaire a Disciple of Locke.\nRousseau a Free-thinking Christian, but deeply Imbued\nwith Religious Sentiments.\nDiderot a Capricious Materialist.\nD'Holbach and Helvetius Avowed Materialists.\nCondillac a Philosopher of Sensations.\n\n\nCHAPTER VI\nKANT\n\nKant Reconstructed all Philosophy by Supporting it on Morality.\n\n\nCHAPTER VII\nTHE NINETEENTH CENTURY: GERMANY\n\nThe Great Reconstructors of the World,\nAnalogous to the First Philosophers of Antiquity.\nGreat General Systems, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, etc.\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII\nTHE NINETEENTH CENTURY: ENGLAND\n\nThe Doctrines of Evolution and of Transformism:\nLamarck (French), Darwin, Spencer.\n\n\nCHAPTER IX\nTHE NINETEENTH CENTURY: FRANCE\n\nThe Eclectic School: Victor Cousin.\nThe Positivist School: Auguste Comte.\nThe Kantist School: Renouvier.\nIndependent and Complex Positivists: Taine, Renan.\n\n\nINDEX\n\n\n\n\nINITIATION INTO PHILOSOPHY\n\n\n\n\nPART I\n\nANTIQUITY\n\n\n\nCHAPTER I\n\nBEFORE SOCRATES\n\n\nPhilosophical Interpreters of the Universe, of the Creation\nand Constitution of the World.\n\n\nPHILOSOPHY.--The aim of philosophy is to seek the explanation of all\nthings: the quest is for the first _causes_ of everything, and also\n_how_ all things are, and finally _why_, with what design, with a\nview to what, things are. That is why, taking \"principle\" in all the senses\nof the word, it has been called the science of first principles.\n\nPhilosophy has always existed. Religions--all religions--are\nphilosophies. They are indeed the most complete. But, apart from religions,\nmen have sought the causes and principles of everything and endeavoured to\nacquire general ideas. These researches apart from religious dogmas in\npagan antiquity are the only ones with which we are here to be concerned.\n\nTHE IONIAN SCHOOL: THALES.--The Ionian School is the most ancient\nschool of philosophy known. It dates back to the seventh century before\nChrist. Thales of Miletus, a natural philosopher and astronomer, as we\nshould describe him, believed matter--namely, that of which all things and\nall beings are made--to be in perpetual transformation, and that these\ntransformations are produced by powerful beings attached to every portion\nof matter. These powerful beings were gods. Everything, therefore, was full\nof gods. His philosophy was a mythology. He also thought that the\nessential element of matter was water, and that it was water, under the\ninfluence of the gods, which transformed itself into earth, air, and fire,\nwhilst from water, earth, air, and fire came everything that is in nature.\n\nANAXIMANDER; HERACLITUS.--Anaximander of Miletus, an astronomer\nalso, and a geographer, believed that the principle of all things is\n_indeterminate_--a kind of chaos wherein nothing has form or shape;\nthat from chaos come things and beings, and that they return thither in\norder to emerge again. One of his particular theories was that fish were\nthe most ancient of animals, and that all animals had issued from them\nthrough successive transformations. This theory was revived for a while\nabout fifty years ago.\n\nHeraclitus of Ephesus (very obscure, and with this epithet attached\npermanently to his name) saw all things as a perpetual growth--in an\nindefinite state of becoming. Nothing is; all things grow and are destined\nto eternal growth. Behind them, nevertheless, there is an eternal master\nwho does not change. It is our duty to resemble him as much as we can; that\nis to say, as much as an ape can resemble a man. Calmness is imperative: to\nbe as motionless as transient beings can. The popular legend runs that\nHeraclitus \"always wept\"; what is known of him only tends to prove that he\nwas grave, and did not favour emotionalism.\n\nANAXAGORAS; EMPEDOCLES.--Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, above all else a\nnatural philosopher, settled at Athens about 470 B.C.; was the master and\nfriend of Pericles; was on the point of being put to death, as Socrates was\nlater on, for the crime of indifference towards the religion of the\nAthenians, and had to take refuge at Lampsacus, where he died. Like\nAnaximander, he believed that everything emerged from something\nindeterminate and confused; but he added that what caused the emergence\nfrom that state was the organizing intelligence, the Mind, just as in man,\nit is the intelligence which draws thought from cerebral undulations, and\nforms a clear idea out of a confused idea. Anaxagoras exerted an almost\nincomparable influence over Greek philosophy of the classical times.\n\nEmpedocles of Agrigentum, a sort of magician and high-priest, almost a\ndeity, whose life and death are but little known, appears to have possessed\nan encyclopaedic brain. From him is derived the doctrine of the four\nelements, for whereas the philosophers who preceded him gave as the sole\nsource of things--some water, others air, others fire, others the earth, he\nregarded them all four equally as the primal elements of everything. He\nbelieved that the world is swayed by two contrary forces--love and hate,\nthe one desiring eternally to unite, the other eternally to\ndisintegrate. Amid this struggle goes on a movement of organization,\nincessantly retarded by hate, perpetually facilitated by love; and from\nthis movement have issued--first, vegetation, then the lower animals, then\nthe higher animals, then men. In Empedocles can be found either evident\ntraces of the religion of Zoroaster of Persia (the perpetual antagonism of\ntwo great gods, that of good and that of evil), or else a curious\ncoincidence with this doctrine, which will appear again later among the\nManicheans.\n\nPYTHAGORAS.--Pythagoras appears to have been born about B.C. 500 on\nthe Isle of Elea, to have travelled much, and to have finally settled in\nGreater Greece (southern Italy). Pythagoras, like Empedocles, was a sort\nof magician or god. His doctrine was a religion, the respect with which he\nwas surrounded was a cult, the observances he imposed on his family and on\nhis disciples were rites. What he taught was that the true realities, which\ndo not change, were numbers. The fundamental and supreme reality is\n_one_; the being who is one is God; from this number, which is one,\nare derived all the other numbers which are the foundation of beings, their\ninward cause, their essence; we are all more or less perfect numbers; each\ncreated thing is a more or less perfect number. The world, governed thus by\ncombinations of numbers, has always existed and will always exist. It\ndevelops itself, however, according to a numerical series of which we do\nnot possess the key, but which we can guess. As for human destiny it is\nthis: we have been animated beings, human or animal; according as we have\nlived well or ill we shall be reincarnated either as superior men or as\nanimals more or less inferior. This is the doctrine of _metempsychosis_,\nwhich had many adherents in ancient days, and also in a more or less\nfanciful fashion in modern times.\n\nTo Pythagoras have been attributed a certain number of maxims which are\ncalled the _Golden Verses_.\n\nXENOPHANES; PARMENIDES.--Xenophanes of Colophon is also a\n\"unitarian.\" He accepts only one God, and of all the ancient philosophers\nappears to be the most opposed to mythology, to belief in a multiplicity of\ngods resembling men, a doctrine which he despises as being immoral. There\nis one God, eternal, immutable, immovable, who has no need to transfer\nHimself from one locality to another, who is _without place_, and who\ngoverns all things by His thought alone.\n\nAdvancing further, Parmenides told himself that if He alone really exists\nwho is one and eternal and unchangeable, all else is not only inferior to\nHim, but is only a _semblance_, and that mankind, earth, sky, plants,\nand animals are only a vast illusion--phantoms, a mirage, which would\ndisappear, which would no longer exist, and _would never have existed_\nif we could perceive the Self-existent.\n\nZENO; DEMOCRITUS.--Zeno of Elea, who must be mentioned more\nespecially because he was the master of that Gorgias of whom Socrates was\nthe adversary, was pre-eminently a subtle dialectician in whom the sophist\nalready made his appearance, and who embarrassed the Athenians by captious\narguments, at the bottom of which always could be found this fundamental\nprinciple: apart from the Eternal Being all is only semblance; apart from\nHim who is all, all is nothing.\n\nDemocritus of Abdera, disciple of Leucippus of Abdera (about whom nothing\nis known), is the inventor of the theory of atoms. Matter is composed of an\ninfinite number of tiny indivisible bodies which are called atoms; these\natoms from all eternity, or at least since the commencement of matter, have\nbeen endued with certain movements by which they attach themselves to one\nanother, and agglomerate or separate, and thence is caused the formation of\nall things, and the destruction, which is only the disintegration, of all\nthings. The soul itself is only an aggregation of specially tenuous and\nsubtle atoms. It is probable that when a certain number of these atoms quit\nthe body, sleep ensues; that when nearly all depart, it causes the\nappearance of death (lethargy, catalepsy); that when they all depart, death\noccurs. We are brought into relation with the external world by the advent\nin us of extremely subtle atoms--reflections of things, semblances of\nthings--which enter and mingle with the constituent atoms of our\nsouls. There is nothing in our intelligence which has not been brought\nthere by our senses, and our intelligence is only the combination of the\natoms composing our souls with the atoms that external matter sends, so to\nspeak, into our souls. The doctrines of Democritus will be found again in\nthose of Epicurus and Lucretius.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\n\nTHE SOPHISTS\n\n\nLogicians and Professors of Logic, and of the Analysis of\nIdeas, and of Discussion.\n\n\nDOCTRINES OF THE SOPHISTS.--The Sophists descend from Parmenides and\nZeno of Elea; Gorgias was the disciple of the latter. By dint of thinking\nthat all is semblance save the Supreme Being, who alone is real, it is very\neasy to arrive at belief in all being semblance, including that Being; or\nat least what is almost tantamount, that all is semblance, inclusive of any\nidea we can possibly conceive of the Supreme Being. To believe nothing, and\nto demonstrate that there is no reason to believe in anything, is the\ncardinal principle of all the Sophists. Then, it may be suggested, there is\nnothing for it but to be silent. No, there is the cultivation of one's\nmind (the only thing of the existence of which we are sure), so as to give\nit ability, readiness, and strength. With what object? To become a\ndexterous thinker, which in itself is a fine thing; to be also a man of\nconsideration, listened to in one's city, and to arrive at its government.\n\nThe Sophists accordingly gave lessons, especially in psychology,\ndialectics, and eloquence. They further taught philosophy, but in order to\ndemonstrate that all philosophy is false; and, as Pascal observed later,\nthat to ridicule philosophy is truly philosophical. They seem to have been\nextremely intellectual, very learned, and most serious despite their\nscepticism, and to have rendered Greece the very great service of making a\npenetrating analysis--the first recorded--of our faculty of knowledge and\nof the limitations, real, possible, or probable, of that faculty.\n\nPROTAGORAS; GORGIAS; PRODICUS.--They were very numerous, the taste\nfor their art, which might be called philosophical criticism, being\nwidespread in Attica. It may be believed, as Plato maintains, that some\nwere of very mediocre capacity, and this is natural; but there were also\nsome who clearly were eminent authorities. The most illustrious were\nProtagoras, Gorgias, and Prodicus of Ceos. Protagoras seems to have been\nthe most philosophical of them all, Gorgias the best orator and the chief\nprofessor of rhetoric, Prodicus the most eminent moralist and poet.\nProtagoras rejected all metaphysics--that is, all investigation of first\ncauses and of the universe--and reduced all philosophy to the science of\nself-control with a view to happiness, and control of others with a view to\ntheir happiness. Like Anaxagoras, he was banished from the city under the\ncharge of impiety, and his books were publicly burnt.\n\nGorgias appears to have maintained the same ideas with more moderation and\nalso with less profundity. He claimed, above all, to be able to make a good\norator. According to Plato, it was he whom Socrates most persistently made\nthe butt of his sarcasms.\n\nProdicus, whom Plato himself esteemed, appears to have been principally\npreoccupied with the moral problem. He was the author of the famous\napologue which represented Hercules having to choose between two paths, the\none being that of virtue, the other of pleasure. Like Socrates later on, he\ntoo was subject to the terrible accusation of impiety, and underwent\ncapital punishment. The Sophists furnish the most important epoch in the\nhistory of ancient philosophy; until their advent the philosophic systems\nwere great poems on the total of all things, known and unknown. The\nSophists opposed these ambitious and precipitate generalizations, in which\nimagination had the larger share, and their discovery was to bring\nphilosophy back to its true starting point by affirming that the first\nthing to do, and that before all else, was to know our own mind and its\nmechanism. Their error possibly was, while saying that it was the first\nthing to do, too often to affirm that it was the only thing to do; still\nthe fact remains that they were perfectly accurate in their assurance that\nit was primary.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III\n\nSOCRATES\n\n\nPhilosophy Entirely Reduced to Morality, and Morality\nConsidered as the End of all Intellectual Activity.\n\n\nTHE PHILOSOPHY OF SOCRATES.--Of Socrates nothing is known except\nthat he was born at Athens, that he held many public discussions with all\nand sundry in the streets of Athens, and that he died under the Thirty\nTyrants. Of his ideas we know nothing, because he wrote nothing, and\nbecause his disciples were far too intelligent; in consequence of which it\nis impossible to know if what they said was thought by him, had really been\nhis ideas or theirs. What seems certain is that neither Aristophanes nor\nthe judges at the trial of Socrates were completely deceived in considering\nhim a Sophist; for he proceeded from them. It is true he proceeded from\nthem by reaction, because evidently their universal scepticism had\nterrified him; but nevertheless he was their direct outcome, for like them\nhe was extremely mistrustful of the old vast systems of philosophy, and to\nthose men who pretended to know everything he opposed a phrase which is\nprobably authentic: \"I know that I know nothing;\" for, like the Sophists,\nhe wished to recall philosophy to earth from heaven, namely from\nmetaphysics to the study of man, and nothing else; for, like the Sophists,\nhe confined and limited the field with a kind of severe and imperious\nmodesty which was none the less contemptuous of the audacious; for,\nfinally, like the Sophists, but in this highly analogous to many\nphilosophers preceding the Sophists, he had but a very moderate and\nmitigated respect for the religion of his fellow-citizens.\n\nAccording to what we know of Socrates from Xenophon, unquestionably the\nleast imaginative of his disciples, Socrates, like the Sophists, reduced\nphilosophy to the study of man; but his great and incomparable originality\nlay in the fact that whereas the Sophists wished man to study himself in\norder to be happy, Socrates wished him to study himself in order to be\nmoral, honest, and just, without any regard to happiness. For Socrates,\neverything had to tend towards morality, to contribute to it, and to be\nsubordinated to it as the goal and as the final aim. He applied himself\nunceasingly, relates Xenophon, to examine and to determine what is good and\nevil, just and unjust, wise and foolish, brave and cowardly, etc. He\nincessantly applied himself, relates Aristotle--and therein he was as much\na true professor of rhetoric as of morality--thoroughly to define and\ncarefully to specify the meaning of words in order not to be put off with\nvague terms which are illusions of thought, and in order to discipline his\nmind rigorously so as to make it an organ for the ascertainment of truth.\n\nHIS METHOD.--He had dialectical methods, \"the art of conferring,\" as\nMontaigne called it, more or less happy, which he had probably borrowed\nfrom the Sophists, that contributed to cause him to be considered one of\nthem, and exercised a wide vogue long after him. He \"delivered men's\nminds,\" as he himself said--that is, he believed, or affected to believe,\nthat the verities are in a latent state in all minds, and that it needed\nonly patience, dexterity, and skillful investigation to bring them to\nlight. Elsewhere, he _interrogated_ in a captious fashion in order to\nset the interlocutor in contradiction to himself and to make him confess\nthat he had said what he had not thought he had said, agreed to what he had\nnot believed he had agreed to; and he triumphed maliciously over such\nconfusions. In short, he seems to have been a witty and teasing Franklin,\nand to have taught true wisdom by laughing at everyone. Folk never like to\nbe ridiculed, and no doubt the recollection of these ironies had much to do\nwith the iniquitous judgment which condemned him, and which he seems to\nhave challenged up to the last.\n\nHIS INFLUENCE.--His influence was infinite. It is from him that\nmorality became the end itself, the last and supreme end of all\nphilosophy--the reason of philosophy; and, as was observed by Nietzsche,\nthe Circe of philosophers, who enchants them, who dictates to them\nbeforehand, or who modifies their systems in advance by terrifying them as\nto what their systems may contain irreverent towards itself or dangerous in\nrelation to it. From Socrates to Kant and thence onward, morality has been\nthe Circe of philosophers, and morality is, as it were, the spiritual\ndaughter of Socrates. On the other hand, his influence was terrible for the\nreligion of antiquity because it directed the mind towards the idea that\nmorality is the sole object worthy of knowledge, and that the ancient\nreligions were immoral, or of such a dubious morality as to deserve the\ndesertion and scorn of honest men. Christianity fought paganism with the\narguments of the disciples of Socrates--with Socratic arguments; modern\nphilosophies and creeds are all impregnated with Socraticism. When it was\nobserved that the Sophists form the most important epoch in the history of\nancient philosophy, it was because they taught Socrates to seek a\nphilosophy which was entirely human and preoccupied solely with the\nhappiness of man. This led a great mind, and in his track other very great\nminds, to direct all philosophy, and even all human science, towards the\ninvestigation of goodness, goodness being regarded as the condition of\nhappiness.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\nPLATO\n\n\nPlato, like Socrates, is Pre-eminently a Moralist,\nbut he reverts to General Consideration of the Universe\nand Deals with Politics and Legislation.\n\n\nPLATO A DISCIPLE OF SOCRATES.--Plato, like Xenophon, was a pupil of\nSocrates, but Xenophon only wanted to be the clerk of Socrates; and Plato,\nas an enthusiastic disciple, was at the same time very faithful and very\nunfaithful to Socrates. He was a faithful disciple to Socrates in never\nfailing to place morality in the foremost rank of all philosophical\nconsiderations; in that he never varied. He was an unfaithful disciple to\nSocrates in that, imaginative and an admirable poet, he bore back\nphilosophy from earth to heaven; he did not forbid himself--quite the\ncontrary--to pile up great systems about all things and to envelop the\nuniverse in his vast and daring conceptions. He invincibly established\nmorality, the science of virtue, as the final goal of human knowledge, in\nhis brilliant and charming _Socratic Dialogues_; he formed great\nsystems in all the works in which he introduces himself as speaking in his\nown name. He was very learned, and acquainted with everything that had been\nwritten by all the philosophers before Socrates, particularly Heraclitus,\nPythagoras, Parmenides, and Anaxagoras. He reconsidered all their teaching,\nand he himself brought to consideration a force and a wealth of mind such\nas appear to have had no parallel in the world.\n\nTHE \"IDEAS.\"--Seeking, in his turn, what are the first causes of all\nand what is eternally real behind the simulations of this transient world,\nhe believed in a single God, as had many before him; but in the bosom of\nthis God, so to speak, he placed, he seemed to see, _Ideas_--that is\nto say, eternal types of all things which in this world are variable,\ntransient, and perishable. What he effected by such novel, original, and\npowerful imagination is clear. He replaced the Olympus of the populace by a\nspiritual Olympus; the material mythology by an idealistic mythology;\npolytheism by polyideism, if it may be so expressed--the gods by\ntypes. Behind every phenomenon, stream, forest, mountain, the Greeks\nperceived a deity, a material being like themselves, more powerful than\nthemselves. Behind every phenomenon, behind every thought as well, every\nfeeling, every institution--behind _everything, no matter what it be_,\nPlato perceived an idea, immortal, eternal, indestructible, and\nincorruptible, which existed in the bosom of the Eternal, and of which all\nthat comes under our observation is only the vacillating and troubled\nreflection, and which supports, animates, and for a time preserves\neverything that we can perceive. Hence, all philosophy consists in having\nsome knowledge of these Ideas. How is it possible to attain such knowledge?\nBy raising the mind from the particular to the general; by distinguishing\nin each thing what is its permanent foundation, what it contains that is\nleast changing, least variable, least circumstantial. For example, a man is\na very complex being; he has countless feelings, countless diversified\nideas, countless methods of conduct and existence. What is his permanent\nfoundation? It is his conscience, which does not vary, undergoes no\ntransformation, always obstinately repeats the same thing; the foundation\nof man, the eternal idea of which every man on earth is here the\nreflection, is the consciousness of good; man is an incarnation on earth of\nthat part of God which is the will for good; according as he diverges from\nor approaches more nearly to this will, is he less or more man.\n\nTHE PLATONIC DIALECTIC AND MORALITY.--This method of raising oneself\nto the ideas is what Plato termed dialectic--that is to say, the art of\ndiscernment. Dialectic differentiates between the fundamental and the\nsuperficial, the permanent and the transient, the indestructible and the\ndestructible. This is the supreme philosophic method which contains all the\nothers and to which all the others are reduced. Upon this metaphysic and by\nthe aid of this dialectic, Plato constructed an extremely pure system of\nmorality which was simply an _Imitation of God_ (as, later on, came\nthe Imitation of Jesus Christ). The whole duty of man was to be as like\nGod as he could. In God exist the ideas of truth, goodness, beauty,\ngreatness, power, etc.; man ought to aim at relatively realizing those\nideas which God absolutely realizes. God is just, or justice lies in the\nbosom of God, which is the same thing; man cannot be the just one, but he\ncan be a just man, and there is the whole matter; for justice comprises\neverything, or, to express it differently, is the characteristic common to\nall which is valuable. Justice is goodness, justice is beautiful, justice\nis true; justice is great, because it reduces all particular cases to one\ngeneral principle; justice is powerful, being the force which maintains,\nopposed to the force which destroys; justice is eternal and invariable. To\nbe just in all the meanings of the word is the duty of man and his proper\ngoal.\n\nTHE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL.--Plato shows marked reserve as to the\nimmortality of the soul and as to rewards and penalties beyond the\ngrave. He is neither in opposition nor formally favourable. We feel that he\nwishes to believe in it rather than that he is sure about it. He says that\n\"it is a fine wager to make\"; which means that even should we lose, it is\nbetter to believe in this possible gain than to disbelieve. Further, it is\nlegitimate to conclude--both from certain passages in the _Laws_ and\nfrom the beautiful theory of Plato on the punishment which is an expiation,\nand on the expiation which is medicinal to the soul and consequently highly\ndesirable--that Plato often inclined strongly towards the doctrine of\nposthumous penalties and rewards, which presupposes the immortality of the\nsoul.\n\nPLATONIC LOVE.--Platonic love, about which there has been so much\ntalk and on which, consequently, we must say a word, at least to define it,\nis one of the applications of his moral system. As in the case of all other\nthings, the idea of love is in God. There it exists in absolute purity,\nwithout any mixture of the idea of pleasure, since pleasure is essentially\nephemeral and perishable. Love in God consists simply in the impassioned\ncontemplation of beauty (physical and moral); we shall resemble God if we\nlove beauty precisely in this way, without excitement or agitation of the\nsenses.\n\nPOLITICS.--One of the originalities in Plato is that he busies\nhimself with politics--that is, that he makes politics a part of\nphilosophy, which had barely been thought of before him (I say\n_barely_, because Pythagoras was a legislator), but which has ever\nsince been taken into consideration. Plato is aristocratic, no doubt\nbecause his thought is generally such, independently of circumstances,\nalso, perhaps, because he attributed the great misfortunes of his country\nwhich he witnessed to the Athenian democracy; then yet again, perhaps,\nbecause that Athenian democracy had been violently hostile and sometimes\ncruel to philosophers, and more especially to his own master. According to\nPlato, just as man has three souls, or if it be preferred, three centres of\nactivity, which govern him--intelligence in the head, courage in the heart,\nand appetite in the bowels--even so the city is composed of three classes:\nwise and learned men at the top, the warriors below, and the artisans and\nslaves lower still. The wise men will govern: accordingly the nations will\nnever be happy save when philosophers are kings, or when kings are\nphilosophers. The warriors will fight to defend the city, never as\naggressors. They will form a caste--poor, stern to itself, and\nredoubtable. They will have no individual possessions; everything will be\nin common, houses, furniture, weapons, wives even, and children. The\npeople, finally, living in strict equality, either by equal partition of\nland, or on land cultivated in common, will be strictly maintained in\nprobity, honesty, austerity, morality, sobriety, and submissiveness. All\narts, except military music and war dances, will be eliminated from the\ncity. She needs neither poets nor painters not yet musicians, who corrupt\nmorals by softening them, and by making all feel the secret pang of\nvoluptuousness. All theories, whether aristocratic or tending more or less\nto communism, are derived from the politics of Plato either by being\nevolved from them or by harking back to them.\n\nTHE MASTER OF THE IDEALISTIC PHILOSOPHY.--Plato is for all thinkers,\neven for his opponents, the greatest name in human philosophy. He is the\nsupreme authority of the idealistic philosophy--that is, of all philosophy\nwhich believes that ideas govern the world, and that the world is\nprogressing towards a perfection which is somewhere and which directs and\nattracts it. For those even who are not of his school, Plato is the most\nprodigious of all the thinkers who have united psychological wisdom,\ndialectical strength, the power of abstraction and creative imagination,\nwhich last in him attains to the marvellous.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V\n\nARISTOTLE\n\n\nA Man of Encyclopedic Learning; as Philosopher,\nmore especially Moralist and Logician.\n\n\nARISTOTLE, PUPIL OF PLATO.--Aristotle of Stagira was a pupil of\nPlato, and he remembered it, as the best pupils do as a rule, in order to\noppose him. For some years he was tutor to Alexander, son of Philip, the\nfuture Alexander the Great. He taught long at Athens. After the death of\nAlexander, being the target in his turn of the eternal accusation of\nimpiety, he was forced to retire to Chalcis, where he died. Aristotle is,\nbefore all else, a learned man. He desired to embrace the whole of the\nknowledge of his time, which was then possible by dint of prodigious\neffort, and he succeeded. His works, countless in number, are the record of\nhis knowledge. They are the _summa_ of all the sciences of his\nepoch. Here we have only to occupy ourselves with his more especially\nphilosophical ideas. To Aristotle, as to Plato, but more precisely, man is\ncomposed of soul and body. The body is composed of organs, a well-made\npiece of mechanism; the soul is its final purpose; the body, so to speak,\nresults in the soul, but, in turn, the soul acts on the body, and is in it\nnot its end but its means of acting upon things, and the whole forms a full\nand continuous harmony. The faculties of the soul are its divers aspects,\nand its divers methods of acting; for the soul is one and\nindivisible. Reason is the soul considered as being able to conceive what\nis most general, and in consequence it forms within us an intermediary\nbetween ourselves and God. God is unique; He is eternal; from all eternity\nHe has given motion to matter. He is purely spiritual, but all is material\nsave Him, and He has not, as Plato would have it, _ideas_--immaterial\nliving personifications--residing in His bosom. Here may be perceived, in a\ncertain sense, progress, from Plato to Aristotle, towards monotheism; the\nOlympus of ideas in Plato was still a polytheism, a spiritual polytheism\ncertainly, yet none the less a polytheism; there is no longer any\npolytheism at all in Aristotle.\n\nHIS THEORIES OF MORALS AND POLITICS.--The moral system of Aristotle\nsometimes approaches that of Plato, as when he deems that the supreme\nhappiness is the supreme good, and that the supreme good is the\ncontemplation of thought by thought--thought being self-sufficing; which is\napproximately the imitation of God which Plato recommended. Sometimes, on\nthe contrary, it is very practical and almost mediocre, as when he makes it\nconsist of a mean between the extremes, a just measure, a certain tact, art\nrather than science, and practical science rather than conscience, which\nwill know how to distinguish which are the practices suitable for an honest\nand a well-born man. It is only just to add that in detail and when after\nall deductions he describes the just man, he invites us to contemplate\nvirtues which if not sublime are none the less remarkably lofty.\n\nHis very confused political philosophy (the volume containing it, according\nto all appearance, having been composed, after his death, of passages and\nfragments and different portions of his lectures) is specially a review of\nthe divergent political constitutions which existed throughout the Greek\nworld. The tendencies, for there are no conclusions, are still very\naristocratic, but less radically aristocratic than those of Plato.\n\nTHE AUTHORITY OF ARISTOTLE.--Aristotle, by reason of his\nuniversality, also because he is clearer than his master, and again because\nhe dogmatises--not always, but very frequently--instead of discussing and\ncollating, had throughout both antiquity and the Middle Ages an authority\ngreater than that of Plato, an authority which became (except on matters of\nfaith) despotic and well-nigh sacrosanct. Since the sixteenth century he\nhas been relegated to his due rank--one which is still very distinguished,\nand he has been regarded as among the geniuses of the widest range, if not\nof the greatest power, that have appeared among men; even now he is very\nfar from having lost his importance. For some he is a transition between\nthe Greek genius--extremely subtle, but always poetic and always somewhat\noriental--and the Roman genius: more positive, more bald, more practical,\nmore attached to reality and to pure science.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI\n\nVARIOUS SCHOOLS\n\n\nThe Development in Various Schools of the General Ideas\nof Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.\n\n\nTHE SCHOOL OF PLATO; THEOPHRASTUS.--The school of Plato (not\nregarding Aristotle as belonging entirely to that school) was continued by\nSpeusippus, Polemo, Xenocrates, Crates, and Crantor. Owing to a retrograde\nmovement, widely different from that of Aristotle, it dabbled in the\nPythagorean ideas, with which Plato was acquainted and which he often\nappreciated, but not blindly, and to which he never confined himself.\n\nThe most brilliant pupil of Aristotle was Theophrastus, naturalist,\nbotanist, and moralist. His great claim to fame among posterity, which\nknows nothing of him but this, is the small volume of _Characters_,\nwhich served as a model for La Bruyere, and before him to the comic poets\nof antiquity, and which is full of wit and flavour, and--to make use of a\nmodern word exactly applicable to this ancient work--\"humour.\"\n\nSCHOOLS OF MEGARA AND OF ELIS.--We may just mention the very\ncelebrated schools which, owing to lack of texts, are unknown to us--that\nof Megara, which was called the Eristic or \"wrangling\" school, so marked\nwas its predilection for polemics; and that of Elis, which appears to have\nbeen well versed in the sophistic methods of Zeno of Elea and of Gorgias.\n\nTHE CYNIC SCHOOL; ANTISTHENES; DIOGENES.--Much more important is the\nCynic school, because a school, which was nothing less than Stoicism\nitself, emanated or appeared to emanate from it. As often happens, the\nvague commencements of Stoicism bore a close resemblance to its end. The\nStoics of the last centuries of antiquity were a sort of mendicant friars,\nill-clothed, ill-fed, of neglected appearance, despising all the comforts\nof life; the Cynics at the time of Alexander were much the same, professing\nthat happiness is the possession of all good things, and that the only way\nto possess all things is to know how to do without them. It was\nAntisthenes who founded this school, or rather this order. He had been the\npupil of Socrates, and there can be no doubt that his sole idea was to\nimitate Socrates by exaggeration. Socrates had been poor, had scorned\nwealth, had derided pleasure, and poured contempt on science. The cult of\npoverty, the contempt for pleasures, for honours, for riches, and the\nperfect conviction that any knowledge is perfectly useless to man--that is\nall the teaching of Antisthenes. That can lead far, at least in systematic\nminds. If all is contemptible except individual virtue, it is reversion to\nsavage and solitary existence which is preached: there is no more\ncivilization or society or patriotism. Antisthenes in these ideas was\nsurpassed by his disciples and successors; they were cosmopolitans and\nanarchists. The most illustrious of this school--illustrious especially\nthrough his eccentricity--was Diogenes, who rolled on the ramparts of\nCorinth the tub which served him as a house, lighted his lantern in broad\ndaylight on the pretext of \"searching for a man,\" called himself a citizen\nof the world, was accused of being banished from Sinope by his\nfellow-countrymen and replied, \"It was I who condemned them to remain,\" and\nsaid to Alexander, who asked him what he could do for him: \"Get out of my\nsunshine; you are putting me in the shade.\"\n\nCRATES; MENIPPUS; ARISTIPPUS.--Crates of Thebes is also mentioned,\nless insolent and better-mannered, yet also a despiser of the goods of this\nworld; and Menippus, the maker of satires, whom Lucian, much later, made\nthe most diverting interlocutor of his amusing dialogues. In an opposite\ndirection, at the same epoch, Aristippus, a pupil of Socrates, like\nAntisthenes, founded the school of pleasure, and maintained that the sole\nsearch worthy of man was that of happiness, and that it was his duty to\nmake himself happy; that in consequence, it having been sufficiently proved\nand being even self-evident, that happiness cannot come to us from without,\nbut must be sought within ourselves, it is necessary to study to know\nourselves thoroughly (and this was from Socrates) in order to decide what\nare the states of the mind which give us a durable, substantial, and, if\npossible, a permanent happiness. Now the seeker and the finder of\nsubstantial happiness is wisdom, or rather, there is no other wisdom than\nthe art of distinguishing between pleasure and choosing, with a very\nrefined discrimination, those which are genuine. Wisdom further consists in\ndominating misfortunes by the mastery of self so as not to be affected by\nthem, and in dominating also pleasures even whilst enjoying them, so that\nthey may not obtain dominion over us; \"possessing without being possessed\"\nwas one of his mottoes which Horace thus translated: \"I strive to subject\nthings to myself, not myself to things.\" This eminently practical wisdom,\nwhich is only a highly-developed egoism, is that of Horace and Montaigne,\nand was expressed by Voltaire in verses that were sometimes felicitous.\n\nTHE SCHOOL OF CYRENE.--Aristippus had for successor in the direction\nof his school, first his daughter Arete, then his grandson. The\nAristippists, or Cyrenaics (the school being established in Cyrene),\nfrankly despised the gods, regarding them as inventions to frighten women\nand little children. One of them, Euhemerus, invented the theory, which in\npart is false and in part accurate, that the gods are simply heroes, kings,\ngreat men deified after their death by the gratitude or terror of the\npopulace. As often happens, philosophic theories being essentially plastic\nand taking the form of the temperament which receives them, a certain\nCyrenaic (Hegesias) enunciated the doctrine that the supreme happiness of\nman was suicide. In fact, if the object of man is happiness, since life\naffords far fewer joys than sorrows, the philosophy of happiness is to get\nrid of life, and the sole wisdom lies in suicide. It does not appear that\nHegesias gave the only proof of sincere belief in this doctrine which can\nbe given by anyone professing it.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII\n\nEPICUREANISM\n\n\nEpicureanism Believes that the Duty of Man is to Seek\nHappiness, and that Happiness Consists in Wisdom.\n\n\nMORAL PHILOSOPHY.--Continuing to feel the strong impulse which it\nhad received from Socrates, philosophy was now for a long while to be\nalmost exclusively moral philosophy. Only it divided very sharply in two\ndirections. Antisthenes and Aristippus were both pupils of Socrates. From\nAntisthenes came the Cynics; from Aristippus the philosophers of\npleasure. The Cynics gave birth to the Stoics, the philosophers of pleasure\nto the Epicureans, and these two great schools practically divided all\nantiquity between them. We will take the Epicureans first because,\nchronologically, they slightly preceded the Stoics.\n\nEPICURUS.--Epicurus, born at Athens a little after the death of\nPlato, brought up at Samos by his parents who had been forced to expatriate\nthemselves owing to reverses of fortune, returned to Athens about 305 B.C.,\nand there founded a school. Personally he was a true wise man, sober,\nscrupulous, a despiser of pleasure, severe to himself, _in practice_ a\nStoic. As his general view of the universe, he taught approximately the\ndoctrine of Democritus: the world is composed of a multitude of atoms,\nendowed with certain movements, which attach themselves to one another and\ncombine together, and there is nothing else in the world. Is there not a\nfirst cause, a being who set all these atoms in motion--in short, a God?\nEpicurus did not think so. Are there gods, as the vulgar believe? Epicurus\nbelieved so; but he considered that the gods are brilliant, superior, happy\ncreatures, who do not trouble about this world, do not interfere with it,\nand are even less occupied, were it possible, with mankind. Also they did\nnot create the world, for why should they have created it? From goodness,\nsaid Plato; but there is so much evil in the world that if they created it\nfrom goodness, they were mistaken and must be fools; and if they willingly\npermitted evil, they are wicked; and therefore it is charitable towards\nthem to believe that they did not create it.\n\nEPICUREAN MORALITY.--From the ethical point of view, Epicurus\ncertainly attaches himself to Aristippus; but with the difference that lies\nbetween pleasure and happiness. Aristippus taught that the aim of life was\nintelligent pleasure, Epicurus declared that the aim of life was\nhappiness. Now, does happiness consist in pleasures, or does it exclude\nthem? Epicurus was quite convinced that it excluded them. Like Lord\nBeaconsfield, he would say, \"Life would be almost bearable, were it not for\nits pleasures.\" Happiness for Epicurus lay in \"phlegm,\" as Philinte would\nput it; it lay in the calm of the mind that has rendered itself\ninaccessible to every emotion of passion, which is never irritated, never\nmoved, never annoyed, never desires, and never fears. Why, for instance,\nshould we dread death? So long as we fear it, it is not here; when it\narrives, we shall no longer fear it; then, why is it an evil?--But, during\nlife itself, how about sufferings?--We greatly increase our sufferings by\ncomplaints and by self-commiseration. If we acted in the reverse way, if\nwhen we were tortured by them we recalled past pleasures and thought of\npleasures to come, they would be infinitely mitigated.--But, of what\npleasures can a man speak who makes happiness consist in the exclusion of\npleasures? The pleasures of the wise man are the satisfaction he feels in\nassuring himself of his own happiness. He finds pleasure when he controls a\npassion in order to revert to calmness; he feels pleasure when he converses\nwith his friends about the nature of true happiness; he feels pleasure when\nhe has diverted a youth from passionate follies or from despair, and\nbrought him back to peace of mind, etc.--But what about sufferings after\ndeath? They do not exist. There is no hell because there is no immortality\nof the soul. The soul is as material as the body, and dies with it.\n\nYou will say, perhaps, that this very severe and austere morality more\nnearly approaches to Stoicism than to the teaching of Aristippus. This is\nso true that when Horace confessed with a smile that he returned to the\nmorality of pleasure, he did not say, as we should, \"I feel that I am\nbecoming an Epicurean,\" he said, \"I fall back on the precepts of\nAristippus;\" and Seneca, a professed Stoic, cites Epicurus almost as often\nas Zeno in his lessons. It may not be quite accurate to state, but there\nwould not be much exaggeration in affirming, that Epicureanism is a smiling\nStoicism and Stoicism a gloomy Epicureanism. In the current use of the word\nwe have changed the meaning of Epicurean to make it mean \"addicted to\npleasure.\" The warning must be given that there is no more grievous error.\n\nTHE VOGUE OF EPICUREANISM.--Epicureanism had an immense vogue in\nantiquity. The principal professors of it at Athens were Metrodorus,\nHermarchus, Polystratus, and Apollodorus. Penetrating to Italy Epicureanism\nfound its most brilliant representative in Lucretius, who of the system\nmade a poem--the admirable _De Natura Rerum_; there were also\nAtticus, Horace, Pliny the younger, and many more. It even became a\npolitical opinion: the Caesarians were Epicureans, the Republicans\nStoics. On the appearance of Christianity Epicureanism came into direct\nopposition with it, and so did Stoicism also; but in a far less degree. In\nmodern times, as will be seen, Epicureanism has enjoyed a revival.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII\n\nSTOICISM\n\n\nThe Passions are Diseases which can and must be Extirpated.\n\n\nTHE LOGIC OF STOICISM.--Stoicism existed as a germ in the Cynic\nphilosophy (and also in Socrates) as did Epicureanism in Aristippus. Zeno\nwas the pupil of Crates. In extreme youth he opened a school at Athens in\nthe Poecile. The Poecile was a portico; portico in Greek is _stoa_,\nhence the name of Stoic. Zeno taught for about thirty years; then, on the\napproach of age, he died by his own hand. Zeno thought, as did Epicurus and\nSocrates, that philosophy should only be the science of life and that the\nscience of life lay in wisdom. Wisdom consists in thinking justly and\nacting rightly; but to think justly only in order to act rightly--which is\nquite in the spirit of Socrates, and eliminates all the science of\nresearch, all consideration of the constitution of the world as well as the\ntotal and even the details of matter. Therein is Stoicism more narrow than\nEpicureanism.\n\nIn consequence, man needs clear, precise, and severe \"logic\" (the Stoics\nwere the first to use this word). Armed with this weapon, and only\nemploying it for self-knowledge and self-control, man makes himself\nwise. The \"wise man\" of the Stoic is a kind of saint--a superman, as it has\nsince been called--very analogous to his God. All his efforts are\nconcentrated on safeguarding, conquering, and suppressing his passions,\nwhich are nothing save \"diseases of the soul.\" In the external world he\ndisregards all the \"things of chance\"--everything, that is, that does not\ndepend on human will--and considers them as non-existent: the ailments of\nthe body, pangs, sufferings, misfortunes, and humiliations are not evils,\nthey are things indifferent. On the contrary, crimes and errors are such\nevils that they are _equally_ execrable, and the wise man should\nreproach himself as severely for the slightest fault as for the greatest\ncrime--a paradoxical doctrine which has aroused the warmth of even\nrespectful opponents of Stoicism, notably Cicero.\n\nMAXIMS OF THE STOICS.--Their most frequently repeated maxim is\n\"abstain and endure\"; abstain from all evil, suffer all aggression and\nso-called misfortune without rebelling or complaining. Another precept\nwidely propagated among them and by them, \"Live according to nature,\"\nremarkably resembles an Epicurean maxim. This must be made clear. This\nprecept as they interpreted it meant: adhere freely and respectfully to the\nlaws of the universe. The world is a God who lives according to the laws He\nHimself made, and of which we are not judges. These laws surround us and\ncompel us; sometimes they wound us. We must respect and obey them, have a\nsort of pious desire that they should operate even against ourselves, and\nlive in reverent conformity with them. Thus understood, the \"life in\nconformity with nature\" is nothing else than an aspect of the maxim,\n\"Endure.\"\n\nPRINCIPAL STOICS.--The principal adepts and masters of Stoicism with\nand after Zeno were Cleanthes, Chrysippus, Aristo, and Herillus in Greece;\nat Rome, Cato, Brutus, Cicero to a certain degree, Thrasea, Epictetus\n(withal a Greek, who wrote in Greek), Seneca, and finally the Emperor\nMarcus Aurelius. Stoicism rapidly developed into a religion, having its\nrites, obediences, ascetic practices, directors of conscience, examination\nof conscience, and its adepts with a traditional dress, long cloak, and\nlong beard. It exerted considerable influence, comparable (comparable\nonly) to Christianity, but it penetrated only the upper and middle classes\nof society in antiquity without descending, or barely descending, to the\nmasses. Like Epicureanism, Stoicism had a renaissance in modern times in\nopposition to Christianity; this will be dealt with later.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IX\n\nECLECTICS AND SCEPTICS\n\n\nPhilosophers who Wished to Belong to No School\nPhilosophers who Decried All Schools and All Doctrines.\n\n\nTHE TWO TENDENCIES.--As might be expected to happen, and as always\nhappens, the multiplicity of sects brought about two tendencies, one\nconsisting in selecting somewhat arbitrarily from each sect what one found\nbest in it, which is called \"eclecticism,\" the other in thinking that no\nschool grasped the truth, that the truth is not to be grasped, which is\ncalled \"scepticism.\"\n\nTHE ECLECTICS: PLUTARCH.--The Eclectics, who did not form a school,\nwhich would have been difficult in the spirit in which they acted, had only\nthis in common, that they venerated the great thinkers of ancient Greece,\nand that they felt or endeavoured to feel respect and toleration for all\nreligions. They venerated Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Zeno,\nMoses, Jesus, St. Paul, and loved to imagine that they were each a partial\nrevelation of the great divine thought, and they endeavoured to reconcile\nthese divergent revelations by proceeding on broad lines and general\nconsiderations. Among them were Moderatus, Nicomachus, Nemesius, etc. The\nmost illustrious, without being the most profound--though his literary\ntalent has always kept him prominent--was Plutarch. His chief effort, since\nthen often renewed, was to reconcile reason and faith (I am writing of the\npolytheistic faith). Perceiving in mythology ingenious allegories, he\nshowed that under the name of allegories covering and containing profound\nideas, all polytheism could be accepted by the reason of a Platonist, an\nAristotelian, or a Stoic. The Eclectics had not much influence, and only\npleased two sorts of minds: those who preferred knowledge rather than\nconviction, and found in Eclecticism an agreeable variety of points of\nview; and those who liked to believe a little in everything, and possessing\nreceptive but not steadfast minds were not far from sceptics and who might\nbe called affirmative sceptics in opposition to the negative sceptics:\nsceptics who say, \"Heavens, yes,\" as opposed to sceptics who always say,\n\"Presumably, no.\"\n\nTHE SCEPTICS: PYRRHO.--The Sceptics proper were chronologically more\nancient. The first famous Sceptic was a contemporary of Aristotle; he\nfollowed Alexander on his great expedition into Asia. This was Pyrrho. He\ntaught, as it appears, somewhat obscurely at Athens, and for successor had\nTimon. These philosophers, like so many others, sought happiness and\naffirmed that it lay in abstention from decision, in the mind remaining in\nabeyance, in _aphasia_. Pyrrho being accustomed to say that he was\nindifferent whether he was alive or dead, on being asked, \"Then why do you\nlive?\" answered: \"Just because it is indifferent whether one lives or is\ndead.\" As may be imagined, their favourite sport was to draw the various\nschools into mutual opposition, to rout some by the rest, to show that all\nwere strong in what they negatived, but weak in what they affirmed, and so\nto dismiss them in different directions.\n\nTHE NEW ACADEMY.--Scepticism, albeit attenuated, softened, and less\naggressive, reappeared in a school calling itself the New Academy. It\nclaimed to adhere to Socrates--not without some show of reason, since\nSocrates had declared that the only thing he knew was that he knew\nnothing--and the essential tenet of this school was to affirm nothing. Only\nthe Academicians believed that certain things were probable, more probable\nthan others, and they are the founders of probabilism, which is nothing\nmore than conviction accompanied with modesty. They were more or less\nmoderate, according to personal temperament. Arcesilaus was emphatically\nmoderate, and limited himself to the development of the critical faculties\nof his pupil. Carneades was more negative, and arrived at or reverted to\nscepticism and sophistry pure and simple. Cicero, with a certain foundation\nof Stoicism, was a pupil, and one of the most moderate, of the New Academy.\n\nAENESIDEMUS; AGRIPPA; EMPIRICUS.--Others built on experience itself,\non the incertitude of our sensations and observations, on everything that\ncan cheat us and cause us illusion in order to display how _relative_\nand how miserably partial is human knowledge. Such was Aenesidemus, whom\nit might be thought Pascal had read, so much does the latter give the\nreasons of the former when he is not absorbed in faith, and when he assumes\nthe position of a sceptic precisely in order to prove the necessity of\ntaking refuge in faith. Such was Agrippa; such, too, was Sextus Empiricus,\nso often critical of science, who demonstrates (as to a slight extent M.\nHenri Poincare does in our own day) that all sciences, even those which,\nlike mathematics and geometry, are proudest of their certainty, rest upon\nconventions and intellectual \"conveniences.\"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER X\n\nNEOPLATONISM\n\n\nReversion to Metaphysics.\nImaginative Metaphysicians after the Manner of Plato, but in Excess.\n\n\nALEXANDRINISM.--Amid all this, metaphysics--namely, the effort to\ncomprehend the universe--appears somewhat at a discount. It enjoyed a\nrenaissance in the third century of our era among some teachers from\nAlexandria (hence the name of the Alexandrine school) who came to lecture\nat Rome with great success. Alexandrinism is a \"Neoplatonism\"--that is, a\nrenewed Platonism and, as considered by its authors, an augmented one.\n\nPLOTINUS.--Plotinus taught this: God and matter exist. God is one,\nmatter is multiple and divisible. God in Himself is incomprehensible, and\nis only to be apprehended in his manifestations. Man rises not to\ncomprehension of Him but to the perception of Him by a series of degrees\nwhich are, as it were, the progressive purification of faith, and which\nlead us to a kind of union with Him resembling that of one being with\nanother whom he could never see, but of whose presence he could have no\ndoubt. Matter, that is, the universe, is an emanation from God, as perfume\ncomes from a flower. All is not God, and only God can be God, but all is\ndivine and all participates in God, just as each of our thoughts\nparticipates of our soul. Now, if all emanates from God, all also tends to\nreturn to Him, as bodies born of earth, nourished by earth, invigorated by\nthe forces proceeding from the earth, tend to return to the earth. This is\nwhat makes the harmony of the world. The law of laws is, that every\nfragment of the universe derived from God returns to Him and desires to\nreturn to Him. The universe is an emanation from the perfect, and an\neffort towards perfection. The universe is a God in exile who has\nnostalgia for himself. The universe is a progressive descent from God with\na tendency towards reintegration with Him.\n\nHow does this emanation from God becoming matter take place? That is a\nmystery; but it may be supposed to take place by successive stages. From\nGod emanates spirit, impersonal spirit which is not spirit of this or that,\nbut universal spirit spread through the whole world and animating it. From\nspirit emanates the soul, which can unite itself to a body and form an\nindividual. The soul is less divine than spirit, which in turn is less\ndivine than God, but yet retains divinity. From the soul emanates the body\nto which it unites itself. The body is less divine than the soul, which was\nless divine than spirit, which was less divine than God; but it still\npossesses divinity for it has a form, a figure, a design marked and\nimpressed with divine spirit. Finally, matter without form is the most\ndistant of the emanations from God, and the lowest of the descending stages\nof God. God _is_ in Himself; He thinks in pure thought in spirit; He\nthinks in mixed and confused thought in the soul; He feels in the body; He\nsleeps in unformed matter. The object of unformed matter is to acquire\nform, that is a body; and the object of a body is to have a soul; and the\naim of a soul is to be united in spirit, and the aim of spirit is to be\nabsorbed into God.\n\nSouls not united to bodies contemplate spirit and enjoy absolute\nhappiness. Other souls not united to bodies, but solicited by a certain\ninstinct to unite themselves to bodies, are of ambiguous but still very\nexalted nature. Souls united to bodies (our own) have descended far, but\ncan raise themselves and be purified by contemplation of the eternal\nintelligence, and by relative union with it. This contemplation has\nseveral degrees, so to speak, of intensity, degrees which Plotinus termed\nhypostases. By perception we obtain a glimpse of ideas, by dialectics we\npenetrate them; by a final hypostasis, which is ecstasy, we can sometimes\nunite ourselves directly to God and live in Him.\n\nTHE PUPILS OF PLOTINUS.--Plotinus had as pupils and successors,\namongst others, Porphyry and Iamblichus. Porphyry achieves little except\nthe exposition of the doctrine of his master, and shows originality only as\na logician. Iamblichus and his school made a most interesting effort to\nrevive exhausted and expiring paganism and to constitute a philosophic\npaganism. The philosophers of the school of Iamblichus are, by the way,\nmagicians, charlatans, miracle-mongers, men as antipositivist as\npossible. Iamblichus himself sought to reconcile polytheism with\nNeoplatonism by putting in the centre of all a supreme deity, an essential\ndeity from whom he made a crowd of secondary, tertiary, and quaternary\ndeities to emanate, ranging from those purely immaterial to those inherent\nin matter. The subtle wanderings of Neoplatonism were continued obscurely\nin the school of Athens until it was closed for ever in 529 by the Emperor\nJustinian as being hostile to the religion of the Empire, which at that\nepoch was Christianity.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XI\n\nCHRISTIANITY\n\n\nPhilosophic Ideas which Christianity Welcomed, Adopted, or Created\nHow it must Give a Fresh Aspect to All Philosophy,\neven that Foreign to Itself.\n\n\nCHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY AND MORALITY.--Christianity spread through the\nEmpire by the propaganda of the Apostles, and more especially St. Paul,\nfrom about the year 40. Its success was extremely rapid, especially among\nthe populace, and little by little it won over the upper classes. As a\ngeneral philosophy, primitive Christianity did not absolutely bring more\nthan the Hebrew dogmas: the unity of God, a providential Deity, that is,\none directly interfering in human affairs; immortality of the soul with\nrewards and penalties beyond the grave (a recent theory among the Jews, yet\none anterior to Christianity). As a moral system, Christianity brought\nsomething so novel and so beautiful that it is not very probable that\nhumanity will ever surpass it, which may be imperfectly and incompletely\nsummed up thus: love of God; He must not only be feared as He was by the\npagans and the ancient Jews; He must be loved passionately as a son loves\nhis father, and all things must be done for this love and in consideration\nof this love; all men are brethren as sons of God, and they should love one\nanother as brothers; love your neighbour as yourself, love him who does not\nlove you; love your enemies; be not greedy for the goods of this world, nor\nambitious, nor proud; for God loves the lowly, the humble, the suffering,\nand the miserable, and He will exalt the lowly and put down the mighty from\ntheir seats.\n\nNothing like this had been said in all antiquity, and it needs\nextraordinary ingenuity (of a highly interesting character, by the way), to\nfind in ancient wisdom even a few traces of this doctrine.\n\nFinally, into politics, so to speak, Christianity brought this novelty:\nthere are two empires, the empire of God and the empire of man; you do not\nowe everything to the earthly empire; you are bound to give it faithfully\nonly what is needed for it to be strong and to preserve society; apart from\nthat, and that done, you are the subject of God and have only to answer to\nGod for your thoughts, your belief, your conscience; and over that portion\nof yourself the State has neither right nor authority unless it be usurped\nand tyrannical. And therein lay the charter of individual liberty like the\ncharter of the rights of man.\n\nAs appeal to the feelings, Christianity brought the story of a young God,\ninfinitely good and gentle, who had never cursed, who had been infinitely\nloved, who had been persecuted and betrayed, who had forgiven his\nexecutioners, and who died in great sufferings and who was to be imitated\n(whence came the thirst for martyrdom). This story in itself is not more\naffecting than that of Socrates, but it is that of a young martyr and not\nof an old one, and therein lies a marked difference for the imagination and\nemotions of the multitude.\n\nTHE SUCCESS OF CHRISTIANITY.--The prodigious rapidity of the success\nof Christianity is easily explicable. Polytheism had no longer a great hold\non the masses, and no philosophic doctrine had found or had even sought the\npath to the crowd; Christianity, essentially democratic, loved the weak and\nhumble, had a tendency to prefer them to the great ones of this world, and\nto regard them as being more the children of God, and was therefore\nreceived by the masses as the only doctrine which could replace the\nworm-eaten polytheism. And in Christianity they saw the religion for which\nthey were waiting, and in the heads of Christianity their own protectors\nand defenders.\n\nITS EVOLUTION.--The evolution of Christianity was very rapid, and\nfrom a great moral doctrine with a minimum of rudimentary metaphysics it\nbecame, perchance mistakenly, a philosophy giving account, or desirous of\ngiving account of everything; it so to speak incorporated a metaphysic,\nborrowed in great part from Greek philosophy, in great part from the Hebrew\ntraditions. It possessed ideas on the origin of matter, and whilst\nmaintaining that God was eternal, denied that matter was, and asserted that\nGod created it out of nothing. It had theories on the essence of God, and\nsaw Him in three Persons, or hypostases, one aspect of God as power,\nanother as love, and the other as intelligence. It presented theories on\nthe incarnation and humanisation of God, God being made man in Jesus Christ\nwithout ceasing to be God. It conceived new relationships of man to God,\nman having in himself powers of purgation and perfection, but always\nneeding divine help for self-perfection (theory of grace). And this he\nmust believe; if not he would feel insolent pride in his freedom. It had\nideas about the existence of evil, declaring in \"justification of God\" for\nhaving permitted evil on earth, that the world was a place of trial, and\nthat evil was only a way of putting man to the test and discovering what\nwere his merits. It had its notions on the rewards and penalties beyond the\ngrave, hell for the wicked and heaven for the good, as had been known to\nantiquity, but added purgatory, a place for both punishment and\npurification by punishment, an entirely Platonic theory, which Plato may\nhave inspired but did not himself entertain. Finally, it was a complete\nphilosophy answering, and that in a manner often admirable, all the\nquestions that mankind put or could ever put.\n\nAnd, as so often happens, that has proved a weakness and a strength to it:\na weakness because embarrassed with subtle, complicated, insoluble\nquestions wherein mankind will always be involved, it was forced to engage\nin endless discussions wherein the bad or feeble reasons advanced by this\nor that votary compromised the whole work; a strength because whoever\nbrings a rule of life is practically compelled to support it by general\nideas bearing on the relations of things and to give it a place in a\ngeneral survey of the world; otherwise he appears impotent, weak,\ndisqualified to give that very rule of life, incapable of replying to the\ninterrogations raised by that rule of life; and finally, lacking in\nauthority.\n\nSCHISMS AND HERESIES.--Right or wrong, and it is difficult and\nhighly hazardous to decide the question, Christianity was a complete\nphilosophy, which was why it had its schisms and heresies, a certain number\nof sincere Christians not resolving the metaphysical questions in the way\nof the majority. Heresies were innumerable; only the two shall be cited\nwhich are deeply interesting in the history of philosophy. Manes, an Arab\n(and Arabia was then a Persian province), revived the old Zoroastrian\ndoctrine of two principles of good and evil, and saw in the world two\ncontending gods, the God of perfection and the god of sin, and laid upon\nman the duty of assisting the God of goodness so that His kingdom should\ncome and cause the destruction of evil in the world. From him proceeded the\nManicheans, who exerted great influence and were condemned by many Councils\nuntil their sect died out, only to reappear or seem to reappear fairly\noften in the Middle Ages and in modern times.\n\nArius denied the Trinity, believing only in one God, not only unique, but\nin one Person, and in consequence denied the divinity of Jesus Christ. He\nwas perpetually involved in controversies and polemics, supported by some\nBishops, opposed by the majority. After his death his doctrine spread\nstrangely. It was stifled in the East by Theodosius, but was widely\nadopted by the \"barbarians\" of the West (Goths, Vandals, Burgundians,\nLombards). It was revived, more or less exactly, after the Reformation,\namong the Socinians.\n\nROME AND CHRISTIANITY.--The relations of Christianity with the Roman\ngovernment were in the highest degree tragic, as is common knowledge. There\nwere ten sanguinary persecutions, some being atrocious. It has often been\nasked what was the cause of this animosity against the Christians on the\npart of a government which tolerated all religions and all\nphilosophies. Persecutions were natural at Athens where a democracy,\nobstinately attached to the local deities, treated as enemies of the\ncountry those who did not take these gods into consideration; persecutions\nwere natural on the part of a Calvin or a Louis XIV who combined in\nthemselves the two authorities and would not admit that anyone in the State\nhad the right to think differently from its head; but it has been argued\nthat they were incomprehensible on the part of a government which admitted\nall cults and all doctrines. The explanation perhaps primarily lies in the\nfact that Christianity was essentially popular, and that the government saw\nin it not only plebeianism, which was disquieting, but an organisation of\nplebeianism, which was still more so. The administration of religion had\nalways been in the hands of the aristocracy; the Roman pontiffs were\npatricians, the Emperor was the sovereign pontiff; to yield obedience, even\nwere it only spiritually, to private men as priests was to be disobedient\nto the Roman aristocracy, to the Emperor himself, and was properly speaking\na revolt.\n\nA further explanation, perhaps, is that each new religion that was\nintroduced at Rome did not oppose and did not contradict polytheism, the\nprinciple of polytheism being precisely that there are many gods; whereas\nChristianity denying all those gods and affirming that there is only one,\nand that all others must be despised as non-existent, inveighed against,\ndenied, and ruined or threatened to destroy the very essence of\npolytheism. It was not a variation, it was a heresy; it was more than\nheretical, it was anarchical; it did not only condemn this or that\nreligion, but even the very tolerance with which the Roman government\naccepted all religions. Hence it is natural enough that it should have been\ncombated to the utmost by practically all the Emperors, from the most\nexecrable, such as Nero, to the best, such as Marcus Aurelius.\n\nCHRISTIANITY AND THE PHILOSOPHERS.--The relations of Christianity\nwith philosophy were confused. The immense majority of philosophers\nrejected it, considering their own views superior to it, and moreover,\nfeeling it to be formidable, made use against it of all that could be found\nbeautiful, specious, or expedient in ancient philosophy; and the ardour of\nNeoplatonism, which we have considered, in part arose from precisely this\ninstinct of rivalry and of struggle. At that epoch there was a throng of\nmen like Ernest Havet presenting Hellenism in opposition to Christianity,\nand Ernest Havet is only a Neoplatonist of the nineteenth century.\n\nA certain number of philosophers, nevertheless, either on the\nJewish-Christian side or on the Hellenic, tried some reconciliation either\nas Jews making advances to Hellenism or as Greeks admitting there was\nsomething acceptable on the part of Sion. Aristobulus, a Jew (prior to\nJesus Christ), seems to have endeavoured to bring Moses into agreement with\nPlato; Philo (a Jew contemporary with and surviving Jesus Christ and a\nnon-Christian), about whom there is more information, throughout his life\npursued the plan of demonstrating all the resemblances he could discover\nbetween Plato and the Old Testament, much in the same way as in our time\nsome have striven to point out the surprising agreement of the Darwinian\ntheory with Genesis. He was called the Jewish Plato, and at Alexandria it\nwas said: \"Philo imitates Plato or Plato imitates Philo.\"\n\nOn their side, later on, certain eclectic Greeks already cited, Moderatus,\nNicomachus, Nemesius, extended goodwill so far as to take into account, if\nnot Jesus, at least Moses, and to admit Israelitish thought into the\nhistory of philosophy and of human wisdom. But, in general it was by the\nschools of philosophy and by the ever dwindling section of society priding\nitself upon its philosophy that Christianity was most decisively repulsed,\nthrust on one side and misunderstood.\n\nCHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHERS.--Without dealing with many others who belong\nmore especially to the history of the Church rather than to that of\nphilosophy, the Christians did not lack two very illustrious philosophers\nwho must receive attention--Origen and St. Augustine.\n\nORIGEN.--Origen was a native of Alexandria at the close of the\nsecond century, and a pupil of St. Clement of Alexandria. A Christian and a\nPlatonist, in order to give himself permission and excuse for reconciling\nthe two doctrines, he alleged that the Apostles had given only so much of\nthe Christian teaching as the multitude could comprehend, and that the\nlearned could interpret it in a manner more subtle, more profound, and more\ncomplete. Having observed this precaution, he revealed his system, which\nwas this: God is a pure spirit. He already has descended one step in\n_spirits_ which are emanations from Him. These spirits are capable of\ngood and evil. When addicted to evil, they clothe themselves with matter\nand become souls in bodies;--which is what we are. There are others lower\nthan ourselves. There are impure spirits which have clothed themselves\nwith unclean bodies; these are demons. Now, as the fallen brethren of\nangels, we are free, less free than they, but still free. Through this\nfreedom we can in our present existence either raise or lower\nourselves. But this freedom does not suffice us; a little help is\nessential. This help comes to us from the spirits which have remained\npure. The help they afford us is opposed by the efforts of the utterly\nfallen spirits who are lower in the scale than ourselves. To combat these\nfallen spirits, to help the pure spirits who help us, and to help them to\nhelp us, such is our duty in this life, which is a medicine, the medicine\nof Plato, namely a punishment; sterile when it is not accepted by us,\nsalutary when gratefully accepted by us, it then becomes expiation and in\nconsequence purification. The part of the Redeemer in all this is the same\nas that of the spirits, but on a grander and more decisive plane. King of\nspirits, Spirit of spirits, by revelation He illumines our confused\nintelligence and fortifies our weak will against temptation.\n\nST. AUGUSTINE.--St. Augustine of Tagaste (in Africa), long a pagan\nexercising the profession of professor of rhetoric, became a Christian and\nwas Bishop of Hippo. It is he who \"fixed\" the Christian doctrine in the way\nmost suitable to and most acceptable to Western intelligence. Instead of\nconfusing it, more or less intentionally, more or less inadvertently, with\nphilosophy, he exerted all his great talents to make the most precise\ndistinction from it. Philosophers (he says) have always regarded the world\nas an emanation from God. Then all is God. Such is not the way to\nreason. There is no emanation, but creation; God created the world and has\nremained distinct from it. He lives in it in such a way that we live in\nHim; in Him we live and move and have our being; He dwells throughout the\nworld, but He is not the world; He is everywhere but He is not all. God\ncreated the world. Then, can it be said that before the world was created\nGod remained doing nothing during an immense space of time? Certainly not,\nbecause time only began at the creation of the world. God is outside\ntime. The eternal is the absence of time. God, therefore, was not an\ninstant before He created the world. Or, if it be preferred, there was an\neternity before the birth of the world. But it is the same thing; for\neternity is the non-existence of time.\n\nSome understand God in three Persons as three Gods. This polytheism, this\npaganism must be rejected. But how to understand? How? You feel in\nyourself several souls? No. And yet there are several faculties of the\nsoul. The three Persons of God are the three divine faculties. Man has body\nand soul. No one ought to have doubts about the soul, for to have doubts\npresupposes thought, and to think is to be; above all things we are\nthinking beings. But what is the soul? Something immaterial, assuredly,\nsince it can conceive immaterial things, such as a line, a point, surface,\nspace. It is as necessary for the soul to be immaterial in order to be able\nto grasp the immaterial, as it is necessary for the hand to be material in\norder that it can grasp a stone.\n\nWhence comes the soul? From the souls of ancestors by transmission? This is\nnot probable, for this would be to regard it as material. From God by\nemanation? This is inadmissible; it is the same error as believing that the\nworld emanates from God. Here, too, there is no emanation, but creation.\nGod creates the souls in destination for bodies themselves born from\nheredity. Once the body is destroyed, what becomes of the soul? It cannot\nperish; for thought not being dependent upon the senses, there is no reason\nfor its disappearance on the disappearance of the senses.\n\nHuman liberty is an assured fact; we are free to do good or evil. But then\nGod has not been able to know in advance what I shall do to-day, and in\nconsequence God, at least in His knowledge, has limitations, is not\nomnipotent. St. Augustine replies confusedly (for the question is\nundoubtedly insoluble) that we have an illusion of liberty, an illusion\nthat we are free, which suffices for us to acquire merit if we do right and\ndemerit if we do wrong, and that this illusion of liberty is a relative\nliberty, which leaves the prescience of God, and therefore His omnipotence,\nabsolute. Man is also extremely weak, debilitated, and incapable of good on\naccount of original sin, the sin of our first parents, which is transmitted\nto us through heredity and paralyses us. But God helps us, and this is what\nis termed grace. He helps us gratuitously, as is indicated by the word\n\"grace\"--if He wishes and when He wishes and in the measure that He wishes.\nFrom this arises the doctrine of \"predestination,\" by which it is\npreordained whether a man is to be saved or lost.\n\n\n\n\nPART II\n\nIN THE MIDDLE AGES\n\n\n\nCHAPTER I\n\nFROM THE FIFTH CENTURY TO THE THIRTEENTH\n\n\nPhilosophy is only an Interpreter of Dogma.\n\nWhen it is Declared Contrary to Dogma by the Authority of Religion,\nit is a Heresy.\n\nOrthodox and Heterodox Interpretations.\n\nSome Independent Philosophers.\n\n\nDOGMA.--After the invasion of the barbarians, philosophy, like\nliterature, sought refuge in monasteries and in the schools which prelates\ninstituted and maintained near them. But the Church does not permit the\nfree search for truth. The truth has been established by the Fathers of the\nChurch and fixed by the Councils. Thenceforth the philosophic life, so to\nspeak, which had never been interrupted, assumed a fresh character. Within\nthe Church it sheltered--I will not say disguised--itself under the\ninterpretation of dogma; it became a sort of respectful auxiliary of\ntheology, and was accordingly called the \"handmaid of theology,\" _ancilla\ntheologiae_. When emancipated, when departing from dogma, it is a\n\"heresy,\" and all the great heresies are nothing else than schools of\nphilosophy, which is why heresies must come into a history of\nphilosophy. And at last, but only towards the close of the Middle Ages, lay\nthought without disturbing itself about dogma and no longer thinking about\nits interpretation, created philosophic doctrines exactly as the\nphilosophers of antiquity invented them apart from religion, to which they\nwere either hostile or indifferent.\n\nSCHOLASTICISM: SCOTUS ERIGENA.--The orthodox philosophy of the\nMiddle Ages was the scholastic. Scholasticism consisted in amassing and in\nmaking known scientific facts and matters of knowledge of which it was\nuseful for a well-bred man not to be ignorant and for this purpose\nencyclopaedias were constructed; on the other hand, it consisted not\nprecisely in the reconciliation of faith with reason, not precisely and far\nless in the submission of faith to the criticism of reason, but in making\nfaith sensible to reason, as had been the office of the Fathers of the\nChurch, more especially St. Augustine.\n\nScotus Erigena, a Scotsman attached to the Palatine Academy of Charles the\nBald, lived in the eleventh century. He was extremely learned. His\nphilosophy was Platonic, or rather the bent of his mind was Platonic. God\nis the absolute Being; He is unnamable, since any name is a delimitation of\nthe being; He _is_ absolutely and infinitely. As the creator of all\nand uncreated, He is the cause _per se_; as the goal to which all\nthings tend, He is the supreme end. The human soul is of impenetrable\nessence like God Himself; accordingly, it is God in us. We have fallen\nthrough the body and, whilst in the flesh, we can, by virtue and more\nespecially by the virtue of penitence, raise ourselves to the height of the\nangels. The world is the continuous creation of God. It must not be said\nthat God created the world, but that He creates it; for if He ceased from\nsustaining it, the world would no longer exist. God is perpetual creation\nand perpetual attraction. He draws all beings to Himself, and in the end He\nwill have them all in Himself. There is predestination to perfection in\neverything.\n\nThese theories, some of which, as has been seen, go beyond dogma and form\nat least the beginning of heresy, are all impregnated with Platonism,\nespecially with Neoplatonism, and lead to the supposition that Scotus\nErigena possessed very wide Greek learning.\n\nARABIAN SCIENCE.--A great literary and philosophical fact in the\neighth century was the invasion of the Arabs. Mahometans successively\ninvaded Syria, Persia, Africa, and Spain, forming a crescent, the two\npoints of which touched the two extremities of Europe. Inquisitive and\nsagacious pupils of the Greeks in Africa and Asia, they founded everywhere\nbrilliant universities which rapidly acquired renown (Bagdad, Bassorah,\nCordova, Granada, Seville, Murcia) and brought to Europe a new quota of\nscience; for instance, all the works of Aristotle, of which Western Europe\npossessed practically nothing. Students greedy for knowledge came to learn\nfrom them in Spain; for instance, Gerbert, who developed into a man of\ngreat learning, who taught at Rheims and became Pope. Individually the\nArabs were often great philosophers, and at least the names must be\nmentioned of Avicenna (a Neoplatonist of the tenth century) and Averroes\n(an Aristotelian of the twelfth century who betrayed tendencies towards\nadmitting the eternity of nature, and its evolution through its own\ninitiative during the course of time). Their doctrines were propagated,\nand the ancient books which they made known became widely diffused. From\nthem dates the sway of Aristotle throughout the middle ages.\n\nST. ANSELM.--St. Anselm, in the eleventh century, a Savoyard, who\nwas long Abbot of Bec in Normandy and died Archbishop of Canterbury, is one\nof the most illustrious doctors of philosophy in the service of theology\nthat ever lived. \"A new St. Augustine\" (as he has been called), he starts\nfrom faith to arrive at faith after it has been rendered sensible to\nreason. Like St. Augustine he says: \"I believe in order to understand\"\n(well persuaded that if I never believed I should never understand), and he\nadds what had been in the thought of St. Augustine: \"I understand in order\nto believe.\" St. Anselm proved the existence of God by the most abstract\narguments. For example, \"It is necessary to have a cause, one or multiple;\none is God; multiple, it can be derived from one single cause, and that one\ncause is God; it can be a particular cause in each thing caused; but then\nit is necessary to suppose a personal force which must itself have a cause\nand thus we work back to a common cause, that is to say to a single one.\"\n\nHe proved God again by the proof which has remained famous under the name\nof the argument of St. Anselm: To conceive God is to prove that He is; the\nconception of God is proof of His existence; for every idea has its object;\nabove all, an idea which has infinity for object takes for granted the\nexistence of infinity; for all being finite here below, what would give the\nidea of infinity to the human mind? Therefore, if the human brain has the\nidea of infinity it is because of the existence of infinity. The argument\nis perhaps open to difference of opinion, but as proof of a singular vigour\nof mind on the part of its author, it is indisputable.\n\nHighly intellectual also is his explanation of the necessity of\nredemption. _Cur Deus Homo?_ (the title of one of his works) asked\nSt. Anselm. Because sin in relation to an infinite God is an infinite\ncrime. Man, finite and limited in capacity, could therefore never expiate\nit. Then what could God do to avenge His honour and to have satisfaction\nrendered to Him? He could only make Himself man without ceasing to be God,\nin order that as man He should offer to God a reparation to which as God He\nwould give the character of infinitude. It was therefore absolutely\nnecessary that at a given moment man should become God, which could only be\ndone upon the condition that God made Himself man.\n\nREALISTS; NOMINALISTS; CONCEPTUALISTS.--It was in the time of\nSt. Anselm that there arose the celebrated philosophic quarrel between the\n\"realists, nominalists, and conceptualists.\" It is here essential to employ\nthese technical terms or else not to allude to the dispute at all, because\nthe strife is above all a war of words. The realists (of whom St. Anselm\nwas one), said: \"The ideas (idea of virtue, idea of sin, idea of greatness,\nidea of littleness) are realities; they exist, in a spiritual manner of\ncourse, but they really exist; they are: there is a virtue, a sin, a\ngreatness, a littleness, a reason, etc. (and this was an exact reminiscence\nof the ideas of Plato). It is indeed only the idea, the general, the\nuniversal, which is real, and the particular has only the appearance of\nreality. Men do not exist, the individual man does not exist; what exists\nis 'man' in general, and individual men are only the appearance of--the\ncoloured reflections of--the universal man.\" The nominalists (Roscelin the\nCanon of Compiegne, for instance) answered: \"No; the general ideas, the\nuniversals as you say, are only names, are only words, emissions of the\nvoice, labels, if you like, which we place on such and such categories of\nfacts observed by us; there is no greatness; there are a certain number of\ngreat things, and when we think of them we inscribe this word 'greatness'\non the general idea which we conceive. 'Man' does not exist; there are men\nand the word humanity is only a word which to us represents a collective\nidea.\"\n\nWhy did the realists cling so to their universals, held to be realities and\nthe sole realities? For many reasons. If the individual alone be real,\nthere are not three Persons in the Godhead, there are three Gods and the\nunity of God is not real, it is only a word, and God is not real, He is\nonly an utterance of the voice. If the individual is not real, the Church\nis not real; she does not exist, there only exist Christians who possess\nfreedom of thought and of faith. Now the Church is real and it is not only\ndesirable that she should be real, but even that she alone should possess\nreality and that the individuals constituting her should exist by her and\nnot by themselves. (This is precisely the doctrine with regard to society\nnow current among certain philosophers: society exists independently of its\nmembers; it has laws of its own independently of its members; it is a\nreality on its own basis; and its members are by it, not it by them, and\ntherefore they should obey it; M. Durckheim is a \"realist.\")\n\nABELARD of Nantes, pupil of the nominalist, William of Champeaux,\nlearned man, artist, man of letters, an incomparable orator, tried to\neffect a conciliation. He said: \"The universal is not a reality, certainly;\nbut it is something more than a simple word; it is a conception of the\nmind, which is something more than an utterance of the voice. As conception\nof the mind, in fact, it lives with a life which goes beyond the\nindividual, because it can be common to several individuals to many\nindividuals, and because in fact it is common to them. The general idea\nthat I have and which I have communicated to my hearers, and which returns\nto me from my hearers, is more than a word since it is a link between my\nhearers and myself, and an atmosphere in which I and my hearers live. Is\nthe Church only to be a word? God forbid that I should say so. She is a\nbond between all Christians; she is a general idea common to them all, so\nthat in her each individual feels himself several, feels himself many;\nalthough it is true that were she not believed in by anyone she would be\nnothing.\" At bottom he was a nominalist, but more subtle, also more\nprofound and more precise, having a better grasp of what William of\nChampeaux had desired to say. He shared in his condemnation.\n\nApart from the great dispute, his ideas were singularly broad and\nbold. Half knowing, half guessing at ancient philosophy, he held it in high\nesteem; he found there, because he delighted in finding there, all the\nChristian ideas: the one God, the Trinity, the Incarnation, the imputation\nof the merits of the saints, original sin; and he found less of a gulf\nbetween ancient philosophy and Christianity than between the Old and the\nNew Testament (this is because the only Christianity known to Abelard, not\nthe primitive but that constituted in the fourth century, was profoundly\nimpregnated with Hellenism). He believed the Holy Ghost to have revealed\nHimself to the wise men of antiquity as well as to the Jews and the\nChristians, and that virtuous pagans may have been saved. The moral\nphilosophy of Abelard is very elevated and pure. Our acts proceed from\nGod; for it is impossible that they should not; but He permits us the\nfaculty of disobedience \"in order that virtue may exist,\" to which it\ntends; for if the tendency to evil did not exist, there would be no\npossibility of effort against evil, and if no efforts, then no virtue; God,\nwho cannot be virtuous since He cannot be tempted by evil, can be virtuous\nin man, which is why He leaves him the tendency to evil for him to triumph\nover it and be virtuous so that virtue may exist; even if He were Himself\nto lead us into temptation, the tendency would still be the same; He would\nonly lead us into it to give us the opportunity for struggle and victory,\nand therefore in order that virtue might exist; the possibility of sin is\nthe condition of virtue, and in consequence, even in the admission of this\npossibility and above all by its admission, God is virtuous.\n\nThe bad deed, furthermore, is not the most considerable from the point of\nview of guilt; as merit or demerit the intention is worth as much as the\ndeed and he is criminal who has had the intention to be so (which is\nclearly according to the Gospel).\n\nHUGO DE SAINT-VICTOR; RICHARD.--Abelard possessed perhaps the\nbroadest and greatest mind of the whole of the Middle Ages. After these\nfamous names must be mentioned Hugo de Saint-Victor, a somewhat obscure\nmystic of German origin; and the not less mystical Richard, who, thoroughly\npersuaded that God is not attained by reason but by feeling, taught\nexaltation to Him by detachment from self and by six degrees: renunciation,\nelevation, impulsion, precipitation, ecstasy, and absorption.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\n\nTHE THIRTEENTH CENTURY\n\n\nInfluence of Aristotle\nHis Adoption by the Church.\nReligious Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas.\n\n\nARISTOTLE AND THE CHURCH.--From the thirteenth century, Aristotle,\ncompletely known and translated into Latin, was adopted by the Church and\nbecame in some sort its lay vicar. He was regarded, and I think rightly, as\nof all the Greek thinkers the least dangerous to her and as the one to whom\ncould be left all the scientific instruction whilst she reserved to herself\nall the religious teaching. Aristotle, in fact, \"defended her from Plato,\"\nin whom were always found some germs of adoration of this world, or some\ntendencies in this direction, in whom was also found a certain polytheism\nmuch disguised, or rather much purified, but actual and dangerous;\ntherefore, from the moment when it became necessary to select, Aristotle\nwas tolerated and finally invested with office.\n\nST. THOMAS AQUINAS.--As Aristotelian theologians must be cited\nWilliam of Auvergne, Vincent of Beauvais, Albertus Magnus; but the\nsovereign name of this period of the history of philosophy is St. Thomas\nAquinas. St. Thomas Aquinas wrote several small works but, surpassing them\nall, the _Summa_ (encyclopaedia) which bears his name. In general\nphilosophy St. Thomas Aquinas is an Aristotelian, bending but not\ndistorting the ideas of Aristotle to Christian conceptions. Like\nAristotle, he demonstrated God by the existence of motion and the necessity\nof a first motive power; he further demonstrated it by the contingent,\nrelative, and imperfect character of all here below: \"There is in things\nmore or less goodness, more or less truth.\" But we only affirm the more or\nless of a thing by comparing it with something absolute and as it\napproaches more or less to this absolute; there is therefore an absolute\nbeing, namely God--and this argument appeared to him better than that of\nSt. Anselm, which he refuted.\n\nHIS CONCEPTION OF NATURE.--He showed the whole of nature as a great\nhierarchy, proceeding from the least perfect and the most shapeless to the\nmost complete and determinate; from another aspect, as separated into two\ngreat kingdoms, that of necessity (mineral, vegetable, animal), and that of\ngrace (humanity). He displayed it willed by God, projected by God, created\nby God; governed by God according to antecedent and consequent wills, that\nis, by general wills (God desires man to be saved) and by particular wills\n(God wishes the sinner to be punished), and the union of the general wills\nis the creation, and the result of all the particular wills is\nProvidence. Nature and man with it are the work not only of the power but\nof the goodness of God, and it is by love that He created us and we must\nrender Him love for love, which is involuntarily done by Nature herself in\nher obedience to His laws, and which we must do voluntarily by obedience to\nHis commandments.\n\nTHE SOUL.--Our soul is immaterial and more complete than that of\nanimals, for St. Thomas does not formally deny that animals have souls; the\ninstinct of animals is the sensitive soul according to Aristotle, which is\ncapable of four faculties: sensibility, imagination, memory, and\nestimation, that is elementary intelligence: \"The bird picks up straw, not\nbecause it gratifies her feelings [not by a movement of sensibility], but\nbecause it serves to make her nest. It is therefore necessary that an\nanimal should perceive those intuitions which do not come within the scope\nof the senses. It is by opinion or estimation that it perceives these\nintuitions, these distant ends.\" We, mankind, possess a soul which is\nsensibility, imagination, memory, and reason. Reason is the faculty not\nonly of having ideas, but of establishing connections and chains of\nconnection between the ideas and of conceiving general ideas. Reason pauses\nbefore reaching God because the idea of God precisely is the only one which\ncannot be brought to the mind by the interrelation of ideas, for God\nsurpasses all ideas; the idea of God is given by faith, which can be\nsubsequently helped by reason, for the latter can work to make faith\nperceptible to reason.\n\nOur soul is full of passions, divisible into two great categories, the\npassions of desire and those of anger. The passions of desire are rapid or\nviolent movements towards some object which seems to us a good; the\npassions of anger are movements of revolt against something which opposes\nour movement towards a good. The common root of all the passions is love,\nfor it is obvious that from it are derived the passions of desire; and as\nfor the passions of wrath they would not exist if we had no love of\nanything, in which case our desire not coming into collision would not turn\ninto revolt against the obstacle. We are free to do good or evil, to master\nour evil passions and to follow those of which reason approves. Here\nreappears the objection of the knowledge God must have beforehand of our\nactions: if God foresees our actions we are not free; if free, we act\ncontrary to his previsions, then He is not all-powerful. St. Thomas makes\nanswer thus: \"There is not prevision, there is vision, because we are in\ntime whereas God is in eternity. He sees at one glance and instantaneously\nall the past, present, and future. Therefore, He does not foresee but see,\nand this vision does not hinder human freedom any more than being seen\nacting prevents one from acting. Because God knows our deeds after they are\ndone, no one can plead that that prevents our full liberty to do them; if\nHe knew them before it is the same as knowing them after, because for Him\npast, present, and future are all the same moment.\" This appears subtle but\nis not, for it only amounts to the statement that in speaking of God time\nmust not be mentioned, for God is as much outside time as outside space.\n\nTHE MORAL SYSTEM OF ST. THOMAS.--The very detailed and\ncircumstantial moral system of St. Thomas may thus be summarized: there is\nin conscience, first, an intellectual act which is the distinction between\ngood and evil; secondly, an act of will which leads us to the good. This\npower for good urges the practice of virtue. There are human virtues, well\nknown to the ancient philosophers, temperance, courage, wisdom, justice,\nwhich lead to happiness on earth; there are divine virtues, inspired in man\nby God, which are faith, hope, and charity, and they lead to eternal\nhappiness. We practise the virtues, when we are well-disposed, because we\nare free; but our liberty and our will do not suffice; it is necessary for\nGod to help us, and that is \"grace.\"\n\nFAITH AND REASON.--On the question of the relation of reason to\nfaith, St. Thomas Aquinas recognizes, or rather proclaims, that reason will\nnever demonstrate faith, that the revealed truths, the Trinity, original\nsin, grace, etc., are above reason and infinitely exceed it. How, then, can\none believe? By will, aided by the grace of God. Then henceforth must no\nappeal be made to reason? Yes, indeed! Reason serves to refute the errors\nof the adversaries of the faith, and by this refutation to confirm itself\nin belief. The famous _Credo ut intelligam_--I believe in order to\nunderstand--is therefore true. Comprehension is only possible on condition\nof belief; but subsequently comprehension helps to believe, if not more, at\nleast with a greater precision and in a more abundant light. St. Thomas\nAquinas here is in exactly the position which Pascal seems to have taken\nup: Believe and you will understand; understand and you will believe more\nexactly. Therefore an act of will: \"I wish to believe\"--a grace of God\nfortifying this will: faith exists--studies and reasoning: faith is the\nclearer.\n\nST. BONAVENTURA; RAYMOND LULLE.--Beside these men of the highest\nbrain-power there are found in the thirteenth century mystics, that is,\npoets and eccentrics, both by the way most interesting. It was St.\nBonaventura who, being persuaded, almost like an Alexandrine, that one\nrises to God by synthetic feeling and not by series of arguments, and that\none journeys towards Him by successive states of the soul each more pure\nand more passionate--wrote _The Journey of the Soul to God_, which is,\nso to speak, a manual of mysticism. Learned as he was, whilst pursuing his\nown purpose, he digressed in agreeable and instructive fashion into the\nrealms of real knowledge.\n\nWidely different from him, Raymond Lulle or de Lulle, an unbridled\nschoolman, in his _Ars magna_ invented a reasoning machine, analogous\nto an arithmetical machine, in which ideas were automatically deduced from\none another as the figures inscribe themselves on a counter. As often\nhappens, the excess of the method was its own criticism, and an enemy of\nscholasticism could not have more ingeniously demonstrated that it was a\nkind of mechanism. Raymond de Lulle was at once a learned man and a\nwell-informed and most enquiring naturalist for whom Arabian science held\nno secrets. With that he was poet, troubadour, orator, as well as very\neccentric and attractive. He was beloved and persecuted in his lifetime,\nand long after his death still found enthusiastic disciples.\n\nBACON.--Contemporaneously lived the man whom it is generally the\ncustom to regard as the distant precursor of experimental science, Roger\nBacon (who must not be confused with Francis Bacon, another learned man who\nlived much nearer to our own time). Roger Bacon, a Franciscan friar,\noccupied himself almost exclusively with physical and natural science. He\npassed the greater portion of his life in prison by reason of alleged\nsorcery and, more especially, perhaps, because he had denounced the evil\nlives of his brethren. He had at least a presentiment of almost all modern\ninventions: gunpowder, magnifying glass, telescope, air-pump; he was\ndistinctly an inventor in optics. In philosophy, properly speaking, he\ndenounced what was hollow and empty in scholasticism, detesting that\npreference should be given to \"the straw of words rather than to the grain\nof fact,\" and proclaiming that reasoning \"is good to conclude but not to\nestablish.\" Without discovering the law of progress, as has too often been\nalleged, he arrived at the conclusion that antiquity being the youth of the\nworld, the moderns are the adults, which only meant that it would be at our\nschool that the ancients would learn were they to return to earth and that\nwe ought not to believe blindly in the ancients; and this was an\ninsurrection against the principle of authority and against the idolatry of\nAristotle. He preached the direct study of nature, observation, and\nexperiment with the subsequent application of deduction, and especially of\nmathematical deduction, to experiment and observation. With all that, he\nbelieved in astrology; for those who are in advance of their time none the\nless belong to it: but he was a very great man.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III\n\nTHE FOURTEENTH AND FIFTEENTH CENTURIES\n\n\nDecadence of Scholasticism. Forebodings of the Coming\nEra. Great Moralists. The Kabbala. Sorcery.\n\n\nDECADENCE OF SCHOLASTICISM.--The fourteenth century dated the\ndecadence of scholasticism, but saw little new. \"Realism\" was generally\nabandoned, and the field was swept by \"nominalism,\" which was the theory\nthat ideas only have existence in the brains which conceive them. Thus\nDurand de Saint-Pourcain remains famous for having said, \"To exist is to be\nindividually,\" which at that epoch was very audacious. William of Ockham\nrepeated the phrase with emphasis; there is nothing real except the\nindividual. That went so far as to cast suspicion on all metaphysics, and\nsomewhat on theology. In fact, _although a devout believer_, Ockham\nrejected theology, implored the Church not to be learned, because her\nscience proved nothing, and to content herself with faith: \"Science belongs\nto God, faith to men.\" But, or rather in addition, if the ministers of God\nwere no longer imposing because of their ambitious science, it was\nnecessary for them to regain their sway over souls by other and better\nmeans. It was incumbent on them to be saintly, to revert to the purity, the\nsimplicity, and the divine childishness of the primitive Church; and here\nhe was virtually a forerunner of the Reformation.\n\nOckham was indeed one of the auxiliaries of Philip the Fair in his struggle\nwith the Holy See, suffered excommunication, and sought refuge with the\nDuke of Bavaria, the foe of the Pope.\n\nBURIDAN: THE LIBERTY OF INDIFFERENCE.--Realists and nominalists\ncontinued their mutual strife, sometimes physically even, until the middle\nof the fifteenth century. But nominalism always gained ground, having\namong other celebrated champions, Peter d'Ailly and Buridan; the one\nsucceeded in becoming Chancellor of the University of Paris, the other in\nbecoming its Rector. Buridan has remained famous through his death and his\ndonkey, both alike legendary. According to a ballad by Villon, Buridan\nhaving been too tenderly loved by Joan of Navarre, wife of Philip the Fair,\nwas by his order \"thrown in a sack into the Seine.\" By comparison of\ndates, the fact seems impossible. According to tradition, either in order\nto show the freedom of indifference, or that animals are mere machines,\nBuridan declared that an ass with two baskets full of corn placed one on\neach side of him and at equal distance from him, would never decide from\nwhich he should feed and would die of starvation. Nothing of the kind is to\nbe found in his works, but he may have said so in a lecture and his pupils\nremembering it have handed it down as a proverb.\n\nPETER D'AILLY; GERSON.--Peter d'Ailly, a highly important\necclesiastic, head of the College of Navarre, chevalier of the University\nof Paris, Cardinal, a leader in the discussions at the Councils at Pisa and\nConstance, a drastic reformer of the morals and customs of the Church, did\nnot evince any marked originality as a philosopher, but maintained the\nalready known doctrines of nominalism with extraordinary dialectical skill.\n\nAmong his pupils he numbered Gerson, who was also Chancellor of the\nUniversity of Paris, another highly zealous and energetic reformer, a more\navowed enemy of scholasticism and mysticism, of exaggerated austerity and\nastrology, eminently modern in the best sense of the word, whose political\nand religious enemies are his title of respect. He was the author of many\nsmall books devoted to the popularization of science, religion, and\nmorality. To him was long attributed the _Imitation of Jesus Christ_,\nwhich on the whole bears no resemblance to his writings, but which he might\nvery well have written in old age in his retreat in the peaceful silence of\nthe Celestines of Lyons.\n\nTHE KABBALA.--From the beginning of the fifteenth century the\nRenaissance was heralded by a revival of Platonism, both in philosophy and\nliterature. But it was a Platonism strangely understood, a quaint medley of\nPythagoreanism and Alexandrinism, the source of which is not very clear\n(the period not having been much studied). Then arose an incredible\ninfatuation for the Kabbala--a doctrine which was for a long while the\nsecret of the Jews, brooded over by them so to speak during the darkness of\nthe Middle Ages, in which are to be found traces of the most sublime\nspeculations and of the basest superstitions of antiquity. It contained a\nkind of pantheistic theology closely analogous to those of Porphyry and\nIamblichus, as well as processes of magic mingled with astrology. The\nKabbalists believe that the sage, who by his astrological knowledge is\nbrought into relation with the celestial powers, can affect nature, alter\nthe course of phenomena, and work miracles. The Kabbala forms part of the\nhistory of the marvelous and of occult science rather than of the history\nof philosophy. Nevertheless men of real learning were initiated and were\ninfatuated, among them the marvelous Pico della Mirandola, Reuchlin, not\nless remarkable as humanist and Hebraist, who would have run grave risk at\nthe hands of the Inquisition at Cologne if he had not been saved by Leo\nX. Cardan, a mathematician and physician, was one of the learned men of the\nday most impregnated with Kabbalism. He believed in a kind of infallibility\nof the inner sense, of the intuition, and regarded as futile all sciences\nthat proceeded by slow rational operations. He believed himself a mage and\nmagician. From vanity he spoke of himself in the highest terms and from\ncynicism in the lowest. Doubt has been cast on his sincerity and also on\nhis sanity.\n\nMAGIC.--There were also Paracelsus and Agrippa. Paracelsus, like\nCardan, believed in an intense light infinitely superior to bestial\nreasoning and calls to mind certain philosophy of intuition of the present\nday. He too believed himself a magician and physician, and effected cures\nby the application of astrology to therapeutics. Agrippa did the same with\nyet stranger phantasies, passing from absolute scepticism through mysticism\nto magi and demonology; in his own time and in subsequent centuries\nenjoying the reputation of a devil incarnate as man.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\nTHE SIXTEENTH CENTURY\n\n\nIt Is Fairly Accurate to Consider that from the Point of\nView of Philosophy, the Middle Ages Lasted until Descartes.\n\nFree-thinkers More or Less Disguised.\n\nPartisans of Reason Apart from Faith, of Observation,\nand Of Experiment.\n\n\nTHE FREEDOM OF PHILOSOPHY: POMPONAZZO.--The freedom and even the\naudacity of philosophy rapidly increased. Learned and convinced\nAristotelians were bent, either from sheer love of truth or from a more\nsecret purpose, on demonstrating to what extent Aristotle, accurately read,\nwas opposed to the teaching of the Church. For instance, Pomponazzo\nrevealed that nothing could be drawn from Aristotle in favour of the\nimmortality of the soul, in which he himself believed fervently, but in\nwhich Aristotle did not believe, hence it was necessary to choose between\nthe Church and Aristotle; that without the immortality of the soul there\ncould be no rewards beyond the grave, which was entirely his own opinion,\nbut whoever should desire to offer excuses for Aristotle could say it was\nprecisely the existence of punishments and rewards which deprived virtue of\nexistence, which did away with virtue, since the good that is done for the\nsake of reward or from fear of punishment is no longer good; that, still\naccording to Aristotle, there could never be miracles; that he, Pomponazzo,\nbelieved in all the miracles recorded in the Scriptures; but that Aristotle\nwould not have believed in them, and could not have believed in them, a\nfact which demanded consideration, not assuredly in order to reject belief\nin miracles, but in order not to bestow on Aristotle that confidence which\nfor so long had been too readily placed in him.\n\nIn the same way, he took up again the eternal question of the prescience of\nGod and of human liberty, and showed that no matter what had been said it\nwas necessary to choose: either we are free and God is not omnipotent, or\nGod is omnipotent and we are not free. To regard as true this latter\nhypothesis, towards which the philosopher evidently leans, would cause God\nto be the author of evil and of sin. It would not be impossible for God to\nbe the author of evil as an essential condition of good, for if evil were\nnot to exist then there could not be good; nor would it be impossible that\nHe should be the author, not of sin, but of the possibility of sin in order\nthat virtue might be possible, there being no virtue where it is impossible\nto commit sin; but therein lies a mystery which faith alone can solve, and\nwhich Aristotle at any rate has not solved, therefore let us not place\nreliance on Aristotle.\n\nThis disguised freethinker, for he does not appear to me to be anything\nelse, was one of the most original thinkers of the period intermediate\nbetween the Middle Ages and Descartes.\n\nMICHAEL SERVETUS; VANINI.--Such instances of temerity were sometimes\nfatal to their authors. Michael Servetus, a very learned Spanish physician\nwho perhaps discovered the circulation of the blood before Harvey,\ndisbelieved in the Trinity and in the divinity of Jesus, and, as he was a\nPlatonist, perceived no intermediaries between God and man save\nideas. Persecuted by the Catholics, he sought refuge at Geneva, believing\nCalvin to be more merciful than the Inquisitors, and Calvin burned him\nalive.\n\nVanini, half a century later, that is at the commencement of the\nseventeenth, a restless, vain, and insolent man, after a life full of\nsudden changes of fortune, and yet distinguished, was burnt alive at\nToulouse for certain passages in his _De admirandis ... arcanis_, and\nfor having said that he would not express his opinion on the immortality of\nthe soul until he was old, a Jew, and a German.\n\nBRUNO; CAMPANELLA.--Giordano Bruno, an astronomer and one of the\nfirst to affirm that the sun was the centre of the world, professed,\ndespite certain precautions, a doctrine which confused God with the world\nand denied or excluded creation. Giordano Bruno was arrested at Venice in\n1593, kept seven years in prison, and finally burnt at Rome in 1600.\n\nCampanella, likewise an Italian, who spent twenty-seven years in a dungeon\nfor having conspired against the Spanish masters of his country, and who\ndied in exile in Paris in 1639, was a sceptic in philosophy, or rather an\nanti-metaphysician, and, as would be said nowadays, a positivist. There are\nonly two sources of knowledge, observation and reasoning. Observation makes\nus know things--is this true? May not the sensations of things which we\nhave be a simple phantasmagoria? No; for we have an internal sense, a sense\nof our own, which cannot deceive us, which affirms our existence (here is\nthe _Cogito_ of Descartes anticipated) and which, at the same time,\naffirms that there are things which are not ourselves, so that coincidently\nthe ego and the non-ego are established. Yes, but is this non-ego really\nwhat it seems? It is; granted; but what is it and can we know what it is?\nNot without doubt, and here scepticism is unshakable; but in that there is\ncertitude of the existence of the non-ego, the presumption is that we can\nknow it, partially, relatively, very relatively, while we remain infinitely\ndistant from an absolute knowledge, which would be divine. Therefore let us\nobserve and experiment; let us make the \"history\" of nature as historians\nmake the history of the human race. And this is the simple and solid\nphilosophy of experiment.\n\nBut Campanella, like so many more, was a metaphysician possessed by the\ndevil of metaphysics, and after having imperiously recommended the writing\nof only the history of nature, he himself wrote its romance as well. Every\nbeing, he said (and the thought was a very fine one), exists on condition\nof being able to exist, and on condition that there be an idea of which it\nis the realization, and again on condition that nature is willing to create\nit. In other words, nature can, knows what she wishes, and wishes. Now all\nbeings, in a greater or less degree according to their perfection or\nimperfection, feel this triple condition of being able, knowing, and\nwishing. Every being can, knows, and wishes, even inorganic matter (here\nalready is the world as will and representation of Schopenhauer), and God\nis only absolute power, absolute knowledge, and absolute will. This is why\nall creative things gravitate to God and desire to return to Him as to\ntheir origin, and as the perfection of what they are: the universe has\nnostalgia for God.\n\nCampanella was also, as we should say nowadays, a sociologist. He made his\n\"Republic\" as Plato had made his. The Republic of Campanella was called the\n_City of the Sun_. It was a community republic, leavened with\naristocracy with \"spiritual power\" and \"temporal power\" somewhat after the\nmanner of Auguste Comte. Campanella was a great sower of ideas.\n\nFRANCIS BACON.--Francis Bacon, lawyer, member of Parliament, Lord\nChancellor of England, personal friend of James I, friend, protector, and\nperhaps collaborator with Shakespeare, overthrown as the result of\npolitical animosity and relegated to private life, was a very learned man\nwith a marvellous mind. Like his namesake, Roger Bacon, but in an age more\nfavourable to intellectual reform, he attempted a sort of renewal of the\nhuman mind (_Instauratio Magna_) or at least a radical revolution in\nthe methods and workings of the human mind. Although Francis Bacon\nprofessed admiration for many of the thinkers of antiquity, he urged that\nit was wrong to rely on them because they had not sufficiently observed;\none must not, like the schoolmen, have ideas _a priori_, which are\n\"idols,\" and there are idols of tribe, of party, of school, of eras;\nintentions must not be perceived everywhere in nature, and we must not,\nbecause the sun warms, believe it was created to warm, or because the earth\nyields nourishment believe her creation was for the purpose of feeding us,\nand that all things converge to man and are put at his service. It is\nnecessary to proceed by observation, by experiment, and then by induction,\nbut with prodigious mistrust of induction. Induction consists in drawing\nconclusions from the particular to the general, from a certain number of\nfacts to a law. This is legitimate on condition that the conclusion is not\ndrawn from a few facts to a law, which is precipitate induction, fruitful\nin errors; but from a very large number of facts to a law, which even then\nis considered as provisional. As for metaphysics, as for the investigation\nof universal law, that should be entirely separated from philosophy itself,\nfrom the \"primary philosophy\" which does not lead to it; it has its own\nfield, which is that of faith: \"Give to faith what belongeth to faith.\" In\nthe main he is uninterested in metaphysics, believing them always to\nrevolve in a circle and, I do not say, only believes in science and in\nmethod, but has hope only from knowledge and method, an enthusiast in this\nrespect just as another might be about the super-sensible world or about\nideas, saying human knowledge and human power are really coincident, and\nbelieving that knowledge will support humanity in all calamities, will\nprolong human life, will establish a new golden age, etc.\n\nMoreover, let there be none of that eternal and unfounded fear that\nknowledge will cause the disappearance of the religious feeling. With\nprofound conviction and judging by himself, Bacon said: \"A little\nphilosophy inclineth a man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy\nbringeth a man's mind about to religion.\" Such is true philosophy,\n\"subordinate to the object,\" attentive to the object, listening to the\nvoices of the world and only anxious to translate them into human language:\n\"that is true philosophy which renders the voices of the world the most\naccurately possible, like an echo, which writes as if at the dictation of\nthe world itself, adding nothing of its own, only repeating and\n_resounding_.\"\n\nAnd, as a man is always of his time, he believed in alchemy and in the\npossibility of transmuting base metals into gold. But note how he\nunderstood it: \"To create a new nature in a given body or to produce new\nnatures and to introduce them ... he who is acquainted with the forms and\nmodes of super-inducing yellowness, weight, ductility, fixity, fluidity,\nsolution, and the rest, with their gradations and methods, will see and\ntake care that these properties be united in some body, whence its\ntransformation into gold may follow.\" Modern chemistry, with scientific\nmethods highly analogous to those which Bacon indicated or foresaw, has not\nmade gold, which is not a very useful thing to do, but has done better.\n\nTHOMAS HOBBES.--At the end of the sixteenth century, another\nEnglishman, Thomas Hobbes, began to think. He was, above all else, a\nliterary man and a sociologist; he translated Thucydides and Homer, he\nwrote _Leviathan, or the Matter, Form, and Power of a Commonwealth_,\nwhich is a manual of despotism, demonstrating that all men in a natural\nstate were beasts of prey with regard to one another, but that they escaped\nthis unpleasant fate by submission to a prince who has all rights because\nhe is perpetually saving his subjects from death, and who can therefore\nimpose on them whatever he pleases, even scientific dogma or religious\nbeliefs. Merely regarded as a philosopher, properly so called, Hobbes has\nan important position in the history of ideas. Like Francis Bacon, but more\nrigorously and authoritatively, he began by separating metaphysics and\ntheology from philosophy. Philosophy is the art of thinking. That which is\nnot sensible--mind, soul, God--cannot be thought: can only be believed;\nphilosophy does not deny all that; merely it does not concern itself\ntherewith. Here is the whole of positivism established in principle. What\nwe can think is what we feel. Things are known to us only through\nsensations; a thought is a sensation, the human mind is a compound of\nsensations.\n\nNo; for I can think of a thing without hearing, seeing, feeling it, etc.\n\nThis is because we have memory, which is itself a sensation; it is a\nsensation which prolongs itself; to remember is to feel that one has felt;\nit is to feel a former sensation which the brain is able to preserve. We\nthink only by combining current sensations with other current sensations,\nor much more often indeed, thanks to memory, by combining current\nsensations with older ones, or former sensations with each other. This is\nbut a fragile basis for knowledge and thought, for sensation is only a\nmodification of ourselves caused by an external object, and consequently\ngives us nothing at all of the external object, and of itself the external\nworld is eternally unknown to us; but we combine with each other the\nillusions that the external world deposits in us through the delusive or\ndoubtful intermediary of our senses.\n\nWhen the sensation thus combined with other sensations has become thought,\nthen ideas begin to exist. They are products of sensation detached from\nsensation. They are interassociated by laws that are obscure, yet which can\nbe vaguely perceived. They awake, so to speak, and call to one another;\nevery time an idea previously acquired reappears, it is followed by the\nthought which accompanied it when it was acquired. In a conversation a\ntraitor is spoken of. Someone asks what was the value of a piece of silver\nin ancient times. This appears incoherent; really it is a natural and\nsimple association of ideas in which there are few intermediate steps. The\nperson who listened as the traitor was mentioned thought of Judas, who was\nthe first traitor of whom he had heard, and of the thirty pieces of silver,\nthe price of the betrayal by Judas. The association of ideas is more or\nless close, more or less loose; it is disconnected in dreams, irregular in\nmusing, close directly it is dominated and in consequence directed by an\nend pursued, by a goal sought; for then there is a desire to attain which\nassociates nothing of itself, but which, eliminating all ideas that are not\npertinent to the end pursued, permits only the association of those which\nhave relation to it.\n\nSeeing in the human soul only successive impulses arising from those first\nimpulses which are the sensations, Hobbes does not believe we are free to\ndo what we wish; we are carried away by the strongest impulse of our\ninternal impulses, desire, fear, aversion, love, etc. Nevertheless we\ndeliberate, we consider different courses to pursue and we decide on the\none we desire to choose. No; we do not deliberate, we only imagine we\ndeliberate. Deliberation is only a succession of different feelings, and to\nthe one that gains the day we give the name of volition. \"In the\n[so-called] deliberation, the final desire or the final fear is called\nwill.\" Therefore liberty has no more existence among men than among\nanimals; will and desire are only one and the same thing considered under\ndifferent aspects.\n\nUTILITARIAN MORALITY.--Henceforth there is no morality; without the\npower to will this and not to will that, there is no possible\nmorality. Hobbes retorts with \"utilitarian morality\": What man should seek\nis pleasure, as Aristippus thought; but true pleasure--that which is\npermanent and that which is useful to him. Now it is useful to be a good\ncitizen, a loyal subject, sociable, serviceable to others, careful to\nobtain their esteem by good conduct, etc. Morality is interest rightly\nunderstood, and interest rightly understood is absolutely blended with the\nmorality of duty. The criminal is not a criminal but an idiot; the honest\nman is not an honest man but an intelligent one. Observe that a man is\nhardly convinced when preached to in the name of duty, but always convinced\nwhen addressed in the name of his own interest.\n\nAll this is fairly sensible; but from the time that freedom ceases there\ncan be no morality, _not even utilitarian_; for it is useless even\nfrom the point of view of his own interests, to preach to a man who is only\na machine moved by the strongest force; and, if he be only that, to lay\ndown a moral code for him either from the point of view of his own\ninterests, or from that of morality, or from that of the love of God are\nthings which are the same and which are as absurd the one as the other. All\nphilosophy, which does not believe in human liberty, yet which enunciates a\nsystem of morality, is in perpetual contradiction.\n\n\n\n\nPART III\n\nMODERN TIMES\n\n\n\nCHAPTER I\n\nTHE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY\n\n\nDescartes. Cartesianism.\n\n\nDESCARTES.--The seventeenth century, which was the greatest\nphilosophic century of modern times and perhaps of any time, began with\nRene Descartes. Descartes, born at La Haye in Touraine in 1596, of noble\nfamily (his real name was des Quartes), was educated by the Jesuits of the\ncollege of La Fleche, followed the military profession for several years,\nthen gave himself up to mathematics and became one of the greatest\nmathematicians of Europe, traveled all over Europe for his own amusement\nand instruction, wrote scientific and philosophical works, of which the\nmost famous are the _Discourse on_ METHOD, the _Meditations_, and\nthe _Rules for the Control of the Mind_, resided sometimes in Paris,\nsometimes in Holland, and finally, at fifty-four years of age, unhappily\nattracted by the flattering invitations of Queen Christina of Sweden,\nproceeded to Stockholm, where he succumbed in four months to the severity\nof the climate. He died in February, 1650.\n\nTHE SYSTEM OF DESCARTES.--In the works of Descartes there are a\ngeneral system of philosophy, a psychology, and a method. This order is\nhere adopted because of the three, in Descartes; it is the third which is\nthe most important, and which has left the most profound traces. The\nfoundation of the system of Descartes is belief in God and in the goodness\nof God. I say the foundation and not the starting-point. The starting-point\nis another matter; but it will be clearly seen that the foundation is what\nhas just been stated. The starting-point is this: I do not believe,\nprovisionally, in anything, not wishing to take into account what I have\nbeen taught. I doubt everything. Is there anything I cannot doubt? It\nseems to me there is: I cannot doubt that I doubt. Now if I doubt, I\nthink; if I think, I am. There is one certainty, I am.\n\nAnd having arrived there, Descartes is at a dead stop, for from the\ncertitude of one's own existence nothing can be deduced save the certitude\nof one's existence. For instance, shall I believe in the existence of\neverything that is not myself? There is no reason why I should believe in\nit. The world may be a dream. But if I believe in God and in a God of\nperfect goodness, I can then believe in something outside of myself, for\nGod not being able to deceive Himself or me, if He permits me to see the\nexternal world, it is because this external world exists. There are\nalready, therefore, three things in which I believe: my own existence, that\nof God, and that of the universe. Which of these beliefs is the fundamental\none? Evidently, the one not demonstrated; the axiom is that upon which one\nrests to demonstrate everything except itself. Now of the three things in\nwhich Descartes believed, his own existence is demonstrated by the\nimpossibility of thinking or feeling, without feeling his own existence;\nthe other is demonstrated by the existence of a good God; the existence of\na good God is demonstrated by nothing. It is believed. Hence belief in a\ngood God is Descartes' foundation. This has not been introduced in order\nthat he may escape from the _I am_ at which he came to a stop; that\nbelief certainly existed previously, and if he had recourse to it, it was\nbecause it existed first. Without that, he had too much intellectual\nhonesty to invent it for a particular need. He had it, and he found it as\nit were in reserve when he asked himself if he could go beyond _I\nam_. Here was his foundation; all the rest would complete the proof.\n\nTHE EXISTENCE OF GOD.--Although Descartes rests on God as being his\nfirst principle, he does not fail to prove His existence, and that is\nbegging the question, something proved by what has to be proved. For if\nDescartes believed only in something outside himself because of a good God,\nthat Being outside himself, God, he can prove only because of the existence\nof a good God, who cannot deceive us, and thus is God proved by the belief\nin Him. That is begging the question. Descartes does not fail to prove the\nexistence of God by superabundance as it were; and this, too, in itself\nindicates clearly that faith in God is the very foundation of the\nphilosophy of Descartes. After having taken it as the basis of reasoning,\nhe takes it as the goal of reasoning, which indicates that the idea of God,\nso to speak, encircled his mind and that he found it at every ultimate\npoint of thought.\n\nHe proves it, therefore, first by an argument analogous to that of\nSt. Anselm, which is this: we, imperfect and finite, have the idea of a\nperfect and infinite Being; we are not capable of this idea. Therefore it\nmust have come to us from a Being really perfect and infinite, and hence\nthis perfect Being exists.\n\nAnother proof, that of God regarded as cause. First: I exist. Who made me?\nWas it myself? No, if it had been myself I should have endowed myself with\nall the perfections of which I can conceive and in which I am singularly\ndeficient. Therefore it must be some other being who created me. It was my\nparents. No doubt, but who created my parents and the parents of my\nparents? One cannot go back indefinitely from cause to cause, and there\nmust have been a first one.\n\nSecondly: even my own actual existence, my existence at this very moment,\nis it the result of my existence yesterday? Nothing proves it, and there is\nno necessity because I existed just now that I should exist at\npresent. There must therefore be a cause at each moment and a continuous\ncause. That continuous cause is God, and the whole world is a creation\nperpetually continued, and is only comprehensible as continuous creation\nand is only explicable by a Creator.\n\nTHE WORLD.--Thus sure of himself, of God, and of the world,\nDescartes studies the world and himself. In the world he sees souls and\nmatter; matter is substance in extensions, souls are substance not in\nextension, spiritual substance. The extended substance is endowed with\nimpulse. Is the impulse self-generated, are the bodies self-impelled? No,\nthey are moved. What is the primary motive force? It is God. Souls are\nsubstances without extension and motive forces. In this respect they are\nanalogous to God. They are united to bodies and act on them. How? This is\nan impenetrable mystery, but they are closely and substantially united to\nthe bodies, which is proved by physical pains depressing the soul and moral\nsufferings depressing the body; and they act on them, not by creating\nmovements, for the quantity of movements is always the same, but by\ndirecting the movements after this fashion or that. Souls being spiritual,\nthere is no reason for their disaggregation, that is, their demise, and in\nfact they do not die.\n\nIt is for this reason that Descartes lays such stress on animals not having\nsouls. If they had souls, the souls would be spiritual, they would not be\nsusceptible to disaggregation and would be immortal. \"Save atheism, there\nis no doctrine more dangerous and detestable than that,\" but animals are\nsoulless and purely mechanism; Descartes exerts himself to prove this in\ngreat detail, and he thus escapes avowing the immortality of the souls of\nanimals, which is repugnant to him, or by allowing that they perish with\nthe bodies to be exposed to the objection: \"Will it not be the same with\nthe souls of men?\"\n\nTHE FREEDOM OF THE SOUL.--The human soul is endowed with freedom to\ndo good or evil. What proof is there of this freedom? First, the inward\nfeeling that we have. Every evident idea is true. Now, not only have we\nthe idea of this freedom, but it would be impossible for us not to have it.\nFreedom \"is known without proofs, merely by the experience we have of it.\"\nIt is by the feeling of our freedom, of our free-will that we understand\nthat we exist as a being, as a thing which is not merely a thing. The true\n_ego_ is the will. Even more than an intelligent being, man is a free\nindividual, and only feels himself to be a man when feeling himself free,\nso that he might not believe himself to be intelligent, nor think himself\nsensible, etc., but not to think himself free would for him be moral\nsuicide; and in fact he actually never does anything which he does not\nbelieve himself to be free to do--that is, which he does not believe that\nhe might avoid doing, if he so wished. Those who say, \"It is simply the\nfeeling that it is better for ourselves which tends to make us do this\ninstead of doing that,\" are deeply in error. They forget that we often\nprefer the worst for ourselves in order to prove to ourselves that we are\nfree and therefore have no other _motive power than our own freedom_.\n(And this is exactly what contemporaneous philosophy has thus formulated:\n\"Will is neither determinate nor indeterminate, it is determinative.\")\n\"Even when a very obvious reason leads us to a thing, although morally\nspeaking it is difficult for us to do the opposite, nevertheless, speaking\nabsolutely, we can, for we are always free to prevent ourselves from\npursuing a good thing clearly known ... provided only that _we think it\nis beneficial thereby to give evidence of the truth of our free-will_.\"\nIt is the pure and simple wish to be free which _creates an action;_\nit is the all-powerful liberty.\n\nAs has been happily observed, in relation to the universe the philosophy of\nDescartes is a mechanical philosophy; in relation to man the philosophy of\nDescartes is a philosophy of will. As has also been remarked, there are\nvery striking analogies between Corneille and Descartes from the point of\nview of the apotheosis of the will, and the _Meditations_ having\nappeared after the great works of Corneille, it is not so much that\nCorneille was a Cartesian, as that Descartes was a follower of Corneille.\n\nPSYCHOLOGY OF DESCARTES.--Descartes has almost written a psychology,\nwhat with his _Treatise on the Passions_ and his letters and, besides,\ncertain passages in his _Meditations_. The soul thinks and has\npassions. There are three kinds of ideas, the factitious, the adventitious,\nand the innate; the factitious ideas are those which the imagination forms;\nthe adventitious ideas are those suggested by the external world through\nthe intermediary of the senses; the innate ideas are those constituting the\nmind itself, the conditions under which it thinks and apart from which it\ncannot think: we cannot conceive an object not extended, nor an object\napart from time, nor anything without a cause; the ideas of time, space,\nand cause are innate ideas; we cannot conceive ourselves as other than\nfree; the idea of liberty is an innate idea.\n\nThe soul has passions; it is therein that, without dependence on the body,\nit has intimate relations with and is modified by it, not radically, but in\nits daily life. There are operations of the soul which cannot strictly be\ntermed passions, and yet which are directed or at least _influenced_\nby the body. Memory is passive, and consequently memory is a species of\npassion. The lively sensations which the body transmits to the brain leave\nimpressions (Malebranche would say \"traces\"), and according to these\nimpressions the soul is moved a second or a third time, and that is what is\ncalled memory. \"The impressions of the brain render it suitable to stir\nthe soul in the same way as it has been stirred before, and also to make it\nrecollect something, just as the folds in a piece of paper or linen make it\nmore suitable to be folded anew as it was before than if it had never been\nthus folded.\" Similarly, the association of ideas is passive, and in\nconsequence is a kind of passion. The association of ideas is the fact that\nthought passes along the same path it has already traversed, and follows in\nits labyrinth the thread which interlinks its thoughts, and this thread is\nthe traces which thoughts have left in the brain. In abandoning ourselves\nto the association of ideas, we are passive and we yield ourselves freely\nto a passion. That is so true that current speech itself recognizes this:\nmusing is a passion, it is possible to have a passion for musing, and\nmusing is nothing else than the association of ideas in which the will does\nnot intervene.\n\nTHE PASSIONS.--Coming to the passions strictly speaking, there are\nsome which are of the soul and only of the soul; the passion for God is a\npassion of the soul, the passion for liberty is a passion of the soul; but\nthere are many more which are the effects of the union of the soul with the\nbody. These passions are excited in the soul by a state of the body or a\nmovement of the body or of some part of the body; they are \"emotions\" of\nthe soul corresponding to \"movements\" of the machine. All passions have\nrelation to the desire for pleasure and the fear of pain, and according as\nthey relate to the former or the latter are they expansive or oppressive.\nThere are six principal passions, of which all the rest are only\nmodifications: admiration, love, desire, joy, having relation to the\nappetite of happiness; hatred, sadness, having relation to the fear of\npain. \"All the passions are good and may become bad\" (Descartes in this\ndeviates emphatically from Stoicism for which the passions are simply\nmaladies of the soul). All passions are good in themselves. They are\ndestined (this is a remarkable theory) to cause the duration of thoughts\nwhich would otherwise pass and be rapidly effaced; by reason of this, they\ncause man to act; if he were only directed by his thoughts, unaccompanied\nby his passions, he would never act, and if it be recognized that man is\nborn for action, it will at the same time be recognized that it is\nnecessary he should have passions.\n\nBut, you will say, there can be good passions (of a nature to give force to\njust ideas) and evil passions.\n\nNo, they are all good, but all also have their bad side, their deviation,\nrather, which enables them to become bad. Therefore, in each passion no\nmatter what it be, it is always possible to distinguish between the passion\nitself, which is always good, and the excess, the deviation, the\ndegradation or corruption of this passion which constitutes, if it be\ndesired to call it so, an evil passion, and this is what Descartes\ndemonstrates, passion by passion, in the fullest detail, in his _Treatise\non the Passions_.\n\nTHE PART OF THE SOUL.--If it is thus, what will be the part of the\nsoul (the soul is the will)? It will be to abandon itself to good passions,\nor more accurately to the good that is in all passions, and to reduce the\npassions to be \"nothing more than themselves.\" In courage, for example,\nthere is courage and temerity. The action of the will, enlightened by the\njudgment, will consist in reducing courage to be nothing but courage. In\nfear, there is cowardice and there is the feeling of self-preservation\nwhich, according to Descartes, is the foundation of fear and which is a\nvery good passion. The action of the soul is to reduce fear to simple\nprudence.\n\nBut _how_ will the will effect these metamorphoses or at least these\ndepartures, these separations, these reductions to the due proportion?\n_Directly_ it can effect _nothing_ upon the passions; it cannot\n_remove_ them; it cannot even remove the baser portions of them; but\nit can exercise influence over them by the intermediary of reasoning; it\ncan lead them to the attentive consideration of the thought that they carry\nwith them, and by this consideration modify them. For instance, if it is a\nquestion of fear, the soul forces fear to consider that the peril is much\nless than was imagined, and thus little by little brings it back to simple\nprudence.\n\nNote that this method, although indirect, is very potent; for it ends by\nreally transforming the passions into their opposites. Persuade fear that\nthere is less peril in marching forward than in flight and that the most\nsalutary flight is the flight forward and you have changed fear to\ncourage.--But such an influence of the will over the passions is\nextraordinarily unlikely: it will never take place.--Yes, by habit! Habit\ntoo is a passion, or, if you will, a passive state, like that of memory or\nthe association of ideas, and there are men possessed only of that passion.\nBut the will, by the means which have been described, by imposing an act, a\nfirst act, creates a commencement of habit, by imposing a second confirms\nthat habit, by imposing a third strengthens it, and so on. In plain words,\nthe will, by reasoning with the passions and reasoning with them\nincessantly, brings them back to what is good in them and ends by bringing\nthem back there permanently, so that it arrives at having only the passions\nit desires, or, if you prefer it, for it is the same thing, at having only\nthe passion for good. Morality consists in loving noble passions, as was\nlater observed by Vauvenargues, and that means to love all the passions,\neach for what is good in it, that is to reduce each passion to what real\ngoodness is inherent in it, and that is to gather all the passions into\none, which is the passion of duty.\n\nTHE METHOD OF DESCARTES.--As has been observed, not only had\nDescartes influence through all that he wrote, but it was by his method\nthat he has exerted the greatest and most durable sway, and that is why we\nconclude with the examination of his method. It is all contained in this:\nto accept nothing as true except what is evident; to accept as true all\nthat is evident. Descartes therefore made evidence the touchstone of\ncertainty. But mark well the profound meaning of this method: what is it\nthat gives me the assurance of the evidence of such or such an idea? How\nshall I know that such an idea is really evident to me? Because I see it in\nperfect clearness? No, that does not suffice: the evidence may be\ndeceptive; there can be false evidence; all the wrong ideas of the\nphilosophers of antiquity, save when they were sophists, had for them the\ncharacter of being evident. Why? Why should error be presented to the mind\nas an evident truth? Because in truth, in profound truthfulness, it must\nbe admitted that judgment does not depend upon the intelligence. And on\nwhat does it depend? On will, on free-will. This is how. No doubt, error\ndepends on our judgment, but our judgment depends on our will in the sense\nthat it depends on us whether we adhere to our judgment without it being\nsufficiently precise or do not adhere to it because it is not sufficiently\nprecise: \"If I abstain from giving my judgment on a subject when I do not\nconceive it with sufficient clearness and distinction, it is evident that I\nshall not be deceived.\" Evidence is therefore not only a matter of\njudgment, of understanding, of intelligence, it is a matter of energetic\nwill and of freedom courageously acquired. We are confronted with evidence\nwhen, with a clear brain, we are capable, in order to accept or refuse what\nit lays before us, of acting \"after such a fashion,\" of having put\nourselves in such a state of the soul that we feel \"that no external force\ncan constrain us to think in such or such a way.\"\n\nThese external forces are authority, prejudices, personal interest, or that\nof party. The faculty of perceiving evidence is therefore the triumph both\nof sound judgment in itself and of a freedom of mind which, supposing\nprobity, scrupulousness, and courage, and perhaps the most difficult of all\ncourage, supposes a profound and vigorous morality. Evidence is given only\nto men who are first highly intelligent and next, or rather before all\nelse, are profoundly honest. Evidence is not a consequence of morality; but\nmorality is the _condition_ of evidence.\n\nThere is the foundation of the method of Descartes; add to it his advice on\nthe art of reasoning, which even in his time was not at all novel, but\nwhich with him is very precise; not to generalize too hastily, not to be\nput off with words, but to have a clear definition of every word, etc., and\nthus a sufficient idea of it will be obtained.\n\nNow first, to this method Descartes was unfaithful, as always happens, and\noften accepted the suggestions of his magnificent imagination as the\nevidences of his reason; secondly, the touchstone of evidence is certainly\nthe best, but is far from being infallible (and Vico has ridiculed it with\nas much sense as wit) and the freest mind can still find false things\nevident; yet, thirdly, favouring freedom of research self-controlled,\nindividual and scornful of all authority, the method of Descartes has\nbecome a banner, a motto, and a flag for all modern philosophy.\n\nDESCARTES THE FATHER OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY.--And from all that the\nresult has been that all modern philosophy, with few exceptions, has\nrecognised Descartes as its parent--that individual evidence, if it may be\nthus expressed, favouring temerity and each believing himself closer to the\ntruth the more he differed from others, and consequently was unable to\nsuspect himself of being subject to influences, individual evidence has\nprovided a fresh opportunity for self-deception; finally, that Descartes,\nby a not uncommon metamorphosis, by means of his system which he did not\nfollow, has become the head or the venerated ancestor of doctrines which he\nwould have detested and which he already did detest more than all\nothers. Because he said that evidence alone and the free investigation of\nevidence led to truth, he has become the ancestor of the sceptics who are\npersuaded that surrender must be made only to evidence and that evidence\ncannot be found; and he has become the ancestor of the positivists who\nbelieve that evidence certainly exists somewhere, but not in metaphysics or\nin theodicy, or in knowledge of the soul, of immortality, and of God,\nbranches of knowledge which surpass our means of knowing, which are in fact\noutside knowledge. So that this man who conceived more than any man, this\nman who so often constructed without a sure foundation, and this man, yet\nagain, as has been aptly said, who always thought by innate ideas, by his\nformula has become the master and above all the guarantor of those who are\nthe most reserved and most distrustful as to philosophic construction,\ninnate ideas, and imagination. This does not in the least diminish his\nbrilliant merit; it is only one of those changes of direction in which the\nhistory of ideas abounds.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\n\nCARTESIANS\n\n\nAll the Seventeenth Century was under the Influence of Descartes.\nPort-Royal, Bossuet, Fenelon, Malebranche, Spinoza, Leibnitz.\n\n\nCARTESIAN INFLUENCE.--Nearly all the seventeenth century was\nCartesian, and in the general sense of the word, not only as supporters of\nthe method of evidence, but as adherents of the general philosophy of\nDescartes. Gassendi (a Provencal, and not an Italian), professor of\nphilosophy at Aix, subsequently in Paris, was not precisely a faithful\ndisciple of Descartes, and he opposed him several times; he had leanings\ntowards Epicurus and the doctrine of atoms; he drew towards Hobbes, but he\nwas also a fervent admirer of Bacon, and so approached Descartes, who\nthought very highly of him, though impatiently galled by his criticisms.\nAfter the example of Epicurus he was the most sober and austere of men, and\nof the two it was Descartes rather than he who was Epicurean in the common\nuse of the word. According to a tradition, which to my mind rests on\ninsufficient proof, he was an instructor of Moliere.\n\nAll the thinkers of the seventeenth century came more or less profoundly\nunder the Cartesian influence: Pascal, Bossuet, Fenelon, Arnauld, and all\nPort-Royal. This influence was to diminish only in the eighteenth century,\nthough kept up by the impenitent Fontenelle, but outweighed by that of\nLocke, to reappear very vigorously in the nineteenth century in France in\nthe school of Maine de Biran and of Cousin.\n\nMALEBRANCHE.--A separate niche must be made for the Cartesians,\nalmost as great as Descartes, who filled the seventeenth century with their\nrenown,--the Frenchman Malebranche, the Dutchman Spinoza, and the German\nLeibnitz. Pushing the theories of Descartes further than Descartes would\nhimself in all probability have desired to, from what Descartes had said\nthat it was only _through God_ that we perceived accurately,\nMalebranche declared that it was only _in God_ that we perceived\naccurately, and fundamentally this is the same idea; it can only be deemed\nthat Malebranche is the more precise: \"God alone is known by Himself [is\nbelieved in without uncertainty]; there is only He that we can see in\nimmediate and direct perspective.\" All the rest we see in Him, in His\nlight, in the light He creates in our minds. When we see, it is that we are\nin Him. Evidence is divine light. He is the link of ideas. (And thus\nMalebranche brought Plato near to Descartes and showed that, without the\nlatter being aware of it, they both said the same thing.) God is always the\ncause and as He is the cause of all real things, He is cause also of all\ntruths, and as He is everywhere in real objects, He is also everywhere in\nthe true ideas which we can have, or rather in which we can participate.\nWhen we seek a truth we pray without thinking we do so; attention is a\nprayer.\n\nIn the same way, from the saying of Descartes that the universe is a\ncontinuous creation, Malebranche deduced or rather concluded that our\nthoughts and actions are acts of God. There can be no action of the body on\nthe soul to produce ideas; that would be inconceivable; but on the\noccasion, for instance, of our eyes resting on an object, God gives us an\nidea of that object, whether in conformity or not we cannot tell; but at\nany rate He gives us that idea of the object which He wishes us to have.\n\nThere is no action of our soul on our body; that would be\ninconceivable. But God to our will adds a force having a tendency towards\ngoodness as a rule, and to each of our volitions adds a force tending to\nits execution and capable of executing it.\n\nThen, when our will is evil and we execute it, does God sin in our name?\n\nCertainly not; because sin is not an act; it consists in doing nothing; it\nconsists precisely in the soul not acting on the body; therefore it is not\na force but a weakness. Sin is that God has withdrawn Himself from us. The\nsinner is only a being who is without strength because he is lacking in\ngrace.\n\nThe principle of morality is the respect for order and the love of\norder. That makes two degrees, the first of which is regularity and the\nsecond virtue. To conform to order is highly rational but without merit\n(_e.g._, to give money to the poor from habit or possibly from\nvanity). To love order and to desire that it should be greater, more\ncomplete, and nearer to the will of God, is to adhere to God, to live in\nGod, just as to see rightly is to see in God. All morality, into the\ndetails of which we will not enter, evolves from the love of order. The\nuniverse is a vast mechanism, as was stated by Descartes, set in motion and\ndirected by God--that is to say, by the laws established by God; for God\nacts only by general dispositions (which are laws) and not by particular\ndispositions. In other words, there exists a will, but there are no\nvolitions.\n\nMIRACLES.--But then you will say there are no miracles; for miracle\nis precisely a particular will traversing and interrupting the general\nwill.\n\nTo begin with, there are very few miracles, which therefore permits order\nto subsist; it would be only if there were incessant miracles that order\nwould be non-existent. Next, a miracle is a warning God gives to men\nbecause of their weakness, to remind them that behind the laws there is a\nLawgiver, behind the general dispositions a Being who disposes. Because of\ntheir intellectual weakness, if they never saw any derogation from the\ngeneral laws they would take them to be fatalities. A miracle is a grace\nintervening in things, just as grace properly so-called intervenes in human\nactions. And it is not contradictory to the general design of God, since\nby bringing human minds back to the truth that there is a Being who wills,\nit accustoms them to consider all general laws as permanent acts, but also\nas the acts of the Being who wills. The miracle has the virtue of making\neverything in the world miraculous, which is true. Hence the miracle\nconfirms the idea of order. Therein, perhaps alone, the exception proves\nthe rule.\n\nSPINOZA.--Spinoza, who during his life was a pure Stoic and the\npurest of Stoics, polishing the lenses of astronomical telescopes in order\nto gain his living, refusing all pensions and all the professorial\npositions offered to him, and living well-nigh on nothing, had read\nDescartes and, to conform to the principle of evidence, had begun by\nrenouncing his religion, which was that of the Jews. His general outlook\non the world was this: There is only one God. God is all. Only He has His\nattributes--that is to say, His manners of being and His modes, that is His\nmodifications, as the sun (merely a comparison) has as its manners of\nbeing, its roundness, colour, and heat, as modifications its rays,\nterrestrial heat, direct and diffused light, etc. Now God has two\nattributes, thought and extension, as had already been observed by\nDescartes; and for modifications He has exactly all we can see, touch, or\nfeel, etc. The human soul is an attribute of God, as is everything else; it\nis an attribute of God in His power. It is not free, for all that comes\nfrom God, all that _is of God_, is a regular and necessary development\nof God Himself. \"There is nothing contingent\" [nothing which may either\nhappen or not happen]. All things are determined, by the necessity of the\ndivine nature, to exist and to act in a given manner. There is therefore\nno free-will in the soul, the soul is determined to will this or that by a\ncause which is itself determined by another and that by another, and so on\nto infinity.\n\nNevertheless we believe ourselves to be free and according to the principle\nof evidence we are; for nothing is more evident to us than our liberty. We\nare as intimately convinced of our liberty as of our existence and we\n_all_ affirm, I am free,--with the same emphasis that Descartes\naffirms: I am. I am and I am free are the two things it is impossible for\nman to doubt, no matter what effort he makes.\n\nNo doubt, but it is an illusion. It is the illusion of a being who feels\nhimself as cause, but does not feel himself as effect. Try to imagine a\nbilliard ball which feels it moves others, but which does not feel that it\nis moved. What we call decision is an idea which decides us because it\nexercises more power over us than the others do; what we term deliberation\nis a hesitancy between two or three ideas which at the moment have equal\nforce; what we name volition is an idea, and what we call will is our\nunderstanding applied to facts. We do not want to fight; we conceive the\nidea of fighting and the idea carries us away; we do not want to hang\nourselves; we have the obsessing idea of hanging ourselves and this thought\nruns away with us.\n\nHIS MORAL SYSTEM.--Spinoza wrote a system of morality. Is it not\nradically impossible to write a system of morality when the author does not\nbelieve in free-will? The admirable originality of Spinoza, even though\nhis idea can be contested, is precisely that morality depends on belief in\nthe necessity of all things--that is, the more one is convinced of this\nnecessity so much the more does one attain high morality--that is, the more\none believes oneself free the more one is _immoral_. The man who\nbelieves himself free claims to run counter to the universal order, and\nmorality precisely is adherence to it; the man who believes himself free\nseeks for an individual good just as if there could be an individual good,\njust as if the best for each one were not to submit to the necessary laws\nof everything, laws which constitute what is good; the man who thinks\nhimself free sets himself against God, believes himself God since he\nbelieves himself to be creator of what he does, and since he believes\nhimself capable of deranging something in the mechanism and of introducing\na certain amount of movement. As a matter of fact, he does nothing of the\nkind; but he believes that he does it, and this mere thought, false and low\nas it is, keeps him in the most miserable condition of life; to sum up, a\nman who believes himself free may not perhaps be an atheist, but he is\nungodly.\n\nOn the contrary, the man who does not believe himself free believes he is\nin the hands of God, and that is the beginning of wisdom and the beginning\nof virtue. We are in the hands of God as the clay is in those of the\npotter; the mad vase would be the one which reproached the potter for\nhaving made it small instead of big, common instead of decorative. It is\nthe beginning of wisdom to believe oneself in the hands of God; to see Him,\nto see Him the least indistinctly that we can, therein lies the highest\nwisdom; we must see His designs, or at least His great design and associate\nourselves with it, thus becoming not only part of Him, which we always are,\nbut a conscient part of Him.\n\nThis is the love of God, and the love of God is virtue itself. We ought to\nlove God without consideration of the good He can do us and of the\npenalties He can inflict upon us; for to love God from love of a beneficent\nGod or from fear of a punitive God is not to love God but to love oneself.\n\nTHE PASSIONS.--We have our passions as enemies and as obstacles to\nour elevation to this semi-perfection. It is they which cause us to do\nimmoral acts. \"Immoral,\" has that a meaning from the moment that we do\nnothing which we are not obliged to do? Yes, just as when led by our\ndeceitful mind we have arrived necessarily at a false idea, the fact of\nthis thought being necessary does not prevent it from being false; we may\nhave been led by necessity to commit a villainous action, but that does not\nprevent its being immoral. The passions are our imperfections, omissions,\ngaps in a soul which is not full of the idea of God and of universal order\nand the love of God and of universal order, and which, in consequence,\nlives individually--that is, separated from the universe.\n\nThe passions are infinite in number and Spinoza, in a bulky volume,\nfurnished a minute and singularly profound description of the principal\nones alone, into the details of which we regret that we cannot enter. The\n_Ethics_ of Spinoza is an incomparable masterpiece.\n\nThe study of the passions is very salutary, because in studying them one\ngets so detached from them that one can perceive their emptiness, their\nmeanness, and their puerile, nay, even bestial character. It might even be\nadded that the mere thought of studying them is already an act of\ndetachment in reference to them. \"Thou wouldst not seek Me, hadst thou not\nalready found Me,\" said God to Pascal. \"Thou wouldst not make\ninvestigations about us, hadst thou not already quitted us,\" the passions\nmight say to the philosopher.\n\nSANCTIONS OF MORALITY.--What are the sanctions of morality? They are\nnecessary sanctions; just as everything is necessary and may even be said\nto be mechanical. There is neither merit nor demerit and the criminal is\nnot culpable; only he is outside order, and everything must be in order.\n\"He who is maddened by the bite of a mad dog is certainly innocent; yet\nanyone has the right to suffocate him. In the same way, the man who cannot\ngovern his passions by fear of the law is a very excusable invalid; yet he\ncannot enjoy peace of mind, or the knowledge of God, or even the love of\nGod, and it is necessary that he perish.\" Through death he has re-entered\nwithin order.\n\nBut does the sanction of beyond-the-grave exist, and is the soul immortal,\nand are we to be rewarded therein in another life? The conclusion of\nSpinoza on this matter is hesitating, but at the risk of misrepresenting\nit, which I fear to do, it seems to me that it can be thus summed\nup--_The soul makes itself immortal_, in proportion as by the\nknowledge and love of God it participates more in God. In proportion it\nmakes itself divine; and approaching perfection, by the same progress it\nalso approaches immortality. It is conceivable that by error and sin it\nkills itself, and by virtue renders itself imperishable. This immortality\nis not or does not seem to be personal, it is literally a definite re-entry\ninto the bosom of God; Spinozian immortality would therefore be a\nprolongation of the same effort which we make in this life to adhere to\nuniversal order; the recompense for having adhered to it here below is to\nbe absorbed in it there, and in that lies true beatitude. Here below we\nought to see everything from the point of view of eternity (_sub specie\naeternitatis_), and this is a way of being eternal; elsewhere we shall\nbe in eternity itself.\n\nLEIBNITZ.--Leibnitz possessed a universal mind, being historian,\nnaturalist, politician, diplomatist, scholar, theologian, mathematician;\nhere we will regard him only as philosopher. For Leibnitz the basis, the\nsubstance of all beings is not either thought or extension as with\nDescartes, but is force, productive of action. \"What does not act does not\nexist.\" Everything that exists is a force, either action or tendency to\naction. And force, all force has two characteristics: it desires to do, it\nwishes to think. The world is the graduated compound of all these\nforces. Above all there is the supreme force, God, who is infinite force,\ninfinite thought; by successive descents those base and obscure forces are\nreached which seem to have neither power nor thought, and yet have a\nminimum of power and even of thought, so to speak, latent. God thinks and\nacts infinitely; man thinks and acts powerfully, thanks to reason, which\ndistinguishes him from the rest of creation; the animal acts and thinks\ndimly, but it does act and think, for it has a soul composed of memory and\nof the results and consequences of memory, and by parenthesis\n\"three-fourths of our own actions are governed by memory, and most\nfrequently we act like animals\"; plants act, and if they do not think, at\nleast feel (which is still thought), though more dimly than animals; and\nfinally in the mineral kingdom the power of action and thought slumber, but\nare not non-existent since they can be transformed into plants, animals,\nand men, into living matter which feels and thinks.\n\nTherefore, as was later on to be maintained by Schopenhauer, everything is\nfull of souls, and of souls which are forces as well as intelligences. The\nhuman soul is a force too, like the body. Between these two forces, which\nseem to act on one another and which certainly act in concert in such\nfashion that the movement desired by the soul is executed by the body or\nthat the soul obviously assents to a movement desired by the body, what can\nbe the affinity and the relation, in what consists their concurrence and\nconcord? Leibnitz (and there was already something of the same nature\nsuggested by Descartes) believes that all the forces of the world act, each\nspontaneously; but that among all the actions they perform there exists an\nagreement imposed by God, a concord establishing universal order, a\n\"preestablished harmony\" causing them all to co-operate in the same\ndesign. Well, then, between the soul, this force, and the body, this force\nalso, this harmony reigns as between any force whatever in nature and one\nand all of the others; and that is the explanation of the union and concord\nbetween the soul and the body. Imagine two well-constructed clocks wound up\nby the same maker; they indicate the same hour, and it might appear that\nthis one directs the other, or that the other directs the first. All the\nforces of the world are clocks which agree with each other, because they\nhave been regulated in advance by the divine clockmaker, and they all\nindicate the eternal hour.\n\nTHE RADICAL OPTIMISM OF LEIBNITZ.--From all these general views on\nmatter, on mind and on the mind, Leibnitz arrived at a radical optimism\nwhich is the thing for which he has since been most ridiculed, and by\nwhich, at any rate, he has remained famous. He believes that all is good,\ndespite the evil of which no one can dispute the existence; and he believes\nthat all is the best _possible_ in the best of _possible_\nworlds. In fact, God is supreme wisdom and supreme goodness; that was quite\nevident to Descartes, who in the matter of evidence was not easily\nsatisfied. This perfect wisdom and perfect goodness could choose only what\nis best.--But yet evil exists! Diminish it as much as you choose, it still\nexists.--It exists by a necessity inherent in what is created. Everything\ncreated is imperfect. God alone is perfect; what is imperfect is by its\ndefinition evil mingled with good. Evil is only the boundary of good, where\nGod was compelled to stop in creating beings and things other than Himself,\nand if He had created only according to absolute goodness, He could have\ncreated only Himself. And that is the precise meaning of this phrase \"the\nbest of possible worlds\"; the world is perfect so far as that which is\ncreated, and therefore imperfect, can be perfect; so far as what is not God\ncan be divine; the world is God Himself as far as He can remain Himself\nwhilst being anything else than Himself. THE THREE EVILS.--Let us\ndistinguish in order to comprehend better. There are three evils: the\nmetaphysical, the physical, and the moral. Metaphysical evil is this very\nfact of not being perfection; it is natural enough that what emanates only\nfrom perfection should not be perfection. Physical evil is suffering; God\ncannot _will_ suffering, desire it, or cherish it; but He can permit\nit as a means of good, as a condition of good; for there would be no moral\ngood if there were not occasion for struggle, and there would be no\noccasion for struggling if physical evil did not exist; imagine a paradise;\nall the inhabitants merely exist and never have cause to show the slightest\nendurance, the least courage, the smallest virtue. And finally, as to\nmoral evil, which is sin, God can even less desire that it should exist,\nbut He can admit its existence, _allow it to be_, to afford men\noccasion for merit or demerit. Nothing is more easy than to criticize God\nwhilst considering only a portion of His work and not considering it as a\nwhole. He must have created it to be a whole and it is as a whole that it\nmust be judged. And precisely because the whole cannot be comprehended by\nanyone, \"hold thy peace, foolish reason,\" as Pascal said, and judge not or\njudge _a priori_, since here it is not possible to judge by\nexperience; and declare that the Perfect can have willed only the most\nperfect that is possible.\n\nTHE POSSIBLE AND THE IMPOSSIBLE.--There still remains the\nfundamental objection: to reduce God to the conditions of the possible is\nto limit Him, and it is useless to say that God is justified if He has done\nall the good possible. He is not; the words \"possible\" and \"impossible\"\nhaving no meaning to Him who is omnipotent, and by definition infinite\npower could effect the impossible.\n\nYes, Leibnitz replies, there is a metaphysical impossibility, there is an\nimpossibility in the infinite; this impossibility is absurdity, is\ncontradiction. Could God make the whole smaller than the part or any line\nshorter than a straight one? Reason replies in the negative. Is God\ntherefore limited? He is limited by the absurd and that means He is\nunlimited; for the absurd is a falling away. It is therefore credible that\nthe mixture of evil and good is a metaphysical necessity to which I will\nnot say God submits, but in which He acts naturally, and that the absence\nof evil is a metaphysical contradiction, an absurdity in itself, which God\ncannot commit precisely because He is perfect; and no doubt, instead of\ndrawing this conclusion, we should actually see it, were the totality of\nthings, of their relations, of their concordance, and of their harmony\nknown to us.\n\nThe optimism of Leibnitz was ridiculed specially in the _Candide_ of\nVoltaire, ingeniously defended by Rousseau, magnificently defended by\nVictor Hugo in the following verses, well worthy of Leibnitz:\n\n \"Oui peut-etre au dela de la sphere des nues,\n  Au sein de cet azur immobile et dormant,\n  Peut-etre faites-vous des choses inconnues\n  Ou la douleur de l'homme entre comme element.\"\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III\n\nTHE ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY\n\n\nLocke: His Ideas on Human Liberty, Morality, General\nPolitics, and Religious Politics.\n\n\nLOCKE.--Locke, very learned in various sciences--physics, chemistry,\nmedicine, often associated with politics, receiving enlightenment from\nlife, from frequent travels, from friendships with interesting and\nillustrious men, always studying and reflecting until an advanced old age,\nwrote only carefully premeditated works: his _Treatise of Government_\nand _Essay on the Human Understanding_.\n\nLocke appears to have written on the understanding only in order to refute\nthe \"innate ideas\" of Descartes. For Locke innate ideas have no\nexistence. The mind before it comes into contact with the external world is\na blank sheet, and there is nothing in the mind which has not first come\nthrough the senses. What, then, are ideas? They are sensations registered\nby the brain, and they are also sensations elaborated and modified by\nreflection. These ideas then commingle in such a manner as to form an\nenormous mass of combinations. They are commingled either in a natural or\nan artificial manner. In a natural manner, that is in a way conforming to\nthe great primary ideas given us by reflection, the idea of cause, the idea\nof end, the idea of means to an end, the idea of order, etc., and it is the\nharmony of these ideas which is commonly termed reason; they become\nassociated by accident, by the effects of emotion, by the effect of custom,\netc., and then they give birth to prejudices, errors, and\nsuperstitions. The passions of the soul are aspects of pleasure and pain.\nThe idea of a possible pleasure gives birth in us to a desire which is\ncalled ambition, love, covetousness, gluttony; the idea of a possible pain\ngives birth in us to fear and horror, and this fear and horror is called\nhatred, jealousy, rage, aversion, disgust, scorn. At bottom we have only\ntwo passions, the desire of enjoyment, and the fear of suffering.\n\nTHE FREEDOM OF MAN.--Is man free? Appealing to experience and\nmaking use only of it and not of intimate feeling, Locke declares in the\nnegative. A will always seems to him determined by another will, and this\nother by another to infinity, or by a motive, a weight, a motive power\nwhich causes a leaning to right or left. Will certainly exists--that is to\nsay, an exact and lively desire to perform an action, or to continue an\naction, or to interrupt an action, but this will is not free, for to\nrepresent it as free is to represent it as capable of wishing what it does\nnot wish. The will is an anxiety to act in such or such a fashion, and this\nanxiety, on account of its character of anxiety, of strong emotion, of\ntension of the soul, appears to us free, appears to us an internal force\nwhich is self-governed and independent; we feel consciousness of will in\nthe effort. This tension must not be denied, but it must be recognised as\nthe effect of a potent desire which the obstacle excites; this tension,\ntherefore, is an indication of nothing except the potency of the desire and\nthe existence of an obstacle. Now this desire, so potent that it is\nirritated by the obstacle, and, so to speak, unites us against it, is a\npassion dominating and filling our being; so that we are never more swayed\nby passion than when we believe ourselves to be exercising our will, and in\nconsequence the more we desire the less are we free.\n\nIt is not essential formally and absolutely to confound will with\ndesire. Overpowered by heat, we desire to drink cold water, and because we\nknow that that would do us harm we have the will not to drink; but although\nthis is an important distinction it is not a fundamental one; what incites\nus to drink is a passion, what prevents us is another passion, one more\ngeneral and stronger, the desire not to die, and because this passion by\nmeeting with and fighting another produces in all our being a powerful\ntension, it is none the less a passion, even if we ought not to say that it\nis a still more impassioned passion.\n\nLOCKE'S THEORY OF POLITICS.--In politics Locke was the adversary of\nHobbes, whose theories of absolutism have already been noticed. He did not\nbelieve that the natural state was the war of all against all. He believed\nmen formed societies not to escape cannibalism, but more easily to\nguarantee and protect their natural rights: ownership, personal liberty,\nlegitimate defence. Society exists only to protect these rights, and the\nreason of its existence lies in this duty to defend them. The sovereign\ntherefore is not the saviour of the nation, he is its law-maker and\nmagistrate. If he violates the rights of man, he acts so directly contrary\nto his mission and his mandate that insurrection against him is\nlegitimate. The \"wise Locke,\" as Voltaire always called him, was the\ninventor of the Rights of Man.\n\nIn religious politics he was equally liberal and advocated the separation\nof Church and State; the State, according to him, should not have any\nreligion of its own, its province being only to protect equally the liberty\nof all denominations. Locke was discussed minutely by Leibnitz, who,\nwithout accepting the innate ideas of Descartes, did not accept the ideas\nthrough sensation of Locke, and said: \"There is nothing in the intelligence\nwhich has not first been in the senses,\" granted ... \"except the\nintelligence itself.\" The intelligence has not innate ideas born ready\nmade; but it possesses forms of its own in which the ideas arrange\nthemselves and take shape, and this is the due province of the\nintelligence. And it was these forms which later on Kant was to call the\ncategories of the intellect, and at bottom Descartes meant nothing else by\nhis innate ideas. Locke exerted a prodigious and even imperious influence\nover the French philosophers of the eighteenth century.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\nTHE ENGLISH PHILOSOPHERS OF THE\nEIGHTEENTH CENTURY\n\n\nBerkeley: Highly Idealist Philosophy which Regarded Matter as Non-existent.\n\nDavid Hume: Sceptical Philosophy.\n\nThe Scottish School: Common Sense Philosophy.\n\n\nBERKELEY.--To the \"sensualist\" Locke succeeded Berkeley, the\nunrestrained \"idealist,\" like him an Englishman. He began to write when\nvery young, continued to write until he was sixty, and died at\nsixty-eight. He believed neither in matter nor in the external world. There\nwas the whole of his philosophy. Why did he not believe in them? Because\nall thinkers are agreed that we cannot know whether we see the external\nworld _as it is_. Then, if we do not know it, why do we affirm that it\nexists? We know nothing about it. Now we ought to build up the world only\nwith what we know of it, and to do otherwise is not philosophy but yielding\nto imagination. What is it that we know of the world? Our ideas, and\nnothing but our ideas. Very well then, let us say: there are only\nideas. But whence do these ideas come to us? To explain them as coming from\nthe external world which we have never seen is to explain obscurity by\ndenser darkness. They are spiritual, they come to us without doubt from a\nspirit, from God. This is possible, it is not illogical, and Berkeley\nbelieves it.\n\nThis doctrine regarded by the eyes of common sense may appear a mere\nphantasy; but Berkeley saw in it many things of high importance and great\nuse. If you believe in matter, you can believe in matter only, and that is\nmaterialism with its moral consequences, which are immoral; if you believe\nin matter and in God, you are so hampered by this dualism that you do not\nknow how to separate nature from God, and it therefore comes to pass that\nyou see God in matter, which is called pantheism. In a word, between us and\nGod Berkeley has suppressed matter in order that we should come, as it\nwere, into direct contact with God. He derives much from Malebranche, and\nit may be said he only pushes his theories to their extreme. Although a\nbishop, he was not checked, like Descartes, by the idea of God not being\nable to deceive us, and he answered that God does not deceive us, that He\ngives us ideas and that it is we who deceive ourselves by attributing them\nto any other origin than to Him; nor was he checked, like Malebranche, by\nthe authority of Scripture, which in Genesis portrays God creating\nmatter. He saw there, no doubt, only a symbolical sense, a simple way of\nspeaking according to the comprehension of the multitude.\n\nDAVID HUME.--David Hume, a Scotsman, better known, at least in his\nown times, as the historian of England than as a philosopher, nevertheless\nwell merits consideration in the latter category. David Hume believes in\nnothing, and, in consequence, it may be said that he is not a philosopher;\nhe has no philosophic system. He has no philosophic system, it is true; but\nhe is a critic of philosophy, and therefore he philosophizes. Matter has no\nexistence; as we know nothing about it, we should not say it exists. But we\nourselves, we exist. All that we can know about that is that in us there is\na succession of ideas, of representations; but _we_, but _I_,\nwhat is that? Of that we know nothing. We are present at a series of\npictures, and we may call their totality the _ego_; but we do not\ngrasp ourselves as a thing of unity, as an individual. We are the\nspectators of an inward dramatic piece behind which we can see no\nauthor. There is no more reason to believe in _oneself_ than in the\nexternal world.\n\nINNATE IDEAS.--As for innate ideas, they are simply general ideas,\nwhich are general delusions. We believe, for instance, that every effect\nhas a cause, or, to express it more correctly, that everything has a cause.\nWhat do we know about it? What do we see? That one thing follows another,\nsucceeds to another. What tells us that the latter proceeds from the\nformer, that the thing B must necessarily come, owing to the thing A\nexisting? We believe it because every time the thing A has been, the thing\nB has come. Well, let us say that every time A has been (thus far) B has\ncome; and say no more. There are regular successions, but we are completely\nignorant whether there are causes for them.\n\nTHE LIBERTY AND MORALITY OF HUME.--It results from this that for\nHume there is no liberty. Very obviously; for when we believe ourselves\nfree, it is because we believe we can fix upon ourselves as a cause. Now\nthe word \"cause\" means nothing. We are a succession of phenomena very\nabsolutely determined. The proof is that we foresee and nearly always\naccurately (and we could always foresee accurately if we completely knew\nthe character of the persons and the influences acting on them) what people\nwe know will do, which would be impossible if they did as they wished. And\nI, at the very moment when I am absolutely sure I am doing such and such a\nthing because I desired to, I see my friend smile as he says: \"I was sure\nyou would do that. See, I wrote it down on this piece of paper.\" He\nunderstood me as a necessity, when I felt myself to be free. And he,\nreciprocally, will believe himself free in doing a thing I would have\nwagered to a certainty that he would not fail to do.\n\nWhat system of morality can Hume have with these principles? First of all,\nhe protests against those who should deduce from his principles the\nimmorality of his system. Take care, said he wittily (just like Spinoza,\nby the way), it is the partisans of free-will who are immoral. No doubt! It\nis when there is liberty that there is no responsibility. I am not\nresponsible for my actions if they have no connection in me with anything\ndurable or constant. I have committed murder. Truly it is by chance, if it\nwas by an entirely isolated determination, entirely detached from the rest\nof my character, and momentary; and I am only infinitesimally\nresponsible. But if all my actions are linked together, are conditional\nupon one another, dependent on one another, if I have committed murder it\nis because I am an assassin at every moment of my life or nearly so, and\nthen, oh! how responsible I am!\n\nNote that this is the line taken up by judges, since they make careful\ninvestigation of the antecedents of the accused. They find him all the more\nculpable if he has always shown bad instincts.--Therefore they find him the\nmore responsible, the more he has been compelled by necessity.--Yes.\n\nHume then does not believe himself \"foreclosed\" in morality; he does not\nbelieve he is forbidden by his principles to have a system of morality and\nhe has one. It is a morality of sentiment. We have in us the instinct of\nhappiness and we seek happiness; but we have also in us an instinct of\ngoodwill which tends to make us seek the general happiness, and reason\ntells us that there is conciliation or rather concordance between these two\ninstincts, because it is only in the general happiness that we find our\nparticular happiness.\n\nTHE SCOTTISH SCHOOL: REID; STEWART.--The Scottish School (end of the\neighteenth century) was pre-eminently a school of men who attached\nthemselves to common sense and were excellent moralists. We must at any\nrate mention Thomas Reid and Dugald Stewart. They were bent especially on\nopposing the transcendent idealism of Berkeley and the scepticism of David\nHume, also in some measure Locke's doctrine of the blank sheet. They\nreconstituted the human mind and even the world (which had been so to speak\ndriven off in vapour by their predecessors), much as they were in the time\nof Descartes. Let us believe, they said, in the reality of the external\nworld; let us believe that there are causes and effects; let us believe\nthere is an _ego,_ a human person whom we directly apprehend, and who\nis a cause; let us believe that we are free and that we are responsible\nbecause we are free, etc. They were, pre-eminently, excellent describers of\nstates of the soul, admirable psychological moralists and they were the\nancestors of the highly remarkable pleiad of English psychologists of the\nnineteenth century.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V\n\nFRENCH PHILOSOPHERS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY\n\n\nVoltaire a Disciple of Locke.\n\nRousseau a Freethinking Christian, but deeply Imbued\nwith Religious Sentiments.\n\nDiderot a Capricious Materialist.\n\nD'Holbach and Helvetius Avowed Materialists.\n\nCondillac a Philosopher of Sensations.\n\n\nVOLTAIRE; ROUSSEAU.--The French philosophy of the eighteenth\ncentury, fairly feeble it must be avowed, seemed as if dominated by the\nEnglish philosophy, excepting Berkeley, but especially by Locke and David\nHume, more particularly Locke, who was the intellectual deity of those\nFrenchmen of that epoch who were interested in philosophy.\n\nWhenever Voltaire dealt with philosophy, he was only the echo of Locke\nwhose depths he failed to fathom, and to whom he has done some injury, for\nreading Locke only through Voltaire has led to the belief that Locke was\nsuperficial.\n\nRousseau was both the disciple and adversary of Hobbes, as often occurs,\nand dealt out to the public the doctrines of Hobbes in an inverted form,\nmaking the state of nature angelic instead of infernal, and putting the\ngovernment of all by all in the place of government by one, invariably\nreaching the same point with a simple difference of form; for if Hobbes\nargued for despotism exercised by one over all, Rousseau argued for the\ndespotism of all over each. In _Emile_, he was incontestably inspired\nby the ideas of Locke on education in some degree, but in my opinion less\nthan has been asserted. On nearly all sides it has been asserted that\nRousseau exercised great influence over Kant. I know that Kant felt\ninfinite admiration for Rousseau, but of the influence of Rousseau upon\nKant I have never been able to discover a trace.\n\nDIDEROT; HELVETIUS; D'HOLBACH.--It was particularly on David Hume\nthat Diderot depended. The difference, which is great, is that David Hume\nin his scepticism remained a grave, reserved man, well-bred and discreet,\nand was only a sceptic, whilst Diderot was violent in denial and a man of\nparadoxes and jests, both impertinent and cynical.\n\nIt is almost ridiculous in a summary history of philosophy to name as\nsub-Diderots, if one may so express it, Helvetius and D'Holbach, who were\nmerely wits believing themselves philosophers, and who were not always\nwits.\n\nCONDILLAC.--Condillac belongs to another category. He was a very\nserious philosopher and a vigorous thinker. An exaggerated disciple of\nLocke, while the latter admitted sensation _and_ reflection as the\norigin of ideas, Condillac admitted only pure sensation and transformed\nsensation--that is to say, sensation transforming itself. The definition of\nman that he deduces from these principles is very celebrated and it is\ninteresting: \"The _ego_ of each man is only the collection of the\nsensations that he feels and of those his memory recalls; it is the\nconsciousness of what he is combined with the recollection of what he has\nbeen.\" To Condillac, the idea is a sensation which has fixed itself and\nwhich has been renewed and vivified by others; desire is a sensation which\nwishes to be repeated and seeks what opportunity offers for its renewal,\nand the will itself is only the most potent of desires. Condillac was\nvoluntarily and systematically limited, but his system is well knit and\npresented in admirably clear and precise language.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI\n\nKANT\n\n\nKant Reconstructed all Philosophy by Supporting it on Morality.\n\n\nKNOWLEDGE.--Kant, born at Koenigsberg in 1724, was professor there\nall his life and died there in 1804. Nothing happened to him except the\npossession of genius. He had commenced with the theological philosophy in\nuse in his country, that of Wolf, which on broad lines was that of\nLeibnitz. But he early read David Hume, and the train of thought of the\nsceptical Scotsman at least gave him the idea of submitting all philosophic\nideas to a severe and close criticism.\n\nHe first of all asked himself what the true value is of our knowledge and\nwhat knowledge is. We believe generally that it is the things which give us\nthe knowledge that we have of them. But, rather, is it not we who impose on\nthings the forms of our mind and is not the knowledge that we believe we\nhave of things only the knowledge which we take of the laws of our mind by\napplying it to things? This is what is most probable. We perceive the\nthings by moulds, so to speak, which are in ourselves and which give them\ntheir shapes and they would be shapeless and chaotic were it\notherwise. Consequently, it is necessary to distinguish the matter and the\nform of our knowledge: the matter of the knowledge is the things\nthemselves. The form of our knowledge is ourselves: \"Our experimental\nknowledge is a compound of what we receive from impressions and of what our\nindividual faculty of knowing draws from itself on the occasion of these\nimpressions.\"\n\nSENSIBILITY; UNDERSTANDING; REASON.--Those who believe that all we\nthink proceeds from the senses are therefore wrong; so too are those wrong\nwho believe that all we think proceeds from ourselves. To say, Matter is an\nappearance, and to say, Ideas are appearances, are equally false doctrines.\nNow we know by sensibility, by understanding, and by reason. By sensibility\nwe receive the impression of phenomena; by the understanding we impose on\nthese impressions their forms, and link them up together; by reason we give\nourselves general ideas of things--universal ones, going beyond or\nbelieving they go beyond the data, even when linked up and systematized.\n\nLet us analyse sensibility, understanding, and reason. Sensibility already\nhas the forms it imposes on things. These forms are time and space. Time\nand space are not given us by matter like colour, smell, taste, or sound;\nthey are not perceived by the senses; they are therefore the forms of our\nsensibility: we can feel only according to time and space, by lodging what\nwe feel in space and time; these are the conditions of sensibility.\nPhenomena are thus perceived by us under the laws of space and of time.\nWhat do they become in us? They are seized by the understanding, which also\nhas its forms, its powers of classification, of arrangement, and of\nconnection. Its forms or powers, or, putting it more exactly, its active\nforms are, for example, the conception of quantity being always equal:\nthrough all phenomena the quantity of substance remains always the same;\nthe conception of causality: everything has a cause and every cause has an\neffect and it is ever thus. Those are the conditions of our understanding,\nthose without which we do not understand and the forms which within us we\nimpose on all things in order to understand them.\n\nIt is thus that we know the world; which is tantamount to stating that the\nworld exists, so far as we are concerned, only so long as we think\nso. Reason would go further: it would seize the most general, the\nuniversal, beyond experience, beyond the limited and restricted\nsystematizations established by the understanding; to know, for instance,\nthe first cause of all causes, the last and collective end, so to speak, of\nall purposes; to know \"why is there something?\" and \"in view of what end is\nthere something?\" in fact, to answer all the questions of infinity and\neternity. Be sure that it cannot. How could it? It only operates, can only\noperate, on the data of experience and the systematizations of the\nunderstanding, which classify experience but do not go beyond it. Only\noperating upon that, having nothing except that as matter, how could it\nitself go beyond experience? It cannot. It is only (a highly important\nfact, and one which must on no account be forgotten)--it is only a sign,\nmerely a witness. It is the sign that the human spirit has need of the\nabsolute; it is itself that need; without that it would not exist; it is\nthe witness of our invincible insistence on knowing and of our tendency to\nestimate that we know nothing if we only know something; it is itself that\ninsistence and that tendency: without that it would not exist. Let us pause\nthere for the moment. Man knows of nature only those impressions which he\nreceives from it, co-ordinated by the forms of sensibility, and further the\nideas of it which he preserves co-ordinated by the forms of his\nunderstanding. This is very little. It is all, if we consider only pure\nreason.\n\nPRACTICAL REASON.--_But_ there is perhaps another reason, or\nanother aspect of reason--to wit, practical reason. What is practical\nreason? Something in us tells us: you should act, and you should act in\nsuch a way; you should act rightly; this is not right, so do not do it;\nthat is right, do it. As a fact this is uncontestable. What is the\nexplanation? From what data of experience, from what systematization of\nthe understanding has our mind borrowed this? Where has it got it? Does\nnature yield obedience to a \"you ought\"? Not at all. It exists, and it\ndevelops and it goes its way, according to our way of seeing it in time and\nspace, and that is all. Does the understanding furnish the idea of \"you\nought\"? By no means; it gives us ideas of quantity, of quality, of cause\nand effect, etc., and that is all; there is no \"you ought\" in all\nthat. Therefore this \"you ought\" is purely human; it is the only principle\nwhich comes exactly from ourselves only. It might therefore well be the\nvery foundation of us.--It may be an illusion.--No doubt, but it is highly\nremarkable that it exists, though nothing gives it birth or is of a nature\nto give it birth. An illusion is a weakness of the senses or an error of\nlogic and is thus explained; but an illusion in itself and by itself and\nonly proceeding from itself is most singular and not to be explained as an\nillusion. Hence it remains that it is a reality, a reality of our nature,\nand given the coercive force of its voice and act, it is the most real\nreality there is in us.\n\nTHE CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE.--Thus, at least, thought Kant, and he\nsaid: There is a practical reason which does not go beyond experience and\ndoes not seek to go beyond it; but which does not depend on it, is\nabsolutely separated from it, and is its own (human) experience by\nitself. This practical reason says to us: you ought to do good. The crowd\ncall it conscience; I call it in a general way practical reason, and I call\nit the categorical imperative when I take it in its principle, without\ntaking into account the applications which I foresee. Why this name? To\ndistinguish it clearly; for we feel ourselves commanded by other things\nthan it, but not in the same way. We feel ourselves commanded by prudence,\nfor instance, which tells us: do not run down that staircase _if_ you\ndo not wish to break your neck; we feel ourselves commanded by the\nconventions which say: be polite _if_ you do not wish men to leave you\nseverely alone, etc. But conscience does not say _if_ to us: it says\nbluntly \"you ought\" without consideration of what may or may not happen,\nand it is even part of its character to scorn all consideration of\nconsequences. It would tell us: run down that staircase to save that child\neven at the risk of breaking your neck. Because of that I call all the\nother commandments made to us hypothetical imperatives and that of\nconscience, alone, the categorical or absolute imperative. Here is a\ndefinite result.\n\nMORALITY, THE LAW OF MAN.--Yet reflect: if the foregoing be true,\nmorality is the very law of man, his especial law, as the law of the tree\nis to spread in roots and branches. Well. But for man to be able to obey\nhis law he must be free, must be able to do what he wishes. That is\ncertain. Then it must be believed that we are free, for were we not, we\ncould not obey our law; and the moral law would be absurd. The moral law is\nthe _sign_ that we are free. Compared to this, all the other proofs of\nfreedom are worthless or weak. We are free because we must be so in order\nto do the good which our law commands us to do.\n\nLet us examine further. I do what is right in order to obey the law; but,\nwhen I have done it, I have the idea that it would be unjust that I should\nbe punished for it, or that I should not be rewarded for it, that it would\nbe unjust were there not concordance between right and happiness. As it\nhappens, virtue is seldom rewarded in this world and often is even\npunished; it draws misfortune or evil on him who practises it. Would not\nthat be the sign that there are two worlds of which we see only one? Would\nnot that be the sign that virtue unrewarded here will be rewarded elsewhere\n_in order that there should not be injustice?_ It is highly probable\nthat this is so.\n\nBut for that it is necessary that the soul be immortal. It is so, since it\nis necessary that it should be. The moral law is accomplished and\nconsummated in rewards or penalties beyond the grave, which pre-suppose the\nimmortality of the soul. All the other proofs of the immortality of the\nsoul are worthless or feeble beside this one which demonstrates that were\nthere no immortality of the soul there would be no morality.\n\nGOD.--And, finally, if justice is one day to be done, this supposes\na Judge. It is neither ourselves who in another life will do justice to\nourselves nor yet some force of circumstances which will do it to us. It is\nnecessary to have an intelligence conceiving justice and a will to realise\nit. God is this intelligence and this will.\n\nAll the other proofs of God are weak or worthless beside this one. The\nexistence of God has been deduced from the idea of God: if we have the idea\nof God, it is necessary that He should exist. A weak proof, for we can have\nan idea which does not correspond with an object. The existence of God has\nbeen deduced from the idea of causality; for all that is, a cause is\nnecessary, this cause is God. A weak proof, for things being as they are,\nthere is necessity for ... cause; but a cause and a _single_ cause,\nwhy? There could be a series of causes to infinity and thus the cause of\nthe world could be the world itself. The existence of God has been deduced\nfrom the idea of design well carried out. The composition, the ordering of\nthis world is admired; this world is well made; it is like a clock. The\nclock supposes a clock-maker; the fine composition of the world supposes an\nintelligence which conceived a work to be made and which made it. Perhaps;\nbut this consideration only leads to the idea of a manipulation of matter,\nof a demiurge, as the Greeks said, of an architect, but not to the idea of\na _Creator;_ it may even lead only to the idea of several architects\nand the Greeks perfectly possessed the idea of a fine artistic order\nexisting in the world when they believed in a great number of deities. This\nproof also is therefore weak, although Kant always treats it with respect.\n\nThe sole convincing proof is the existence of the moral law in the heart of\nman. For the moral law to be accomplished, for it not to be merely a tyrant\nover man, for it to be realised in all its fullness, weighing on man here\nbut rewarding him infinitely elsewhere, which means there is justice in all\nthat, it is necessary that somewhere there should be an absolute realizer\nof justice. God must exist for the world to be moral.\n\nWhy is it necessary for the world to be moral? Because an immoral world\nwith even a single moral being in it would be a very strange thing.\n\nThus, whilst the majority of philosophers deduced human liberty from God,\nand the spirituality of the soul from human liberty, the immortality of the\nsoul from human spirituality, and morality from human immortality, Kant\nstarts from morality as from the incontestable fact, and from morality\ndeduces liberty, and from liberty spirituality, and God from the\nimmortality of the soul with the consequent realization of justice.\n\nHe has effected an extraordinarily powerful reversal of the argument\ngenerally employed.\n\nTHE INFLUENCE OF KANT.--The influence of Kant has been incomparable\nor, if you will, comparable only to those of Plato, Zeno, and\nEpicurus. Half at least of the European philosophy of the nineteenth\ncentury has proceeded from him and is closely connected with him. Even in\nour own day, pragmatism, as it is called--that is, the doctrine which lays\ndown that morality is the measure of truth and that an idea is true only if\nit be morally useful--is perhaps an alteration of Kantism, a Kantian\nheresy, but entirely penetrated with and, as it were, excited by the spirit\nof Kant.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII\n\nTHE NINETEENTH CENTURY: GERMANY\n\n\nThe great reconstructors of the world, analogous to the\nfirst philosophers of antiquity.\n\nGreat general systems: Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, etc.\n\n\nFICHTE.--Fichte, embarrassed by what remained of experience in the\nideas of Kant, by the part, restricted though it was, which Kant left to\nthings in the external world, completely suppressed the external world,\nlike Berkeley, and affirmed the existence of the human _ego_\nalone. Kant said that the world furnished us with the matter of the idea\nand that we furnished the form. According to Fichte, form and matter alike\ncame from us. What then is sensation? It is nothing except the pause of the\n_ego_ encountering what is not self, the impact of the _ego_\nagainst what limits it.--But then the external world does exist, for how\ncould our mind be encountered by nothing and there be an impact of our mind\nagainst nothing?--But this non-self that encounters self is precisely a\nproduct of self, a product of the imagination which creates an object,\nwhich projects outside us an appearance before which we pause as before\nsomething real which should be outside us.\n\nThis theory is very difficult to understand, but indicates a very fine\neffort of the mind.\n\nYet outside ourselves is there anything? There is pure spirit, God. What\nis God? For Fichte He is moral order (a very evident recollection of\nKant). Morality is God and God is morality. We are in God, and it is the\nwhole of religion, when we do our duty without any regard to the\nconsequences of our actions; we are outside God, and it is atheism, when we\nact in view of what results our actions may have. And thus morality and\nreligion run into one another, and religion is only morality in its\nplenitude and complete morality is the whole of religion. \"The holy, the\nbeautiful, and the good are the immediate apparition [if it could be] in us\nof the essence of God.\"\n\nSCHELLING.--Schelling desired to correct what, according to him, was\ntoo radical in the idealism of Fichte. He restored the external world; for\nhim the _non-ego_ and the _ego_ both exist and the two are\n_nature_, nature which is the object in the world regarded by man, the\nsubject when it regards man, subject and object according to the case; in\nitself and in its totality neither subject nor object, but absolute,\nunlimited, indeterminate. Confronting this world (that is nature and man)\nthere is another world which is God. God is the infinite and the perfect,\nand particularly the perfect and infinite will. The world that we know is a\ndebasement from that without our being able to conceive how the perfect can\nbe degraded, and how an emanation of the perfect can be imperfect and how\nthe non-being can come out of being, since relatively to the infinite, the\nfinite has no existence, and relatively to perfection, the imperfect is\nnothing.\n\nIt appears however that it is thus, and that the world is an emanation of\nGod in which He degrades Himself and a degradation of God such that it\nopposes itself to Him as nothing to everything. It is a fall. The fall of\nman in the Scriptures may give an idea, however distant, of that.\n\nHEGEL.--Hegel, a contemporary of Schelling, and often in\ncontradiction to him, is the philosopher of \"_becoming_\" and of the\nidea which always \"becomes\" something. The essence of all is the idea, but\nthe idea in progress; the idea makes itself a thing according to a rational\nlaw which is inherent in it, and the thing makes itself an idea in the\nsense that the idea contemplating the thing it has become thinks it and\nfills itself with it in order to become yet another thing, always following\nthe rational law; and this very evolution, all this evolution, all this\nbecoming, is that absolute for which we are always searching behind things,\nat the root of things, and which is _in_ the things themselves.\n\nThe rationally active is everything; and activity and reality are synonyms,\nand all reality is active, and what is not active is not real, and what is\nnot active has no existence.\n\nLet not this activity be regarded as always advancing forward; the becoming\nis not a river which flows; activity is activity and retro-activity. The\ncause is cause of the effect, but also the effect is cause of its cause.\nIn fact the cause would not be cause if it had no effect; it is therefore,\nthanks to its effect, because of its effect, that the cause is cause; and\ntherefore the effect is the cause of the cause as much as the cause is\ncause of the effect.\n\nA government is the effect of the character of a people, and the character\nof a people is the effect also of its government; my son proceeds from me,\nbut he reacts on me, and because I am his father I have the character which\nI gave him, more pronounced than before, etc.\n\nHence, all effect is cause as all cause is effect, which everybody has\nrecognized, but in addition all effect is cause of its cause and in\nconsequence, to speak in common language, all effect is cause forward and\nbackward, and the line of causes and effects is not a straight line but a\ncircle.\n\nTHE DEISM OF HEGEL.--God disappears from all that. No, Hegel is very\nformally a deist, but he sees God in the total of things and not outside\nthings, yet distinct. In what way distinct? In this, that God is the\ntotality of things considered not in themselves but in the spirit that\nanimates them and the force that urges them, and because the soul is of\nnecessity in the body, united to the body, that is no reason why it should\nnot be distinct from it. And having taken up this position, Hegel is a\ndeist and even accepts proofs of the existence of God which are regarded by\nsome as hackneyed. He accepts them, only holding them not exactly as\nproofs, but as reasons for belief, and as highly faithful descriptions of\nthe necessary elevation of the soul to God. For example, the ancient\nphilosophers proved the existence of God by the contemplation of the\nmarvels of the universe: \"That is not a 'proof,'\" said Hegel, \"that is not\na proof, but it is a great reason for belief; for it is an exposition, a\nvery exact although incomplete account rendered of the fact that by\ncontemplation of the world the human mind rises to God.\" Now this fact is\nof singular importance: it indicates that it is impossible to think\nstrongly without thinking of God. \"When the passage [although\ninsufficiently logical] from the finite to the infinite does not take\nplace, it may be said that there is no thought.\" Now this is a reason for\nbelief.'\n\nAfter the same fashion, the philosophers have said \"from the moment that we\nimagine God, the reason is that He is.\" Kant ridiculed this proof. Granted,\nit is not an invincible proof, but this fact alone that we cannot imagine\nGod without affirming His existence indicates a tendency of our mind which\nis to relate finite thought to infinite thought and not to admit an\nimperfect thought which should not have its source in a perfect thought;\nand that is rather an invincible belief than a proof, but that this belief\nis invincible and necessary in itself is an extremely commanding proof,\nalthough a relative one.\n\nHIS POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY.--The philosophy of the human mind and\npolitical philosophy according to Hegel are these. Primitive man is mind,\nreason, conscience, but he is so only potentially, as the philosophers\nexpress it; that is to say, he is so only in that he is capable of becoming\nso. Really, practically, he is only instincts: he is egoist like the\nanimals [it should be said like the greater part of the animals], and\nfollows his egoistical appetites. Society, in whatever manner it has\nmanaged to constitute itself, transforms him and his \"becoming\" commences.\nFrom the sexual instinct it makes marriage, from capture it forms regulated\nproprietorship, out of defence against violence it makes legal punishment,\netc. Hence-forth, and all his evolution tends to that, man proceeds to\nsubstitute in himself the general will for the particular will; he tends to\ndisindividualize himself. The general will, founded upon general utility,\nis that the man be married, father, head of a family, good husband, good\nfather, good relative, good citizen. All that man ought to be in\nconsideration of the general will which he has put in the place of his own,\nand which he has made his own will. That is the first advance.\n\nIt is realized (always imperfectly) in the smallest societies, in the\ncities, in the little Greek republics, for example.\n\nHere is the second advance. By war, by conquest, by annexations, by more\ngentle means when possible, the stronger cities subdue the weaker, and the\ngreat State is created. The great State has a more important part than the\ncity; it continues to substitute the general will for the particular wills;\nbut, _in addition,_ it is an idea, a great civilizing idea,\nbenevolent, elevating, aggrandizing, to which private interests must and\nshould be sacrificed. Such were the Romans who considered themselves, not\nwithout reason, as the legislators and civilizers of the world.\n\nTHE IDEAL FORM OF STATE.--Putting aside for a while the continuation\nof this subject, what political form should the great State take to conform\nto its destiny? Assuredly the monarchical form; for the republican form is\nalways too individualist. To Hegel, the Greeks and even the Romans seem to\nhave conceded too much to individual liberty or to the interests of class,\nof caste; they possessed an imperfect idea of the rights and functions of\nthe State. The ideal form of the State is monarchy. It is necessary for the\nState to be contracted, gathered up, and personified in a prince who can be\npersonally loved, who can be reverenced, which is precisely what is\nneeded. These great States are only really great if they possess strong\ncohesion; it is therefore necessary that they should be nationalities, as\nit is called--that is, that they should be inwardly very united and highly\nhomogeneous by community of race, religion, customs, language, etc. The\nidea to be realized by a State can only be accomplished if there be a\nsufficient community of ideas in the people constituting it. However the\ngreat State will be able to, and even ought to, conquer and annex the small\nones in order to become stronger and more capable, being stronger, of\nrealizing its idea. Only this should be done merely when it is certain or\nclearly apparent that it represents an idea as against a people which does\nnot, or that it presents a better, greater, and nobler idea than that\nrepresented by the people it attacks.\n\nWAR.--But, as each people will always find its own idea finer than\nthat of another, how is this to be recognized?--By victory itself. It is\nvictory which proves that a people ... was stronger than another!--Not\nonly stronger materially but representing a greater, more practical, more\nfruitful idea than the other; for it is precisely the idea which supports a\npeople and renders it strong. Thus, victory is the sign of the moral\nsuperiority of a people, and in consequence force indicates where right is\nand is indistinguishable from right itself, and we must not say as may\nalready perhaps have been said: \"Might excels right,\" but \"Might is right\"\nor \"Right is might.\"\n\nFor example [Hegel might have said], France was \"apparently\" within her\nrights in endeavouring to conquer Europe from 1792 to 1815; for she\nrepresented an idea, the revolutionary idea, which she might consider, and\nwhich many besides the French did consider, an advance and a civilizing\nidea; but she was beaten, _which proves_ that the idea was false; and\nbefore this demonstration by events is it not true that the republican or\nCaesarian idea is inferior to that of traditional monarchy? Hegel would\ncertainly have reasoned thus on this point.\n\nTherefore war is eternal and must be so. It is history itself, being the\ncondition of history; it is even the evolution of humanity, being the\ncondition of that evolution; there-fore, it is divine. Only it is purifying\nitself; formerly men only fought, or practically always, from ambition; now\nwars are waged for principles, to effect the triumph of an idea which has a\nfuture, and which contains the future, over one that is out of date and\ndecayed. The future will see a succession of the triumphs of might which,\nby definition, will be triumphs of right and which will be triumphs of\nincreasingly fine ideas over ideas that are barbarous and justly condemned\nto perish.\n\nHegel has exercised great influence on the ideas of the German people both\nin internal and external politics.\n\nART, SCIENCE, AND RELIGION.--The ideas of Hegel on art, science, and\nreligion are the following: Under the shelter of the State which is\nnecessary for their peaceful development in security and liberty, science,\nliterature, art, and religion pursue aims not superior to but other than\nthose of the State. They seek, without detaching the individual from the\nsociety, to unite him to the whole world. Science makes him know all it\ncan of nature and its laws; literature, by studying man in himself and in\nhis relations with the world, imbues him with the sentiment of the possible\nconcordance of the individual with the universe; the arts make him love\ncreation by unravelling and bringing into the light and into relief all\nthat is beautiful in it relatively to man, and all that in consequence\nshould render it lovely, respected, and dear to him; religion, finally,\nseeks to be a bond between all men and a bond between all men and God; it\nsketches the plan of universal brotherhood which is ideally the last state\nof humanity, a state which no doubt it will never attain, but which it is\nessential it should imagine and believe to be possible, without which it\nalways would be drawn towards animality more and much more than it is.\n\nThe Hegelian philosophy has exercised an immense influence throughout\nEurope not only on philosophic studies, but on history, art, and\nliterature. It may be regarded as the last \"universal system\" and as the\nmost daring that has been attempted by the human mind.\n\nSCHOPENHAUER.--Schopenhauer was the philosopher of the\nwill. Persuaded, like Leibnitz, that man is an epitome and a picture of the\nworld, and that the world resembles us (which is hypothetical), he takes up\nthe thought of Leibnitz, changing and transforming it thus: All the\nuniverse is not thought, but all the universe is will; thought is only an\naccident of the will which appears in the superior animals; but the will,\nwhich is the foundation of man, is the foundation of all; the universe is a\ncompound of wills that act. All beings are wills which possess organs\nconformed to their purpose. It is _the will to be_ which gave claws to\nthe lion, tusks to the boar, and intelligence to man, because he was the\nmost unarmed of animals, just as to one who becomes blind it gives\nextraordinarily sensitive and powerful sense of hearing, smell, and\ntouch. Plants strive towards light by their tops and towards moisture by\ntheir roots; the seed turns itself in the earth to send forth its stalk\nupwards and its rootlet downward. In minerals there are \"constant\ntendencies\" which are nothing but obscure wills; what we currently term\nweight, fluidity, impenetrability, electricity, chemical affinities, are\nnothing but natural wills or inconscient wills. Because of this, the\ndiverse wills opposing and clashing with one another, the world is a war of\nall against all and of _everything_ literally against _everything_; and\nthe world is a scene of carnage.\n\nThe truth is that will is an evil and is the evil. What is needed for\nhappiness is to kill the will, to destroy the wish to be.--But this would\nbe the end of existence?--And in fact to be no more or not to be at all is\nthe true happiness and it would be necessary to blow up the whole world in\nan explosion for it to escape unhappiness. At least, as Buddhism desired\nand, in some degree, though less, Christianity also, it is necessary to\nmake an approach to death by a kind of reduction to the absolute minimum of\nwill, by detachment and renunciation pushed as far as can be.\n\nNIETZSCHE.--A very respectful but highly independent and untractable\npupil of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche \"turns Schopenhauer inside out\" as it\nwere, saying: Yes, assuredly the will to be is everything; but precisely\nbecause of that it is essential not to oppose but to follow it and to\nfollow it as far as it will lead us. But is it not true that it will lead\nto suffering? Be sure of that, but in suffering there is an intoxication of\npain which is quite comprehensible; for it is the intoxication of the will\nin action; and this intoxication is an enjoyment too and in any case a good\nthing; for it is the end to which we are urged by our nature composed of\nwill and of hunger for existence. Now wisdom, like happiness, is to follow\nour nature. The happiness and wisdom of man is to obey his will for power,\nas the wisdom and happiness of water is to flow towards the sea.\n\nFrom these ideas is derived a morality of violence which can be\nlegitimately regarded as immoral and which, in any case, is neither\nBuddhist nor Christian, but which is susceptible of several\ninterpretations, all the more so because Nietzsche, who was a poet, never\nfails, whilst always artistically very fine, to fall into plenty of\ncontradictions.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII\n\nTHE NINETEENTH CENTURY: ENGLAND\n\n\nThe Doctrines of Evolution and of Transformism:\nLamarck (French), Darwin, Spencer.\n\n\nTRANSFORMISM AND EVOLUTION.--The great philosophic invention of the\nEnglish of the nineteenth century has been the idea, based on a wide\nknowledge of natural history, that there never was creation. The animal\nspecies had been considered by all the philosophers (except Epicurus and\nthe Epicureans) as being created once and for all and remaining\ninvariable. Nothing of the kind. Matter, eternally fruitful, has\ntransformed itself first into plants, then into lower animals, then into\nhigher animals, then into man; our ancestor is the fish; tracing back yet\nmore remotely, our ancestor is the plant. Transformation (hence the name\n_transformism_), discrimination and separation of species, the\nstrongest individuals of each kind alone surviving and creating descendants\nin their image which constitute a species; evolution (hence the name\n_evolutionism_) of living nature thus operating from the lowest types\nto the highest and therefore the most complicated; there is nothing but\nthat in the world.\n\nLAMARCK; DARWIN; SPENCER.--The Frenchman Lamarck in the eighteenth\ncentury had already conceived this idea; Darwin, purely a naturalist, set\nit forth clearly, Spencer again stated it and drew from it consequences of\ngeneral philosophy. Thus, to Spencer, the evolutionist theory contains no\nimmorality. On the contrary, the progressive transformation of the human\nspecies is an ascent towards morality; from egoism is born altruism because\nthe species, seeking its best law and its best condition of happiness,\nperceives a greater happiness in altruism; seeking its best law and its\nbest condition of happiness, perceives that a greater happiness lies in\norder, regular life, social life, etc.; so that humanity raises itself to a\nhigher and yet higher morality by the mere fact of adapting itself better\nto the conditions of the life of humanity. Morality develops\nphysiologically as the germ becomes the stem and the bud becomes the\nflower.\n\nAs for religion it is the domain of the unknowable. That is not to assert\nthat it is nothing. On the contrary it is something formidable and\nimmense. It is the feeling that something, apart from all that we know,\nsurpasses us and that we shall never know it. Now this feeling at the same\ntime maintains us in a humility highly favourable to the health of the soul\nand also in a serene confidence in the mysterious being who presides over\nuniversal evolution and who, no doubt, is the all-powerful and eternal soul\nof it.\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IX\n\nTHE NINETEENTH CENTURY: FRANCE\n\n\nThe Eclectic School: Victor Cousin.\n\nThe Positivist School: Auguste Comte.\n\nThe Kantist School: Renouvier.\n\nIndependent and Complex Positivists: Taine, Renan.\n\n\nLAROMIGUIERE: ROYER-COLLARD.--Emerging from the school of Condillac,\nFrance saw Laromiguiere who was a sort of softened Condillac, less\ntrenchant, and not insensible to the influence of Rousseau; but he was\nlittle more than a clear and elegant professor of philosophy. Royer-Collard\nintroduced into France the Scottish philosophy (Thomas Reid, Dugald\nStewart) and did not depart from it or go beyond it; but he set it forth\nwith magnificent authority and with a remarkable invention of clear and\nmagisterial formulae.\n\nMAINE DE BIRAN.--Maine de Biran was a renovator. He attached himself\nto Descartes linking the chain anew that had for so long been\ninterrupted. He devoted his attention to the notion of _ego_. In full\nreaction from the \"sensualism\" of Condillac, he restored a due activity to\nthe _ego_; he made it a force not restricted to the reception of\nsensations, which transform themselves, but one which seized upon,\nelaborated, linked together, and combined them. For him then, as for\nDescartes, but from a fresh point of view, the voluntary deed is the\nprimitive deed of the soul and the will is the foundation of man. Also, the\nwill is not all man; man has, so to say, three lives superimposed but very\nclosely inter-united and which cannot do without one another: the life of\nsensation, the life of will, and the life of love. The life of sensation is\nalmost passive, with a commencement of activity which consists in\nclassifying and organizing the sensations; the life of will is properly\nspeaking the \"human\" life; the life of love is the life of activity and yet\nagain of will, but which unites the human with the divine life. By the\ningenious and profound subtlety of his analyses, Maine de Biran has placed\nhimself in the front rank of French thinkers and, in any case, he is one of\nthe most original.\n\nVICTOR COUSIN AND HIS DISCIPLES.--Victor Cousin, who appears to have\nbeen influenced almost concurrently by Maine de Biran, Royer-Collard, and\nthe German philosophy, yielded rapidly to a tendency which is\ncharacteristically French and is also, perhaps, good, and which consists in\nseeing \"some good in all the opinions,\" and he was eclectic, that is, a\nborrower. His maxim, which he had no doubt read in Leibnitz, was that the\nsystems are \"true in what they affirm and false in what they deny.\"\nStarting thence, he rested upon both the English and German philosophy,\ncorrecting one by the other. Personally his tendency was to make\nmetaphysics come from philosophy and to prove God by the human soul and the\nrelations of God with the world by the relations of man with matter. To him\nGod is always an augmented human soul. All philosophies, not to mention all\nreligions, have rather an inclination to consider things thus: but this\ntendency is particularly marked in Cousin. In the course of his career,\nwhich was diversified, for he was at one time a professor and at another a\nstatesman, he varied somewhat, because before 1830 he became very Hegelian,\nand after 1830 he harked back towards Descartes, endeavouring especially to\nmake philosophic instruction a moral priesthood; highly cautious, very\nwell-balanced, feeling great distrust of the unassailable temerities of the\none and in sympathetic relations with the other. What has remained of this\neclecticism is an excellent thing, the great regard for the _history_\nof philosophy, which had never been held in honour in France and which,\nsince Cousin, has never ceased to be so.\n\nThe principal disciples of Cousin were Jouffroy, Damiron, Emile Saisset,\nand the great moralist Jules Simon, well-known because of the important\npolitical part he played.\n\nLAMENNAIS.--Lamennais, long celebrated for his great book, _Essay\non Indifference in the Matter of Religion_, then, when he had severed\nhimself from Rome, by his _Words of a Believer_ and other works of\nrevolutionary spirit, was above all a publicist; but he was a philosopher,\nproperly speaking, in his _Sketch of a Philosophy_. To him, God is\nneither the Creator, as understood by the early Christians, nor the Being\nfrom whom the world emanates, as others have thought. He has not created\nthe world from nothing; but He has created it; He created it from Himself,\nHe made it issue from His substance; and He made it issue by a purely\nvoluntary act. He created it in His own image; it is not man alone who is\nin the image of God, but the whole world. The three Persons of God, that\nis, the three characteristics, power, intelligence, and love are\nfound--diminished and disfigured indeed, but yet are to be found--in every\nbeing in the universe. They are especially our own three powers, under the\nform of will, reason, sympathy; they are also the three powers of society,\nunder the forms of executive power, deliberation, and fraternity. Every\nbeing, individual or collective, has in it a principle of death if it\ncannot reproduce however imperfectly all the three terms of this trinity\nwithout the loss of one.\n\nAUGUSTE COMTE.--Auguste Comte, a mathematician, versed also in all\nsciences, constructed a pre-eminently negative philosophy in spite of his\ngreat pretension to replace the negations of the eighteenth century by a\npositive doctrine; above all else he denied all authority and denied to\nmetaphysics the right of existence. Metaphysics ought not to exist, do not\nexist, are a mere nothing. We know nothing, we can know nothing, about the\ncommencement or the end of things, or yet their essence or their object;\nphilosophy has always laid down as its task a general explanation of the\nuniverse; it is precisely this general explanation, all general explanation\nof the aggregate of things, which is impossible. This is the negative part\nof \"positivism.\" It is the only one which has endured and which is the\n_credo_ or rather the _non credo_ of a fairly large number of\nminds.\n\nThe affirmative part of the ideas of Comte was this: what can be done is to\nmake a classification of sciences and a philosophy of history. The\nclassification of sciences according to Comte, proceeding from the most\nsimple to the most complex--that is, from mathematics to astronomy,\nphysics, chemistry, biology to end at sociology, is generally considered by\nthe learned as interesting but arbitrary. The philosophy of history,\naccording to Comte, is this: humanity passes through three states:\ntheological, metaphysical, positive. The theological state (antiquity)\nconsists in man explaining everything by continual miracles; the\nmetaphysical state (modern times) consists in man explaining everything by\nideas, which he still continues to consider somewhat as beings, by\nabstractions, entities, vital principle, attraction, gravitation, soul,\nfaculty of the soul, etc. The positive state consists in that man explains\nand will explain all things, or rather limits himself and will limit\nhimself to verifying them, by the links that he will see they have with one\nanother, links he will content himself with observing and subsequently with\ncontrolling by experiment. Also there is always something of the succeeding\nstate in the preceding state and the ancients did not ignore observation,\nand there is always something of the preceding state in the succeeding\nstate and we have still theological and metaphysical habits of mind,\ntheological and metaphysical \"residues,\" and perhaps it will be always\nthus; but for theology to decline before metaphysics and metaphysics before\nscience is progress.\n\nOver and above this, Comte in the last portion of his life--as if to prove\nhis doctrine of residues and to furnish an example--founded a sort of\nreligion, a pseudo-religion, the religion of humanity. Humanity must be\nworshipped in its slow ascent towards intellectual and moral perfection\n(and, in consequence, we should specially worship humanity to come; but\nComte might reply that humanity past and present is venerable because it\nbears in its womb the humanity of the future). The worship of this new\nreligion is the commemoration and veneration of the dead. These last\nconceptions, fruits of the sensibility and of the imagination of Auguste\nComte, have no relation with the basis of his doctrine.\n\nRENOUVIER.--After him, by a vigorous reaction, Renouvier restored\nthe philosophy of Kant, depriving it of its too symmetrical, too minutely\nsystematic, too scholastic character and bringing it nearer to facts; from\nhim was to come the doctrine already mentioned, \"pragmatism,\" which\nmeasures the truth of every idea by the moral consequence that it contains.\n\nTAINE.--Very different and attaching himself to the general ideas of\nComte, Hippolyte Taine believed only in what has been observed,\nexperimented, and demonstrated; but being also as familiar with Hegel as\nwith Comte, with Spencer as with Condillac, he never doubted that the need\nof going beyond and escaping from oneself was also a fact, a human fact\neternal among humanity, and of this fact he took account as of a fact\nobserved and proved, saying if man is on one side a \"fierce and lascivious\ngorilla,\" on the other side he is a mystic animal, and that in \"a double\nnature, mysterious hymen,\" as Hugo wrote, lay the explanation of all the\nbaseness in ideas and actions as well as all the sublimity in ideas and\nactions of humanity. Personally he was a Stoic and his practice was the\ncontinuous development of the intelligence regarded as the condition and\nguarantee of morality.\n\nRENAN.--Renan, destined for the ecclesiastical profession and always\npreserving profound traces of his clerical education, was, nevertheless, a\nPositivist and believed only in science, hoping everything from it in youth\nand continuing to venerate it at least during his mature years. Thus\nformed, a \"Christian Positivist,\" as has been said, as well as a poet above\nall else, he could not proscribe metaphysics and had a weakness for them\nwith which perhaps he reproached himself. He extricated himself from this\ndifficulty by declaring all metaphysical conceptions to be only \"dreams,\"\nbut sheltered, so to say, by this concession he had made and this\nprecaution he had taken, he threw himself into the dream with all his heart\nand reconstituted God, the immortal soul, the future existence, eternity\nand creation, giving them new, unforeseen, and fascinating names. It was\nonly the idea of Providence--that is, of the particular and circumstantial\nintervention of God in human affairs, which was intolerable to him and\nagainst which he always protested, quoting the phrase of Malebranche, \"God\ndoes not act by particular wills.\" And yet he paid a compliment, which\nseems sincere, to the idea of grace, and if there be a particular and\ncircumstantial intervention by God in human affairs, it is certainly grace\naccording to all appearances.\n\nHe was above all an amateur of ideas, a dilettante in ideas, toying with\nthem with infinite pleasure, like a superior Greek sophist, and in all\nFrench philosophy no one calls Plato to mind more than he does.\n\nHe possessed a charming mind, a very lofty character, and was a marvellous\nwriter.\n\nTO-DAY.--The living French philosophers whom we shall content\nourselves with naming because they are living and receive contemporary\ncriticism rather than that of history, are MM. Fouillee, Theodule Ribot,\nLiard, Durckheim, Izoulet, and Bergson.\n\nTHE FUTURE OF PHILOSOPHY.--It is impossible to forecast in what\ndirection philosophy will move. The summary history we have been able to\ntrace sufficiently shows, as it seems to us, that it has no regular advance\nsuch that by seeing how it has progressed one can conjecture what path it\nwill pursue. It seems in no sense to depend, or at all events, to depend\nremarkably little, at any period, on the general state of civilization\naround it, and even for those who believe in a philosophy of history there\nis not, as it appears to me, a philosophy of the history of philosophy. The\nonly thing that can be affirmed is that philosophy will always exist in\nresponse to a need of the human mind, and that it will always be both an\neffort to gather scientific discoveries into some great general ideas and\nan effort to go beyond science and to seek as it can the meaning of the\nuniversal enigma; so that neither philosophy, properly speaking, nor even\nmetaphysics will ever disappear. Nietzsche has said that life is valuable\nonly as the instrument of knowledge. However eager humanity may be and\nbecome for branches of knowledge, it will be always passionately and\nindefatigably anxious about complete knowledge.\n\n\n\n\nINDEX OF NAMES\n\n     A\n\n     Aelard\n     Aenesidemus\n     Agrippa\n     Agrippa, Cornelius\n     Ailly, Peter d'\n     Albertus Magnus\n     Alexander the Great\n     Anaxagoras\n     Anaximander\n     Anselm, St.\n     Antisthenes\n     Apollodorus\n     Arcesilaus\n     Arete\n     Aristippus\n     Aristo\n     Aristobulus\n     Aristophanes\n     Aristotle\n     Arius\n     Arnauld\n     Atticus\n     Augustine, St.\n     Averroes\n     Avicenna\n\n     B\n\n     Bacon, Francis\n     Bacon, Roger\n     Beaconsfield\n     Bergson\n     Berkeley\n     Bonaventura, St.\n     Bossuet\n     Bruno, Giordano\n     Brutus\n     Buridan\n\n     C\n\n     Calvin\n     Campanella\n     Cardan\n     Carneades\n     Cato\n     Champeaux, William of\n     Charles the Bald\n     Christina of Sweden\n     Chrysippus\n     Cicero\n     Cleanthes\n     Clement, St., of Alexandria\n     Comte, Auguste\n     Cnodillac\n     Corneille\n     Cousin, Victor\n     Crantor\n     Crates\n\n     D\n\n     Damiron\n     Darwin\n     Democritus\n     Descartes\n     Diderot\n     Diogenes\n     Durand de Saint-Pourcain\n     Durckheim\n\n     E\n\n     Empedocles\n     Epictetus\n     Epicurus\n     Euhemerus\n\n     F\n\n     Fenelon\n     Fichte\n     Fontenelle\n     Fouillee\n     Franklin\n\n     G\n\n     Gassendi\n     Gerbert\n     Gerson\n     Gorgias\n\n     H\n\n     Harvey\n     Havet, Ernest\n     Hegel\n     Hegesias\n     Helvetius\n     Heraclitus\n     Herillus\n     Hermarchus\n     Hobbes, Thomas\n     Holbach, d'\n     Horace\n     Hugo, Victor\n     Hugo de Saint-Victor\n     Hume, David\n\n     I\n\n     Iamblichus\n     Izoulet\n\n     J\n\n     James I\n     Jesus Christ\n     Joan of Navarre\n     Jouffroy\n     Justinian\n\n     K\n\n     Kant\n\n     L\n\n     La Bruyere\n     Lamarck\n     Lamennais\n     Laromiguiere\n     Leibnitz\n     Leo X\n     Leucippus\n     Liard\n     Locke\n     Louis XIV\n     Lucian\n     Lucretius\n     Lulle, Raymond\n\n     M\n\n     Maine de Biran\n     Malebranche\n     Manes\n     Marcus Aurelius\n     Menippus\n     Metrodorus\n     Moderatus\n     Moliere\n     Montaigne\n     Moses\n\n     N\n\n     Nemesius\n     Nero\n     Nicomachus\n     Nietzsche\n\n     O\n\n     Ockham, William of\n     Origen\n\n     P\n\n     Paracelsus\n     Parmenides\n     Pascal\n     Paul, St.\n     Pericles\n     Philips the Fair\n     Philo\n     Pico della Mirandola\n     Plato\n     Pliny the Younger\n     Plotinus\n     Plutarch\n     Poincare, Henri\n     Polemo\n     Polystratus\n     Pomponazzo\n     Porphyry\n     Prodicus\n     Protagoras\n     Pyrrho\n     Pythagoras\n\n     R\n\n     Reid, Thomas\n     Renan\n     Renouvier\n     Reuchlin\n     Ribot, Theodule\n     Richard de Saint-Victor\n     Roscelin\n     Rousseau, J. J.\n     Royer-Collard\n\n     S\n\n     Saisset, Emile\n     Schelling\n     Schopenhauer\n     Scotus Erigena\n     Seneca\n     Servetus, Michael\n     Sextus Empiricus\n     Shakespeare\n     Simon, Jules\n     Socrates\n     Spencer, Herbert\n     Speusippus\n     Spinoza\n     Stewart, Dugald\n\n     T\n\n     Taine, Hippolyte\n     Thales\n     Theodosius\n     Theophrastus\n     Thomas Aquinas, St.\n     Thrasea\n     Timon\n\n     V\n\n     Vanini\n     Vauvenargues\n     Vico\n     Villon\n     Vincent of Beauvais\n     Voltaire\n\n     W\n\n     William of Auvergne\n     Wolf\n\n     X\n\n     Xenocrates\n     Xenophanes\n     Xenophon\n\n     Z\n\n     Zeno (of Citium)\n     Zeno (of Elea)\n     Zoroaster","title":"Initiation into Philosophy","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":39817}