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THE DEVELOPMENT OF BRITISH THOUGHT
THE DEVELOPMENT OF BRITISH THOUGHT
FROM 1820 TO 1890 With Special Reference to German Influences
By
M. M. WADDINGTON, M.A., Ph.D.
Lecturer, Trinity College, Toronto
J. M. DENT & SONS. LIMITED
MELINDA STREET. TORONTO
1919
J3is(c Wz
Copyright. Canada, 1919 BT J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd.
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FOREWORD
Readers of the prose writings of Coleridge have doubtless been struck by his air of being more than a mere man of letters. Yet he is not, in his own right, a philosopher, and his appeal is to the student of literature rather than to the philosophical inquirer. The difficulty which a reader who knew no philosophy might experience, in reading such material as Coleridgian prose, suggested the need of a work like the following. An examination of English literature in the 19th century led to definite conclusions as to the influences which w€nt to make certain phases of that literature what they were. The result was the preparation of the following study. It is an attempt to relate Coleridge, and others to whom he is more or less akin, to that body of thought which formed for them a common source. The main emphasis in the work has therefore been laid on the two later sections. The purpose of the introductory part is merely to sketch in a background : this, though general in character, was required to explain the references in the remainder. Chapter II affords an outline of the thought of those writers whose influence can be traced through the literature of the period selected.
I desire here to acknowledge my debt of gratitude to Professor G. S. Brett, of the University of Toronto, in the whole matter of the preparation of this book.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
SECTION I. Introductory.
PAGE
Chapter I. — Pre-Revolution Thought in England and France . 1
II. — The Critical Philosophy in Germany 12
III.— The British Line from Bentham to J. S. Mill... 31
SECTION II.
The Earlier German Influencic.
IV.— Coleridge 45
V. — Newman and the Tractarians, Carlyle, Emerson,
and Ruskin 63
VI. — Sir William Hamilton, James Frederick Ferrier. 85 VII.— John Stuart Mill 100
SECTION III.
The Scientific Movement and Later German Influence.
VIII. — The Scientific Movement 117
IX.— J. Hutchison Stirling— T. H. Green 138
X. — The Cairds, Bradley and Bosanquet 163
Conclusion 185
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SECTION I INTRODUCTORY
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CHAPTER I
PRK-REVOLUTION THOUGHT IN FRANCE AND BRITAIN
Many threads in the history of modern European thought may be traced to a discussion which took place over two centuries ago. " Were it fit to trouble thee with the history of this essay," John Locke writes in his " Epistle to the Reader," " 1 should tell thee that five or six friends meeting at my chamber, and discoursing on a subject very remote from this, found themselves quickly at a stand, by the difficulties that arose on every side. After we had awhile puzzled ourselves, without coming any nearer a resolution of those doubts which perplexed us, it came into my thoughts that we took a wrong course ; and that, before we set ourselves upon inquiries of that nature, it was necessary to examine our own abilities, and see what objects our understandings were, or were not, fitted to deal with."
We infer that the discourse of Locke and his friends had been concerned with God and man and the end of human life, and that the inevitable point had been reached beyond which none could go. Whatever the subject, a conviction came upon Locke that supernatural objects should be dismissed from discussion until the nature of knowledge itself had been examined. lAi the validity of an argument depended upon its agreement with fact, and human knowledge had no standard whereby to test the validity of an argument in the supernatural realm, wisdom was surely found in a determination to cling to experience. Hence arose Locke's investigations into the thinking side of experience, and their far-reaching results.
Lodce reached in his criticism of knowledge two main positions. Supernatural objects should be relegated to
theVsp!;ifiH..pf J5^<itabililj5f^ an'd faith. Attention should be c(5n(ieritrateci on tlie ideas gained from experience, which alone constitute certain knowledge. % The philosophical thought of Europe in the last two centuries seems to have alternated between agreement with and reaction from this two- fold conviction of Locke. In France and England keen advocates have been found for a thorough- going' analysis of experience. In Germany, interest has tended to centre about the so-called " transcendental '^ ideas. Each country has, however, exerted its influence on the other two, and so by initiation and reaction all three through their leaders of thought have thrown light on Locke's original problems.
%/Locke's appeal to experience, if unbiassed by earlier conceptions, might have led to other results than the scepticism of Hume, but he narrowed his field of inquiry considerably by discrediting the '' dark " side of psychical life — the realm of feeling. Leibniz was at one with him in this latter point. J^urther, his examination of ideas as the material of knowledge was bound to yield inadequate results, for he emphasized ideas in their bearing as psychical states at the expense of ideas as objective con- tents. There was an inherent tendency in Locke's work to regard ideas as the passive objects of thought — discrete, particular, and with no natural bond of connec- tion; and to neglect the active, judging, synthetic powers of the mind. Locke made the idea representative rather than presentative or objective, pre-supposing the existence of the external world and of the self, at the same time that he denied their possibility as objects of knowledge. The epistemological question, when put by Hume in a later development, had assumed the form, " How can the transition be effected from the content of our perception to the nature of the real?" That this unanswerable and impractical problem underlay Locke's psychological analysis was made clear by Berkeley. The latter frankly treated ideas as the only reality, making their significance dependent upon the will of God. He did, it is true, retain the intuitive consciousness of the
self, but otherwise maintained consistently that the esse of things was their being perceived. It only remained for Hume to work out Locke's premise to its logical con- clusion, which was to reduce knowledge to isolated matters of fact. The demonstrative knowledge of God, the intuitive knowledge of the self, and belief in any real existence, were all swept away when tested by the criterion of their origin in an impression. Thus the valuable experimental method, introduced by Locke in the discussion of epistemological questions, defeated its own end. Hume followed up the pre-suppositions inherited from Locke, and used them to rob experience of its full significance. The result was the denial of any reality save the impression of the moment. l/^he result of Hume's subversive thought in Scotland, was the reaction of the so-called Scottish School. Reid, Beattie, Brown and Dugald Stewart all took their stand on the witness of common sense, against the negation of thought which was Hume's conclusion. )i(The merit of the '* common sense " thinkers was their insistence upon the objective reference of knowledge. Reid criticized Hume's basis, and declared that the object of knowledge is always something other than a mere psychical datum. He broke away from the conception of the idea as representative, and defined it as directly significant of reality. Differ- entiation was made between the sensation as occurring in consciousness, and the meaning or content of the sensation. Here Locke's original confusion was corrected, and the tendency to limit knowledge to sub- jective particulars, checked. Reid showed that scepticism was inevitable, where the impression and the idea were defined abstractly — apart from the meaning they convey. He indicated also the part which judgment plays in perception, instead of regarding the latter as mere passive sensibility. But Reid himself was not secure against criticism. The material qualities by which his mental states were suggested, he left really unknown. The mental states had no content apart from their indica- tion of external reality. The idea which, in the Lockeian
development had prevented our knowledge of existence was swept away, but at the same time the two unknowns^ self and the external world, were left unrelated. Reid's method was defective then, for instead of developing Locke's experience, he denied his postulate and appealed to the inexplicable. Had he but recognized the world of experience as the real world, and consciousness as the true starting-point for analysis, his results would have been more adequate.
Parallel to the reaction against Hume, of which Reid is the chief exponent, several positive developments from Locke's teaching may be observed in English thought. Characteristic of them all is the attempt to clarify common conceptions, and the rejection of any element that cannot be easily analyzed and explained. In the sphere of religion, theological dogmas were laid on one side. Seventeenth century idealism declined before the growth of deism and atheism. As early as 1750, the incredulity of the age in matters of religion was lamented (Monthly Review) : " The number of pretended phil- osophers is now immensely great, whose influence in debasing the manners of the age is such that a man that truly fears God is as great a curiosity as an atheist was heretofore. . . . God and his worths they try by the infallible touchstone of reason; and if ought is to be believed of either which they cannot distinctly compre- hend the manner or cause of, the proposition is immediately rejected as absurd and impossible; or if any difficulty or objection occurs to their imagination which cannot instantly be dissolved, the validity of the objection is straightway allowed, and the proposition to which it relates is condemned." Locke's reliance upon revelation was thus shown to be illogical, by the light of that very understanding whose use he emphasized. His successors were deists or atheists, according as they accepted or rejected the cosmological and the teleological arguments for the existence of God.
Corresponding with the criticism of theological dogmas in eighteenth century England was an increasing
interest in moral questions. There was a continuous effort on the part of different writers to carry out Locke's plan of making ethics a demonstrative science. To his definition of self-love as the sole motive of human action, Hume added the sense of sympathy with man- kind. Adam Smith developed this idea, resting the moral sense upon the social nature of man. Though the question of the origin of the moral consciousness is more important psychologically than from the standpoint of ethical theory, this recognition of the reality of human sympathy tended to reinstate the value of feeling in human experience. Tucker and Paley gave the first account of the relation between personal happiness as the motive, and the general happiness as the criterion, of virtuous action.. Their theory is perhaps better known in its later development through Bentham and J. S. Mill.
But while England showed the influence of Locke and Hume in her new tendency to subject established opinions and forms to a moderate criticism, France was moved to a much greater change. Englishmen find it possible and natural to retain inconsistencies when these meet the needs of everyday life. Frenchmen drop any compromise in their pursuit of one principle. The main body of the English people in the eighteenth century followed the temper of the sober-minded, religious Locke, rather than that of the sceptic Hume. They kept their old forms for the most part, while supplying them with a new interpretation. But the French people ran the whole way of criticism and attacked one after another of the beHefs and institutions which made up their life. There is a marked difference between the revolutions in the two countries — a parliamentary and political change in England, as against an upheaval of the whole moral and social order in France. Locke's work furnished a justification for the first, but at the same time, gave the impetus for the initiation of the second. Where the logical exponent of the analytic principle in England was a theorist, France produced a practical subversive thinker. And Voltaire's was the dominant intellect in
the Enlightenment on the Continent. His " Lettres aux Anglais " lighted the train of French political discontent. His fight for the reversal of the Calas case led the way; to the discrediting of ecclesiasticism, and the institution of the worship of Reason.
It was in the " Encyclopedie " that the French people first saw a thorough application of the analytic principle. This great work was inspired and unified by the influence of Bacon and Locke. Voltaire had said that anybody; who had read Locke, or rather who was his own Locke, must find the Platos mere fine talkers and nothing more. (Cor. 1736, Oeuvres I, xiii, p. 29.) So, too, Helvetius continually used the names of Bacon and Locke as instances of men of genius. Diderot's favorite motto had the English practical turn — " Faire le bien," "Connaitre le vrai." The whole Encyclopaedic group tended to discount the ancient systems and to look to the leaders of the empiricist school in England for guidance. Thus their work was marked by an insistent search after practical knowledge and an emphasis on physical science. Their unfaiHng source of confidence was the' power of the human intellect. K The positive achievement of the Encyclopaedists was the examination of innumerable departments of human experience, which had hitherto been deemed unexplain- able. Up to this time monasticism, superstition, the control of the Church and the Government had served to prevent criticism by their claim to supernatural origins. But the rationalistic outlook of the Encyclopaedists demanded a natural explanation for all the events that occurred in man's life. Thus they investigated econ- omic conditions in their own and other countries. They examined the French fiscal system. They discussed the slave trade and colonial tyranny. They suggested a natural origin for revelation. They traced miraculous phenomena to a subjective source. Helvetius expressed the conviction of the whole school when he said that man was simply the sum of circumstance and education.
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Behind this scientific movement was a new apprecia- tion of the social idea. There was a real assertion of the truth that man loses his significance if he has no sig- nificance for other people. Moral intuitionism, the claims of revelation and attested miracles were all questioned as having their origin in a false isolation of man from man. All mystical tendencies were crushed, and super- natural phenomena lost their interest. Even within the Church there was a strong opposition to the individual- izing tendency. The miracles wrought at the tomb of the Jansenist deacon Paris were regarded as the results of religious hysteria, and the whole Jansenist party was finally discredited. Solitary saints and sages roused suspicion, and not admiration, in the eighteenth century. M
It is true that the social principle worked out in the Revolution as a purely disintegrating force. The lack of historical knowledge in the French critics made them want to break away from present evils, without consider- ing any latent good that might be swept away at the same time.4/They did not realize that, though systems may have outgrown their usefulness, they had their source in the social nature of man. The germ alike of paternal government, of the manorial system and of ecclesiastical tyranny might be found in a certain original helpfulness obtaining between the untrained many and the controlling minorityi^It was on the negative side of this truth that the Revolutionary thinkers concentrated. They would have none of social relations where the advantages of the relationship were all on one side. They were maddened by the growth of privilege and the prevalence of ignorant prejudice among the governing classes. Thus their expression of social obligation — their aspiration for the freedom and betterment of their countrymen — offered more than the gift of new knowledge. It was a criticism of the whole established order. Voltaire attacked the dogma of the Church and Diderot revealed the vicious absoluteness of its philosophy. Helvetius and Holbach suggested as substitutes for religion a scientific education and a naturalistic faith. Rousseau pointed to
the enslaved condition of Frenchmen under their rulers. Then he lifted up the hope of a State, where the volonte generale should give expression to the individual will.
The fault in such radical thinking lay in its non- recognition of the historical principle. Helvetius and Holbach were not conscious of the human needs and aspirations in which religion has had its rise. They under-estimated its importance as an educational force and a basis for morality. Rousseau on the other hand failed to see that his volonte generale would only be operative against individualism, where all the individuals in a community were mature and perfectly balanced. He wanted the freedom of the aboriginal savage to co-exist *with the true liberty of the developed citizen. He looked upon government as a purely artificial creation, not a growth, and pinned his hopes to a fictitious state, where the citizens might be at once subject and sovereign. His work then seems to have been built upon a false reading of Hobbes. The " social contract " of the Leviathan was taken for an historical account of the development of government, instead of a logical basis for the theory of government. ^
The strength of the appeal made by Rousseau's work lay in its emotional character. Voltaire had made articulate the dumb thoughts of the nation in his common sense criticism. Rousseau gave expression to tlfeir vague feelings and yearnings in his sentimental outpourings. It is interesting to speculate whether if Rousseau had been a Burke the French Revolution would have been averted. But he did not understand the continuity of human history, and the value of institutions had no meaning for him. So instead of letting emotion play about the associations of the present, he poured the wealth of his sentiment around an imaginary golden age of individualism. From asserting the vital character of the bonds which link man and man, Rousseau came to repudiate the contribution of the past as useless. He violated at the moment that he vindicated the principle of human unity.
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Though Rousseau was the first and leading apostle of the value of feeling, there were others of the Hol- bachians who urged the reinstatement of emotion in the life of the time. In his " Pensees Philosophiques," Diderot laid great emphasis on the passions " qui puissent elever Tame aux grands choses " (Oeuv. I, p. 127). He avowed a keen admiration for the English novelists Sterne and Richardson, and took from them a moralizing turn, which tended to linger upon the domestic virtues. He resented more keenly than any other charge the accusation of unfriendliness. His life was one long story of inability to resist any plea for help — he was at the service of the deserving and the unworthy alike. Indeed it was the fashion among the cultivated people of the period to regard the dictates of the *' belle ame " as the final and most precious side of their personal experience.
On the theoretic side the maxims of such a writer as Helvetius are illuminating. He defined sentiment as " Tame de la poesie, et surtout de la poesie dramatique " (De I'Esprit, Oeuv. II, p. 27). Sentiment must be ex- pressed simply and sincerely. The artist who has felt the sentiment he tries to portray is sure to be successful. The writer who does not feel becomes "la dupe de Tesprit" (De TEsprit, Oeuv. II, p. 33), and turns sentiment into maxims. It is not surprising then that Helvetius criti- cized his age for the over-elegance and the emptiness of its work. " L'on est, pour ainsi dire, convenu de diviser le nation in deux classes ; Tune, celle des betes, et c'est la plus nombreuse; I'autre, celle des fous, et Ton comprend dans cette derniere tous ceux a qui Ton ne peut refuser des talents." (De I'Esprit, Oeuv. II, pp. 86, 87.) Helvetius said that great minds should be occupied with great things, and the greatest object for any man is " la bonheur de I'humanite." " Ignorez-vous qu'un citoyen, s'il est vertueux, ne verra jamais avec indiff- erence les maux qu'occasionne une mauvaise administra- tion?" (De I'Esprit, Oeuv. II, p. 120.) For Helvetius, the subject of education and legislation was invested with a great charm. He thought that when bigots were
displaced from the seats of power, a new race of rulers and teachers would work out perfect happiness for the nation. Helvetius' chief inconsistency was his attribution of altruistic motives to the legislator, while he regarded the individual as purely selfish. He just came short of developing a utilitarian system ; it only needed Holbach's social-sympathy basis to complete a French Benthamite morality. Indeed in one point or another all the writers in France before the Revolution show a real and deep love of humanity. This motive is expressed in such terms of emotion as still can move the indifferent to action and to service. Had the emotional impetus spent itself in France in the pursuit of scientific investigation, and the gradual betterment of economic conditions, the revolu- tion desired by the first French crkics might have been attained. As it was, the extremes to which the rebels ran caused the Revolutionary thought to be identified with the principle of destruction. Hence the philosophic reaction throughout Europe about 1800.
There was one phase of the scientific interest in France which had a special relation to Hume's influence in England. Hartley and the Mills carried on the analytic tradition in their development of the association psy- chology. l/On the Continent Condillac and De La Mettrie, together with the Swiss Bonnet, distinguished them- selves in psychological research. The empiricist method of Locke formed their common starting-point, but each came to different conclusions. Bonnet showed the influence of Berkeley and Leibniz as well as of Locke, for while he attributed a sensationalistic origin to thought, he argued for the existence of God and of an immaterial soul. In retaining religious beliefs along with his scien- tific interests he was like Hartley. He resembled Hartley too in declaring the importance of nerve-modifications in the phenomena of consciousness. His theory of knowl- edge was built up on the vibrations of nerve fibres. Condillac reduced all experience to sensation, maintain- ing that *' penser est sentir." The third psychologist of the group was a thoroughgoing materialist. He
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maintained that philosophy was a meaningless study un- less preceded by physiological knowledge. He described mind as nothing but a part of the body, and regarded man as a machine. Man's duty consisted in keeping this machine in order — he must " cultivate his garden." Faith in the existence of a Moral Governor of the Universe had no foundation in fact. There was only one substance, differently modified, in the whole universe, and the guide which led to this conclusion was the senses. " Experience has spoke to me in behalf of reason," as the old translator has it. When the translation of De La Mettrie's work, '* Man a Machine," was reviewed in England (Monthly Reviezv, 1749), the point brought out by the critic was that such teaching struck at belief in the existence of God. Since religious faith affects the moral question, English critics must discourage all such writing. The reviewer refuses any mere litterateur's suggestion, to look at the question from the viewpoint of theory rather than of practice. He who can contemplate irreligious writing in any but its practical bearing, must have sunk to an irrational and immoral state.
ty^he contrast between the England and France of the eighteenth century is therefore very marked. English subversive thought, where it did exist, was mainly theoretical. France, though she took her analytical principle from England, was much more thorough in applying it. It is in Germany that a new influence was matured, which helped to restore the body of thought and practice undermined by the Revolution. K
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CHAPTER II
THE CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY IN GERMANY
Immanuel Kant, whose work as a wTiter started in 1755, had for philosophical genealogy the rationalistic dogmatism of Wolff, combined with a strong pietistic bias and a keen scientific interest. The latter element made him eager to re-instate the external world as a legitimate field of knowledge, after Hume's results had pointed to universal uncertainty. From Wolff he took that confidence in logical propositions, in the priority of the thinking factor to the sensible material in experience, that made him transcendentalist as well as critic. The religious bent; inherited from his parents and inbred in his whole outlook, determined the ethical character of his philosophy. Before indicating his place in the recon- struction of European thought, it is important to note the elements in the intellectual life of Germany when Kant began to write.
There was first the Berlin Academy, founded by Frederick I in 1700, and dominated in its early days by the genius of Leibniz. The oft-quoted dictum, '* Nihil est in intellectu quod non prius in sensu, nisi intellectus ipse," illustrates the characteristic difference between Leibniz' epistemological position and that of his great English contemporary, Locke. Where Locke pointed to a Hume, Leibniz pointed to a Kant. After Leibniz' time, in the reign of the great Frederick, many learned men were drawn by the Academy to live in Berlin. Under Maupertuis as President, work was conducted along the four lines of physics, mathematics, philosophy, and hi^story and philology. When the writings of the Encyclopaedists appeared, the members of the Academy
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were stirred to enthusiasm, and put forth many German translations. Then began a period of scientific advance in Prussia, much of which was doubtless due to the famous foundation of Frederick.
By the end of the eighteenth "century, the scientific movement was seen to affect the philosophical ascendency of Wolff. Wolff's systematized knowledge had been for some time the chief study in the Universities. The principles of contradiction and sufficient reason had been taken to prove the validity of the mental concepts which Wolff had laid down. But Locke's influence showed itself in Germany as in France in the development of a new psychology. Writers like Lambert and Tetens pro- tested against accepting the validity of ideas apart from their relation to experience. Like Kant in his earlier work (Nachricht von der Einrichtung seiner Vorlesungen in dem Wintershalbjahre 1765-66), they insisted on the importance of empirical knowledge. The result of such teaching in Germany was at first a philosophical eclecti- cism. Wolff was held to be the guide in logical investigation, while Locke led the way to new discoveries in experience. This combination was comparable to the absorbing of pietistic tendencies by the old dogmatism, which had begun a little earlier. In France assertions of individual experience had resulted in an absolute break between criticism and ecclesiasticism. In Germany the more flexible character of Protestantism allowed modi- fications in religious dogma. Thus the members of the German church were allowed to work out their own salvation, along the new lines of inward guidance and subjective emotion. The result was a deepening of the moral character of a large element of the population.
Kant's Critique of Pure Reason was not published till 1 78 1. Before that time he had written on several problems, e.g., in the "Principiorum primorum cognitionis metaphysicae novae dilucidatio " (1755), " Versuch den Begriff der negativen Grossen in die Weltweisheit einzu- fiihren " (1763), and " De mundi sensibilis et intelligibilis forma et principiis " (1770). Kant never doubted that
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these questions had their origin in the human mind. Thus his theory of knowledge was a contrast from the first to any " white paper " doctrine of the mind. Kant regarded the mind as primarily active and synthetic. At the same time he was conscious of the errors of the rationahsts, and refused to predicate existence of logical factors without examining their origin and their relation to experience. By Kant's own account, the impetus which resulted in the Critical Philosophy was the reading of Hume. Hume's description of the nexus of cause, which reduces causation to a subjective fiction, was felt by Kant to be inadequate. There is a necessity and universality attributed to the causal nexus by the mind, which is distinct from any imagined force gained through repeated occurrence of phenomena. Also, there was need to account for the agreement of this and other mental concepts with experience. If the mind evolved the concept of cause, it was difficult to see why it should apply to the manifold of experience. Kant's answer was based upon his deduction of the ideality of space and time. Objects only become objects as the result of the mind's working. Regarded as phenomena, sensible data have no existence for thought. The mind makes its objects — or objects only take their place in experience when a mental factor is present, i.e. through the employ- ment of time and space and the categories. Naturally, then, a priori concepts apply to the objects which are simply due to the a priori powers of the mind.
Hume had made the idea identical with reality, at the same time pre-supposing a real occurrence in the sensible world before his idea could come into being. In Kant's theory of knowledge this inconsistency was corrected. Reality was defined as experience, and the constituent elements of experience were found to be a subject in relation to the object, and an object in relation to the subject. Of these the mental factor supplied the forms whereby ideas of objects come into being — the sensible factor supplied the concrete filling for those forms. The
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Critical Philosophy therefore made subject and object alike rise out of the unity of consciousness.
Though Kant was concerned to combat that view, which regarded the mind as passive and as acted upon from without, his work is entirely misinterpreted if it be classed as subjective idealism. In his early examination of Swedenborg, Kant had put his hand on the weakness of the idealist's position. If ideas be the only reality and the objective reference of knowledge be overlooked, there is no way of proving the difference between a true experience and an illusion. Kant's later positing of the thing-in-itself was his matured protest against idealism. In this it was not his purpose to emphasize an unknowable something as the background for phenomenal change. But he wished to substantiate the claims of the sensible world as a legitimate field for scientific inquiry. He therefore made the object of knowledge a social entity rather than a subjective impression. After the psychological and physical aspects of the subject-object relation have been exhausted, a noumenon remains — a something whose meaning consists in its possibilities of relation to thought. Kant's insistence on the objectivity of experience is the ground of the modern cry " Back to Kant." It is the counter-balancing force to that expo- sition of the rights of thought as thought which charac- terized the labors of Fichte, Schelling and Hegel.
Kant's transcendental philosophy is an analysis of the conditions of knowing. The empirical school had over- emphasized the contribution which is made by the sensible data to knowledge. So Kant tends to concentrate upon the mental factor in the constitution of experience. In his Aesthetic, Kant investigated the sense-stem of human knowledge, i.e. the human faculty of having per- ceptions through the medium of receptivity. Here he found that the sensuous content or matter was always accompanied in experience by the forms of space and time. Space and time are not empirical, for they are necessary. They cannot be left out ; they are the sub- jective background for all our perceptions. They are
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the forms of synthesis which lie in us, but being imposed on isolated sensations, they unify the sensible material into a perception. Now comes in the question of a priori synthetic judgments. These are valid in the mathematical realm, because mathematics deals entirely with space and time determinations. Since the latter originate with the mind, propositions, or synthetic judgments, may be con- structed which will never be contradicted by any phenomena. For the mind intuitively constructs figures to correspond with the developing proposition. Thus the mind governs phenomena in respect of time and space relations. Mathematical truths have apodictic certainty, because the mind is solely responsible for the experience whose conditions are limited by that truth. On the other hand, the validity of mathematical propositions is restricted to the realm of phenomena. For time and space, as forms of perception, may not be applied to any- thing that is not an object^ of perception, i.e. not phenomenal. Kant has, however, shown that the concept of cause has objective validity in the sphere of pure intuition, mathematics.
The Transcendental Analytic examines understanding, and its constructive work in knowledge, as the Aesthetic had investigated sense. The material for the under- standing is supplied in perceptions, and these perceptions are united into a synthesis which is called judgment. Formal logic had analyzed the different judgments, and shown the different ways in which the understanding produces judgments. The principles of its synthesizing Kant calls categories, or stem-conceptions of the pure understanding. These belong to the spontaneity of the mind, just as space and time are present in our receptive faculty. They exemplify furthermore the same unifying tendency, which is common to all human thought. The categories are valid of objects, because the mind recognizes their correspondence with sensible data, when the former are schematized by the productive imagination. It is only through the categories that a continuous experience is possible. Otherwise isolated impressions of phenomena
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would be all, and the universals of logic could never have been constructed. Kant is showing that it was a false account of knowledge, which described the mind as merely comparing and relating discrete ideas received from sense-impressions. Sense-impressions become a part of organic experience as soon as they enter into consciousness. Thought is a developing reality, working up experience according to its own laws. Just as sensi- bility is a growing power to receive impressions, so logic is an evolution of thought-principles, which realize them- selves as experience broadens and deepens. If the categories are a constituent element in knowledge, they apply to all objects of experience, but they are not valid beyond. Kant noted the natural tendency of thought to apply the categories, as well as the forms of space and time, to objects which can never exist for us. He insisted in the Analytic, as he had in the Aesthetic, on the restric- tion of human knowledge to possible objects of experi- ence; and stated that the categories should only be predicated of things which may enter into consciousness. The function of reason is examined in Kant's Dialectic. As in the two earlier divisions of the Critique, it is the constructive power of the mind that is brought out. But whereas in the Aesthetic, a sensible content had been furnished to perception, and in the Analytic perceptions had been the material in which the categories were realized, the third part of the Critique deals with purely mental factors. The reason is the mind as it deals with the super-sensible, and its constructive endow- ment is displayed in the statement of ideas and problems. These have their own value as regulative principles, whose claim to reality Kant takes to be borne out by the moral nature of man. But they cannot be used as a basis for speculative knowledge. The first great idea of the reason has its origin in the concept of the transcen- dental ego. This is a regulative principle which the reason supplies to the understanding — a logical principle for the flowing stream of ideas, whose sum is experience or consciousness. The reason then borrows the categories
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and applies them to this logical, extra-experience prin- ciple. The result is the concept of the soul — simple, unified, immortal, a substance distinct from body. But to this concept no perception can ever be found to cor- resfK)nd, nor can it ever become an object of experience. Hence the existence of the soul is not relative to knowledge.
In the Antinomies of Pure Reason, are seen the same action of the mind in applying categories to the World- Idea. The Reason, like the Understanding and the Receptive Intelligence, tends to impose the mind's unity on the content furnished by thought or experience. So the changing phenomena of the world are united by the reason into the idea of an all-embracing transcendental object — a totality of experiences which is conceived as reality. Error conies in when a category like cause is applied to such an idea. For cause, while operative in experience and known to the mind in the sensible sphere, cannot be predicated of an idea which is never experi- enced. The idea of an object-world is present to the reason, but not a part of known experience. Therefore the First and Necessary Cause, which reason posits on the analogy of the understanding's category, can never enter into knowledge. But it may be used as a regulative principle for thought. Kant pursues the same line of argument in his critique of Rational Theology. God is an Ideal of Pure Reason, the unconditioned and absolute contrast, which thought throws out as against relative knowledge. But this Ideal can never become an object of experience. The ontological proof of God's existence is unsound, for existence is merely a question of the rela- tion to our knowledge. Thus since God cannot enter into our consciousness in the natural way of experience, speculative knowledge in the theological sphere is impossible. Kant indicates, even in the Critique of Pure Reason, that the proof of God is made not by the mind, but by the heart, not by reason but by faith. In the same way, his discussion of determinism vs. freedom in the Antinomies of Pure Reason has shown that human
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freedom is merely a regulative principle for the under- standing, but a constitutive principle for practice.
For it is probably true that while the Critique of Pure Reason set out to substantiate the claims of the mind in helping to construct experience, Kant's ultimate emphasis lay on the Practical Reason. The metaphysics which Hume disdained Kant rejected too. But while discredit- ing theological disputes that can never be settled, Kant restored the super-natural element to human experience in his description of man's moral nature. Here the reaction is seen from the " enlightened self-interest " doctrine of Holbach and the French schools. Kant taught the reality of a different category from those which govern the working of the understanding. Instead of a principle realized in a determined experience, this cate- gory itself determines experience. It is the assertion of human freedom, the expression of personality, the con- viction of "I ought" as against the impression, "I am influenced." It is the transcendental ego urging its empirical self to follow right reason. Its form is, " Act so that thy maxim may be the law for all rational beings." Its end is simple virtue, and not the working out of benefits. Kant regarded the reason as the highest aspect of the human mind, and so pointed to a ruling of sub- jective desires and impulses by the reason as the practical expression of the categorical imperative. Here may be seen the fact which, kid in one balance of the Antinomies of Pure Reason, inclined the scale in favor of human freedom. Man may be held in the chain of sensible necessity, as long as he follows subjective desires. But in stating and obeying the categorical imperative he proves his own freedom. Man enters into the super- sensible sphere when he wills. He leaps in the moral life from thing-hood to personality.
The Critique of Practical Reason is built up on the subjective fact of moral conviction. So the Critique of Judgment has for its basis the existence of beauty- concepts and the reality of the feeling for art. Kant had denied the cosmological and teleological arguments for
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God's existence, when he demonstrated the irrelevance of the ontological proof. But though denying the validity of these ideas for knowledge, Kant re-instated them in the world of experience when he analyzed the conditions of human judgment with regard to beauty. Beauty is attributed to objects by the judgment, as a result of a subjective feeling of their adaptation to ends. " That the beautiful, purposive as it may seem to us, must not serve any particular purpose, but must be an object of wholly free pleasure in order to produce that enjoyment which the free play of our emotional powers engenders " — is Kant's definition of the beautiful. (Life of Goethe, by Bielschowsky. Vol. II, p. 196.) Kant seemed to believe that there is an inward adaptability of things to a purpose, witnessed to by the human feeling for beauty. Thus his art-theory points to idealism, where his epistemology seems to issue in scepticism. The Critique of Judgment is a kind of premonitor of Hegel's logic. Kant said we seem to touch on the inner law of nature through our instinct for beauty, though we can never grasp it as knowledge. He showed that an antinomy of pure reason is brought to consciousness in the sphere of art, just as the categories are realized in experience. Hegel went further. He maintained that, as nature only becomes known, and so existent, through consciousness, all knowledge presupposes an ante-cedent unity of nature and thought.
But Kant's thought passed through other forms before it was transformed by Hegel. Johann Gottlieb Fichte (b. 1762, d. 1814) seems to have started from the view- point presented in the Critique of Practical Reason. In his first work (a Critique of all Revelation) he pointed to two elements in the human will, sensuous impulse and impulse determined by reverence for moral law. The latter element was the significant one for Fichte. He thought that the more real side of experience, whether in the sphere of morals or of knowledge, was the free, active, conscious side. If moral life develops from the recognition of the moral law, Fichte thought he could
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prove that experience is evolved from the Ego's con- sciousness of its own power. He was unsatisiied with the dualism which Kant had left in the Critique of Pure Reason, of thought arid sense, form and matter, and said that the one had to be explained by the other if the validity of any knowledge were to be established. It was absurd to follow the Lockeian line of examining first a set of subjective factors and then a group of objective facts. These had only a relative value after all. Fichte urged a more thorough application of Kant's method, i.e. an examination of experience in the light of self- consciousness where subject and object are at one.
Fichte criticized Kant at the outset for stopping with an analysis of the conditions of experience. Philosophy needs an explanation of the origin of experience. Fichte said that though subject and object in mutual relation were equal to the sum of knowledge, one of these two must be prior to the other. If subjective experience or the Ego be taken as the product of the Non-Ego, the self-conscious subject is still unexplained. Therefore the theory which represents experience as springing from the Ego is more likely to be right. Fichte considered Spinoza and Kant to give the only reasoned philosophies, and he preferred Kant to Spinoza because of his idealistic bent. Experience cannot be explained by such a notion as that of reciprocity, which is applicable only within the experience of a self-conscious subject. Experience may be explained, Fichte maintained, on the ground of the laws under which self-consciousness works. He proposed to trace the evolution of experience, in building up a completed self-consciousness from the unity of apperception. In his distinction between the mind as a stream of conscious states, and the mind as the unity of self-consciousness, Fichte was quite right. But he failed to realize that his self-conscious principle, for all that may be known, has no more than logical validity. Satis- factory results cannot be attained from examining a principle that is without definite content.
I.
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Where Kant had analyzed empirical consciousness and determined the features in it which were due to the synthetic action of the mind, Fichte set himself to investigate the idea of self-consciousness, to determine its conditions and evolve its elements. He deduced the idea of self-consciousness from the examination of a perception, or a judgment. The object posited in such a mental act is affirmed by the mind to be identical with itself. But such identity exists only for the Ego ; thus its ground must be the affirmation of the Ego. Fichte then made the primitive datum of consciousness not a fact, but the product of an act. He considered the essence of the Ego to lie in its power of reflecting upon itself, of making itself its own object. That the I should posit the Me is therefore Fichte's first Category — that of Reality. This Category is realized as a result of the active nature of the Ego. The second category, that of Negation, develops from the first. For in being able to reflect upon itself, the Ego possesses ipso facto the moment of. diflference within itself. Furthermore being active — " the essence of Reason is Will " — the Ego can posit a Non-Ego as well as an objective self. Fichte never explains the reason for the existence of the Non- Ego — further than that by it self -consciousness is realized and moral development attained. Non-Ego is simply what has not been willed. The third category, of Limitation, is the statement of how far Ego and Non-Ego limit each other.
Kant had preferred to leave the synthetic forms of the mind more or less unconnected, as being so far more true to the diversity of experience. There was reason for the categories in both sense and thought, he seemed to think, and it was a needless and imaginary unity of origin which the mind might suggest for them. Further, though nothing could be presented in self-consciousness out of harmony with these forms, the specific determination of the matter of knowledge was not to be deduced from the forms. In these two contentions Kant made a solid pro- test against idealism, which was a merit. But Fichte
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considered him to have stopped short at just the wrong point. He thought that in deducing the number and connection of the categories from the idea of self- consciousness, he had completed the Critical Philosophy. As compared with the Kantian system, the Wissen- schaftslehre possesses the one greater virtue of being more clear and unified. It started with the outlook which Kant reached in his description of the Practical Reason and of Judgment, and so lacked the breadth which Kant's scientific and practical knowledge gave him. The central conception of Fichte's theory of knowledge was the active determining influence of personality in experience. It is true that what man thinks he will find has a great deal to do with what experience he will meet. (What he believes helps to determine what he will do.) In this sense the practical activity of the Ego is the ground of the Anstoss. But for knowledge, the Anstoss has a reality which can- not be abolished by the will of the individual. It is not a universal type for whom '* the world is the sensualized material of our duty." The more natural human being is apt to be carried away by the reality of the sensible world, and to disregard the working of a rational principle and a moral law. Fichte had thought to substantiate his ethical claims, by constructing a theory of knowledge upon principles which co-incided with the postulates of the moral law. But he carried the explanation of knowledge no further than his predecessor — as was proved by the ultimate emphasis which he put upon the practical, as against the speculative, side of his work.
Fichte's most far-reaching influence was in the sphere of religion and education. His break with the Romantic School had been the result of his deeply religious outlook, expressed very clearly in his ** Bestimmung des Men- schen " (1800). He considered the fulfilment of the moral law as the highest end of man, which was to be approached by an infinite series of real acts of the conscious self. Natural tendency could be subordinated to the tendency to freedom, and the ideal approached of obedience to the infinite law of freedom. In 1805
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Fichte delivered lectures at Erlangen on the " Grundzuge gegenswartigen Zeitalters," " Wesen des Gelehrten " and "Anweisung zum seligen Leben oder Religionslehre." In these, Fichte suggested an ideal basis for experience, which he interpreted as the vesture of the divine idea. He said that the thinker, the poet, the scientist and the ordinary man could renew life and thought by viewing the transcendent realities behind empirical facts. Individual aims should be sacrificed to the service of humanity, and the moral ideal worked out as an incentive for others. Carlyle made these lectures the subject of study some decades later. In 1807 and 1808, Fichte gave his " Reden an der deutsche Nation." He urged a reform of education which he felt as the most needed element in the rebuilding of Prussia after Napoleon's victory. In 1810 the State University of Berlin was built as a result. The practical outcome of Fichte's work was thus a moral impetus given to individual readers and hearers, and a rational basis furnished for new developments in the Prussian State. Fichte had in early writing shown the place filled by revelation in the moral development of the race. He later supplied a theoretical ground for the strengthening of state control in Prussia. Feeling as he did that a theory of knowledge had little relation to the average man — that his idealistic explanation of experience could only be appreciated by the few — he looked to the State, as embodying Absolute Will, to accomplish that mental and moral reform of the individual which he desired.
Schelling (b. 1775, d. 1854) is rather the poetic inter- preter of nature than a philosopher. He regarded nature as an independent entity, endowed with formative powers and giving rise to human consciousness as we know it. His work was looked upon by Kant and Fichte as worth- less mysticism, for though starting with the activity of the thinking subject as his first basis, Schelling came ulti- mately to put his whole emphasis on Intellectual Intuition. This latter was a secret, wonderful and unexplainable faculty, which was described as capable of seeing into the
24
transcendental ground of natural experience. It had the disadvantage of being a merely private and subjective function and it did not admit of exact definition. Schel- ling's Natur-Philosophie was no more than a bold imaginative flight, in which Nature was pictured as slumbering intelligence, and natural conditions were explained a priori by a logical sleiglit-of-hand. In his Philosophy of Identity, Schelling forestalled Hegel's labors to a certain degree, when he attempted to reconcile Spirit and Nature in the higher unity of the Absolute. But he did not succeed in making his Identity more than a . formal unity ; Schelling's Absolute lacked the concreteness of Hegel's Idea. In his later writings, Schelling dwindled off into an exam- ination of mythical and religious doctrines. His greatest influence was shown in the impetus which his spiritual conception of Nature gave to the Romantic School about 1800. His work was doubtless another factor, too, in the development of' the modern conception of history. But this strain, like most of the other elements in his work, was lost in the greater effect produced by his greater contemporary, Hegel.
Hegel's Logic purported to be an examination and explanation of experience, such as would complete the unfinished systems of Kant and Fichte. Kant had pointed the way to a solution of Locke's problem by showing that experience is a unity, a constructive system in which the subjective and objective are constituent elements. Fichte had developed one side of this exj>erience, its active character. Hegel went one step further and substan- tialized the Activity of thought. For Hegel the universe was what is thought. Thought moves in the schemata of space and time and on the forms of the categories. The sensuous element in thought Hegel took to be the copy, or outer, or other of the categories. He said that the intellectual contained all that the sensuous is. Therefore an examination of the categories would lead to a knowl- edge of all the thoughts that made, and that constitute the world. In his Logic, then, Hegel aimed at a science
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of the necessary and universal rules of thought. These can and must be known a priori, being the prior reality. But they must first of all be discovered by the observation of the natural exercise of understanding and reason in experience.
The outstan.ding characteristic of thought was, for Hegel, its tendency to pass into its opposite. Hegel ele- vated this characteristic into a principle which he indi- cated by the term dialectic. Thought (and in Hegel's completed system life as well) proceeded by an inner necessity from the positive to the negative, from that to a new positive and so on indefinitely. Hegel then argued that should he discover the first beginning of thought, he would be able to deduce therefrom the complete thought-system which is the ideal of knowledge, and with that the groundwork of reality, as constituted by Man and Nature.
Hegel found as the absolutely first and indissoluble background of thoug'ht the notion " Being." By the operation of his dialectical method, Hegel showed that Being passes to its equal and opposite Nothing, through Becoming. But Becoming is determinate being, and from it Hegel deduced the categories of quality and quantity. From positing measure (the culminating form of quan- tity), Hegel arrived by a leap at the doctrine of Essence. This in turn became the stepping-stone to the final doctrine of the Logic, the doctrine of the concrete Notion. In the words of Wallace's English translation ("The Logic of Hegel," 2nd edit., p. 284), "The Notion is defined as Essence reverted to the simple immediacy of Being,— the shining or show of Essence thereby having actuality, and its actuality being at the same time a free shining or show of itself." In Hegel's system the Notion, or self-determining Consciousness, is the true, intrinsic form of thought, and it is also the inner life of Nature and of history.
After the criticism and discussion of a century Hegel's Logic stands secure in its main contention, i.e., that the philosophic concept is a concrete synthesis, containing in
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itself the solution of the problem of opposites. Hegel also pointed the conclusions of most great thinkers since Aristotle, when he maintained that experienced reality is best described by the concept becoming or movement or development. The crux of the argument against him lies in the assumption he makes in uniting the two points. Experience and thought can never be proved to be identical and, this being so, the philosopher may not take for granted a rational end for rational development. But this is what Hegel does. His philosophy of Nature, and his treatment of history and the state and religion, all take their start from the conviction that the real is the rational. Or to use his own expression, Hegel believes (and expects his reader to believe) that the memory of the world-spirit contains everything. The incompatibility of this viewpoint with any grip on the significance of per- sonality, is a difficulty even for Hegelians.
It has often been pointed out that the application of Hegel's dialectical method outside the sphere of logic, was connected with his study of the history of philosophy. Hegel observed the alternation of pyositive doctrines and negative view-points in the history of ancient and modem thought, and from that became convinced that thought- forms are the timeless basis of all actual fact. Hence arose his conception of a philosophy of history, of which Hegel says that " the one thought with which philosophy approaches history is the simple thought of reason ; that reason rules the world, and therefore in the history of the world also, there is a rational process." (Quoted by Croce in " What is Living and What is Dead in the Philosophy of Hegel," p. 140). The result in Hegel's own treatment of history is the attempt to trace out the progress of the consciousness of liberty in the world's evolution, each national spirit being taken as a moment or degree in that progress. Thus Hegel spoke of Universal History as the dialectic of the several national minds. As a guiding conception, his idea is undoubtedly useful, but if employed arbitrarily and without due regard to empirical fact, it amounts to a negation of history as such.
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That Hegel sacrificed fact, and so truth, to his dialectical method, is evident from the following quotation (See " What is Living and What is Dead in the Philosophy of Hegel," Croce, p. 145). To mingle, in the interests of so-called truth, individual trivialities of time and people wi'th the representation of general interests is not only contrary to judgment and to taste, but contrary to the concept of objective truth. For, according to this con- cept, the truth for spirit is that which is substantial, not the vacuity of external existence, and of accident." The critics of Hegel find, in this assumed distinction between essential and unessential facts, a contradiction of that valuable first principle of Hegel, that the universal is inherent in the individual. H then experience be the embodiment of objective truth, no individual empirical fact may be regarded as unessential. But Hegel, if con- strued literally, would be required to dispense with empirical fact, for the deduction of history depends finally upon the thought-process exhibited in it.
. Hegel's philosophy of Nature is open to the same criticism as his idea of a philosophy of history. It is built up on the idea that Nature has developed, stage by stage, from mere outwardness to the inwardness of spirit. Mechanism is the lowest stage of natural development, while higher in the progress are physics and organism. The phenomena which fit into this scheme are used by Hegel for purposes of illustration, but for any further regard to empirical fact, Hegel expressly declares that nothing should be allowed to prevent a thoroughgoing -- application of the dialectical method. Phenomena which seem to fall outside the thought-evolution in Nature are regarded as exceptions, as extraordinary cases, due to what Hegel calls the " Ohnmacht der Natur." But this destroys the proper basis of the exact sciences, just as the disregard of empirical fact in Hegel's philosophy of history negated history.
The culmination of Hegel's system is found in his philosophy of Mind or Spirit, which treats of Subjective Mind or Spirit (the sphere of psychology), Objective
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Mind (family life, civil institurions, the State, etc.), and Absolute Mind (art, religion and speculative philosophy). Of these divisions and subdivisions generally, it may be said that all are regarded as leading up to the completeness of philosophic thought, and the treatment of each is affected by the presuppositions shown as underlying Hegel's work as a whole. His doctrine of the State, and his view of religion, should be especially noted.
Hegel regarded the State as the fullest objective realization of spirit. It is the unity of the essence of family life and of civic society, and in it alone does the individual find his true ethical sphere. Hegel regarded the individualism which was the result of the Revolution as an unmixed evil, saying that subjective will is mere individual caprice which will attain none of the true aims of humanity. In as far as Hegel emphasized the social nature of man as against a false individualism, his political theory was good. But when he exercised him- self to increase the prestige of the Prussian bureaucracy, he became the instrument of a reactionary tyranny. It is right to say that the idea of a constitution is connected with the spirit of the nation, but the actual constitution as it exists may need re-forming to the shape of the informing ideal. And it may be in the spirit of the nation to observe this fact, before the administrators of the constitution will recognize it.
Hegel's doctrine of religion points to imagination as the faculty in the ordinary man which grasps the Absolute. That is, there may be an imaginative intuition of the fact that all things spring from infinite spirit — ^as well as the philosophic perception of the same truth. So far so good. But Hegel goes one step further and treats religion as only a preliminary way of conceiving the Absolute, while the final and completely satisfactory way is through philosophy. (Similarly art and religion are regarded by Hegel as inchoate mental systems, instead of being considered autonomous and valuable per se — the one for its grasp of sensible certainty and the other for its basis on presentative fact.) So Hegel ends
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by discounting all forms of spirit save that of the specu- lative consciousness; the philosopher alone may be good and happy and wise.
That Hegel's thought, so stimulating and splendid in its beginnings, should have led to a conclusion that is contrary to the facts of nature and of human life, his great Italian critic finds in the following error. Hegel confused the theory of distincts (in which concepts differ by degrees from one another) with his valuable doctrine of opposites, and applied the dialectical method equally to both. Thus Croce says (p. 95), " He conceived the con- nexion of these degrees dicdectically in the manner of the dialectic of opposites; and he applied to this connexion the triadic form, which is proper to the synthesis of opposites." Hence it was that concepts which have a reality and meaning per se were treated by Hegel as mere abstracts, e.g. art corresponds to the abstract concept being, religion is the not-being of art, and truth is only found in their synthesis philosophy. Where in the treat- ment of nature and of history, Hegel's violation of truth had alienated the scholar, his estimate of art and of religion is now found to contradict the experience of the ordinary man.
In the final analysis, it would seem that Hegel reverses the judgment of Kant. The latter had said that when philosophy fails, art and religion are the means by which we arrive at truth. Hegel maintains that the truth which appears veiled in art and religion is clearly revealed to man by philosophy. The issue between the two must rest on how far their philosophy explicates experience. Kant acknowledges mystery in experience — ^two elements unknown which yet make Life. Hegel says there is no mystery — but he has perforce to wrest the facts, that his concept of the Evolving Consciousness may be justified.
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CHAPTER III
THE BRITISH UNE FROM BENTHAM TO J. S. MILL,
The year after the publication -of the Critique of Practical Reason saw the calling of the States General in France. ^At the same time a significant work appeared in England, feeiitliain^s " Introduction to the Principles of Morals and LegislatioiT*^ 1789) . Bentham was a prac- tical thinker, whose primary aim was a criticism of the English Constitution and of English law. He followed the tradition of Locke and Hume in distrusting anything of the nature of unproved assumptions, and so attacked the " sacramental expressions " and the a priori principles with which current theories in politics and ethics were used to defend themselves. His " Fragment on Govern- ment" (1776) had early attracted the attention of English Liberals, and during his life time he did not cease to urge definite reforms in the state system. Among the political changes he desired were the extension of the franchise, the use of the ballot in voting, and the substi- tution of national education for national pauperizing. In the sphere of jurisprudence, he suggested simplification and codification of the laws. One of his keenest interests was the proper administration of criminal punishment. He considered the aim of punishment to be reformatory and preventive rather than retributive, and emphasized three objects for judge and jury in imposing their sen- tence. The first of these was the discipline and reforma- tion of the criminal, then the protection of society from further injury, and lastly the deterring of possible imitators from following the example of crime.
In presenting such principles as his basis for the administration of justice, Bentham was simply employing
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the test which he felt should be applied to all laws and institutions whatever. This is the test of consequences. Any established form which caused misery for the indi- vidual and no compensatory happiness for society, Bentham took to be evil on the face of it. For happiness Js 7 lie frv^^fesi £»ood, and men prov.- tr;;s bv irie u:i;versi1 value which they set upon it. Thus government and legislation, all conscious action and established thought, should be judged according to their tendency to promote human happiness. "^
From criticizing the public evils of his day as due to the lack of this idea in the work of governors and legis- lators, Bentham went on to elaborate a science of right action on the same principle. It was no theory of the rights of man or of the existence of a social contract, that had been Bentham's starting point for the advocation of political and legal reform. So it was no doctrine of intuitive conscience or of a priori right that formed the basis of his ethics. Bentham said that if happiness were the greatest good, then actions which promote happiness are good. To any moral system which exalted virtue or self-sacrifice as the summum bonum, Bentham opposed the ethics of utility. " Utility is the property in an object or the tendency in an action, to augment ... the happiness of the party whose interest is in question." Virtue is a secondary good, to be valued because it is conducive to human welfare. But pain should only be commended if endured with a view to the happiness of others. That happiness is the dearest object of man, Bentham took to be proved even by his opponents. For their very inculca- tion of virtue and self-sacrifice, is accompanied by the promise of a higher and more enduring happiness than can be found on earth.
Bentham found happiness to consist in the balance of pleasure over pain. Right conduct means the attainment of pure and lasting and certain pleasure. In the " Intro- duction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation," Bentham writes : '* Nature has placed man under the government of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure.
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It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand, the standard of right and wrong, on the other, the chain of causes and effects are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we say, in all we think : every effort we make to throw off the subjection, will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it. . . . The principle of utility recognizes this subjection, and assumes it for the foundation of that system, the object of which is to rear the pibric of felicity by the hands of reason and of law." I^he common criticisms of Bentham's principle are that it makes selfish pleasure a justifiable aim, and that it tends to glorify prudence to the belittling of nobler virtues. Bentham answered the first objection in his later definition of the ethical end, as " the greatest happi- ness of the greatest number " ; also in his placing benevolence at the head of the list of human motives. He would have accepted prudence as the foundation- virtue in the formation of good habits, but held that if the individual were to count only for one, prudential considerations would operate for the general good as often as for personal happiness. The fact that sympathy with the suffering and oppressed was the animating motive of Bentham's life, and that altruistic action was given a foremost place in his system, cannot fail to modify the seeming selfish aspect of his ethics. )^
Considered in comparison with British ethical theories put forward before and since, Bentham's utilitarianism has distinctive merits. It was first a continuation and combination of earlier lines of thought. The emphasis laid by Hutcheson and Shaftesbury on the importance of benevolence in moral experience, together with Adam Smith's appreciation of sympathy as a natural quality in man, appeared in Bentham's supreme moral end — "the greatest happiness of the greatest number." The intel- lectual side of moral judgments, on which thinkers hke Price and Wollaston had laid so much stress, was present in Bentham's conception of the value of rational calcula- tion in determining moral action. More prominent still
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was the strain of thought taken from Hume and Priestley — that exposition of morality as utility, which made right conduct consist in the production of happy consequences. But the peculiar interest of Bentham's work lies in his striking combination of these earlier principles. Happi- ness, or the balance of pleasure over pain, was taken to be man's dearest object, and the pleasure-producing quality of an action was described as the basis of its moral character. Rational reflection was directed to an enlightened knowledge of the comparative value of pleasures, and through an appeal to the social sympathies in man, the scope of personal morality was shown to extend to humanity.
As contributing to the development of ethical theory, Bentham's outstanding merit lies in his furnishing a clear and definite standard. The nature and benefit of pleasure is understood alike by the child and the adult, the unlearned and the cultured. So to test the moral quality of an act would be easy, if its consequences in adding to pleasures and detracting from pains were the criterion. Bentham thought that lack of clear knowledge as to the shortness and narrowness of pleasure-effects was the chief obstacle to private morality. Hence his elaborate classifications and evaluations, that his readers might be guided to a right judgment of what was the greatest sum of pleasures, as the result of a particular act. At the time when Bentham wrote, the perfectibility of men was a confident hope. It was thought that if the social conscience of the leaders of the nation were roused and the political inequalities and social abuses of the masses removed, the development of the individual would henceforth be unimpeded. For private morality, it needed only the strengthening of the external " sanctions " with the application of the utility principle, to produce perfection.
Bentham's ethical system served excellently, as history has shown, in furnishing an instrument for public reform. Though his influence was confined at first to stimu- lating the thought of a very small group of men,
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the gradual spread of his ideas between 1789 and 1832 was a potent factor in preparing the way for the Reform Bill. Had the French Revolution not overleapt itself, and discredited all liberal thought in England for a consider- able time, Bentham's conception of progress would doubtless have made its way much sooner. As it is, historians are not far wrong in attributing much of the credit for the whole development of the modern English representative system to Bentham and those he inspired. So with national education, prison reform and modern social service — all are in accord with the ideals which Bentham set before his readers. In his special sphere of law, Bentham's greatness was early acknowledged. Brougham called him " the first legal philosopher that had appeared in the world." Speaking in 1838 he said of him that he " first made the mighty step of trying the whole provisions of our jurisprudence by the test of expediency, fearlessly examining how each part was con- nected with the rest, and with a yet more undaunted courage, inquiring how far even its most consistent and symmetrical arrangements were framed according to the principle which should pervade a code of laws — their adaptation to the circumstances of society, to the wants of man, and to the promotion of human happiness." (Brougham's Speeches, ii, p. 288.) Sir Henry Maine writes, " I do not know a single, law reform since his day which cannot be traced to his influence."
*^or the dissemination of his ideas, Bentham owed most to James Mill, a man of considerable personal power and of great literary and conversational gifts. Mill's place in the history of Hterature is founded on his contribution to history through the production of a " History of India," and on his work in the sphere of psychology .)(The "Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind " still strikes the reader with its freshness and wealth of illustration, and at the time it appeared ( 1829) formed a distinct land-mark in the field of psychological investigation. Of this book, J. S. Mill says that it " carried Hartley's mode of explain- ing the mental phenomena to much greater length and
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depth." Hartley's psychology had combined two principles, the theory of vibrations taken from Newton's Principia Philosophiae and the doctrine of association propounded by Hume. Mill concentrated on the second of these principles, and by a searching and vigorous examination of conscious experience, showed the all- important part played in it by the association of ideas.
It must be noted at the outset that Mill's discussion was of purely psychological questions, and could lead logically to no theory of reaHty. By hypothesis, the psychologist is precluded from examining such problems as that of substance, for he is merely dealing with ideas as events in the conscious life of men. When Mill and other associationists attempt to dogmatize about the limitations of knowledge with regard to reality, they are stepping out of their own sphere. Their French exponent Ribot writes on this point : " Shall psychology be spiritualist or materialist? Such a question has no meaning. Spiritualism and materialism supply a solution of the questions of substance, which is reserved to metaphysics. It is possible that the psychologist may, in the pursuit of his studies, incline to one of the two solu- tions or to another, as the physiologist may incline to mechanism or animism, but these are personal specu- lations which he does not confound with science." So Mill's description of the idea is valuable as an account of its occurrence, but misleading in that it connotes a theory of the representative character of thought and a division between the mental and physical worlds.
Mill reduced experience to sensations, ideas, and asso- ciations of ideas. " When our sensations cease, by the absence of their objects, something remains . . . This trace, this copy of the sensation, which remains after the sensation, is an Idea "( Analysis I, p. 52). The general law of association of ideas, he stated to be that " Our ideas spring up, or exist, in the order in which the sensa- tions exist, of which they are the copies." (Analysis I, p. 78.) Later in his discussion, he affirmed, "The funda- mental law of association is, that when two things have
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been frequently found together, we never perceive or think of the one without thinking of the other." Mill pointed to the vividness of the associated feelings, and the frequency of the association, as the causes of strength in association. In his desire for simplification, he reduced association by resemblance to association by contiguity, stating that groups of sensations and ideas are formed either because of synchronic or successive connection. ^Upon the sensations and their consequent ideas, Mill built up his psychology. In memory and imagination, the ideas of the self and of external objects, he traced the working of the association process. But connected with every sensation Mill recognized the existence of a feeling of pleasure or pain or indifference. These simple feel- ings he took as the sources of the complex emotions, and in his account of their possible transformation he supplied a basis for the Benthamite ethics. ^He maintained that originally ideas of pleasure and pain had only been associated with egoistical causes, but in time means to selfish ends had been erected into ends in themselves. Great stress was laid on the growth of " inseparable associa- tions " in the human mind, for through them the pleasure-seeking individual passed from selfish to dis- interested action. Thus Mill made the transition from Bentham's psyc'hological egoism to ethical altruism.
The theory of knowledge and reality held by Mill was closely related to the Humian view. Knowledge he reduced to customary belief, and belief he defined as inseparable association. " Wherever the name belief is applied, there is a case of the indissoluble association of ideas." (Anal. I, p. 367.) " In the most simple cases, Belief consists in sensation alone, or ideas alone ; in the more complicated cases, in sensation, ideas and association combined" (Anal. I, p. zyy). "When the ideas are associated in conformity with the connexions of things, the belief is right belief; when the ideas are connected not in conformity with the connexions of things, the belief is wrong belief " (Anal. I, p. 381). Belief in future events Mill defined as the inseparable association of like
37
consequents with like antecedents. Belief in the truth of propositions he said was nothing more than the recogni- tion of the coincidence, entire or partial, of two general names. The word cause for him meant merely the ante- cedent of a consequent, where the connection is constant; in other words, " to believe a succession or coexistence between two facts is only to have the ideas of the two facts so strongly and closely associated that we cannot help having the one idea when we have the other." (Editor's note, Anal. I, p. 402.) Here Mill distinctly separated himself from all those schools of philosophy which erect the conception of Necessary Conjunction into " a Law of Things." Implicit in all his statements is the limitation of knowledge to the simple idea, and parallel to this is a similar limitation of reality. The only reality for Mill was experience, and experience disclosed nothing more than sensations and ideas. The external world had no existence, apart from our ideas of external objects, and these were simply " the ideas of a certain number of sensations, associated frequently." The self Mill explained also in terms of association. He described it as " that thread of consciousness drawn out in succession which I call myself " (Anal. I, p. 17), or that " thread of consciousness in which, to me, my being consists," "the train of consciousness which I call myself " (Anal. H, p. 197).
When in 1870, John Stuart Mill was describing the opinions held by the so-called Philosophical Radicals in 1824, he stated that the Hartleian metaphysics ranked with Benthamism and the modern political economy as their dearest articles of faith. By " Hartleian metaphysics " he meant the doctrines indicated above, as the dominating note contributed by James Mill. But in addition to supplying the psychological and philosophical tenets of the Utilitarians, James Mill added a keen personal bias in political questions, i.e., " an almost unbounded confidence in the efficacy of two things: representative government, and freedom of discussion." The latter principles he advocated untiringly both in writing and in conversation,
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and according to his son's account, produced almost as much effect through the second of these methods, as Bentham did by his published works. " I have never known any man who could do such ample justice to his best thoughts in colloquial discussion. His perfect com- mand over his great mental resources, the terseness and expressiveness of his language and the moral earnestness as well as intellectual force of his delivery, made him one of the most striking of all argumentative conversers : and he was full of anecdote, a hearty laugher, and, when with people whom he liked, a most lively and amusing com- panion. It was not solely, or even chiefly, in diffusing his merely intellectual opinions that his power showed itself : it was still more through the influence of a quality, of which I have only since learnt to appreciate the extreme rarity : that exalted public spirit, and regard above all things to the good of the whole, which warmed into life and activity every germ of similar virtue that existed in the minds he came in contact with ; the desire he made them feel for his approbation, the shame at his disapproval; the moral support which his conversation and his very existence gave to those who were aiming at the same objects, and the encouragement he afforded to the faint- hearted and desponding among them, by the firm confidence which (though the reverse of sanguine as to the results to be expected in any one particular case) he always felt in the power of reason, the general progress of improvement, and the good which individuals could do by judicious effort." (J. S. Mill, Autob. p. 58.)
The above quotation furnishes the reason, not only for James Mill's personal ascendancy over the group of young men with whom his son consorted, but for the immense influence exercised by the whole party for a time. " The good of the whole " was an ideal which had lost its glamor in England, as a result of the French Reign of Terror and the Napoleonic wars. But by 1824 the reaction had run its course and a strong tide was setting towards reform. When the first number of the West- minster Review appeared, the editors themselves were
39
astonished at the reception it received. The new and reasoned Liberalism of the Utilitarians appealed first to the thinking part of the nation, as had been proved already by the footing which it had gained at Cambridge (Autob. p. 59). Theirs was no chimerical scheme, based on an imaginary picture of the natural gifts and graces of untutored men; they were an age removed from Rousseau. But they had a reasonable hope for the amelioration of conditions by the removal of social injustice, and the use of education. It was this funda- mental doctrine then, that won the thinkers — " the formation of all human character by circumstances, through the universal Principle of Association, and the consequent unlimited possibility of improving the moral and intellectual condition of mankind by education.'' (Autob. p. 62).
Then the Benthamite Liberalism attracted the interest of the great middle class of England, which had only lately come to its own through the rise of industrialism. The leading Utilitarians themselves came from this class, and they looked to it for the working out of the social and political problems which confronted the nineteenth century. A group of writers which regarded the middle class as that " which gives to science, to art, and to legis- lation itself, their most distinguished ornaments, and is the chief source of all that has exalted and refined human nature," was bound to inspire confidence and rouse enthusiasm in those whom they thus eulogized. Of the influence of the Utilitarians upon the lower strata of English society, it may be said that it has operated less directly, but still intensely. The middle ranks have acted, as James Mill prophesied, as pioneers in the political experience w^hich the whole English electorate is now gaining. They have also afforded definite examples of keenness and intelligent self-culture, for the lower classes to emulate.
Bentham died in 1832, the year when so many of his hopes might be said to have approached realization. His great second, Mill, followed him four years later. In
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recording his father's death, J. S. Mill consciously points the period of the sway of the great Utilitarians. A note of sadness runs through his last tribute, as appeared also in his essay on Bentham. Of his father he writes, '* Not- withstanding the great number of his opinions which, partly through his own efforts, have now been generally adopted, there was on the whole, a marked opposition between his spirit and that of the present time. As Brutus was called the last of the Romans, so was he the last of the eighteenth century: he continued its tone of thought and sentiment into the nineteenth (though not unmodified nor unimproved), partaking neither in the good nor in the bad influences of the reaction against the eighteenth century, which was the great characteristic of the first half of the nineteenth. The eighteenth cen- tury was a great age, an age of strong and brave men, and he was a fit companion for the strongest and bravest." (J. S. Mill, Autob. p. 117.)
There is a reason for the note of sadness which runs through the above. The writer himself had felt the influences of the reaction spoken of, and in his deepening sense of separation from the staunch old " Brutus " towards the end, counted himself in a manner a traitor. For the modifications and enlargements to which Mill ultimately subjected the doctrines inherited from Bentham and his father, brought him closer than even he realized to the opposing school. It is difficult to-day to decide which side may more justly claim him — empiricists or intuitionists, Epicureans or Stoics. The contrast between the younger and the older Mill, between later and earlier Utilitarianism, is only one of the many results due to the introduction of German thought into England. The melancholy which the Autobiography describes made fertile ground, no doubt, for Mill's inarticulate yearnings towards a wider faith. But the positive factors in his change had their source, directly or indirectly, in Germany.
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SECTION II THE EARLIER GERMAN INFLUENCE
CHAPTER IV
THJe BEGINNING OF GERMAN INFLUENCE — COLERIDGE
The present-day critic who wishes the German element in our literature absent altogether has only in mind the ephemeral (we hope) contribution of the last few years. For the earlier contribution was of inestim- able value. New breadth and depth were added to our study of ethical and philosophical questions. A fresh conception was given of the treatment of history. Thinkers in theology were impelled to greater keenness by the application of historical criticism. Poets were supplied with a new idea of the world. It is not too much to say that were the impulse given by such great men as Goethe, with Kant and his successors, taken from our national thought in the nineteenth century, a great factor in its interest would be gone.
The history of German influence in England up to 1800 may be indicated in a few words. As the German language was generally unknown, translations were the only medium by which the English public came into touch with German thoug'ht. The first translated works which attracted any interest were those of Jacob Bohme (b. 1575, d. 1624), made by the Rev. Wm. Law during the earlier half of the eighteenth century. These were mystical in tone, and appealed deeply to religious readers. After 1760, translations from Wieland, Klopstock and Lessing began to appear, and in 1792, a translation of Schiller's Robbers was published. William Taylor of Norwich, whose " Historic Survey of German Poetry " was reviewed by Carlyle on its appearance in 1830, had pur- sued his plodding study of German literature for half a century — he began about 1780. Meanwhile a faint
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interest in the German language, as other than barbarous, was developing. Lord Chesterfield in one of his letters to his son expressed his satisfaction on hearing that he spoke German perfectly. Occasional students went to Germany and learned the language at first hand. Notable among these was Herbert Marsh, who afterwards became Bishop of Peterborough ; he was profoundly influenced by the teaching of Michaelis. In 1792, a society was formed by Scott for the study of German. Between the latter year and 1825, when the young Mill and his friends formed a class for the same purpose, the chief steps had been taken towards the great incorporation of German with English thought, which continued up to the middle of the century.
Scott's translations of German poetry followed upon his knowledge of the language, and here he struck that note of fondness for the past, which characterized the whole Romantic Movement. In 1798, Coleridge carried out his plan of visiting Germany, with a view to learning a philosophy that would " refute the philosophy of Hume and expose the shallowness of the metaphysics of Locke and the Paley School of Theology." Two years before he had written to a friend, " I am studying German, and in about six weeks shall be able to read that language with tolerable fluency. Now I have some thoughts of making a proposal to Robinson, the great London bookseller, of translating all the works of Schiller, ... on condition that he should pay my journey and my wife's to and from Jena. . . . If I could realize this scheme, I should there study chemistry and anatomy, and bring over with me all the works of Semler and Michaelis, the German theologians, and of Kant, the great German meta- physician." (Letter to Poole, May 6, 1796.) Coleridge actually seems to have brought back what of Kant he thought substantiated his own ideas. In 1801, the young Scottish philosopher, Thomas Brown, reviewed and con- demned Kant, in an article published in the Edinburgh Review; his only source of information had been a Frenchman's account of the great Critical Philosopher.
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But the later verdict of Stewart, though based on a wider knowledge, was just as unsatisfactory. He, together with James Mill, saw in Kant only a reproduction of old errors. However, the interest in German philosophy gradually spread, as did the appreciation of German criticism, poetry and drama. In 1806, Mackintosh took the works of Kant and Fichte with him to India. In 1812, Wirgman put forth an English exposition of Kant. In 1 82 1, Byron dedicated his Sardanapalus to Goethe. At Cambridge Julius Hare and Thirlwall were translating Niebuhr, at the same time that Charles Austin was preaching the gospel of Bentham and James Mill. Simi- larly, Pusey and Rose argued about German Neologism, while the young Ward was still fascinated by the Utilitarian ideal. From 1825, Carlyle's famous discourses on German literature continued to appear.
It is of Coleridge first that it is natural to speak, as a vehicle of German ideas among Englishmen. For he was the earliest thinker who went to Germany, in definite search of a system that would support his own protest against Revolutionary and sceptical doctrines. Coleridge was, like Bentham, "a teacher of the teachers" — one of the " great seminal minds of England " in his age. Writing in 1838, J. S. Mill said, " Although their influences have but begun to diffuse themselves . . . over society at large, there is already scarcely a pubHcation of any con- sequence addressed to the educated classes, which, if these persons had not existed, would not have been different from what it is." (From opening paragraph of the Essay on Bentham.) Thus to have Mill's Kantian Idealism and Hamilton's introduction of Continental philosophy in their right setting, to appreciate the German element in Carlyle, Emerson and the host of Romantic writers, to understand the Hegelianism of later English philosophers, it is necessary first to grasp Coleridge's contribution to thought.
The accounts of Coleridge as a child show him impressionable and imaginative. He delighted in fairy tales, and his early lessons in astronomy with his father
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seemed but to confirm his faith in the wonders of the imaginative world. He comments thus, " I heard him with a profound deHght and admiration, but without the least mixture of wonder or incredulity, for from my early readings of fairy tales and about genii and the like, my mind had been habituated to the Vast; and I never regarded my senses in any zvay as the criteria of my belief/' ("Biographia Epistolaris," Vol. I, p. 17.) Coleridge's boyish " love of the Great and the Whole " formed a permanent obstacle to his ever being satisfied with a little scientist or a narrow theologian. For him no Newton could ever arise to construct a blade of grass. No Spencerian logic could bar the way to his contempla- tion of the Final Cause. It was a truth deep-seated in his being that the very attempt to realize things in their unity, to view the universe in its substratum of reality, enlarges the mind and rouses the noblest feelings in man. With this regulation of faith and life by his conceptions may be contrasted the experimentalist lessons of Mill's early years. He was taught by his father to " contem- plate nothing but parts." So as " all parts are necessarily little," the universe was to him but " a mass of little things." It is significant that the nature-poetry of Wordsworth was the touchstone by which the youthful convictions of both Coleridge and Mill were tried. The early intuitions of the one were as a result strengthened and deepened. The inadequate faith of the other was enlarged, and at the same time he was saved from the insanity of despair.
Coleridge's early fondness for fairy lore was super- seded by a keen interest in metaphysical problems. These were surveyed chiefly from the standpoint of mystics like Bohme, and with the doctrines of the Neo-Platonists in mind. It was not the passing enthusiasm of an impres- sionable boy, but the incorporating work of an active personality, that marks this first excursion into abstract thought on Coleridge's part. For his attitude towards knowledge was the same as his attitude towards people — he subjected his whole being to the influence of the
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moment, not passively as the Humist would argue, but with his physical and mental and spiritual powers all awake. His own description of the result in the particu- lar case of Nature's influence is characteristic, " I return
. . to a house of such prospect that if, according to you and Hume, impressions constitute our being, I shall have a tendency to become a god, so sublime and beautiful will be the series of my visual existence." (Biog. Epist., Vol. I, pp. 193, 194.) Thus in the sphere of thought, the attitude held by the Neo-Platonists and the thrill caught from the works of the mystics, became integral factors in Coleridge's experience. He here first became conscious of the problems which metaphysics seeks to solve, and added to his early religious faith a philosophical bias towards the spiritual interpretation of experience.
At the age of twenty- four, Coleridge wrote to his friend Wade of his meeting with Dr. Darwin, '* the every- thing but Christian. Dr. Darwin possesses, perhaps, a greater range of knowledge than any other man in Europe, and is the most inventive of philosophical men. He thinks in a new train of subjects on all subjects but religion. He bantered me on the subject of religion, I heard all his arguments, and told him it was infinitely consoling to me, to find that the arguments of so great a man adduced against the existence of a God, and the evidences of revealed religion, were such as had startled me at fifteen, but had become the objects of my smile at twenty. Not one new objection — not even an ingenious one! He boasted that he had never read one book in favor of such stuff, but that he had read all the works of Infidels!" (Biog. Epist., Vol. I, pp. 56-57.)
These remarks indicate the range of Coleridge's read- ing while at college. His early speculations and poetical enthusiasms were followed by a detailed examination of the empirical school. After studying the works of Locke and Hume, he made a thorough examination of Hartley's doctrines. The theory of knowledge deduced by this inspired doctor was embraced by Coleridge in character- istic heart-and-soul fashion. The law of association
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became to him the ultimate fact and physical causes the only subject of mental reflection. Indeed he went further than Hartley, and denied to the mind any quality other than motion. Similarly, he was an avowed Unitarian in religion.
The end of Coleridge's empiricist stage was reached with the commencement of his friendship for Words- worth. His nature demanded some philosophical system which made art and religion more than a great venture — like Browning, he had had an imaginative and spiritual experience which required a basis just as truly as scientific knowledge did.
" Just when we are safest, there's a sunset-touch, A fancy from a flower-bell, some one's death, A chorus-ending from Euripides, — And that's enough for fifty hopes and fears As old and new at once as nature's self, To rap and knock and enter in our soul, Take hands and dance there, a fantastic ring, Round the ancient idol, on his base again, — The grand Perhaps! We look on helplessly. There the old misgivings, crooked questions are."
(Bishop Bloug ram's Apology.)
Thus one of Coleridge's avowed objects in going to Germany was to study the Critical Philosophy, and from it to substantiate the claims to reality which his reason demanded for aesthetic feeling and religious truth.
The primary distinction from which Coleridge started was that between fancy and imagination, which was later compared with the differentiation between the functions of the understanding and the reason. It was brought home to him with fresh force when he heard Wordsworth read one of his early poems. " It was the union of deep feeling with profound thought ; the fine balance in observ- ing with the imaginative faculty in modifying, the objects observed; and above all the original gift of spreading the tone, the atmosphere, and with it the depth and height of the ideal world around forms, incidents and situations, of which, for the common view, custom had bedimmed all the lustre, had dried up the sparkle and the dew
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drops." (Biog. Lit., Everyman Edit., p. 45.) It became Coleridge's object to investigate more fully the seminal principle of the poetic and spiritual facuhies, and then from the kind to deduce the degree exhibited in different practical instances. He wished to complete Wordsworth's picture of the branches and fruitage by adding the trunk and roots of the mind, as far as they are visible to human consciousness.
The results of Coleridge's German study may be seen chiefly in the Biographia Literaria (1817), though Ger- man ideas run all through his less systematic works, his letters and his table talk. The philosopher nearest akin to him is Schelling, in whose Natur-Philosophie and System des transcendentalen /fl?^a/ww2<.y Coleridge says he ''found a genial coincidence with much that he had toiled out for himself, and a powerful assistance in what he had yet to do.'* (Biog. Lit., Everyman Edit., p. 79.) The charge of plagiarism from Schelling, made against Coleridge, is hardly a serious one, since what is valuable philosophically in either writer really came from Kant. Coleridge wrote on this point, " The writings of the illustrious sage of Koenigsberg, the founder of the Critical Philosophy, more than any other work, at once invigorated and dis- ciplined my understanding. The originality, the depth, and the compression of the thoughts ; the novelty and subtlety, yet solidity and importance of the distinctions; the adamantine chain of the logic; and I will venture to add — (paradox as it will appear to those who have taken their notion of Immanuel Kant from Reviewers and Frenchmen) — the clearness and evidence, of the Critique of Pure Reason; and Critique of the Judgment; of the Metaphysical Elements of Natural Philosophy ; and of his Religion within the bounds of Pure Reason, took posses- sion of me as with the giant's hand." (Biog. Lit., p. y6.)
In the sphere of metaphysics, Coleridge used the Critical Philosophy as a basis for protesting against Hartley and the Associationists. The study of Kant doubtless made clear to him the empiricist confusion between ideas and reality, between clear knowledge and
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unanalyzed experience. To make sense-impressions and reflection upon disconnected ideas, the sole sources of knowledge of reality, is to destroy the efficacy of that very appeal to experience which Locke deems so neces- sary. Experience as the basis of knowledge must not be conceived in any abstract way. The mere content of isolated ideas forms no adequate starting-point for the apprehension of reality. Locke's demonstrative knowl- edge of God and his intuitive conviction as to the exist- ence of the self are not tenable ultimately, if his first principle of the theory of knowledge be accepted. More- over, his common-sense acceptance of the reality of the external world, in contradistinction to the thinking self, makes the scepticism of Hume the only logical outcome. The only knowable left to man being sense-impressions and thought-images, it becomes the business of the philosopher (turned-psychologist) to develop and apply the theory of the association of ideas. As has been shown, the result was a considerable advance in the understanding of psychological problems in England. Coleridge tended to under-estimate the value of this advance, for it connoted in his day a materialistic out- look. Most of the Associationists were frankly, as Cole- ridge said of Erasmus Darwin, '' Atheists by intuition." James Mill definitely depreciated intense feeling. Bentham regarded "all poetry as misrepresentation." Roebuck, one of the younger disciples of the school, " saw little good in any cultivation of the feelings, and none at all in culti- vating them through the imagination, which he thought was only cultivating illusions." (J. S. Mill, Autob., p. 87.) Coleridge's reaction from such views was deter- mined, first by his religious faith, and secondly by his conception of the value of the feelings. Thus to the Associationist theory of knowledge as the work of " the faculty judging according to sense," Coleridge opposed the activity of the reason reaching truths a priori. Against the doctrine of Necessity, which lay at the root of the earlier Utilitarianism, Coleridge asserted the reality of the will. To the conception of religion as illusion and
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art as misrepresentation, Coleridge opposed the legitimate place of the Practical Reason and the Imagination in human experience.
Coleridge contrasted a many-sided view of the human mind, to the picture of the " human understanding " given by the successors of Locke. Man is not simply the series of states of consciousness which is the subject of sensation. He is a complex being whose physical develop- ment finds a correlate in the evolution of the mind. The food which nourishes the body is not simply added to it, but is absorbed, incorporated, changed and made the basis of new tissue. So external impressions are reacted upon by the mind, and the cognitions resulting are worked into it, making the texture of to-day stronger than that of yesterday. " That the root, stem, leaves, petals, etc., cohere to one plant is owing to an antecedent power or principle in the seed," and similarly the incipient con- sciousness of a man is the promise of developed percep- tion and understanding and reason. This view is reminiscent of Aristotle and of Leibniz. For Coleridge then, the mind was a unified activity with diverse possi- bilities— which assimilates, reflects upon and grows with experience. It may be compared with Kant's Transcen- dental Ego, the Unity of Apperception, and is differenti- ated chiefly by being more concrete.
In treating of '' the easily analyzed part of conscious- ness," the sphere of the understanding, Coleridge was not concerned to reproduce Kant's argument in the Aesthetic. He described the understanding as the developed vital impulse, or conscious life of the animal organism ; here it is the faculty of mediate ends. Then he examined it as a moral factor, and found it to be the source of pruden- tial dictates. Coleridge took it that the Associationists in philosophy and the Utilitarians in ethics had occupied themselves exclusively with these two phases of the mind, disregarding the activity of reason and imagination, and the reality of the will. It was his insistence upon the existence of the will that was Coleridge's ultimate cause of cleavage from the Associationist philosophy. He saw
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that man's power of choice, his ability to recall and pro- ject other ideas than those presented in the impulse of the moment, freed him from the chain of Necessity which the empiricists pictured as binding human action. The factor which makes possible the inhibition of natural experience is the will — '' the supernatural in man and his principle of personality," by virtue of which he is a responsible agent, " a person and not merely a living thing/'
Obviously since Coleridge's philosophy, like Schel- ling's, became a justification of religion, it laid more emphasis upon the practical reason than upon reason in its speculative aspect. But there are numerous references to its general characteristics, and these are more or less taken from Kant. Reason is differentiated from the understanding in having objects alien from sensation. It appeals to no other faculty or sense as the ground for its conclusions. Its conclusions are absolute and fixed. It is the faculty of contemplation, rather than of reflection. It views things in their relations to each other as ideas — for the known in relation to the mind, it substitutes the known-in-itself. But since we can know only phenomena, the only way of proving the truth of our speculative theories is to assume them in experience and test their validity by the way they fit the facts. Thus mathematical truths only become apparent to the untrained mind when they are worked out in practical experience. Similarly, such an idea as the existence of a God, apart from the historic proof of its almost universal acceptance, is proved by the average individual by the effect of its acceptance on his own life.
If reason be " the source and substance of truths above sense," it can never operate freely while hampered by sensuous conceptions. Thus Coleridge considered emancipation from the consideration of things in their visible and tangible forms, as the first step towards rational development. Plato had urged in a similar way that all men should have their minds freed from the tyranny of the senses by the discipline of geometry,
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before attempting to solve the deep problems of meta- physics. Coleridge maintained that the working of reason in its contemplation of abstract truth is not more valid than its working in reference to actual or moral truth. There is a practical reason as well as a speculative reason. But the efficiency of the former is as effectually cancelled by a constant adherence to the conceptions of the understanding, as the results of the latter are pre- vented by a bondage to the senses. The man who stubbornly declares that the sun moves round the earth, because of the witness of his senses to his belief, is not as unreasonable as the extreme atheist, for the latter denies what he cannot possibly know, and by his refusing to follow the dictates of the practical reason, effectually prevents the only possible enlightenment.
The great value of the speculative reason in Cole- ridge's scheme is a negative one. No religious system or moral doctrine can be founded on truth, if it contradicts the laws of right reason. It is from the moral being of man that the activity of the practical reason commences. Man has wants, cravings and interests as a moral being which will only be satisfied by a revealed religion. For except through revelation, the race is not freed from the tyranny of the senses ; hence Coleridge's assertion that the term revealed religion is a pleonasm. The few through education learn to contemplate abstract truth. The many through obedience obtain spiritual knowledge. "For some of the faithful, religious truths have an evidence of reason, but for the whole household of faith, their certainty is in their working." It is by the working that we know and determine existence in the first instance. The child learns that he has eyes and ears by the acts of seeing and hearing. So if in early life the man has not been taught to assume the existence of spiritual realities, he must later accept them that he may find a reason for his belief. Coleridge main- tained that this is not difficult to one who has " a good heart," i.e. a state of being in harmony with itself and with its environment. For the understanding and
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speculative reason suggest it, the analogy of experience excites and recalls it, and the feelings sanction it. It remains only for the practical reason to substantiate it.
Coleridge developed the absorbing claims of reHgion upon man's whole nature, laying special stress upon the existence of religious feeling. Religious truths are only understood as they are believed and felt. " We live by faith." He was heard to say once that "No article of faith can be truly and deeply preached without necessarily and simultaneously infusing a deep sense of the indispensable- ness of a holy life." Also the natural feelings accom- panying the intuition of religious truths give power to the individual to embody them in action. Disjoined from reason, and the feelings engendered by religious faith, prudential maxims are like arms without hearts. Thus the natural feelings of joy, exaltation and sorrow which accompany the contemplation of various ideas have a real value in themselves.
In this restoration of feeling to its practical place, Coleridge showed a marked German influence. Kant and ,his successors had exhibited the work of emotion in human experience, as well as the activity of intellect and will. So Coleridge showed that emotion is as natural a concomitant of knowledge and mental experience as it is of life in action. Indeed it may be compared with that engendering of vital heat consequent upon a chemical reaction. To the experimenter, the giving out of heat proves that a compound has been formed. To the observer, it acts as an incentive, impelling him to examine the experiment and find out its working principle. Similarly, the witness of human feehng in any connection proved to Coleridge the existence of some vital relation- ship and urged him to solve the component factors. The clustering of fervent associations round social and national institutions convinced him that those institutions are grounded in elemental needs of human nature. Personal experience of aesthetic feeling assured him that there must be some poetic faculty which can express the union of man and nature. Perhaps the most practical
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contributions which Coleridge made to thought are repre- sented by his " Church and State according to the Idea of each," and his " Biographia Literaria " where the Imagin- ation as the poetic power is deduced and applied.
In searching for the idea of an institution, Coleridge assumes that it means more than the fulfilment of its primary object. If the natural feelings and associations connected with any social relationship are violated, the very foundations of man's moral being are shaken or destroyed. The social fabric loses every claim to per- manence, if institutions are founded only upon human rights. It is true that the universal necessity from which the institution takes its origin is in one sense a right. But for the individual, the idea or inner principle of an insti- tution is its claim upon his sense of duty. Thus when Coleridge deduced the philosophical ideas of the Church and State, he maintained that, the threefold object of government being the highest good of each individual, the individual's adherence to duty is the surest guarantee that he will receive his rights. Faulty administration of government should not lead to an attack upon the social order itself, as in France, but to an examination of the principles of government, and a revived strength of right feeling and right action upon the part of governors and governed. The most ardent Radical would agree with Coleridge's definition of the objects of government, (i) to make the means of subsistence more easy to each indi- vidual, (2) to secure to him the hope of bettering his own condition and that of his children, and (3) to promote in him the development of those faculties which are essential to his moral and rational being. The working out of the first two objects is the prime consideration of political economists. Coleridge's scorn for their con- tribution towards the solution of social problems lies in his contention that only the third aim goes to the root of the matter. Material well-being, or even the careful training of man's understanding will not save him from vice and misery. There must be some absolute, and it has been shown that Coleridge finds this in the religious ideal.
^7
For the idea of the State, with its factors of Permanence and Progression, is not complete without the idea of the Church — which combines both in the education of the people. It is useless, Coleridge said, to '' plebificate knowledge " ; the people must be raised to desire knowledge through their personal contact with those whose spirits and minds alike are cultivated. The National Church is " the State itself in its intensest federal union ; yet at the same moment the Guardian and Representative of all personal Individuality." ('* Aids to Reflection," p. 196.) To it is entrusted " the only remain- ing interest of the State in its larger sense, that of maintaining and advancing the moral cultivation of the people themselves." It is the established body of the nation's learned men, who act as the teachers of the practical professions and the particular channels of civilization in every community.
To understand Coleridge's views upon the Imagina- tion as the poetic faculty, it must be borne in mind that personal experience of the reality of aesthetic feeling was his starting-point — just as his philosophic speculations were based upon his boyhood's faith. Coleridge differed /from Kant in regarding Man and Nature as akin. The j latter considered Nature as purely the object of Man's subjective feeling and thought, though he linked the i objective and subjective spheres in the operation of the I Judgment. Coleridge having experienced the intensest sympathy with Nature concluded that there must be some ground for it in his constitution as a rational being. In a letter written to Wedgwood years before the composition of the Biographia, he said, *' In simple earnestness, I never find myself alone, within the embracement of rocks and hills, a' traveller upon an Alpine road, but my spirit careers, drives, and eddies, like a leaf in autumn ; a wild activity of thoughts, imaginations, feelings, and impulses of motion rises up from within me; my whole being is filled with waves that roll and stumble, one this way, and one that way, like things that have no common master. I think that my soul must have pre-existed in the body of
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the chamois-chaser. The simple image of the old object has been obliterated, but the feelings and impulsive habits and incipient actions are in me, and the old scenery awakens them." (Biog. Epist., Vol. I, p. 261.) In such moments of exaltation, life seemed to him a universal spirit. His reason cried within him, " God is every- where," and his bodily vision saw new signs and wonders telling His Presence on every side. The outcome of such experience was Coleridge's insistence upon a peculiar poetic faculty, apart from the fancy — which plays only with fixities and definites, the conceptions of the under- standing. Coleridge conceived of this faculty as akin to the reason, and attributed it in its highest form to genius only. " To find no contradiction in the union of old and new, to contemplate the Ancient of Days, His words and His works, with a feeling as fresh as if they were now springing forth at His fiat — this characterizes the minds that feel the riddle of the world and may help to unravel it." (" The Statesman's Manual," Collected Works, Vol. I, pp. 434, 435).
Coleridge's idea of the Imagination was probably in some such general form as that sketched above when he became acquainted with the German philosophy. After his study of German writers his definition of terms became more elaborate than before, but his exposition of the Imagination is really different from that of either of the above-named philosophers.
Kant described the Imagination as a purely intellectual faculty, a representative power, which clothes conceptions and ideas in sensuous form. It is the poet's instrument, but not the actuating cause which inspires him to write. The moving cause of poetic work is the Judgment, which impels the observer of Nature to a teleological view of the universe, and enables him to reveal this view to man- kind through the construction of Imaginative Ideals. Kant described aesthetic feeling as concomitant with the efforts of the poet, and justified it as naturally roused in those who appreciate poetry.
Coleridge on the contrary described the Imagination
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as a creative and unifying power. He provided that it could not be real and vivid unless the whole moral and intellectual being of the writer was in a harmonious state. Thus his Imagination is really dependent on a good heart, a healthy state of the feelings. If the will of a man be subordinated to the direction of his reason, a quick insight into the workings of the Divine Reason in nature is the result.
The initiative for aesthetic creation is intense feeling, feeling vitalized by thought.
"Joy, blameless Poet ! Joy that ne'er was given Save to the pure, and in their purest hour."
The poet's subject is the ideas of the reason ; not sensuous conceptions which furnish material for the understanding. His method of expression is the language of symbols, that is, representative and universal images — which transcend the " fixities and definites " of fancy, as the ocean transcends each of its waves. For " the Imagina- tion is that reconciling and mediatory power which, incor- porating the reason in the images of the sense, and organizing (as it were) the flux of the senses by the permanence and self-circling energies of the reason, gives birth to a system of symbols, harmonious in themselves and consubstantial with the truths of which they are the conductors." (From "The Statesman's Manual," Col- lected Works, Vol. I, p. 436.) This language of symbols speaks direct to the heart of the reader, for it is the transcript of life.
Coleridge's description of the Imagination was the natural expression of a poet. He had experienced that union of deep feeling and profound thought which pro- duces insight. In the grip of creative passion he had gazed fearlessly on reality, and seized the leaping image which fixed the image for all time. He did not elucidate the particular part which the feelings play in the game of poetry. He did not tell precisely when the reason, fired by the feelings, darts ahead and grasps the idea. Indeed he gave no direct description of his experience like the
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following, " A lyric conception ... my friend the Poet said . . . hits me like a bullet in the forehead. I have often had the blood drop from my cheeks when it struck, and felt that I turned white as death. Then comes a creeping as of centipedes running down the spine . . . then a gasp and a great jump of the heart,— then a sudden flush and a beating in the vessels of the head, . . . then a long sigh, . . . and the poem is written." ("Autocrat of the Breakfast Table," O. W. Holmes.) Coleridge felt, however, that a world of difference lay between the man who possesses, and the man who lacks, imagination. Whole-heartedness, intensity — in doing, or thinking, or loving, produces insight, and insight means seeing the need of the next moment and meeting it. Herein lies the peculiar^ gift of poets, that they communicate the fire of their discovery to their readers, and kindle in other souls the power of imagination. Coleridge whether as philosopher or critic was always poet. Thus while his definitions might be lacking in definiteness and his analysis might not be clear, he imparted conviction as to the reality and greatness of his subject. He not so much illuminated his theme — rather he opened the eyes of the reader to see all there was to see. Those who have caught from him feeling and thought and joy in Hfe, understand what Davy meant when he wrote to Coleridge on the eve of a journey, " In whatever part of the world you are, you will often live with me, not as a fleeting idea, but as a recollection possessed of creative energy, — as an imagination winged with fire, inspiring and rejoicing."
It was his restoration of human feelings to their rightful place, and his triumphant vindication of person- ality, that gave Coleridge his peculiar power over the age of reaction in England. These two notes were sounded with telling effect, after Coleridge had found a philo- sophical basis for his faith, in the work of Kant and his successors. He found that every impression is accom- panied by a corresponding feeling, a state of the whole being, which is an integral part of experience. Man is
6i
not the mere sum of his impressions, thoughts and emotions, but a something greater than all these. The basis of this entity is the will, and the color of it is the characteristic set of feelings incident to its experience. For feeling is the visible essence of personality. In pro- mulgating these doctrines qua philosopher, Coleridge exerted an indirect but powerful influence. By applying them in the spheres of literary criticism and religion, he furnished a real contribution to the thought-life of his age.
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CHAPTER V
NEWMAN AND THE TRACTARIANS, CARI^YIvE, EMERSON AND RUSKIN
J. S. Mill's estimate of Bentham and Coleridge, as the two great seminal minds of nineteenth century England, has already been noted. With this opinion might be compared a remark made by J. A. Froude — written about forty years later (in ''The Oxford Counter- Reformation," 1881). The latter singles out Newman and Thomas Carlyle as the two writers most powerfully affecting the Englishmen of his day. Doubtless Froude's early connection with the Oxford Movement had much to do with his appreciation of Newman's influence, while his personal devotion to Carlyle made the latter seem a universal oracle. At the same time Froude's statement bears close scrutiny. Newman may have affected directly only a certain section of English society, but his work is of immense importance historically. All modern Chris- tian apologists must take account of him, whether they think his ground mistaken or simply absurd. And as for Carlyle, the very triteness of most of his sayings to-day witnesses to his profound influence in the past. Both thinkers further have produced an effect indefinitely great through the great speakers and writers inspired by their ideas. Not Newman alone, but the leaders in sym- pathy with him, have a message for their age — Keble, Pusey and Ward. Carlyle's gospel has been preached in many forms, and echoes of his voice are heard in such diverse works as those of Emerson, Ruskin and J. S. Mill himself. So that though Bentham and Coleridge may be the first teachers of the teachers in our period, Newman and Carlyle may be taken to have come in closer touch
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with the practical life of the English people. A brief examination will show the relation these two thinkers bear to the movement already initiated towards incor- porating German with English thought. Their starting- point was a common one, dissatisfaction with liberalism as a cure for personal perplexity and social evil. Their result was divergent and yet akin. Newman said, "Obedience comes first, knowledge*afterwards." (Quoted in ** William George Ward and the Oxford Movement/' p. yy,^ Carlyle said, "Find in any country the Ablest Man that exists, raise him to the supreme place, and loyally reverence him; you have a perfect government for that country." (From "Heroes and Hero Wor- ship," p. i6i of Vol. ni, Ashburton Edition, Carlyle's Works.) The one put the emphasis on the authority already set up; the other pointed to the ideal authority which might be developed.
Newman's conception of his own relation to the thought of his time might be amply illustrated from passages throughout his works. In 1841, he opened his defence of the writing of Tract 90 in the following words, " I have always contended, and will contend, that it is not satisfactorily accounted for by any particular movements of individuals on a particular spot. The poets and philosophers of the age have borne witness to it many years. Those great names in our literature, Sir Walter Scott, Mr. Wordsworth, Mr. Coleridge, though in different ways and with essential differences one from another, and perhaps from any Church system, bear witness to it. The age is moving towards something, and most unhappily the one religious communion among us which has of late years been practically in possession of that something is the Church of Rome. She alone, amid all the errors and evils of her practical system, has given free scope to the feelings of awe, mystery, tender- ness, reverence, devotedness, and other feelings which may be especially called Catholic." Newman here acknowledges the aim of the early party of Oxford leaders, i.e., to restore the Catholic elements in
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Anglicanism. With Keble, Hurrell Froude and Pusey, Newman claimed for the Church of England the marks of apostolical authority and Catholic sanctity. It needed but a step further to reach the position taken up in the forties by Ward and others, when they sought to make Christianity identical with the Catholic system.
The factors which went to make up Newman's intellectual and religious experience are fully indicated in the Apologia. This volume is curiously reminiscent of Coleridge — with its recorded tributes to Evangelicalism and mysticism, its appreciation of Law's Serious Call, its adoption of the ideas of the Neo-Platonists, and its emphasis on the imaginative and contemplative side of life. Newman avows two principles as the basis of his early religious pwDsition, and to these he later added belief in the importance and necessity of dogma. The first is faith in " the sacramental system " — defined by him as *'the doctrine that material phenomena are both the types and the instruments of real things unseen." The second is acceptance of Butler's doctrine of probability. Newman regarded the request for intellectual certainty, as answered by the witness of religious feelings to theological truth. " In matters of religion . . . it is not merely probability which makes us intellectually cer- tain, but probability as it is put to account by faith and love. It is faith and love which give to probability a force which it has not in itself. Faith and love are directed towards an object; in the vision of that object they live; it is that object, received in faith and love, which renders it reasonable to take probability as suffi- cient for internal conviction." (" Apologia," Everyman edition, p. 43.) Newman thus adopted at the outset the argument from feeling, which Coleridge only reached when well advanced in his speculations. He handed it as a weapon tested and tried to his party, and so swung them forward into a movement which was bound to end in the dilemma of the Apologia. Either all must be accepted or nothing — either the Church is a living organ- ism or it is not — either faith must grip the body of
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dogma, or faith is false. The result of this leading was first a large accession of believers to the Roman Catholic Church. Newman was right in this; human nature demands authority somewhere, and if the need is not met through one channel, it will be sought through another. A secondary result of his work was a deepening of that intellectualism and scepticism which he sought to overthrow. The strong spirits which felt in them more divine reason than natural incHnation, would not sell truth to gain the birthright which Newman said they had lost. J. A. Froude voices the attitude of this party, when he declares that if committing oneself absolutely be religion, then Englishmen rightly refuse to commit them- selves at all. The Oxford leaders in his eyes have done irreparable wrong to the English religious spirit. " By their attempts to identify Christianity with the Catholic system, they provoked doubts, in those whom they failed to persuade, about Christianity itself. But for the Oxford movement, scepticism might have continued a harmless speculation of a few philosophers." (Short Studies on Great Subjects, Vol. IV, p. 252.) Froude with many others reacted violently against the Roman Catholic doctrine of authority, which for the sake of discipline claims jurisdiction without protest from the laity. He did not see his way to the view which, while accepting authority, allowed that the laity might contribute to inherited traditions and modify accepted strictures. The necessity and value of paternal government may be acknowledged, without excluding the influence of matured reason upon the governors by the governed.
It has been stated that had the Oxford leaders known German philosophy, they would never have come to the extreme positions which some of them took up. That is, had they realized that modern thought might save intel- lectual agnosticism from its practical evil effects, by a canonization of the moral realities and an acknowledg- ment of the rights of art and religion per se, they would not have felt it necessary to lay all the stress they did upon ecclesiastical authority. Possibly this view is borne
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out by the fact that Pusey, who was a German scholar and knew a good deal about Kant and his successors, did not follow Newman and Ward. On the other hand, the evidence suggests that the final step was more or less a matter of temperament. The highly imaginative nature, the soul on which the mystery of human sin and suffering continually presses, finds rest in the conception of a Corporate Body endowed with power to fight the evil in the world. The greater its claims to authority, the greater the relief and thankfulness of such an one. For when education and social improvement have done their best there is still need of power from above, and the more compelling the Embodiment of that Power be, the happier for the pessimist Newman and his friends. But only a fraction of mankind are thoroughgoing pessimists, so all the world has not followed Newman yet.
Should it be said with Carlyle that the Oxford Reformers had only the brains of rabbits, so to over- balance the claims of sound common sense and the practical intellect by their appeal to emotion and imagina- tion, yet the praises of their opponents should also be remembered. Keble's poetic genius, Newman's eloquent and exquisite touch as orator and writer, and Ward's intellectual keenness, have had far-reaching effect and due acknowledgment, since the days when Newman was ostracized and Ward arraigned at Oxford. Jowett, whose influence went to wipe away the traces of Tractarianism at Oxford, frankly acknowledged the intellectual impetus and personal inspiration he had received from Ward. At the time of the publication of "The Ideal of a Christian Church" (1844), J. S. Mill wrote of it to Comte, as containing " the best possible defence of the intuitional philosophy." And to touch on a more specific point, Ward has met with approbation from philosophers on the ground of his kinship to Kant. Where Newman put forth a merely subjective justification for faith, in the witness of feeling, Ward promulgated a view of faith and duty which might be closely compared with Kant's categorical imperative. He said that faith
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had its roots in neither intellect nor emotion, but was founded upon the sense of duty or the dictates of con- science. "Conscience may not tell us much at first, but it is a faculty affording a ghmpse of something objective, infinitely higher in kind than the sensible things around us." ..." Discursive argument on known facts which one understands and fully grasps is one thing; blind surrender to subjective feelings another; but there is a third which consists in watchful and reverent atten- tion to an external power above us, recognized as real and authoritative, and yet not fully understood." (Life of Ward by his son, Wilfrid Ward, p. 254.) Ward thus felt with Kant the transcendent greatness of the moral law, though his feeling w^as in no wise due to that philosopher's influence. Ward's only notice of Kant is the naive statement that he had read a little of Kant in a French translation (he knew no German) and had found him very hard reading!
The relation of the Oxford thinkers to German philosophy was thus chiefly a negative one. But side by side with their ignorance of and disregard for Kant and his successors, there was working the second force of which Froude spoke. Thomas Carlyle (b. 1795-d. 1881) commenced his study of modern languages about 1820, and the first result of his German research was seen in the " Life of Schiller," which was finished in 1824. There followed in close succession translations from Goethe, Richter and some writers of the Romantic School. In 1827 appeared the essays on "Richter" and "The State of German Literature," and the first great essay on Goethe. Four years later appeared a review and criticism of Taylor's Historic Survey of German Poetry. Carlyle's main criticism of Taylor's work is significant. He writes, " We must complain that he reads German Poetry from first to last with English eyes; will not accommodate himself to the spirit of the Literature he is investigating, and do his utmost, by loving endeavor, to win its secret from it ; but plunges in headlong, and silently assuming that all this was written for him and his
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objects, makes short work with it, and innumerable false conclusions." (** Essays," Vol. Ill, Edinburgh Edition, p. 235.) In other words, Carlyle affirms that criticism which opens with the question, "Arian or Trinitarian?" ''Wilt thou help me or not?" is as little helpful as the " Coleridgian Moonshine," which purported to teach the same truth as German philosophy. He believes himself to be inaugurating the first true sympathetic interpreta- tion of German ideas for English minds. In pursuing this task he looks for the development of a " World Literature," a spiritual intercourse among nations which shall prevent isolated and extreme political and religious movements, and which shall bind men together in the bonds of common thought. How much Carlyle did towards the establishment of such a World Literature may be briefly indicated.
First his exposition and criticism of modern German poets, but especially of Goethe, led the English people to realize and admire their genius. Carlyle found in Goethe the seer of modern times, the one who understood human life in all its phases and who painted it as it was, without at the same time relinquishing the ideal meaning and value of existence. The side of Goethe which appealed most to Carlyle, and which finds in some measure an echo in Carlyle's ethical doctrine, is his religious submission, his preaching of self-emptying and renunciation. Goethe, it is true, meant by renunciation the sacrifice of a lower aim, or the subjection of a baser element in human nature, to one which experience had taught him was a higher. Carlyle's version of the doctrine was rather like the Puritan teaching that the higher side of human life demanded the elimination of the lower. But Carlyle's Hebraistic version of the Hellene Goethe, was due to the moral motive of all his writings. Goethe writes once in the "Lehrejahre" (vii. 3), "Wie ist mir das Nachste so werth, so theuer geworden," but Carlyle's "Do the duty that lies nearest thee" seems to echo and ^re-echo throughout his work. The philosophical bearing of this point is indicated below. Meanwhile it is sufficient to
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note that it is the moral content of Goethe's masterpieces that Carlyle emphasizes, more than his mere poetic genius. There is a further element in Goethe's work which stirred Carlyle's imagination and helped to mould his ultimate view of the universe. This is the conception of Nature as the expression of Divinity, which was Goethe's reading of Spinozism. Carlyle had fallen victim in early youth to the easy scepticism of the Encyclopaedists and of Gibbon. He counted it a happy day when he met the modern, whose creed was crystallized in the song of the Earth Spirit. That a giant intellect like Goethe's could accept such a view was conviction enough for Carlyle. His quotation in Sartor —
" 'Tis thus at the roaring Loom of Time I ply, And weave for God the Garment thou see'st Him by,"
shows the source of all that fiery eloquence which Carlyle threw round his Pantheistic view of the world. With his master Goethe, he felt that to add the warmth of poetic feeling to a concept based on reason, was one of the highest aims of art. Extracts might be multiplied, illus- trating Carlyle's Natural Supernaturalism as he calls it. " Then sawest thou that this fair Universe, were it the meanest province thereof, is in very deed the star-domed City of God; that through every star, through every grass-blade, and most through every Living Soul, the glory of a present God still beams. But Nature, which is the Time- Vesture of God, and reveals Him to the wise, hides Him from the foolish." (" Sartor Resartus," Shilling Edition, p. 153.) Closely connected with this Pantheism caught from Goethe, is Carlyle's ready incorporation of the ideas of the Romantic School. Just as the oft-repeated question, " What is Nature ? Art thou not the Living Garment of God?" has its source in Goethe, so Carlyle's conception of the mystery of human life and personality harks back to Novalis and his fellow writers. In the Hero as Divinity Carlyle quotes the saying of Novalis, " We touch Heaven when we lay our hands on a human
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body!" and goes on himself — "We are the miracle of miracles — the great inscrutable mystery of God."
It is natural that admiration for the German Romantic writers, should be accompanied by interest in the German philosophers of the same period, for the Schlegels, Tieck and the rest are not comprehensible without reference at least to Schelling. Carlyle seems early to have worked out some idea of the general relations between the liter- ary and philosophical movements in Germany, for he makes quite lengthy reference to the ** Transcendental Philosophers " in his *' State of German Literature " (1827). It cannot be said that Carlyle's account is adequate, but the significance he attaches to the whole Critical Philosophy shows keen penetration and insight — at a time when English opinion gave no leading or support in the matter. Carlyle indignantly repudiated the charge of mysticism brought by English ignorance against Kant and his successors, and claimed for them the great merit of confuting Hume's first principle, i.e., that Sense is the only inlet of Knowledge. He enlarged also upon Kant's distinction between Understanding and Reason, a dis- tinction which, unfortunately, he understood even less clearly than Coleridge. Kant would hardly have endorsed the description of Reason which follows. " Not by logic and argument does it work ; yet surely and clearly may it be taught to work : and its domain lies in that higher region whither logic and argument cannot reach : in that holier region, where Poetry, and Virtue and Divinity abide, in whose presence, Understanding wavers and recoils, dazzled into utter darkness by that ' sea of light/ at once the fountain and the termination of all true knowledge." ("State of German Literature," Edin- burgh edit. Carlyle's Works, Vol. I, p. 70.)
The Pure Reason Critique was however the source of a conception, which Carlyle has made peculiarly his own by his very fine use of it. This is the ideality of Space and Time. The poet and prophet in Carlyle were always impressed with the creative power of the human intellect : thus Kant's description of the mind as imposing its
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thought-forms upon experience proved especially inspir- ing. Carlyle never tired of marking the mystery of Space and Time — measureless unities created by thought, which yet coincide with and embrace experience. By their place in experience they have come to usurp the attention for "appearances," which should properly be given to the underlying realities. " But deepest of all illusory Appearances, for hiding Wonder, as for many other ends," Carlyle wrote in Sartor, '* are your two grand fundamental world-enveloping Appearances, Space and Time. These, as spun and woven for us from before Birth itself, to clothe our celestial Me for dwelling here, and yet to blind it, — lie all-embracing, as the universal canvas, or warp and woof, whereby all minor Illusions, in this Phantasm Existence, weave and paint themselves. In vain while here on Earth, shall you endeavor to strip them off, you can, at best, but rend them asunder for moments and look through." (" Sartor Resartus," p. 176, Vol. Ill, Carlyle's Works, Ashburton Edition.) Also, ** Believe what thou findest written in the sanctuaries of Man's Soul, even as all Thinkers, in all ages, have devoutly read it there; that Time and Space are not God, but creations of God ; that with God as it is a universal Here, so it is an everlasting Now/' ( " Sartor Resartus," p. i yy. ) And further, " Admit Space and Time to their due rank as Forms of Thought ; nay, even, if thou wilt, to their undue rank of Realities ; and consider, then, with thyself how their thin disguises hide from us the brightest God- effulgences !" (" Sartor Resartus," p. 178.) From which Carlyle went on to his conclusion, the conclusion that lies at the end of his every argument, that the illusory world of sense is not all, but behind this "Shadow-System" lies a "Divine Essence." Here we have the world of noumena, accepted by Carlyle with Fichte's and not with Kant's emphasis. Its existence is proved by the reality of the human will and of purposive action, and its secret is read ever and anon by the poet, the artist, the man of genius.
Though it was undoubtedly Fichte of German 72
philosophers who influenced Carlyle most directly, there are two further points than those mentioned above, on which he received inspiration from Kant. First his instinctive rejection of the Utilitarian account of morality, received a reasoned support from the principles of the Practical Critique. His blind knowledge of human nature told him that, should morality have no firmer foundation to build on, than the possibility of forming associations that were at once pleasant and right, the uplift of mankind would never come. Kant's categorical imperative gave him a philosophical basis, for his rehabilitation of the concept of duty in the eyes of the English people. At this date it is impossible to say how long the Benthamite scheme would have imposed on the shallow-thinking masses of the people, had not Carlyle's violent and some- times extreme attack been made. That " Given a world of Knaves, to educe an Honesty from their united action " is now a commonplace, with many other like sayings, shows the extent of Carlyle's influence in the matter of popular ethical conceptions.
The other element in Kant's work which may be said to find an echo in Carlyle, is his valuation of the aesthetic side of life. Kant thought that through the judgment man gets a view of truth, which is denied him by way of the understanding or the reason. Carlyle said more than this — that every form of genius has as its root, the power to feel with and so see into the meaning of things, which is the characteristic gift of the poet and the painter. Of Dante he wrote, " He is world great, not because he is world-wide, but because he is world-deep. . . . He could not have discerned the object at all, or seen the vital type of it, unless he had what we may call, sympathised with it, — had sympathy in him to bestow on objects." ("Heroes and Hero- Worship," p. yy in Vol. ni, Carlyle's Works, Ashburton Edition.) So Carlyle went on to say, "How much of morality is in the kind of insight we get of anything; 'the eye seeing in all things what it brought with it the faculty of seeing!' To the mean eye all things are trivial, as certainly as to the
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jaundiced eye they are yellow." Carlyle's triumphant conclusion is like that of his Hero-Poets, that "Every- thing that exists has a harmony at its heart." (" Heroes and Hero-Worship," p. 78.)
Though Carlyle may thus be shown to have assimilated something of Kant's point of view, it is to Fichte that he owes a more direct debt. The description of Fichte given in the " State of German Literature " indicates the element in Fichte which attracted his English critic's admiration. '* The cold, colossal, adamantine spirit, stand- ing erect and clear, like a Cato Major among degenerate men ; fit to have been the teacher of the Stoa, and to have discoursed of Beauty and Virtue in the groves of Academe! We state Fichte's character, as it is known and admitted by men of all parties among the Germans, when we say that so robust an intellect, a soul so calm, so lofty, massive and immovable, has not mingled in philosophical discussion since the time of Luther . . . The man rises before us, amid contradiction and debate, like a granite mountain amid clouds and wind." ("Essays," Vol. I, p. 65.) It was Fichte's exaltation of the moral ideal, both in practice and in theory, that made Carlyle his confirmed disciple. Fichte produced no halt- ing dualism — he left no indeterminate gap between the speculative and the practical Hfe. To him the world is what we make of it — the r^iere stuff of our moulding will. There are, it is true, laws of nature, but these exist as the expression of divine power and are discoverable by man only because he is a higher expression of that power. In Fichte's Divine Idea then, Carlyle found a formula which answered his conception of reality. He applied it in the spheres of literature and art, of ethics and of politics, with Fichteian conceptions always in the background of his mind.
Carlyle's critical work forming the occasion of his entry into the literary world, it is natural to find the principles set forth to be identical with those of the " Uber das Wesen des Gelehrten." In the " State of Ger- man Literature," the essay on Taylor's Historic Survey,
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and the criticisms of Goethe and the rest, Carlyle distinctly avowed the Fichteian test as his own. He quoted with approval fragments from Fichte, and spoke of Literary Men as "the appointed interpreters of the Divine Idea" of the Universe. He wrote of works of art in the following strain : " Glances we do seem to find of that ethereal glory which looks on us in its full bright- ness from the Transfiguration of Rafaelle, from the Tempest of Shakespeare; and in broken but purest and still heart-piercing beams, struggling through the gloom of long ages, from the tragedies of Sophocles, and the weather-worn sculptures of the Parthenon." (*' Essays," Vol. I, p. 54.) He took the message of poets to be really a confession of faith, and quoted a verse trans- lated from the German as an expression of their creed.
" As all Nature's thousand changes, But one changeless God proclaim, So in Art's whole kingdom ranges One sole meaning, still the same: This is truth, eternal Reason, Which from Beauty takes its dress, And, serene through time and season. Stands for aye in loveliness."
In the Heroes, too, Carlyle modelled his Man of Letters on the Fichteian conception. " The unspeakable Divine Significance full of splendour, of wonder and terror, that lies in the being of every man, of every thing, — the Presence of the God Who made every man and thing, Mahomet taught this in his dialect ; Odin in his : it is the thing which all thinking hearts, in one dialect or another, has to teach." (From "Heroes and Hero- Worship," p. 129, Vol. Ill of Carlyle's Works, Ash- burton Edition.) And, side by side with his picture of the creative Literary Man, Carlyle puts his definition of the true critic's function. " Criticism stands like an interpreter between the inspired and the uninspired; between the prophet and those who hear the melody of his words, and catch some glimpse of their material mean- ing, but understand not their import. She pretends to
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open for us this deeper import ; to clear our sense that it may discern the pure brightness of this eternal Beauty, and recognize it as heavenly, under all forms where it looks forth, and reject, as of the earth earthy, all forms, be their material splendour what it may, where no gleam- ing of that other shines through." ("Essays," Vol. I, p. 44.)
Carlyle's ethical view-point has already been indicated, in connection with the discussion of Kant's influence. Carlyle rightly rejected the account of human nature, which made it simply the subject of pleasurable and pain- ful sensations. In Sartor he outlined the active, purposive features of human character, emphasizing the truth that " the end of Man is an action, and not a Thought," and leading up to the well-known ethical doctrine of the Everlasting Yea. " Do the Duty which lies nearest thee, which thou knowest to be a Duty ! Thy second Duty will already have become clearer. . . . The situation that has not its Duty, its Ideal, was never yet occupied by man. Yes here, in this poor, miserable, hampered, despicable Actual, wherein thou even now standest, here or nowhere is thy Ideal : work it out therefrom ; and working, believe, live, be free." (" Sartor Resartus," p. 133, Vol. Ill, Carlyle's Works, Ashburton Edition.) Carlyle thus reclaimed for the English people the truth of the old doctrine of free-will which Locke and his school had relinquished, i.e., that the man makes the motive just as much as the motive makes the man. Should it be asked what was the definite content of Carlyle's ethical ideal, the weakness as well as the strength of his position is laid open. Carlyle is right, as Fichte was right, in insisting that duty is as real a conception as self-love or self-preservation, and that human ideals avail to modify the course of experience. But the Puritan view of life described above, deprived Carlyle of the possibility of giving more than a one-sided end for action. Carlyle could only fill out his " Work thou in Well-doing," in some such way as "Exercise thy characteristic spiritual activity and produce spiritual results," thus neglecting the
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more human elements of morality, of sympathy and altruism.
Carlyle's application of the " Divine Idea " formula to political theory, closely resembled that of his master Fichte. Both thinkers had started with a belief in democracy, but with advancing experience, tended more and more to paternalism and collectivism. In his Staatslehre, Fichte therefore worked out as the end of the state, the enforcing of the law of Right as against the natural freedom of the individual. Institutions, both he and Carlyle came to feel, are the embodied expressions of the Divine Idea, as it has been revealed to the leaders of the nation in the past. Hence came Carlyle's picture of history in the Heroes, and his final emphasis on the duty of obedience. Though it may readily be admitted at this distance, that Carlyle's reaction against liberalism and its hopes was too violent, there is no doubt that the over-sanguine claims of the early Radicals in England needed some check, and that Carlyle made the strong counter-claim for established authority that was needed. Social reform and education, the improved administration of civil and criminal law, and the amelioration of human suffering, will go a certain way, it is true, towards making the world better. But always with the concept of self- government and self -development should be closely joined the idea of self-control, or human nature will relapse from liberty to license. It was on this truth that Carlyle stood firmly, thereby proving his kinship with the Oxford religious leaders that he so despised. It is on this point that the present age might have learned much from him that we are now learning by the hard teachings of experience.
It has been noted above that Carlylean ideas made themselves felt both directly and indirectly. Of indirect effect, the championship of Carlyle's cause by Emerson in America might first be noticed. In Emerson, the moral intuitions of a singularly pure nature, together with his early study of Plato, led to a confirmed spiritual view of the universe. The admiration of his boyhood's teacher,
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Channing, for Coleridge and Wordsworth, is a significant fact, while the German travels and study of Dr. Everett, a preacher who influenced him much in youth, doubtless disposed him to the ready sympathy which he felt on first reading Carlyle. As early as 1828, Emerson was follow- ing Carlyle's work with interest, and from him had caught the taste for the German language and Hterature, which he followed from that time. On his first trip to Europe in 1833, Emerson visited Carlyle, Coleridge and Words- worth, and by 1835 ^e had made himself familiar with the hterature which was so closely related to the Trans- cendental Movement — Plotinus, the German mystics and the Cambridge Platonists. The following year Emerson edited "Sartor" in book form (it had only appeared in England in Fraser's Magazine) y and in 1838, he edited a collection of Carlyle's essays. The Transcendental Club, formed largely by Emerson's initiative, began in 1840 to publish a magazine called The Dial. The articles in this paper, though later tending to an interest in questions of reform, were at first quite occupied with two subjects — aesthetics and the writings of German thinkers. It may be seen then how soon the Carlylean impetus towards a " World Literature " produced a result.
Of actual reproduction of Carlylean ideas in Emerson there is none. The two writers were of too diverse tem- perament to be able to catch the same view of truth. But on certain points there is a broad general agreement. Emerson and Carlyle are alike first in identifying religion with morals. But Emerson has a broader and more human view than Carlyle — ^^he never sacrifices thought for action, and he refuses to abandon his great hopes of man- kind, in spite of the obvious evil that is in the world. The story is told that Emerson, on the occasion of one of his visits to England, was led by Carlyle through the streets of London at midnight. Carlyle marked the hideousness of evident evil, and asked as they passed from street to street, " Do you believe in the devil now?" Emerson's reply was that the more he saw of the English people, the greater and better he thought them. So there
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is a marked difference in the conceptions of life presented by the two thinkers. To Carlyle life was at best a struggle, in which success might only be won by a stern subjection of inclination to duty. To Emerson the following of duty meant also following the great trend of Life. When he preached the need of obedience he thought of it as a simple surrender to the Law of Nature, which is also the Law of God. His moral code is Hellenic rather than Hebraic, standing for the harmonious activity of the whole being of man.
In the sphere of metaphysics, Emerson held a doctrine which accounts for his optimistic ethical views. This is the belief in an Over-Soul of the World — a Spiritual Power which is immanent in Nature and in Man. It may be traced back to the early mystics, who took the Neo- Platonic doctrine of emanation and changed it for that of immanence. Philosophically such a doctrine is indefen- sible, though it may be exceedingly fruitful, as it was in Emerson's case, in the production of poetical ideas and in the inculcation of moral precepts. As compared with Carlyle's Fichteian idealism it is neither so convincing nor so true to life. The following extract illustrates the point of view which is characteristic of Emerson. " Belief and love — a believing love will relieve us of a vast load of care. O my brothers, God exists. There is a soul at the centre of nature, and over the will of every man, so that none of us can wrong the universe. . . . The whole course of things goes to teach us faith. We need only obey. There is a guidance for each of us, and by lowly listening we s^hall hear the right word." ("Essays," Vol. II, p. III.)
The third point of sympathy between Emerson and Carlyle is their lofty conception of the place that true art fills in life. The essays on *' Art " and '' The Poet " are continually reminiscent of Carlyle, and through him of the Germans who inspired Carlyle. " The signs and credentials of the poet are that he announces that which no man foretold. He is the true and only doctor, he knows and tells ; he is the only teller of news, for he was
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present and privy to the appearances which he describes. He is a beholder of ideas, and an utterer of the necessary and causal." ("Essays," Vol. II, p. 311.) Again, "The reference of all production, at last, to an aboriginal Power explains the traits common to all works of the highest art — that they are universally intelligible; that they restore to us the simplest states of mind; and are religious. Since what skill is therein shown is the reappearance of the original soul, a jet of pure light, it should produce an impression similar to that made by the natural object. In happy hours, nature appears to us one with art; art perfected — the work of genius." (" Essays," Vol. II, pp. 292, 293.) Finally the following description of the activity of the Imagination may be given, as recalling kindred passages in the Heroes. " This insight, which expresses itself by what is called Imagina- tion, is a very high sort of seeing, which does not come by study, but by the intellect being where and what it sees, by sharing the path or circuit of things through forms and so making them translucid to others." ("Essays, Vol.
n, p. 325.)
Emerson's elaborate discussion of the function of art, in which he states that the poet experiences a " ravishment of the intellect by coming near to the fact," indicates the change of attitude brought about by the critical work of Carlyle and Coleridge. By the time that Emerson wrote, the aesthetic theories of James Mill and Alison, and even of Burke were deemed inadequate. It was felt that art could claim a higher place that that of a mere adjunct to the life of the senses. A curious and interesting phase of this change of view-point, in the history of English criticism, is the attitude of the poets themselves towards their art. One of Browning's letters to Elizabeth Barrett (dated June 14th, 1845), contains the following remarks, " One should study the mechanical part of the art, as nearly all that there is to be studied — for the more one sits and thinks over the creative process, the more it confirms itself as ' inspiration/ nothing more nor less, or, at worst, you write down old inspirations,
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what you remember of them . . . but with that it begins. * Reflection ' is exactly what it names itself — a r^-presentation, in scattered rays from every angle of incidence, of what first of all became present in a great light, a whole one. So tell me how these lights are born, if you can ! But I can tell anybody how to make melodi- ous verses — let him do it therefore — it should be exacted of all writers."
No slightest sketch of Carlyle's influence would be complete without mention of Ruskin. It is unnecessary here to trace the connection between Ruskin's social reform period and Carlyle's political ideas, as the relation of master and pupil is obvious. There is in both the same impatience of the political economists and the same tendency towards paternalism in Government; the same hatred of war, and the same exaltation of the value of honest work and faithful obedience. But an interesting parallel and contrast exist between Ruskin's earlier phase and certain aspects of Carlyle, which are not always noticed. These might be illustrated from the opinions expressed by Ruskin in his deservedly famous " Modern Painters."
The specific aim of the last-named work was the defence of Turner's art against the ignorant criticism of the day. In pursuing this end, Ruskin was led to set up general principles for a theory of art, and "to declare and demonstrate, wherever they exist, the essence and the authority of the Beautiful and the True." The significant point in the first volume of his work is his insistence uf>on Turner's truth to Nature, as against the misrepresentation of contemporary artists. Ruskin, like both Carlyle and Etnerson, thought that if the artist truly see into Nature and reproduce his vision, he will attain at once ideal loveliness and real truth. His work as a critic, he con- siders, includes "bringing to light, as far as may be in his power, that faultless, ceaseless, inconceivable, inex- haustible loveliness, which God has stamped upon all things, if man will only receive them as he gives them." (From preface to the Second Edition, " Modern
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Painters.") From this it is a natural step to Ruskin's conception of the moral function of art. That a critic of modern painters should dare to "attach to the artist the responsibility of a preacher," is only explainable as a result of Carlyle's influence.
The reader of Modem Painters, Volume II, finds still clearer echoes of Carlyle, in the discussion of the imagin- ative faculty. Ruskin's master-painter is like Carlyle's genius poet, in his power to see into the heart of things and body forth his vision. *' Such is always the mode in which the highest imaginative faculty seizes its materials. It never stops at crusts or ashes, or outward images of any kind ; it ploughs them all aside, and plunges into the very central fiery heart; nothing else will content its spirituality; whatever semblances and various outward shows and phases its subject may possess go for nothing; it gets within all fence, cuts down to the root, and drinks the very vital sap of that it deals with : once therein, it is at liberty to throw up what new shoots it will, so always that the true juice and sap be in them, and to prune and twist them at its pleasure, and bring them to fairer fruit than grew on the old tree ; but all this pruning and twist- ing is work that it likes not, and often does ill; its function and gift are the getting at the root, its nature and dignity depend on its holding things always by the heart." ("Modern Painters," Vol. II, Popular Edition, p. 176.) In this and other similar passages, Ruskin was really re-iterating the view of art of which Goethe and Kant displayed different phases, and which Coleridge and Carlyle had preached to England before him.
In spite of the parallel afforded by the above extracts, between Ruskin's aesthetic opinions and the Anglo- German ideas of Coleridge and Carlyle, an interesting point of difference is found from the reading of Modern Painters, Vol. III. Where his master Carlyle eulogized the Germans from his earliest writings to the latest, Ruskin expressed an open agnorance of and contempt for their work. The following satirical passage is sig- nificant. " I have often been told that anyone who will
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read Kant, Strauss, and the rest of the German meta- physicians and divines, resolutely through, and give his whole strength to the study of them, will, after ten or twelve years' labour, discover that there is very little harm in them; and this I can well believe; but I beheve also that the ten or twelve years may be better spent ; and that any man who honestly wants philosophy not for show, but for use, and, knowing the Proverbs of Solomon, can, by way of commentary, afiford to buy, in convenient editions, Plato, Bacon, Wordsworth, Carlyle, and Helps, will find that he has got as much as will be sufficient for him and his household during life, and of as good quality as need be." (From Appendix II, "Modern Painters," Vol. III.)
Ruskin was doubtless wise in opposing the tendency to rate the value of German thought too highly. But the weakness of his strictures is that they class together such diverse thinkers as Kant and Strauss, and that they ignore the impetus received from Germany, by two of his avowed favorites. Finally in the practical conclusions which he shared with Carlyle, Ruskin was apparently ignorant how close he came to the true spirit of Kant. Kant himself might be imagined endorsing the following words, for he with Ruskin thought that right religious faith was established by the natural dictates of the developed moral being. " For simple and busy men ... I am writing ; and such men I do, to the utmost of my power, dissuade from meddling with German books ; not because I fear inquiry into the grounds of religion, but because the only inquiry which is possible to them must be con- ducted in a totally different way. They have been brought up as Christians, and doubt if they should remain Christians. They cannot ascertain, by investigation, if the Bible be true; but if it be, and Christ ever existed, and was God, then certainly, the Sermon which He has permitted for 1800 years to stand recorded as first of all His own teaching in the New Testament, must be true. Let them take that Sermon and give it fair practical trial: act out every verse of it with no quibbling, nor
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explaining away. . . . Let them act out, or obey, every verse literally for a whole year, so far as they can, — a year being little enough time to give to an inquiry into religion; and if, at the end of the year, they are not satisfied, and still need to prosecute the enquiry, let them try the German system if they choose." (From Appendix II., Vol. Ill, of " Modern Painters.")
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CHAPTER VI
SIR WILUAM HAMILTON — JAMES FR^DEIRICK FERRIER
The year 1830 suggests the Revolution of July, a re-birth of hope in the hearts of Young Germany leaders, and a new kindling of enthusiasm for Parliamentary reform in England. It would seem on the face of it the great year of radical creeds — of confidence in the value of secular education, the power of the middle classes and the all-sufficing strength of the Utilitarian ideal. The voice of Byron still echoed with power throughout Europe — the passion of 1789 was not yet spent. But with the seeming triumph of Radical ideas, there went signs of a deeper reaction than that represented by the Holy Alliance. In England we have noted the increasing literary fame of Coleridge and Carlyle, and the return to ecclesiastical authority and tradition in the development of the Oxford Movement. There were also significant changes in the creed of the younger Radicals. But in addition there was a definite incorporation of Continental thought in the British philosophy of the period. The leading influence in this direction was Sir William Hamilton. Where Coleridge and Carlyle used German terms and phrases to bear out their own personal opinions, Hamilton endeavored to build the Critical Philosophy on to the doctrines of the Common Sense school. Though his results are inconsistent, he must be given the credit of broadening and deepening the scope of British philosophy. In the hands both of Reid and the Associationists, the latter had narrowed itself to psycho- logical investigation. Hamilton defended anew the claims of metaphysics and of religion.
Hamilton's first essay appeared in the Edinburgh
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Review in 1829. It is interesting to note the work of a French contemporary, whose aims and position offer a close parallel to his own. Victor Cousin (b. 1792-d. 1867) belonged nominally to the French Idealist school, a group of men who did little but interpret the Scottish philosophy for French hearers. But Cousin was also a keen student of Plato and Descartes. After his appointment as assistant to Royer-Collard he went to Germany from time to time, and there examined at first hand the works of the German Idealists. The result was that to the doctrine of psychological perception borrowed from Reid, he added polemic in the cause of '' universal reason " as vindicated by Schelling and Hegel. Cousin's great " History of Philosophy " marks an important step in the constructive advance made by European thought after 1815. It was no longer a virtue to hold to the tenets of one particular school, but philosophers as well as politicians and men of affairs, expected to learn from the views of others what was needed to correct or com- plete their own creed. Sir William Hamilton, like Cousin, has nothing insular or narrow about him. His work breathes a kind of mental spaciousness, an exalted love of truth won after contact and struggle with many minds.
Sir William Hamilton starts from the viewpoint of Reid as a Natural Realist. His philosophy of perception purports to be an unbiassed analysis of consciousness. " In consciousness — in the original spontaneity of intel- ligence ( V0V5, locus principiorum), are revealed the primordial facts of our intelligent nature." Hamilton traces scepticism to its source in a narrowing of the con- ception of consciousness. He criticizes Locke and Hume for presupposing the mind as passive, and in opposition to their viewpoint, he pictures intelligence as an active synthetic power, involving judgment. " Our knowledge rests ultimately on certain facts of consciousness, which as primitive, and consequently incomprehensible, are given less in the form of cognitions than of beliefs. But if consciousness in its last analysis — in other w^ords, if
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our primary experience, be a faith, the reality of our knowl- edge turns on the veracity of our constitutive beliefs." ("Discussions on Philosophy and Literature," p. 90.) Hamilton says it is illogical to accept part of the original deliverance of consciousness, i.e. a belief in the knozdedge of the existence of an external world, and to reject its counterpart, which is a belief in the existence of that world. **The object of which we are conscious in per- ception could only," Locke and his successors avowed, ^' be a representative image present to the mind ; — an image which, they implicity confessed, we are necessi- tated to regard as identical with the unknown quality itself." Hamilton, on the contrary, describes perception as immediate or presentative. He maintains that the idea has objective reference, and that when the mind witnesses to a duality of existence, the deliverance of consciousness is true.
When Hamilton leaves the simple statement of the epistemological question and tries to particularize in what are really psychological problems, his results are incon- sistent. From the general existential judgment of the mind in perception, he goes to a search for the definite channel whereby knowledge of the world without is gained. This he finds in force, for it is through a sense of resistance that we acquire knowledge of the primary qualities of objects. But this re-instatement of the prim- ary qualities is a weakening from the epistemological position described above. It is also inconsistent with a later development on Hamilton's part — his particular statement of the law of Relativity.
"We should not think of it (relativity)," he writes, *' as a law of things, but merely as a law of thought. ... The condition of Relativity, in so far as it is necessary, is brought to bear under three principal relations ; the first of which springs from the subject of knowledge — the mind thinking (the relation of Knozvledge) , the second and third from the object of knowledge — the thing thought about (the relations of Existence) ." ("Dis- cussions," p. 569.) *'The relations of Knowledge are
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those which arise from the reciprocal dependence of the subject and of the object of thought, Self and Not-Self. . . . All these cognitions exist for us, only as terms of a correlation/' ("Discussions,'* pp. 569, 570.) ''The relations of Existence, arising from the object of knowl- edge, are twofold ; in as much as the relation is either Intrinsic or Extrinsic. As the relation of Existence is Intrinsic, it is that of Substance and Quality. . . . Substance and Quality are, manifestly, only thought as mutual relatives. We can not think a quality existing absolutely, in or of itself. . . . Absolute substance and absolute quality, these are both inconceivable, as more than negations of the conceivable." ( " Discussions," p. 570.) With regard to the relations of Existence as Extrinsic, Hamilton says that it may be apprehended under the condition of Time and Space and Degree. Time and Space are positively inconceivable, either as a whole or as absolutely indivisible. But they are necessary and a priori conditions of Thought. Degree on the con- trary has to do with the Secondary Qualities of Body, and so exists only potentially in the mind. Thus from his original Realism, Hamilton comes to state that " our knowledge is only of the relative." " Perception proper is an apprehension of the relation of sensations to each other, primarily in Space, and secondarily in Time and Degree." " Qualities which we call material — extension, figure, etc., exist for us only as they are known by us ; thus . . . they are modes of mind." The object has been reduced to a stimulus only. The subject is left Vv^ith its derivative and sensuous knowledge, separated per- manently from the object by the very elements added by sense in the process of knowing.
Hamilton's doctrine of mental latency marks an important advance from that uncritical view, which regarded the mind as the summing up of individual impressions. Such phenomena as the unconscious links in mental association, and the unconscious acts of will in performing habits, had not been adequately examined or explained by the Lockeian school. Hamilton says that
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" the sphere of our conscious modifications is only a small circle in the centre of a far wider sphere of action and passion, of which we are only conscious through its effect." In language that recalls Leibniz and his doctrine of the " petites perceptions," Hamilton notes that in our total impression of a forest, there are parts of which we are not conscious ; and in our impression of a sound, there are smaller modifications than the collective effect of which we are distinctly conscious. Assuming then that because a whole consists of parts and the whole makes an impression, therefore a part makes some impression, Hamilton maintains that the mind is capable of uncon- scious ideas. J. S. Mill, in his Examination of Hamilton's Philosophy, rejects the above doctrine on the ground that Hamilton was talking psychology where he should have been using physiological terms. He would, however, admit Hamilton's unconscious mental modifications, in the shape of unconscious modifications of the nerves. The truer view seems to be that taken by Dugald Stewart, who showed the necessity of the Unconscious in the development of experience. The object is a phase of consciousness before it is a datum. Neither Hamilton nor Mill saw this point.
Hamilton's epistemology is based upon his simple and ultimate deliverances of consciousness, viz., faiths. This is the Reid element in his work. Regarded as judgment, such ultimate faiths are a true designation of knowledge. But they savor too much of the subjective feelings upon which Hamilton bases his knowledge of the objective world. A mere individual feeling (of the quasi-primary phase of the secondary qualities of objects, cf. Hamil- ton's edition of Reid, Vol. H, p. 882), cannot be taken as a basis for knowledge. Neither can an inexplicable belief be taken as explicating experience, unless the Kantian view that such belief is part of the constitution of experi- ence be really meant. Hamilton was confused between the question of the origin of impressions and ideas, and their foundation in a world of experience where subject
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and object have no existence apart from their inter- relation.
Hamihon's theory of knowledge in its final result inclines more to Kant than to Reid. With Kant's theory of the ideality of the external as well as internal sense, may be compared Hamilton's theory of perception as the apprehension of relations. " All in our cognition that belongs to intuition contains nothing more than mere rela- tions." Kant had Hmited the human mind to knowledge of phenomena, with an empty thing-in-itself beyond com- prehension. Hamilton says we know that things are through the quasi-primary phase of secundo-primary qualities ; but we do not know what things are. We call them external objects by natural instinct, — something we are conscious of as resisting us. Hume was wrong in saying that the mind has nothing present to it but per- ceptions, for in that case we can never attain experience of their connection with resembling objects. Hamilton saw the real philosophical difficulty — the impossibility of going from conception to reality. So he said that the material thing is apprehended in contact. Here he escaped from one difficulty to fall into another, for knowledge gains nothing through physical contact. Hamilton then betook himself to inference. Though he lost himself in the physical aspect of the object-subject relation, Hamilton established one strong point. That is, that in the simplest perception the Ego and Non-Ego are affirmed as existing.
Hamilton described his own teaching as a Philosophy of the Conditioned. Like Hume and like Kant, he empha- sized the impossibihty of cognizing with human faculties the existence of a First Cause. He opposed Cousin's argu- ment that the idea of the infinite or absolute is equally real with the idea of the finite or relative, because one naturally suggests the other. Hamilton maintained on the contrary that our ideas of the infinite and of the absolute are only the negative and inconceivable background, for the finite and conditioned which we do know. Moreover the one unconditioned, the absolute, is the contradiction
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of the other unconditioned, the infinite. Cousin's own statement — that knowledge presupposes pluraHty or difference in the known — would cut him off from cogniz- ing either the Infinite or the Absolute. For of these the essential thought is their unity. To conclude, Hamilton regarded the Unconditioned as the negative background for our positive thought. Neither of its two species, the Infinite and the Absolute, can be reached by thought ; but since they are mutually contradictory, one of them must be real. The moral freedom of man, his consciousness of responsibility to a law of duty, witnesses to the idea of the Absolute as true. Hamilton's final position in metaphysics was therefore similar to that of Kant. " The recognition of human ignorance is not only the one highest, but the one true, knowledge; and its first fruit, as has been said, is humility." (" Discussions," p. 591.) As an offset to his emphasis on philosophical nescience, Hamil- ton laid immense stress on the categorical imperative, the innate sense of moral responsibility in man.
Among the younger men who were bound to Hamilton by ties of admiration and gratitude, one especially deserves to be noted as having some connection with our subject — James Frederick Ferrier. Though he owed to Hamilton his first keen interest in metaphysical subjects, he was distinguished from such close Hamiltonians as Mansel and Veitch, by reaching conclusions very different from Hamilton's own. Of Hamilton Ferrier writes, " Morally and intellectually, Sir William Hamilton was among the greatest of the great. ... I have learnt more from him than from all other philosophers put together; more, both as regards what I assented to and what I dissented , from. His contributions to philosophy have been, great; but the man himself was greater far. I have studied both. I approve of much in the one; in the other I approve of all. He was a giant in every field of intellectual action. I trust that I have profited by whatever is valuable in the letter of his system. At any rate, I venture to hope that, from my acquaintance, both with himself and his writings, I have imbibed some small
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portion of his philosophic spirit; and that spirit, when left freely to itself, was as gentle as the calm, and yet also as intrepid as the storm." (Appendix to '' Institutes of Metaphysic") The above quotation is given, in order to illustrate Ferrier's view of his own philosophical development. Starting from Hamilton's views he had gone back to Reid, Stewart and Brown, and after a thorough study of the whole school, he had come to the position of a critic. His criticisms of the Scottish thinkers are to be found in his essays on " An Introduc- tion to the Philosophy of Consciousness," (Blackwood's Magazine, 1838 and 1839), and in an essay on Reid (published in Vol. II of the "Remains"). His positive conclusions are embodied in the " Institutes of Meta- physic," published first in 1852. The publication of the above works, together with his professorship in Moral Philosophy at St. Andrew's from 1845 till his death in 1864, constitute the main facts of his philosophical career. How prominent his visit to Heidelberg in 1834, and his subsequent German studies, should be made, is a question. But reference will be made to this point later.
The outstanding fault which Ferrier had to find with the Common Sense thinkers, was their assumption of a philosophical position at all. They, not less than the Associationists, made their study of mind a stepping- stone to dogmatic conclusions with regard to the nature of being. In his " Introduction to the Philosophy of Consciousness," Ferrier showed how though Reid and Stewart professed to confine their attention to the opera- tions of the mind. Brown went on to define those operations as belonging to the physical sphere. '' That which perceives," Ferrier quoted from Brown, " is a part of nature as truly as the objects of perception which act on it, and as a part of nature is itself an object of investigation purely physical. It is known to us only in the successive changes which constitute the variety of our feelings ; but the regular sequence of these changes admits of being traced, like the regularity which we are capable of discovering in the successive organic changes
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of our bodily frame." (" Physiology of the Mind," pp. I, 2.) Ferrier's criticism of Brown was pointed by his satirical picture of the " analytic poulterer " who, by cutting into the natural workings of the mind, slays the goose that lays the golden eggs. In other words, Brown had neglected the essential feature of mental operations, which is consciousness. As Ferrier pointed out, ''A priori there is no more ground for supposing that * reason,' * feeling,' * passion,' and * states of mind ' whatsoever, should be conscious of themselves, than that thunder and lightning, and all the changes of the atmosphere should. Mind, endow it with as- much reason as you please, is still perfectly conceivable as existing in all its varying moods, without being, at the same time, at all conscious of them. Many creatures are rational without being conscious." (Remains, Vol. II, p. 28.) Ferrier thus took his stand upon consciousness as the proper subject for philosophical investigation. Where the psychologists talked of " states of mind," Ferrier spoke of '' conscience, morality, responsibility, \v'hich may be shown to be based on consciousness and necessary sequents thereof." He stated also, " The fact that consciousness is in nothing passive, but is ab origine essentially active, places us upon the strongest position which, as philosophers fighting for human freedom, we can possibly occupy; and it is only by the maintenance of this position that man's liberty can ever be philosophically vindicated and made good." (Remains, Vol. II, p. 80.)
From rejecting the materialistic inference of Brown, with regard to mental phenomena, and positing the peculiar character of human consciousness as against any other sphere of observable fact, Ferrier went on to dis- cuss the problem of perception, and to elaborate his own theory. It was on this question that he thought Reid had gone all astray. By eliminating the idea in Locke's triple-reality scheme, he had thrown away the only sig- nificant factor. Matter per se and mind per se were meaningless terms, but the idea really stood in Locke's and Berkeley's systems for intuition — object-perception —
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known reality. Had Berkeley but substituted sciri for percipi in his famous definition, thus avoiding the limita- tion of perception to sensuous perception, Ferrier would have been an out-and-out Berkeleian. For he considered that neither matter alone nor mind alone were to be found in experience, but only mind-perceiving-matter. " The perception of matter is the absolutely elementary in cognition, the ne plus ultra of thought. Reason cannot get beyond or behind it. It has no pedigree. It admits of no analysis. It is not a relation constituted by the coalescence of an objective and a subjective element. It is not a state or modification of the human mind. It is not an effect which can be distinguished from its cause. It is not brought about by the presence of antecedent realities. It is positively the i^irst, with no forerunner. The perception-of -matter is one mental word, of which the verbal words are mere syllables." (Remains, Vol. II, p. 411.) Ferrier characterized his doctrine further in another passage. *' This metaphysical theory of percep- tion is a doctrine of pure intuitionism ; it steers clear of all the perplexities of representationism, for it gives us in perception only one — that is, only a proximate object; this object is the perception of matter, and this is one indivisible object. It is not, and cannot be, split into a proximate and a remote object. The doctrine, therefore, is proof against all the cavils of scepticism. We may add, that the entire objectivity of this datum (which the metaphysical doctrine proclaims) makes it proof against the imputation of idealism — at least, of every species of absurd or objectionable idealism." (Elements of Phil- osophy, pp. 445, 446.)
On the basis of this doctrine of intuitive perception, Ferrier built up a constructive philosophy under the three headings of Epistemology, Agnoiology and Ont- ology. The first proposition (for the whole of the " Institutes " is worked out in a well-knit series of quasi- mathematical propositions), shows the connection be- tween Ferrier's theory of perception and his final ontological conclusions. *' Along with whatever any
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intelligence knows, it must, as the ground or condition of its knowledge, have some cognisance of itself." (Insti- tutes of Metaphysic, 3rd edit., p. 82.) This primary law having been established by the law of right reason, the writer proceeds to exclude matter per se and the ego per se from the sphere of the knowable. He maintains that as perception is a synthesis, so knowledge is a synthesis. Every cognition is a synthesis of something universal, necessary and unchangeable, with something changeable, contingent and particular. The first the universal factor is consciousness, while the second may be any object- matter, a thought, a state of mind. Further, Ferrier extended his *' synthesis " definition to thought as well as to cognition. He says in Proposition XHI, " The only independent universe which any mind or ego can think of is the universe in synthesis with some other mind or ego." In striking contrast to his predecessors, he goes on to maintain that " there is no mere relative in cognition : in other words, the relative per se is of neces- sity unknowable and unknown." (" Institutes of Meta- physic," 3rd edit., p. 363.) Finally he states in Propo- sitions XX and XXI of the Epistemology that " there is an absolute in cognition " and that " the synthesis of object and subject is the absolute in cognition."
Ferrier's ^ Agniology ' division of the " Institutes " was avowedly framed in answer to Hamilton's Philosophy of the Conditioned. Following upon his statement that there could be no knowledge of the mere relative, w'hether subject or object, Ferrier maintained that there could be no ignorance of the mere relative, for the rela- tive is a contradictory conception. Just as, properly speaking, a man cannot be said to be ignorant of the * fact ' that two and two make five, so the human mind should not be described as " ignorant "of the ego per se, or " ignorant " of matter per se. Ferrier therefore treated as inept the common philosophical apology for our limited human faculties and consequent ignorance. Holding as he did that the nature of intelligence gener- ally (not merely human intelligence) is to know subject
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plus object and neither by themselves, human nescience with regard to the ego per se and matter per se is incident to the very essence of reason. Of mind or matter by themselves there can be no real ignorance. For since all that can be known is a subject and object in one (Epis- temology, Prop, i), Ferrier concludes that " the object of all ignorance is, of necessity, some-object-plus-some- subject." (Agnoiology, Prop. VIII.)
In the Ontology, Ferrier shows that since Absolute Existence or Being in itself is not the contradictory, we must either know it or be ignorant of it. After examin- ing the various factors in our knowledge, he concludes that not matter per se, nor mind per se, not the universal or subject nor the particular or object, is Absolute Exist- ence. The only entity which we know of as existing absolutely, is the synthesis of subject and object exempli- fied in our own experience. Thus individual consciousness is the type of absolute existence, and from it we conceive of many other similar existences. One more step, and the conclusion of the Ontology is reached. " All absolute existences are contingent except one; in other words, there is One, but only one. Absolute Existence which is strictly necessary; and that existence is a supreme, and infinite, and everlasting Mind in synthesis with all things." (Ontology, Prop. XL)
The above bald outline of Ferrier's system represents little of the real force and originality of his work. Few writers on philosophy are marked by such consistent clearness or such felicity of expression — such a happy power of illustration or such a ready wit. His critics however deny him anything but a literary originality. They say that his main positions are '* nothing but an echo of Hegel's." To this charge Ferrier directly replies in the Appendix to the Institutes (originally published as a paper under the title of " Scottish Philosophy, the Old and the New"). He says that ''the exact truth of the matter is this : I have read most of Hegel's works again and again, but I cannot say that I am acquainted with his philosophy. I am able to understand only a few short
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passages here and there in his writings ; and these I greatly admire for the depth of their insight, the breadth of their wisdom, and the loftiness of their tone. . . . But, for myself, I must declare that I have not found one word or one thought in Hegel which was available for my system, even if I had been disposed to use it." Ferrier also calls Hegel *' that man of adamant," and points out that while Hegel started with the consideration of Being, his own first step is the consideration of Knowing. These assertions do not however establish Ferrier's entire inde- pendence of Hegel. The truth rather seems to be this. Ferrier was original in rejecting the "Common Sense" theory of perception and substituting his intuitive doc- trine, but the reading of German philosophy insensibly influenced him, in deciding to make the synthesis principle in his doctrine of perception a basis for a whole philo- sophical system. Ferrier expressly acknowledges in the Institutes (3rd edit., pp. 94, 95), that the first proposition of his Epistemology had been foreshadowed by Kant, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, at the same time claiming that his use of the principle is entirely original.
Of direct traces of the German philosophy in Ferrier's system, several are to be noted. First his fre- quent references to, and criticisms of, Kant show how important he considered that philosopher to be in the history of the thought of the time. Ferrier thought that Kant's great error was, to allow the existence of mere sensible knowledge. Ferrier held on the contrary that " the senses by themselves cannot place any knowable or intelligible thing before the mind." Also, '* the senses are the contingent conditions of knowledge — our senses are not laws of cognitions, or modes of apprehension, which are binding on intelligence necessarily and univer- sally." Ferrier thought that thus he saved himself from the conclusion which Kant reached when he said that knowledge was only of phenomena. Ferrier's second outstanding criticism of Kant was that he posited two contradictories, the transcendental unity of apperception and the thing-in-itself . These Ferrier took to be identical
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with what he called the ego per se and matter per se, both of \vhich are excluded from the sphere of the con- ceivable. On this point Ferrier's criticism seems less sound than on the question of the senses. For Kant's real position, as indicated in Chapter II, was the accept- ance of the synthetic unity of experience, and the positing of noumena was only a protest against the idealism of the Humists. Indeed to the reader of to-day Ferrier's epistemology seems really a thinner elucidation of Kant's. Whether his analysis of cognition would or would not have been the same as that laid down in the Institutes, without the reading of Kant, cannot be told. We have again a statement of Ferrier's own on the question, how- ever. " My philosophy is Scottish to the very core," he writes.
One very definite passage occurs in the Institutes which illustrates the influence of Fichte on Ferrier. In Proposition IX of the Epistemology the ego per se has been reduced to a contradiction. But Ferrier distinguishes the ego per se from matter per se in the following way. " There is this difference between the two contradictories, that the ego carries within itself the power by which the contradiction may be overcome, and itself redeemed into the region of the cogitable, out of the region of the contradictory. It has a power of self-determination, which is no other than the Will. Matter per se, on the other hand, has to look to the ego for the elimination of the contradiction by which it is spell-bound. This is a momentous difference, and gives the contradictory ego per se an infinite superiority over the contradictory material universe per se." ('' Institutes of Metaphysic," 3rd edit., p. 252.) Ferrier does not however develop this point further.
There remains only to be stated the relation between Ferrier and Hegel — for Schelling seemed to Ferrier, as to most philosophers, a writer rich in promise but barren in actual achievement. The first point on which Ferrier seems to be reproducing Hegel is in his doctrine of the concrete universal. Ferrier states in Proposition VI of
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the Epistemology that every cognition is a synthesis of something universal, necessary and unchangeable with something changeable, contingent and particular, and later in the same section that " all knowledge and all thought are concrete, and deal only with concretions — the concretion of the particular and the universal." (Institutes of Metaphysic, p. 195.) This sound con- clusion, if arrived at independently, is an excellent example of Ferrier's real philosophical insight. It may be taken to contradict finally, the opinion underlying Ferrier's counter-proposition, i.e. that there may be par- ticular cognitions of particular things. The second point of general agreement between Ferrier and Hegel is their identification of knowledge and existence, of thought and reaHty. If it be clearly understood that by thought and by knowledge is meant the object-plus-subject synthesis of experience, the identification is well-estabhshed. (Ferrier at least meant this.) But the further step of positing an Absolute Existence, as the consummation of all individual experiences, is not justifiable in either Hegel or Ferrier. It is here that the reason of the philosopher is prompted by his imagination or his faith. It is here too that possible adherents, who have neither the faith nor the imagination of Hegel and Ferrier, part company with both philosophers.
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CHAPTER VII
JOHN STUART MILL
When J. S. Mill as the champion of the Experience and Association philosophy attacked Hamilton as " the chief pillar " of the Intuitionist School, his general motive was the defence of the experiential method. He felt that practical reforms as well as enlightened thought were hindered by " a philosophy which is addicted to holding up favorite doctrines as intuitive truths, and deems intuition to be the Voice of Nature and of God, speaking with an authority higher than that of our reason." The result of Mill's examination was to acquit his opponent of philosophic dogmatism, but to accuse him of an agnosticism more dangerous than his own.
Mill had expected to find Hamilton an ally on two important points, first, in his statement of the law of Relativity, and second, in his rejection of the later Transcendentalist doctrines. But agreement on the first point was only apparent. For while affirming as Mill did that all we know of objects is that they have power of exciting certain sensations in us, Hamilton also defended Natural Realism and its claim to immediate knowledge of the Primary Qualities. Then Hamilton's rejection of the later Transcendentalists was only the preliminary step to a dogmatism more objectionable than that of a Schelling or a Hegel. '' His peculiar doctrines were made the justification of a view of religion which I held to be profoundly immoral — 'that it is our duty to bow down in worship before a Being whose moral attri- butes are affirmed to be unknowable by us, and to be perhaps extremely different from those which, when we are speaking of our fellow-creatures, we call by the same
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names." (Autob., p. 157.) ThaViKiMlll'felf tHat" Hianail- ton was discrediting knowledge in order to make way for revelation and for faith, and if such were the result of a Critical Philosophy, Mill would have none of it. Scepti- cism and superstition seemed to him the alternative issues of Hamilton's position. He himself took his ground on certain positive elements in human experience which he thought a safer starting point for constructive thought and life.
In the " Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy " (1861), and in the notes to the posthumous edition of his father's ** Analysis " (1868), may be seen Mill's distinctive contributions to psychology. There is first a marked advance from the viewpoint of the earlier Associationists, in Mill's emphasis upon the activity of the brain in mental processes. The characteristic aspect of the mind heretofore broug'ht out by the English school of psychology had been its passivity. An illustration of Mill's change of attitude has already been given in his criticism of the doctrine of mental latency. Mill like his collaborator Bain had benefited by the reading of German physiology, and was able to add the results of physical investigation to the knowledge gained by his own and his predecessor's observation and introspection. MiWs stress upon cerebral activity in connection with thought shows close affinity with the modern emphasis upon mental activity as synthetic. (See article on Psychology by J. Ward, Encycl. Brit., nth edit.)
James Mill's work in psychology had been an apothe- osis of the law of association. To his son also the asso- ciation of ideas was the ultimate fact, but his application of that law was more faithful to the experiential method than his father's. James Mill had sacrificed truth to logical unity in reducing association by resemblance ^to association by contiguity. J. S. Mill pointed out that many associations by contiguity pre-suppose a previous association by resemblance, and that " some of the broadest distinctions of intellectual character can be grounded on the distinctive aptitudes of the mind for
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conUguHJ^ ^fe^ Jo^ similarity," He and Bain both realized that " the identification of likeness shrouded in diversity, expresses much of the genius of the poet, the philosopher, the man of practice."
J. S. Mill's statement of the law of association includes three propositions. Similar ideas tend to awaken each other; ideas experienced simultaneously or in suc- cession are also apt to be associated ; and greater intensity of feeling in an association is equivalent to greater fre- quency of conjunction. The latter point was elaborated by Bain, who criticized the author of the *' Analysis " for having only a twofold division of mental phenomena, i.e. the intellectual and the active. Bain said that thought, feeling and will was the proper division, and that James Mill's insufficient treatment of special forms of emotion was due to his failure to lay a right basis for their ex- haustive or natural classification. J. S. Mill indicates the reason for this discrediting of the feelings in the Autobiography (p. 63). "Offended by the frequency with which, in ethical and philosophical controversy, feel- ing is made the ultimate reason and justification of conduct, instead of being itself called upon for a justifica- tion, while in practice, actions the effect of which o'- human happiness is mischievous, are defended as being required by feeling, and the character of a person of feeling obtains a credit for desert, which he thought onl- due to actions, he had a real impatience of attributing praise to feeling, or of any but the most sparing refer- ence to it either in the estimation of persons or in the discussions of things." J. S. Mill himself came to realize the part which the emotions should play in human life, after his experience of the effect of a super-abundance of logic and analysis. He no longer regarded " educated intellect " as the one aim of individual and social effort, but gave its proper place to the internal culture of the individual. '' The cultivation of the feelings became one of the cardinal points in my ethical and philosophical creed," he wrote. Parallel with this new emphasis on the feelings. Mill exhibited the effect of his German and
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Anglo-German reading, in adopting a theory of life which had much in common with Carlyle's " anti-self-conscious- ness " creed. But this point will be discussed below, as it has less to do with Mill's psychology than with his ethics.
It is in his doctrine of exterior perception that J. S. Mill shows most clearly his divergence from the British psychologists. Extracts from the text of the " Analysis " go to prove that James Mill regarded isolated impressions as the whole content of psychological investi- gation. The influence of Kantian Idealism on his son is at once seen in the fact that J. S. Mill treated of two elements as present in every sensation. There is the series of states of consciousness which is the subject of sensation, and the cluster of permanent possibility of sen- sation (partly realized in the actual sensation) which is the object of the sensation. That is, J. S. Mill departed from the Humians in refusing to start from the discrete sensation or idea as an event in consciousness. Neither was he caught by the Common Sense view, of percep- tion as a relation. He took his stand, as Kant did, on an experience for his psychological content.
The first result of this new departure on the part of Mill, was an appreciation of the element lacking in his father's description of knowledge. The early Associa- tionists had failed finally to differentiate between a real and an imagined experience. James Mill's definition of belief has been quoted above (in Chapter ITT). In criticism, J. S. Mill writes, *' I cannot help thinking that there is in the remembrance of a real fact, as distin- guished from that of a thought, an element which does not consist, as the author supposes, in a diflference between the mere ideas which are present to the mind in the two cases. This element, however we define it, con- stitutes Belief, and is the difference between Memory and •Imagination." Thus J. S. Mill rejected the explanation of belief which made it the result of the inseparable association of ideas. " When we can represent to ourselves in imagination either of two conflicting suppositions — to believe or disbelieve — neither of the
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associations can be inseparable. There must be in the fact of Belief, something for which inseparable associa- tion does not account." Also, " What in short is the difference to our minds between thinking of a reality and representing to ourselves an imaginary picture? I con- fess that I can perceive no escape from the opinion that the distinction is ultimate and primordial/' (Analysis I, p. 411.) Here Mill came close to his opponent Hamilton. For both thinkers (through their contact with the Critical Philosophy) grasped the significance of the element of judgment, in perception and in thought. They were thus saved from the scepticism of the Humian tradition.
The second outcome of Mill's doctrine of exterior perception was a metaphysics strikingly different from that of the earlier Associationists. It has been seen that the elder Mill regarded the object as a mere complex idea. In his definition of the object as a "cluster of permanent possibility of sensation," J. S. Mill really joins with Kant in his protest against Hume. He is using the terms of English psychology to denote the " thinsr-in-itself ," the " noumenon " of the great Critique. Mill's phraseology shows more clearly than Kant's did that he predicated of human knowledge no seeing into the essence of things. But he retains in his permanent clusters of sensation, a foundation for that knowledge about things which Lotze later established. He also defends himself against the charge of solipsism, which may justly be brought against those who declare the fleeting individual impression to be the only reality.
The " Analysis " had treated of the self as a series of sensations, and had maintained that the evidence on which we accept our own identity is that of memory. J. S. Mill points out that memory reaches only a certain way back, and further that memory itself needs ex- planation. " What is memory ? It is not merely having the idea of a fact recalled; that is but thought, or conception, or imagination. It is having the idea recalled along with the Belief that the fact which it is the idea of, really happened, and moreover,
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happened to myself. Memory therefore, by the very fact of its being different from Imagination, implies an Ego who formerly experienced the facts remembered, and who was the same Ego then as now. The phenomena of Self and that of Memory are merely two sides of the same fact, or two different modes of viewing the same fact." (Editor's note, Anal. II, p. 174.) Mill accord- ingly denied that the self was nothing more than a dis- connected series of sensations. He thought that our idea of our own identity was real, not imagined, and showed this in his amended definition of the self — that it is a sensation-series conscious of itself as a series, or a con- tinuous consciousness connected by memory. Thus he writes, " I am aware of a long and uninterrupted suc- cession of past feelings going as far back as memory reaches, and terminating with the sensations which I have at the present moment, all of which are connected with an inexplicable tie, that distinguishes them not only from any succession or combination in mere thought, but also from the parallel successions of feelings which I believe on satisfactory evidence to have happened to each of the other beings shaped like myself, whom I perceive around me. This succession of feelings, which I call my memory of the past, is that by which I distinguish my Self. My- self is the person which had that series of feelings, and I know nothing of myself, by direct knowledge, except that I had them. But there is a bond of some sort among all the parts of the series, which makes me say that they were feelings of a person who was the same throughout, and a different person from those who had any of the parallel successions of feelings ; and this bond, to me, con- stitutes my Ego. Here, I think, the question must rest until some psychologist succeeds better than any one has yet done in showing a mode in which the analysis can be carried further." (Analysis II, p. 175.) The above dis- cussion would seem to be a psychologist's interpretation of Kant's transcendental ego.
In ethics as well as in psychology and metaphysics, Mill was immensely influenced by German thought. His
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first ethical work is contained in the sixth book of the Logic (published in 1843), where he attempts to deduce a science of ethology. His discussion opens with a criticism of the Necessity doctrine as taught by certain empiricists. From the time of his great thought-change about 1828, he had come to draw in his own mind, " a clear distinction between the doctrine of circumstances and Fatalism, discarding altogether the misleading word Necessity" (Autob., p. 97). He therefore puts forth a new interpretation of that doctrine, asserting that "though our character is formed by circumstances, our own desires can do much to shape those circumstances ; and that what is really inspiriting and ennobling in the doctrine of free- will is the conviction that we have real power over the formation of our own crharacter; that our will, by influ- encing some of our circumstances, can modify our future habits or capabilities of willing." (Autob., p. 97.) Mill points out that the freewill doctrine, by keeping in view the power of the mind tp operate in the formation of its own character, is practically nearer to truth than the Necessity creed as frequently taught. Necessitarians have a stronger sense of the importance of what human beings can do to shape the characters of one another. Freewill thinkers have fostered in themselves a much stronger spirit of self-culture.
A further point in this connection is established by Mill, as against the received empirical tradition. Bentham and the elder Mill had used the association principle to account for the pursuit of disinterested ends by numer- ous individuals and groups of human beings. J. S. Mill allows, with them, that the will is always constrained by motives, but denies that motives are invariably anticipa- tions of a pleasure or a pain. He argues that.it is through association that men come to desire the means without thinking of the end, but points out that even the means ceases to be desired as pleasurable after good habits have been formed. Purpose is a habit of willing and this habit of willing a certain course of action in time becomes the character. Mill quotes here from Novalis, *'A character
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is a completely fashioned will." ("A System of Logic," p. 586.) That an Associationist should appreciate the fact that the man makes the motive, as well as the motive the man, is due to the importation of Continental thought, after the dominance of purely British psychology.
How far Mill had journeyed from his early enthusi- asms was seen in his exposition of Utilitarianism written about i860. Two outstanding modifications of Bentham- ite principles give the key to the whole work. The first is the statement that " some kinds of pleasure are more desirable and valuable than others." (Util., p. 11). Mill said that it was absurd to consider the quantity of pleas- ures and to disregard their quality. For he like Bentham held that happiness should be the ultimate end of all action, and happiness he defined as pleasure and the absence of pain, while unhappiness is pain and the priva- tion of pleasure. (Util., p. 10.) In maintaining that the quality of pleasures should be a determining factor in moral choice, Mill really abandoned the Utility principle. For pleasure as Bentham used it was a super-added ele- ment— something enjoyed by the physical organism as a result of sensuous or intellectual experience. Pleasure in Mill's Utilitarianism is in eflfect the Aristotelian happi- ness— a state of the whole being when its parts are in harmonious activity. The moral problem therefore changes from a simple to a complex one. A disciple of Bentham seeks, for himself and for others, the greatest quantity of pleasures. A follower of Mill aims at the highest, rather than the greatest, pleasure. Where the former is apt to grasp the nearest and surest pleasure at the expense of the higher interests, the latter has fre- quently to sacrifice the greatest sum of pleasures in order to gain the more exalted happiness.
For there is a determining factor in man's nature, quite distinct from the desire for pleasure and aversion to pain. Mill's emphasis upon this element, more even than the point he has just been shown to make, marks him a pupil of Kant. Mill writes, " A being of higher faculties requires more to make him happy, is capable
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probably of more acute suffering, and certainly, accessible to it at more points, than one of an inferior type ; but in spite of these liabilities, he can never really wish to sink into what he feels to be a lower grade of existence. We may give what explanation we please of this unwilling- ness ; we may attribute it to pride, a name which is given indiscriminately to some of the most and to some of the least estimable feelings of which mankind are capable: we may refer it to the love of liberty and personal inde- pendence, an appeal to which was with the Stoics one of the most effective means for the inculcation of it ; to the love of power, or to the love of excitement, both of which do really enter into and contribute to it: but its most appropriate appellation is a sense of dignity, which all human beings possess in one form or other, and in some, though by no means exact, proportion to their higher faculties, and which is so essential a part of the happiness of those in whom it is strong, that nothing which conflicts with it, could be, otherwise than momentarily, an object of desire to them." (Util., p. 8.) This sense of human dignity is nothing other than Kant's ground of the moral law. When Kant said, " So act, that the rule on which thou actest would admit of being adopted as a law by all rational beings," the moral content he had in mind was man in his threefold nature of reason, emotion and appe- tite. Like Plato, he assumed that a rational being would put uppermost the activity which is distinctively human, i.e., the activity of the reason. So Mill's criticism, that it is impossible to deduce from Kant's first principle any of the actual duties of morality, might just as fairly be used against his own sense of human dignity. For the latter, practically interpreted, means simply the constraint to put first things first — to act as a human person, and not as an unreasoning thing. No ethical generalization can go further than this, when with it is combined the social qualification — " the greatest happiness of the greatest numhef " or "" Do unto others as you would they should do unto you/' Mill's inherited aim being public reform, he emphasized the social aspect of the question, i.e., the
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good of the community. Kant by his pietistic inheritance w'as led to concentrate on the individual problem, i.e., the right that each soul must seek.
Two quotations may serve to show further, how closely Mill's ethics approximated to the ethics of the Transcendentalists. The first is part of his comment on the contention, " that man can do without happiness, that all noble human beings have felt this, and could not have become noble but by learning the lesson of Entsagen, or renunciation, which lesson, thoroughly learnt and sub- mitted to, they affirm to be the beginning and necessary condition of all virtue." (Util, pp. 17, 18.) Mill writes, " Though it is only in a very imperfect state of the world's arrangements that anyone can best serve the happiness of others by the absolute sacrifice of his own, yet so long as the world is in that imperfect state, I fully acknowledge that the readiness to make such a sacrifice is the highest virtue which can be found in man. I will add, that in this condition of the world, paradoxical as the assertion may be, the conscious ability to do without happiness gives the best prospect of realizing such happiness as is attain- able." (Util., p. 23.) The second quotation indicates Mill's attitude towards those who hold up a virtuous character as an end in itself. *' The question, what con- stitutes this elevation of character (ideal nobleness of will and conduct), is itself to be decided by a reference to happiness as the standard. The character itself should be, to the individual, a paramount end, simply because the existence of this ideal nobleness of character, or of a near approach to it, in any abundance, would go farther than all things else toward making human life happy, both in the comparatively humble sense of pleasure and freedom from pain, and in the higher meaning of render- ing life, not what it now is almost universally, puerile and insignificant, but such as human beings with highly de- veloped faculties can care to have." ("A System of Logic," pp. 658, 659.) Mill concludes his argument by saying, that in the case of conflict between happiness to
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be attained and character to be maintained, character should be the highest end.
The evolution of Mill's poUtics shows the same influ- ences at work, as changed the other branches of his thought. His father's " Essay on Government " formed his early political creed, but by reading Coleridge and Carlyle, Goethe, and certain of the French writers of the time, he came to abandon his absolute radicalism. He recognized " that the human mind has a certain order of possible progress, in which some things must precede others, an order which governments and public instruc- tors can modify to some, but not to an unlimited extent ; that all questions of political institutions are relative, not absolute, and that different stages of human progress not only will have, but ought to have, different institutions: that government is always either in the hands, or passing into the hands, of whatever is the strongest power in society, and that what this power is, does not depend on institutions, but institutions on it : that any general theory or philosophy of politics presupposes a previous theory of human progress, and that this is the same thing with a philosophy of history." (Autob., p. 93.) Mill's first philosophy of history had measured human progress purely by its approach to liberty. His theory of politics had been based on '' representative democracy " as an absolute principle. His political ideal after 1829 was affirmed to be " unchecked liberty of thought, unbounded freedom of individual action in all modes not hurtful to others ; but also, convictions as to what is right and wrong, useful and pernicious, deeply engraven on the feelings by early education and general unanimity of sentiment, and so Urmly grounded in reason and in the true exigen- cies of life, that they shall not, like all former and present creeds, religious, ethical and political, require to he periodically thrown off and replaced by others/' (Autob., P- 95-) Were the latter half of this statement put first, it might easily have been made by Coleridge or by Burke. In recording the above change in his political view- point. Mill noted that he gradually came to see the
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significance of Carlyle's denunciations against the present " age of unbelief." The St. Simonian division of history into organic and critical periods had been particularly enlightening to Mill. He no longer regarded revolution against tyranny as a good thing in itself, but looked for a liberty which should mean self-control, as well as self- development and self-expression. Though still desiring democracy for Europe and especially for England, it was on quite a new ground. He wrote in this connection : ** If the democracy obtained a large, and perhaps the principal share, in the governing p>ower, it would become the interest of the opulent classes to promote their educa- tion, in order to ward off really mischievous errors, and especially those which would lead to unjust violations of property. On these grounds I was not only as ardent as ever for democratic institutions, but earnestly hoped that Owenite, St. Simonian, and all other anti-property doc- trines might spread widely among the poorer classes ; not that I thought those doctrines true, or desired that they should be acted on, but in order that the higher classes might be made to see that they had more to fear from the poor when uneducated than when educated." (Autob., p. 98.) Thus Mill rejoiced in the French Revolution of July, but not as his father would have rejoiced. When his articles on "The Spirit of the New Age " appeared in 1 83 1, they were so far from radicalism that Carlyle said on reading them, " Here is a new Mystic." Shortly after- wards commenced the personal friendship between the two, which led to as great an understanding as was possible between two such diverse thinkers. Mill char- acteristically was much more generous in appreciation of Carlyle, than Carlyle of Mill, and the very terms of his praise denote him a mystic. " I felt that he was a poet, and that I was not ; that he was a man of intuition, which I was not ; and that as such, he not only saw many things long before me, which I could only, when they were pointed out to me, hobble after and prove, but that it was highly probable he could see many things which, were not
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visible to me even after they were pointed out." ( Autob., p. lOI.)
One striking instance may be given, of Mill's way of adopting and adapting an opponent's point of view. In the ** French Revolution" (published 1837), and the "Heroes" (published 1841), Carlyle had expressed his great-man theory of history. When Mill wrote the sixth book of the Logic (about 1843), ^^^ indicated that his model in tracing the laws of social science was physical science, he allowed that one of the greatest determining factors in the chain of natural causation is personality. " However universal the laws of social development may be, they cannot be more universal or more rigorous than those of the physical agencies of nature ; yet human will can convert these into instruments of its designs, and the extent to which it does so makes the chief difference between savages and the most highly civilized people. . . . The volitions of exceptional persons, or the opinions and purposes of the individuals who at some particular time compose a government, may be indispensable links in the chain of causation by which even the g^eneral causes produce their effects ; and I believe this to be the only tenable form of the theory." ("A System of Logic," p. 648.) "Eminent men do not merely see the coming light from the hill-top, they mount on the hilltop and evoke it. . . . Philosophy and religion are abundantly amenable to general causes ; yet few will doubt that, had there been no Socrates, no Plato and no Aristotle, there would have been no philosophy for the next two hundred years, nor in all probability then; and that if there had been no Christ, and no St. Paul, there would have been no Christianity." (''A System of Logic," p. 649.)
Mill's ultimate conclusions are a mystery even to his disciples. The two most definite confessions of faith in the Autobiography are given in connection with his appre- ciations of John Austin, and of his wife. Of the former he notes his " opposition to sectarianism," his attaching less importance to outward changes than to " the cultiva- tion of the inward nature," and his admiration of the
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Prussian government and education. Then Mill writes, " There were many points of sympathy between him and me, both in the new opinions he had adopted and in the old ones which he retained. Like me, he never ceased to be a utilitarian, and, with all his love for the Germans and enjoyment of their literature, never became in the smallest degree reconciled to the innate-principle meta- physics. He cultivated more and more a kind of German religion, a religion of poetry and feeling with little, if anything, of pK)sitive dogma. . . . He professed great disrespect for what he called * the universal principles of human nature of the political economists,' and insisted on the evidence which history and daily experience afford of the * extraordinary pliability of human nature * (a phrase which I have somewhere borrowed from him) ; nor did he think it possible to set any positive bounds to the moral capabilities which might unfold themselves in mankind, under an enlightened direction of social and educational influences." (Autob., p. 102.)
Of his wife he said, " In her, complete emancipation from every kind of superstition (including that which attributes a pretended perfection to the order of nature and the universe), and an earnest protest against many things which are still part of the established constitution of society, resulted not from the hard intellect, but from strength of noble and elevated feeling, and co-existed with a highly reverential nature. In general spiritual characteristics, as well as in temperament and organiza- tion, I have often compared her to Shelley ; but in thought and intellect, Shelley, so far as his powers were developed in his short life, was but a child compared with what she ultimately became. Alike in the highest regions of specula- tion and in smaller practical concerns of daily life, her mind was the same perfect instrument, piercing to the very heart and marrow of the matter, always seizing the essential idea or principle." (Autob., p. 107.)
Mill acknowledged his " infinite " debt to his wife in the following significant paragraph : " With those who, like all the best and wisest of mankind, are dissatisfied
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with human life as it is, and whose feelings are wholly identified with its radical amendment, there are two main regions of thought. One is the region of ultimate aims; the constituent elements of the highest realizable ideal of human life. The other is that of the immediately useful and practically attainable. In both these departments, I have acquired more from her teaching, than from all other sources taken together. And, to say truth, it is in these two extremes, principally, that real certainty lies. My own strength lay wholly in the uncertain and slippery intermediate region, that of theory, or moral and political scieyice: respecting the conclusions of which, in any of the forms in which I have received or originated them, whether as political economy, analytic psychology, logic, philosophy of history, or anything else, it is not the least of my intellectual obligations to her that I have derived from her a wise scepticism, which, while it has not hin- dered me from following out the honest exercise of my thinking faculties to whatever might result from it, has put me on my guard against holding or announcing these conclusions with a degree of confidence which the nature of such speculations does not warrant, and has kept my mind not only open to admit, but prompt to welcome and eager to seek, even on the questions on which I have most meditated, any prospect of clearer perceptions and better evidence. I have often received praise, which in my own right I only partially deserve, for the greater practicality which is to be found in my writings, compared with those of most thinkers who have been equally addicted to large generalizations. The writings in which this quality has been observed, were not the work of one mind, but of the fusion of two, one of them as pre-eminently practical in its judgments and perceptions of things present, as it was high and bold in its anticipations for a remote futurity." (Autob., p. 109.)
The last word that might be premised then of Mill, is " a kind of German religion " in the realm of feeling and sentiment combined with " a wise scepticism " in the realm of thought.
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SECTION III
THE SCIENTIFIC MOVEMENT AND LATER GERMAN INFLUENCE
CHAPTER VIII
THE SCIENTIFIC MOVEMENT
In his History of European Thought in the Nine- teenth Century, Merz points out that " France was the only country in which science had early acquired that position and commanded that esteem which it now enjoys everywhere." (Vol. Ill, p. 91.) He indicates that it was not till the forties that English scientific interest grew to any proportions, and in Germany growth did not come till the sixties and seventies. (It should be noted here that this opinion of Merz has only partial regard to the facts. The case for Germany up to i860 will be stated briefly in a later chapter.) The causes of the increasing popularity of science in England are mainly two. First, the immense development of commerce as a result of scientific inventions has set a golden seal upon the practical investigations of science. Second, the statement of the theory of evolution by Charles Darwin, has been an epoch-making stimulus to scientific study. Men are now won to science, not only by their purses, but by their imaginations. The world of nature seems to-day invested with new magic — quite different from the fantastic charms which dreaming poets give her, far other than the ideal meaning which is her only reality for some philosophers. " I have preserved the mountains and hills," she seems to say, " I have guided the races of living things, creeping things and birds of the air and creatures that care for each other, till at last here is man — perfect, my child, born of my breath. Is there any love dearer than I, the mother of all flesh?"
The theory of evolution is not a purely nineteenth cen- tury product, though modern popular enthusiasm would make it seem so. The ancient doctrine of Heraclitus,
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trdvTa p€i, has a distinct bearing on present-day scien- tific theory. Aristotle's natural philosophy also puts great emphasis on the thought of development, or increas- ing perfection of structure in the course of evx)lution. Through succeeding periods writers appeared from time to time who considered the question of mutability of species, till in the eighteenth century there are found three men who contribute in various ways to the view- point finally expressed by Charles Darwin. The first is George C. L. Buff on (b. 1707, d. 1788), whose distinctive doctrine is that of the direct action of environment in the modification of the structure of plants and animals, and the conservation of these modifications through heredity. Secondly, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, whose writings Cole- ridge has been seen to examine and oppose, propounded a theory of the origin of life from ''filaments." He held a theory of descent which is distinctly related to the ethical and psychological views of the Associationists. In his Zoonomia (1794-1796) he wrote that "all animals undergo transformations which are in part produced by their own exertions in response to pleasures and pains, and many of these acquired forms or propensities are transmitted to their posterity." Thirdly, Lamarck (b. 1744, d. 1829) emphasized the Law of Use and Disuse as a factor in the development of animal organisms, and, like Erasmus Darwin, taught the theory of the trans- mission of acquired characters. His most original con- tribution was his conception of the history of life, which he compared to a many branching tree. The roots of the tree represent the simplest organisms, while the terminal twigs of the longest branches represent the living forms of to-day. A view somewhat similar to that of Lamarck was expressed in a work called " Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation," which appeared some fifteen years before Darwin's results were published. This work was entirely occupied with the subject of evolution, and in the course of his argument the author wrote, " We are drawn on to the supposition that the first step in the creation of life upon this planet was a chemico-electric
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operation by which simple germinal vesicles were pro- duced." He then traced a development from this " first step " to the final evolution of man ; and in man is included both physical structure and mental capacity.
In 1859, Darwin's " Origin of Species " was pub- lished. The distinctive contribution made by this work to earlier evolutionary theory was the statement of the Law of Natural Selection. Darwin noted that all living beings vary in some respect or other, and certain varia- tions tend to increase the efficiency and prolong the life of the individual in question. These fortunate variations being transmitted to progeny, the final result is a new type. Hence, by natural selection lower forms of life become transmuted into higher. To quote Darwin's own words. Natural Selection is inferred from clearly ob- served and well established laws, '' these laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the external conditions of Hfe, and from use and disuse: a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less improved forms. Thus from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows." (" Origin of Species," John Murray, 1897, Vol. II, p. 305.)
In the " Descent of Man " (published 1871), Darwin applies his Law of Natural Selection to human history. He not only argues that man's bodily structure is the development of a lower form, but he also maintains that " there is no fundamental difference " between man and the higher mammals in their mental faculties. (" Descent of Man," John Murray, 1871, Vol. I, p. 35.) This position of Darwin's did not, however, prevent his recognition of certain peculiarly human powers such as those of abstrac- tion and self-consciousness. " It would be very difficult for anyone with even much more knowledge than I possess,
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to determine how far animals exhibit any traces of these high mental powers. This difficulty arises from the im- possibility of judging what passes through the mind of an animal." ("Descent of Man," 2nd EngHsh ed., 1874, Ch. 3.) Nor did Darwin presume to explain the origin of consciousness, as certain of his popular followers attempted to do. " In what manner the mental powers were first developed in the lowest organisms, is as hope- less an enquiry as how life itself originated. These are problems for the distant future, if they are ever to be solved by man." ("Descent of Man," ist ed.. Vol. I, p. 36.) Darwin's treatment of the moral qualities of man has the same evolutionary basis as his description of the mental powers, but with certain concessions to the ortho- dox viewpoint. " I fully subscribe to the judgment of those writers who maintain that of all the differences between man and the lower animals, the moral sense or conscience is by far the most important." (*^ Descent of Man," 1st edit.. Vol. i, p. 70.) Darwin assumes as fundamental, certain instincts which are common to the higher animals, and suggests the probable development of a morality from these. " The following proposition seems to me in a high degree probable — ^namely, that any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or con- science, as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well developed, or nearly as well developed, as in man." (ist edit., Vol. I, pp. 71, y2.) Darwin accounts for the more or less settled character of moral stan^dards among men, by showing that the more enduring social instincts conquer the less persistent instincts, (ist edit. Vol. I, p. 89.) '*As man cannot prevent old impressions con- tinually repassing through his mind, he will be compelled to compare the weaker impressions of, for instance, past hunger, or of vengeance satisfied or danger avoided at the cost of other men, with the instinct of sympathy and goodwill to his fellows, which is still present and ever in some degree active in his mind." ( ist edit., Vol. I, p. 90.) Here Darwin tacitly allows that reflection and reason
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enter into the formation of moral law, which means a practical abandonment of the naturalistic viewpoint. In other words, biological explanations are inadequate to the final solution of ethical, as of psychological problems. Yet Darwin seems to stand on his ground of Natural Selection to the end, averring that human action like ordinary physiological phenomena is governed by " the blind, unconscious selection " of Nature rather than by the purposive selection of reason.
Darwin regarded virtue as at first merely tribal. " When two tribes of primeval man, living in the same country, came into competition, if the one tribe included (other circumstances being equal) a greater number of courageous, sympathetic, and faithful members, who were always ready to warn each other of danger, to aid and defend each other, this tribe would without doubt succeed best and conquer the other. . . . Selfish and conten- tious people will not cohere, and without coherence noth- ing can be effected. A tribe possessing the above quali- ties in a high degree would spread and be victorious over other tribes; but in the course of time it would, judging from all past history, be in its turn overcome by some other and still more highly endowed tribe. Thus the social and moral qualities would tend slowly to advance and be diffused throughout the world." ('^Descent of Man," Vol. I, p. 162.) Through the growing repute of courage, obedience, sympathy and other primitive virtues, Darwin traced the origin of praise and blame as deter- mining factors in the setting up of moral standards. Here, as in the development of his whole body of theory, Darwin shows the influence of the Associationists. For not only in their emphasis on the constant correlation of mind and body, but also in their presentation of utility as the criterion of moral action, they are in close sympathy with the scientist. Darwin and J. S. Mill alike find " the social feelings of mankind " one of the most significant phenomena in their survey of natural fact.
Two names are closely linked with that of Darwin in connection with the promulgation of evolutionary theory
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in England about i860. The first is that of Alfred Russel Wallace, who reached conclusions similar to those of Darwin by an independent road, but who published his results a little later. In his treatise " On the Law which has regulated the Introduction of New Species," Wallace made his first statement of the law of Natural Selection. In 1889, he wrote as follows in " Darwinism " : ** What- ever other causes have been at work, Natural Selection is supreme, to an extent which even Darwin himself hesitated to claim for it." But at the same time Wallace appreciated and made explicit the importance of these '' other causes," in a way that Darwin had not done. In the first place, he rejected the theory of instinct, as in any way explaining the development of thought and of mor- ality. " The theory of instinct implies innate ideas of a very definite kind, and if established, would overthrow Mr. Mill's Sensationalism and all the modern philosophy of experience." Wallace regarded instinct as " some form of mental modification " and held that instruction always preceded the performance of so-called instinctive acts, as education was always necessary to the develop- ment of the moral feelings. In other words, Wallace declared ''natural selection, as the law of the. strongest, inadequate" to account for man's mental and moral de- velopment. Further Wallace distinctly stated that there were two points in evolution where new causes came into play, i.e., at the beginning of life and at the beginning of consciousness. " Increase of complexity in chemical compounds, with consequent instability, could certainly not have produced living protoplasm,— protoplasm which has the power of growth and reproduction, and of that continuous process of development which has resulted in the marvellous variety and complex organization of the whole vegetable kingdom, or, that is, vitality." (Dar- winism, pp. 442, 443.) All idea of mere complication of structure producing consciousness is " out of the question." " Because man's physical structure has been developed from an animal form by natural selection, it does not follow that his mental nature, even though
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developed pari passu with it, has been developed by the same causes only." (Darwinism, p. 463.)
The second name linked with Darwin's in connection with evolutionary doctrine in England, is that of Thomas Henry Huxley. Born in 1825, he had already attained note in the scientific world when the " Origin of Species " was pubHshed, for Darwin remarked at that time, " If I can convert Huxley, I shall be content." The Law of Natural Selection was accepted by Huxley as a working hypothesis, and when asked to review Darwin's work for the Times, he set himself to win " the educated mob " to a hearing of the great scientist at least. " Whatever they do, they shall respect Darwin," he said. The following year (i860) saw another and more public defence of Darwin's views, on the part of Huxley, at the meeting of the British Association at Oxford. Here Huxley made his famous speech in reply to the taunt of Bishop Wilberforce, who had asked whether it was through his grandfather or grandmother that his opponent claimed descent from an ape. Huxley combated the position that kinship of origin between man and the brutes meant man's degrada- tion. " Is it true," he asked, " that the poet or the artist is degraded because he is the direct descendant of some bestial savage? Is he bound to howl and grovel on all fours because he was once an egg which no one could distinguish from that of a dog? Is maternal affection vile because shown in a bird? or fidelity base because dogs possess it ? The common sense of the mass of man- kind will answer those questions without a moment's hesitation. Nay more, thoughtful men, once escaped from the blinding influences of traditional prejudice, will find in the lowly stock whence man has sprung, the best evidence of the splendour of his capacities ; and will dis- cern in his long progress through the past, a reasonable ground of faith in his attainment of a nobler future."
The above quotation has been given at length, for it illustrates the fine enthusiasm which Huxley brought to his work as a scientist, and the deep faith he had in the power of science to uplift mankind. He was no cloistered
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investigator — he felt himself rather as a prophet, who, if his nights might be spent in searching out the mysteries of Nature, used his days in revealing them to the multi- tude. Huxley became a power through this very con- ception of his work. By his immense literary output he made a deep impress on the educated public. By his popular addresses and his lectures to working men, he initiated a movement towards the scientific education of the people which has had incalculable effects. His prac- tical ideal was to make people realize '' that physical virtue is the basis of all other, and that they are to be clean and temperate and all the rest — not because fellows in black with white ties tell them so, but because there are plain and patent laws of Nature which they must obey under penalties." There is no doubt that Huxley deserves the gratitude of the English-speaking world to-day for impressing this ideal, though its final value as a means of holding mankind on a higher plane of life than the animal creation, is disputed by a great body of thinkers and practical reformers.
Apart from his evolutionary views, and the high value he set upon scientific education as an aid to moral development, there was a third point on which Huxley diverged from the orthodox thought of his day. This was in the particular realm of personal belief — whether that be called religion or philosophy. Huxley was unlike others of his scientific friends, Darwin or Lyell or Hooker, in his deep interest in philosophic questions. One of his biographers mentions that in the years succeeding his defence of Darwin at Oxford, Huxley devoted a great deal of time to philosophical study. The result was what it is customary to associate with the personal beliefs of scientists — the rejection of orthodox religion and the adherence to a position which Huxley himself described as Agnosticism. The familiarity of the latter term is a witness to the extent of Huxley's influ- ence, for it was not till the last two decades of the nineteenth century that " the general " knew any alterna- tive beyond theism of some sort and atheism. Of the
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latter Huxley says, " To my mind, atheism is, on purely philosophical grounds, untenable. That there is no evidence of the existence of such a being as the God of the theologians is true enough; but strictly scientific reasoning can take us no further. Where we know nothing we can neither affirm nor deny with propriety." Huxley therefore concentrated on the truths of which he felt himself scientifically certain, regarding speculations on any ultimate as useless. "If the religion of the present diflfers from that of the past, it is because the theology of the present has become more scientific than that of the past ; because it has not only renounced idols of wood and idols of stone, but begins to see the necessity of breaking in pieces the idols built up of books and traditions and fine-spun ecclesiastical cobwebs; and of cherishing the noblest and most human of man's emotions, by worship * for the most part of the silent sort ' at the altar of the Unknown and Unknowable." (From Lay Sermon on the " Advisableness of Improving Natural Knowledge," delivered in St. Martin's Hall, January 7th, 1866, and published in Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews, 1870). As a comment upon these words of Huxley, the lines written upon his grave by his wife may be quoted — " lines inspired by his own robust conviction that, all questions of the future apart, this life as it can be lived, pain, sorrow and evil notwith- standing, is worth — and well worth — living."
" Be not afraid, ye waiting hearts that weep ; For still He giveth His beloved sleep ; And if an endless sleep He wills, so best."
It is evident from even a casual glance at Huxley's life, that the scientific movement which he represented had inherent tendencies towards a distinct type of philosophic theory. Indeed English scientists of the second half of the century were very close in spirit to the native philosophic tradition represented by the Mills, Bain, Lewes, and Spencer. That the last great name has been neglected so far, is due to the fact that Spencer's
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chief works did not appear till after Darwin's principles had been published. The date of the first edition of his " Principles of Psychology " was 1855, but the second edition published in 1870 was considerably altered by the incorporation of Darwinian thought. Spencer's " First Principles " appeared in 1862, his *' Principles of Biology " in 1863, and his " Principles of Sociology," Vol. I, in 1876. Spencer named his own system a *'' synthetic philosophy," and described it by the term evolution. In his earliest noteworthy work, " Social Statics" (published 1851), Spencer had been occupied in criticizing the " Expediency Philosophy " or Utilitarian- ism, and suggesting a substitute for it, namely Absolute Ethics. He argued that though the " greatest happiness " might be the creative purpose for man, human conduct should not be regulated by it as -the end, but by the con- ditions which make for happiness. Spencer took happi- ness to consist in the due exercise of all the functions, so duty for him was development of the individual's powers, — or as he later expressed it in the " Data of Ethics " (published in 1874), the movement towards the highest and most complete life. Since the exercise of all the functions is impossible without freedom, Spencer empha- sized the fact of the necessary limitation of the individual by society. In other words, he enunciated the principle that every man " may claim the fullest liberty to exercise his feelings compatible with the possession of a like liberty in every other man." ("Evolutional Ethics," by Williams, p. 32).
Though Spencer regarded the distinction between Relative and Absolute Ethics as his strongest point in ethical theory, it was the thoroughgoing application of his guiding principle of evolution which made his ethical work original, as also his psychology and general philosophy. He defined the subject-matter of Ethics as " that form which universal conduct assumes during the last stages of its evolution," and thought by studying the evolution of conduct, in its physical and other aspects, to arrive at that form. In a letter to J. S. Mill, published in
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Bain's "Mental and Moral Science" (p. 721, 3rd edit.), he wrote as follows, " To make my position fully under- stood, it seems needful to add that, corresponding to the fundamental propositions of a developed Moral Science (Spencer's Absolute Ethics), there have been, and still are, developing in the race, certain fundamental moral intuitions ; and that, though these moral intuitions are the results of accumulated experience of Utility, gradually organized and inherited, they have come to be quite independent of conscious experience. Just in the same way that I believe the intuition of space possessed by any living individual, to have arisen from the organized and consolidated experiences of all antecedent individuals, who bequeathed to him their slowly developed nervous organizations — just as I believe that this intuition, requir- ing only to be made definite and complete by personal experiences, has practically become a form of thought, apparently quite independent of experience; so do I believe that the experiences of utility organized and con- solidated through all past generations of the human race, have been producing nervous modifications, which by con- tinued transmission and accumulation, have become in us certain faculties of moral intuition, certain emotions responding to right and wrong conduct, which have no apparent basis in the individual experiences of utility. I also hold that, just as the space-intuition responds to the exact demonstrations of geometry, and has its rough con- clusions interpreted and verified by them, so will moral intuitions correspond to the demonstrations of Moral Science ; and will have their rough conclusions interpreted and verified by them." The above quotation indicates Spencer's ideas both of moral and mental evolution, which he regarded as springing alike from one origin, experience. His conception of experience differed widely, however, from that of Locke and the earlier empiricists. ^* Experience, too," he writes in his essay on ' Morals and Moral Sentiment,' " in its ordinary acceptation, connotes definite perceptions of causes and consequences, as stand- ing in observed relations, and is not taken to include the
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connections found in consciousness between states that occur together, when the relation between them, causal or other, is not perceived. It is in its widest sense, how- ever, that I habitually use this word, as will be manifest to everyone who reads the * Principles of Psychology/ " Spencer thus appreciated the part which feelings and innumerable unconscious modifications play in the build- ing up of the mental and moral life. At the same time he considered the problems of the origin of life and the ultimate nature of consciousness as insoluble.
The last-named conclusion stands indeed in the fore- front of Spencer's system. The opening section of his " First Principles " is devoted to answering the question, "What is Reality?" His answer is that the so-called truly Real, the ultimate Ground of everything, is unknow- able by us, though analysis of experience shows it as an underlying Power. Spencer said that all we can know about Reality is confined to the phenomenal world or to appearance, and thus science is the first knowledge. But a task remains for philosophy in the unification of knowledge, — the working out of "the whole system of conceptions by which the exact sciences try to describe the observable and known phenomena of nature, and to predict those that are unknown and frequently escape observation." (Merz, Vol. Ill, p. 579.) The unity at which Spencer arrived was, as he stated at the outset, a merely formal one. " His highest principles, such as * The Instability of the Homogeneous ' and the alternation of the processes of 'differentiation' and 'integration,' are merely the most abstract descriptions of the ever- repeat- ing phases in which the World-Process is developed, the stages of the evolution of the Unknowable Absolute." But Spencer thought this was all that could be attained by human knowledge — ^the affirmation of a great Un- knowable behind the whole of Hfe. So he substituted a study of the becoming of things for the old problem of their being.
Spencer's doctrine of the Unknowable finds a parallel in several other systems, and points of contact with many.
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There is first a distinct connection with the British philosophical line, from James Mill on. In his Auto- biography (p. 38), J. S. Mill writes that his father, " finding no halting place in Deism, remained in a state of perplexity until, doubtless after many struggles, he yielded to the conviction that, concerning the origin, of things, nothing whatever can be known/' The incon- clusive creed of J. S. Mill himself has already been noted, and the convictions of Bain and Lewes bore a similar character. The popularized form of Spencer's doctrine appeared in Huxley's agnosticism, while the influence of Comte combined with English native thought, to point to an " ignoscible " as the origin of things. But the inter- esting point, in connection with Spencer's division between the Unknowable and the Knowable, is his close relation to the opposing school of thought. Spencer practically admitted the twofold meaning of the world of Reality which has come down from Plato, when he spoke of the underlying ground of things — an actual something though unknowable. Spencer professedly disregarded the writ- ings of contemporary thinkers, declaring that he refrained from reading any philosophical work with whose first pages he disagreed. But it is likely that through Lewes and Hamilton, he acquired at least a superficial knowl- edge of Kant and his successors, and the theory of the noumenal and phenomenal worlds struck in him a sym- pathetic chord. Unlike Hamilton and Mansel, he turned Kant's argument to a rejection of that body of positive doctrine with which the Associationists had broken long before. Perhaps Huxley's epitaph might have done for Spencer too.
There is one further aspect of Spencer's work which it is needful to notice, as diflFerentiating him from the earlier and atomistic style of thought, and bringing him nearer to the critics of that school. This is the emphasis Spencer laid upon the importance of synthesis, in science and in philosophy. In psychology, for example, he main- tained that mental phenomena cannot be imderstood if the individual mind alone be studied. He prefaced his
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psychology by a study of human society, its history and progress. Holding as he did the genetic view of nature, he endeavored to analyze and comprehend social develop- ment by the use of biological analogies; then the clue gained from thence he applied, in his search for the nature and significance of the individual mind. Spencer's method, in this and other instances that might be quoted, follows the line suggested by Goethe many years before as the truly philosophical one. The rather lengthy extract given below might be a note on Spencer's own method, as of the other great scientists of the nineteenth century. ''If we regard objects of nature, but especially those which are living, with the intention of gaining an insight into the connection of their being and acting, we believe that the best way to arrive at this is through separation of their parts ; as indeed this way really leads a good space onward. We need only recall to the memory of all friends of knowledge what chemistry and anatomy have contributed to an insight and comprehension of nature. But these dividing operations, ever and ever con- tinued, produce likeimse many a disadvantage ; the living is indeed analyzed into elements, but it cannot possibly be brought together again out of them and animated. This is even true of many inorganic and not only of organic bodies. Accordingly we find among scientific persons at all times the desire manifesting itself, to recognize living things as such, to regard their external, visible and tangible parts in their connection, to view them as indica- tions of the internal, and thus to command, c^ it were, a vieiv of the whole." (From the " Versuche die Meta- morphose der Pflanzen zu erklaren," 1790). This scien- tific viewpoint is what Compte termed the esprit d'en- semble, or as Professor W. R. Sorley renders it, the synoptical view.
Frequent mention has been already made of two thinkers who were contemporaries, and in a sense intel- lectual kinsmen, of Spencer. The first of these, Alexander Bain, was a psychologist pure and simple. His influence began to be felt in the pre-evolutionary period of thought,
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as his two important works, " The Senses and the Intellect," and " The Emotions and the Will," were pub- lished, the first in 1855, and the second in 1859. Bain shared in the keen biological interest of his time, and made a special study of the physiology of Johannes Miiller. He not only used the phenomena of organic life, as his source for analogy in psychological description, but he explained mental facts and processes by physio- logical facts and processes. Spencer was thus in sym- pathy with Bain when he wrote, as quoted above, of " nervous modifications, which by continued transmission and accumulation have become in us certain faculties of intuition." Bain's connection with the Associationist school has already been shown above.
George Henry Lewes (b. 1817, d. 1878) added to his interest in psychology and physiology a wide knowledge of general philosophy. He was known in his life-time as a disciple of Comte, but the relation of the great Frenchman to Lewes was rather as an inspirer of fruitful ideas than as a master. Lewes like J. S. Mill was not contented with a mere postpontment of ultimate prob- lems, but endeavored to work out a philosophical creed from his psychological basis. The results of his search were embodied in ** Problems of Life and Mind" (ist series, 1874), and two volumes with the sub-title, " Foundations of a Creed " (1874 and 1875). -^ perusal of these volumes leaves the reader with the same undecided impression that J. S. Mill's later works pro- duce. For while hinting in his ver>' title at his belief in a certain fixed reality or realities, Lewes failed to advance beyond the phenomenalist's position. In Vol. Ill, p. 376, he wrote, " All Existence as known to us — is the Felt." " We know Things absolutely in so far as they exist in relation to us ; and that is the only knowledge which can have any possible significance for us." Yet Lewes's psy- chology showed a keenness of observation and a breadth of knowledge, which put him in advance of certain of the earlier Associationists. He noted for example that "a certain mental co-operation is requisite even for the
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simplest perception of quality," quoting in illustration the fact that a blind person cannot understand color though it be explained in terms of wave-motion. (Cf. Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Vol. I, pp. i86, 187.) Lewes corrected the earlier mechanical view of the mind by insisting on the unique character of an organism — especially of the human organism. " Not that we are to admit the agency of any extra-organic principle, such as the hypothesis of Vitalism assumes ; but only the agency of an intra-organic principle, or the abstract symbol of all the co-operant conditions — the special combination of forces which result in organization." (Problems of Life and Mind, Vol. Ill, p. 365). Then on page 366, "The process taking place (in an organism) is one which involves conditions never found in purely physical pro- cesses," and on the next page, ** Among these conditions, there are combinations and co-ordinations of Sensibility, which, although material processes on the objective side, are processes believed to be only present in organisms." Lewes expressed his divergence from the purely physio- logical viewpoint still more clearly, when he pointed out that a machine has no experience, it reacts at last as at first. " A machine has no historical factor manifest in its functions." Also, " An organism is radically distinguish- able from every inorganic mechanism in that it acquires through the very exercise of its primary constitution, a new constitution with new powers. ... Its adjust- ment is a changing and developing mechanism."
In the final issue, Lewes reduced all reaHty to Feeling. He allowed that " in one sense no definition of Conscious- ness can be satisfactory, since it designates an ultimate fact, which cannot therefore be made more intelligible than it is already." Here as in the case of Spencer, we are reminded of the " ultimates " of Hamilton's psy- chology. But in another sense, Lewes proceeded to say, consciousness is simply equivalent to feeling. For biologically, consciousness is a function of the organism, and it can only be complete as long as that vital mechanism is entire. Lewes noted that in coma, for
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example, actions are said to go on unconsciously, and because unconsciously, are called pure reflexes, the actions of an insentient machine. He criticized this view, on the ground that as reflex mechanism involves sensibility, reflex actions may be unaccompanied by consciousness (in one meaning), without ceasing to be sentient — feel- ings may be operative without being discriminated.
In treating of the relation of Body and Mind, Lewes (using Aristotle's illustration) suggested that there, may be no more distinction between the Body and the Soul, than between the concave and convex of a circle. He held that the mental process is at every point contrasted with the physical process which is assumed to be its correlate. ** The identity underlying the mental and the physical process is not evident to Sense, but may be made eminently probable to Speculation, especially when we have explained the grounds of the difference, namely, that they are apprehended through different modes." (Problems of Life and Mind, Vol. HI, p. 377.) '^ There is common to both the basis in Feeling, that they are both modes of Consciousness" (Problems of Life and Mind, Vol. HI, p. 378). Lewes objected to the position that sensation belongs simply to the material organism — that it is no more than a reaction when the bodily organ is excited by some stimulus. Lewes said that the above is simply the objective aspect of sensation; in its subjective aspect, feeling or consciousness is really needed before sensation is complete. "What in subjec- tive terms is called Logic," he wrote, *'in objective terms is called Grouping." Any proposition he said could be viewed logically, as a grouping of experiences, or physio- logically, as a grouping of neural tremors. (Problems of Life and Mind, Vol III, p. 386.)
Lewes gave a singularly fresh and vivid treatment of the will and of volition, combating the reflex theory (see Huxley's "Animal Automatism") and holding firmly to his point of the influence of organic unity. With a machine, he pointed out, " every interruption in the pre- arranged order, either throws it out of gear, or brings it
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to a standstill." A machine is regulated, not self-regulat- ing. But " automatism in the organism implies memory and perception," and phenomena excite the vital mechan- ism according to its *^ organized experiences." ( Problems of Life and Mind, Vol. Ill, p. 435.)
The comments of Lewes on the part played in experi- ence by " the general consciousness " are particularly significant, suggesting both the work of Herbart, and the later British development in James Ward's psychology. " We do not see the stars at noonday," Lewes wrote, " yet they shine. There is a sort of analogy to this in the general Consciousness, which is composed of the sum of sensations excited by the incessant simultaneous action of internal and external stimuli. . . . Attention falls on those particular sensations of pleasure or of pain, which usurp prominence amongst the objects of the sen- sitive panorama." "As we need the daylight to see the brilliant and the sombre forms of things, we need this living Consciousness to feel the pleasures and the pains of life. It is therefore as erroneous to imagine that we have no other sensations than those which we distinctly recog- nize— as to imagine that we see no other light than what is reflected from the shops and equipages, the colors and splendors which arrest the eye." (Vol. Ill, p. 472.) " Over and above all the particular sensations capable of being separately recognized, there is a general stream of Sensation which constitutes (man's) feeling of exist- ence— the Consciousness of himself as a sentient being. The ebullient energy which one day exalts life, and the mournful depression which the next day renders life a burden almost intolerable, are feelings not referable to any of the particular sensations." From which Lewes went on to say that '' the tone of each man's feeling is determined by the state of his general consciousness," and more significant still, that " our philosophy, when not borrowed, is little more than the expression of our per- sonality." (Vol. Ill, p. 475.) It would seem that Lewes's search for certitude resolves itself into an avowed solipsism.
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Besides the oft-quoted " Problems of Life and Mind," Lewes wrote " The Study of Psychology ; Its Object, Scope and Method " (1879), a " History of Philosophy " (ist edit., 1845, 2nd edit., 1871), and "The Life of Goethe" (1855). The last two works are particularly interesting in the light of our subject, for in giving a critical account of philosophical development in the past, Lewes acted as the English pioneer in a German fashion — represented by the works of men like Ritter, Zeller. Erdmann and Kuno Fischer. And in thinking his work on the greatest German poet worth while, he showed his own interest in the subject, and his sense of the popular need for such a work. Lewes's History naturally gives a much greater place to the English realistic school than had been given in any Gennan work, but it shows an appreciation also of Continental thought. In his Life of Goethe, Lewes displays further an understanding of the extraordinary hold which Kantian ideas had taken upon Germany. Commenting on the interest which Goethe and Schiller felt in science and philosophy, he said that their art would have suffered from their tendency to reflection and imitation, had they not been geniuses. The Romantic School he spoke of as ''a brilliant error," for in his opinion philosophy " distorted poetry " and " cursed criticism." This is interesting writing from one who numbered James Mill among his philosophical anteced- ents. Lewes seemed to point for a solution of life's problems to that very life of the emotions, which earlier English thinkers had disavowed and discredited.
In this its fin^l issue, the scientific movement of the second half of the century has a more eloquent exponent in one closely associated with Lewes. George Eliot, though primarily a novelist, has been said by one of her biographers to reflect more fully than any other author of the day the scientific spirit of the time. The founda- tion for such a statement may be found first in her keen interest in the studies which were to Lewes " a seventh heaven," — physiolog}', chemistry and psycholog}^ Then her intimate fellowship with such scientists as Spencer,
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added to the influence of Lewes, gave her the open- minded outlook which is one of the finest elements in the scientific spirit. Finally her inherent melancholy made her a singularly impressive painter of the rule of law in the sphere of human action, an aspect not hitherto empha- sized in the history of English fiction. It is not simply a coincidence that close psychological accuracy in the novel should be accompanied by a convincing vindication of the universal validity of moral concepts. George Eliot's novels are great as works of art — but greater still as true pictures of human hfe.
George Eliot's personal creed is instructive as indicat- ing the insufficiency of the scientific outlook alone to satisfy the human soul. Though accepting the theory of evolution in the realm of pure nature, she insisted on the distinct validity of the moral and emotional spheres in the life of man. So she writes, " One might as well hope to dissect one's own body, and be merry in doing it, as take molecular physics (in which you must banish from your field what is specifically human) to be your dominant guide, 3^our determiner of motives, in what is solely human. That every study has its bearing on every other is true; but pain and relief, love and sorrow, have their peculiar history, which make an experience and knowledge over and above the swing of atoms." Akin to this is her remark upon the publication of Darwin's " Origin of Species." " To me the Development Theory, and all other explanations of processes by which things come to be, produce a feeble impression compared with the mystery that lies under the processes." So George Eliot framed for herself a religion that should allow for this sense of mystery. Following Comte she based her faith on the social nature of man, and the result was that religion of humanity which is expressed in her poem, " Oh, may I join the choir invisible." George Eliot looked upon the emotions as the sanctions for religion, and thought that by cultivating all pure and lofty human emotions, men might be led to a unity of feeling more valuable than any possible intellectual harmony.
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In thus basing religion upon purely subjective factors, George Eliot is representative of much of the scientific thought of her day. She was not, however, followed by more than a small section of her countrymen. The fol- lowing delightful story illustrates the common reception of her views when summed up for the public in the biography of George Eliot prepared by her husband. An English lady tells how as a girl on a visit she shared in the reading of this new and much-talked of book. She and her cousins took turns in reading aloud, while near them there sat with her knitting the old nurse, who still shared the interests of the growing boys and girls. As the reading proceeded she began to shake her head and at last broke in. ** Poor thing !" she ^said, " to think that she did not believe more than that!" With which anecdote the present chapter may conclude.
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CHAPTER IX
HEGELIAN THOUGHT IN J. HUTCHISON STIRLING AND T. H. GREEN
Protagoras' maxim has many applications. When the imaginations of men are occupied with the wonders of the universe, Nature seems the one great reahty. The world is writ exceeding large, man exceeding small. And as long as scientific fervor lasts, man is content with this version of things. But sorrow or separation comes home to him; he wins a world-applauded victory that turns to ashes in his mouth ; he meets with the natural failure that is yet the intrinsic triumph — and another mood ensues. He walks now in a voiceless land, amid trees and hills of alien birth, and in his infinite joy or pain he cries out at Nature's claims. She is no more than a fleeting picture in the mirror of his mind — nothing else than a tool in his creative hand. Even when in defeat and death she seems to have him at her mercy, he rises with the cry, " The soul, thought, striving, are all, and Nature is nought." For consciousness makes reality, and without it the world is a blank.
Such a succession of moods is seen twice in nine- teenth century England. First the hopes of the Utili- tarians, with political economy and parliamentary reform as their modes of expression ; followed by the reactionary thought of Coleridge, Carlyle and kindred writers. Then the scientific movement culminating in Spencer, followed by a similar reaction. It is of the latter that the present chapter intends to treat, with two men as its subject in particular. The first, James Hutchison Stirling, was a Scotchman — yet an inveterate enemy of the great Scottish sceptic, and of the Scottish school. The second, Thomas
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Hill Green, was an Oxford man, — yet a spirit essentially, different from English philosophers that had gone before. Unlike in temperament and training they had one great point in common, and that was their looking to Germany for thought-impetus and instruction. The one made Hegel's philosophy his answer to scepticism, materialism and Darwinism. The other used Hegelian metaphysics as the groundwork for a spiritual evolution of morals, as against the natural ethics worked out by science. What- ever view be taken of the soundness of their doctrine, there can be no doubt of the effectiveness of their work. From the year of its publication (1865) to the present, the " Secret of Hegel " has continued to elicit a real response from the English thinking public. In America too it has exerted a great influence, affecting first the Emerson group who had worked on transcendentalism in The Dial, and later the academic leaders not a little — among them Josiah Royce. Green's immediate influence has been confined to a narrower circle, but indirectly he has helped to mould the popular mind. His ethical con- ceptions have filtered through the lips of preachers and the pens of poets, till they form a part of that indefinable something, the spirit of the age. The commonsense pro- test against applying the survival of the fittest doctrine to humankind, modern talk of ideals, the well-established conception of the immanence of God, have all been affected and promoted by Green's philosophy.
As an introduction to Stirling's work, it is interesting to note other signs of a reviving interest in metaphysical problems, about the time that he was laboring with Hegel. There has been shown in the very scientist's camp the search for a reasoned creed, notably in the writings of Spencer and Lewes. In O. B. Browning's autobiography it is noted that about i860, the English university gradu- ate might expect to meet most of his friends in Germany pursuing some post-graduate study. The names of the Sidgwicks, Sir George Trevelyan, J. Addington Symonds and T. H. Green, among those whom Browning met at this time, illustrate the widespread interest in German
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thought that was felt about this date. Then the poet Tennyson, who in a great measure reflects and anticipates the England of his age, both recognized and met the spiritual difficulties felt by his contemporaries, as a result of the new claims of science. Huxley himself said that Tennyson " was the only modern poet, in fact I think the only poet since the time of Lucretius, who has taken the trouble to understand the work and tendency of men of science." Yet the same Tennyson pointed the way for the shallow-thinking throng who had been carried away by evolutionary catchwords, to make a sound defence for the claims of spirit. He showed them the fallacy of explaining origins by any development theory. He saw that the formulae of both Comte and Spencer are inade- quate finally, for neither considers the end of things. His clear-sightedness on this point undoubtedly had much to do with the immediate success of his work. For as Chesterton says (in his essay on Tennyson, publ. London, 1903), ''Tennyson lived in the time of a conflict more crucial and frightful than any European struggle, the conflict between the apparent artificiality of morals and the apparent immorality of science. A ship more symbolic and menacing than any foreign three-decker hove in sight at that time — the great, gory pirate- ship of Nature, challenging all the civilisations of the world." To the men of that time "had happened the most black and hopeless catastrophe conceivable to human nature ; they had found a logical explanation of all things. To them it seemed that an Ape had suddenly risen to gigantic stature and destroyed the seven heavens." But Tennyson, living like all genius sub specie aeternitatis, was able to show his readers that the origin of species had nothing to do with the origin of being, and to restore to his age something of that sense of the divine mystery, of which science had seemed to rob it.
Two events may also be mentioned, as indicative of the reactionary distrust of English empiricism and French positivism felt in England in the sixties and seventies. The first is the formation of the Metaphysical Society in
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1869. Its members included not only Mr. Gladstone, the Archbishop of York, Cardinal Manning and James Martineau, but John Morley, Frederick Harrison, Tyn- dall and Huxley. These men and others united in dis- cussion of the ultimate problems which for a time had been discredited. Then in 1877 the first number of the Fortnightly Review was published, with the avowed object of encouraging metaphysical discussion. One of its first features was the conducting of a " Symposium " by written word, in which thinkers just as diverse as those linked above in connection with the Metaphysical Society exchanged opinions on the whence and why and whither of existence. Speculative thinking was thus invigorated and not checked by the advance of science.
James Hutchison Stirling graduated in arts at the University of Glasgow in 1838. Though he won certain distinction, while a student, in Moral Philosophy, the pro- fession he decided upon was medicine. His early literary efforts were discouraged by Carlyle, to whom he had sent them for criticism, so he followed the advice of the man whom he termed " the master," and '* in reality our begin- ning, our middle, and our end," by ^' keeping by medi- cine, and resolving faithfully to learn it, on all sides of it, and make himself in actual fact an larpU, a man that could heal disease." (Letter to Stirling from Carlyle, dated Jan. 18, 1842.) The greater part of his experience as a doctor was passed in Wales, at a place called Hir- wain, where he was surgeon to one of the great iron- works which had sprung up as a result of the Industrial Revolution. Here the strangeness of the country and people, together with the responsibility of his position, appears to have developed in him early a poise and a strength which are unusual in so young a man. He recorded some of his experiences in "The Foreign Country at Home." where the sense of continual contrast strikes the reader. He speaks of " the long ridges of hills that run like combs over bleak, bare commons ; the exquisite miniature little valleys, that nestle in the mountain-bosoms down from these ; . . . the uncouth
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language, the strange shapes of pliant forms and supple features; the gigantic iron-works, that amid blue, un- excavated mountains, thunder with the most indescribable din, and belch forth fire and smoke upon the scene ; all is novel, strange, and unexampled, . . . for grandeur and for squalor, for beauty and for ugliness, for importance and for meanness, for interestingness and uninteresting- ness, it is unsurpassed in the kingdom." (Quoted in *' James Hutchison Stirling, His Life and Work," p. 69.) Stirling speaks also of the fiery nature of the Welsh people, in his description of the riots which took place about the time of his coming to Hirwain. He pictures " thousands of motley savages," " with inflamed faces that promise perdition to the whole universe," and speaks of " the scummy river of the mob," as roaring, " hoarse in Welsh." That his ministering to these people taught him much, is evident both from the composition men- tioned above, and from "The Common Sense of Cholera," which was written two or three years after he left Wales altogether. A rather lengthy extract from the Cholera pamphlet is given below, as it indicates clearly the line of thought along which his mind had been running from his youth.
" It has come out of late, however, and there are certain statistics to prove, that not the animal and sensual conditions only, but also the moral and intellectual are necessary to the procurement of health and the certi- oration of longevity. Our model man, therefore, shall know that skin, stomach, lung, that nerve, muscle, sense alone suffice not, but, to the magic circle which should round existence, the heart, the mind, the soul, are necessary. For the heart, then, he shall find the aliment of the affections. . . . Neither shall the due aliment, the due vital conditions of the mind be wanting. He shall search, and think, and speculate; for the heavens are questions to him, and the earth and man. He shall widen and illuminate his intellect by the knowledge of his times. He shall purify and fortify the God within him by the study and imitation of the wise, and good, and great,
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who have gone before him. He shall be religious too: for as affection to the heart, and its own exertion to the mind, so to the soul, which is the inmost entity, the depth of depths, religion— religion which is the sum of all, the flower, the crowning, ultimate, and essential fruit, to which the rest are but as root, and stem, and branches. . . . He shall have made plain to himself the probation- ary— and even, perhaps, the pictorial — condition of this world, the certainty of a God, the necessity of a future existence, and, thus inspirited and inspired, his whole life shall he a peaceful evolution of duty. He may have fed upon the scepticism of his times, hut he shall have healthily assimilated it. He shall have recognized the thinness of its negation, the pretension of its pedantry, the insufficiency of its material hypotheses; and the great mystic, spiritual truths shall shine out to him, even as to them of old, undimmed, unveiled, unremoved hy any of them." (Quoted in " James Hutchison Stirling, His Life and Work," pp. 99, 100.)
The turning point in Stirling's life, from the point of view of our subject, was his succeeding to the patrimony which he regarded as sufficient to retire upon. In the summer of 1851 he resigned his position as surgeon and went with his wife to the Continent, with the immediate object of learning the French and German languages. He had already achieved certain literary success, in that some sketches sent from Wales were accepted by Douglas Jerrold for the Shilling Magazine; but he now deter- mined to devote his whole time to intellectual pursuits. He lived for five years in France, and then in 1856 went to Heidelberg, where he met with what might be called his fafe. Hegel's name had lingered in his mind from some casual sight of it in an English Review, but it was impressed with fresh force upon his brain by hearing it again, soon after his first acquaintance with German. " The special magic lay for me in this that, supping with two students of German before I was in German as deep as they, I heard this Hegel talked of with awe as, by universal repute, the deepest of all philosophers, but as
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equally also the darkest. The one had been asked to translate bits of him for the Press; and the other had come to the conclusion that there was something beyond usual remarkable in him: it was understood that he had not only completed philosophy ; but, above all, reconciled to philosophy Christianity itself. That struck/' (Quoted in " James Hutchison Stirling, His Life and Work," p. 115.) Stirling's curiosity about Hegel led him first to his own German teacher. " Other writers," the latter replied, " may be this, may be that ; but Hegel ! — one has to stop! and think! and think !— Hegel ! Ach, Gott!" From all others, scholars, historians and commentators, Stirling seems to have met with the same answer to his inquiries. So he set himself with new vigor to master the German language, that he might begin a systematic study of German philosophy. He saw that Hegel could only be understood in his connection with previous thinkers, and the first master- thinker of the time he took to be Kant. Subsequent English criticism bears him out in this conclusion, which he made clear to his country- men nine years later. Of the period before the publica- tion of the " Secret," he wrote in a letter to Mill as fol- lows : " From 1856 to 1865, I was most laboriously — • rather with positive agony, indeed, and often for twelve hours a day — occupied with those German books that were not yet understood in England, and yet that, nega- tively or affirmatively, required to be understood before an advance was possible for us." How far Stirling suc- ceeded in making them understood we shall hope to indicate in the sequel.
The movement of German philosophy from Kant to Hegel appeared to Stirling analogous to the Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, group in Greek history. The Aufklarung or Enlightenment, by the setting up of private judgment, had issued in infidelity, somewhat in the same way as the Sophistic teaching had resulted in scepticism. Similarly Kant and Hegel endeavored to supply the principles which were so much needed, as their great Greek predecessors had done in the olden time. The principle
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on which Hegel chiefly insisted was the exist- ence of the universal — as against the particular and individual which the Enlightenment had alone recognized. *' The principle must not be Subjective Will, but Objective Will; not your will or my will or his will, and yet your will and my will and his will — Universal Will — Reason! Individual will is self-will or caprice; and that is precisely the one Evil, or the evil One — the Bad. And is it to be thought that Police alone will ever suffice for the correction of the single will into the universal will — for the extirpation of the Bad?" (Introd. to " Secret of Hegel," p. 54.)
Stirling pointed out the relation which he thought Hegel bore to Kant, in the first part of the Secret, i.e. " the Struggle." He said that Kant's Apperception was equivalent to Hegel's Idea (''Secret of Hegel," p. 98). Kant had represented the object as " a concretion of Apperception through its forms of space and time and the categories," and had regarded empirical matter as but the ''contingent other" of apperception. The universe for Kant was the sum of apperception and its empirical other. Hegel then criticized Kant, for making apperception merely individual and not universal. To Kant's view, " What is, is my Sensation, in my Space and Time, in my Categories, and in my Ego," Hegel seemed to object, " But each Ego as Ego is identical with my Ego. What substantially is then, what necessarily and universally is, — what apart from all consideration of particular Subjects or Egos, objectively is, is — Sensation in the net of Space and Time ganglionised into the Cate- gories. All is ideal then; but this ideal element (the common element that remains to every subject on elim- ination of the individual subject) can only be named an objective one." In this objective element, Hegel said that the sensuous was but a copy or externalization of the intellectual part, so the intellectual contained all that its copy or other was. Hence an examination of the cate- gories would lead to reality, or " to know all the cate- gories would be to know all the thoughts that made, that
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are, the universe. That would be to know God." Hegel then started from Kant's deduction of the categories, and tried to improve. He showed that Kant took for granted an empirical content, in which was recognized an un- known something, a thing-in-itself. But this thing-in- itself is an abstraction from thought, and the creation of thought. Thought is the only reality, and " the universe, in fact, is but matter modelled on thought." ("The Secret of Hegel," p. iii.) In the world of man and nature we have simply to do with the thought of God — for " we cannot suppose God making the world like a mason. It is sufficient that God think the world. But we have thus access to the thought of God — the mind of God. Then our own thought — as thought — is analogous. So the process of generalisation is to study thought in the form of a universal." (''The Secret of Hegel," p. 54.) The latter study Hegel undertook in his '' Logik," which was the chief subject of Stirling's struggle and the work which he translated in the Secret. With reference to it, Stirling says that " Scientific Logic is a science of the necessary and universal rules of thought, which can and must be known a priori, independently of the natural exercise of understanding and reason in concreto, although they can first of all be discovered only by means of the observation of said natural exercise." StirHng thought the great excellence of Hegel's method to be, that it laid undue emphasis neither on the subject or objects of thought. ** Suppose thought," he wrote, " in all cases to be perceptive thought, thought where the sub- ject thinking and the object thought are identical — identical in difference if you like, even as the one side and the other side of this sheet of paper are identical in difference — then we come tolerably close to Hegel's standpoint." (''The Secret of Hegel," p. 56.)
Before attempting to master Hegel's exposition of the evolution of thought, Stirling had to face the problem of the genesis of matter. The light he drew from Hegel on the question, is seen in the following extracts. The first is from the early part of the " Struggle," where he has
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been led to the conclusion that " thought is the All, and as the All it is the prius." He writes that God is obviously thought ; or God is Spirit, and the life of Spirit is thought. He continues, "Creation then is thought also; it is the thought of God. God's thought of the Creation is evidently the prius of the Creation ; but with God to think must be to create, for he can require no wood-carpentry or stone-masonry for his purpose : or even should we suppose him to use such, they must represent thought, and be disposed on thought. — But it is pleonastic to assume stone-masonry and wood-carpentry as independent self- substantial entities, out of and other than thought. Let us say rather that thought is perceiving thought, thought is a perceptive thought, or the understanding is a percep- tive understanding. So Kant conceived the understand- ing of God. Our perception he conceived to be derivative and sensuous (intuitus derivativus) ; while that of God appeared to him necessarily original and intellectual (intuitus originarius). Now the force of this is that the perception of God makes its objects ; (Creation and per- ception, with the understanding of the same, are but a one act in God. Man, Kant conceived, possessed no such direct perception, but only a perception indirect through media of sense, which media, adding elements of their own, separated us for ever from the thing-ih-itself (or things-in-themselves), at the very moment that they revealed it (them)."
Then towards the conclusion of the " Struggle," Stirling answered the objections of those who found the idea of a Beginning incomprehensible. " People say," he writes, that ** there cannot anything begin, neither so far as it is, nor so far as it is not: for so far as it is, it does not just begin ; and so far as it is not, neither does it begin. Should the world or anything else be supposed to have begun, it must have begun in nothing. But nothing is no beginning, or there is no beginning in nothing: for a beginning includes in it a being: but nothing contains no being. Nothing is only nothing. In a ground, cause, etc., when the nothing is so determined or
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defined, an affirmation, being, is contained. For the same reason, there cannot anything cease. For in that case being would require to contain nothing. But being is only being, not the contrary of itself." Stirling replied, in the language of Hegel, that Nothing was brought here against Becoming (viz., beginning and ending), but at the same time there was an assertoric denial of, together with an ascription of truth to. Being and Nothing, each in division from the other. Yet this dialectic was more consistent than reflective conception. To the latter, that Being and Nothing are only in separation, passes for perfect truth. But on the contrary, it holds beginning and ending as equally true characterizations ; it assumes de facto the undividedness of Being and Nothing.
Stirling came finally to the Hegelian conception that Being and Nothing, as pure abstractions, are the same. He put aside the criticism of popular talk, that " it makes a real difference in my state of means, whether I merely think $ioo or possess that sum." Hegel would have answered that $ioo has determinate existence, and therefore this illustration affords no proof. But even further, he held that man in his moral nature should be able to contemplate all evanescent things as valueless, as nothing. Hegel said that Kant's criticism of the onto- logical proof of a God is founded on the same error as the above popular objection. '' It is the Definition of Finite Things, that in them notion and being are different, notion and reality, soul and body, are separable, and they themselves consequently perishable and mortal: the abstract definition of God, on the other hand, is just this — that his Notion and his Being are unseparated and inseparable. The true criticism of the Categories and of Reason is exactly this — to give thought an understanding of this difference, and to prevent it from applying to God the distinguishing characters and relations of the Finite." C Secret of Hegel," p. 226.)
Stirling described the progress of the Logic as " the demonstration of God as he is in his eternal essence before the creation of nature and a single finite spirit."
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Of this whole process he said that the one secret was " the secerning of the One's determination out of the One — in the end, indeed, to restore it again, leaving but the Absolute Spirit and his eternal and infinite life." " The whole advance of civilisation, the whole progress of society, the whole life of thought itself, can be shown to depend on, and consist of, nothing but this onwards and onwards of settlement after settlement, expression after expression, determination after determination, position after position; in which each new apparent not only replaces but implies its predecessor and all its predeces- sors. There is but a single life in the universe, and that from the bubble on the beach to the sun in the centre, or from this dead sun itself to the Spirit that lives, is a per- petual setting." " The universe is but the glory of God ; existence but the sport, the play of himself with him- self." (" The Secret of Hegel," p. 469.)
In his translation of the " Logik," Stirling presents a thoroughgoing. system of equivalents for the peculiar Hegelian terminology. Seyn, Nichts, Wesen, Seyn-an- Sich, Seyn-fur-sich, and all the rest are there — in their queer, abrupt English dress. Stirling starts with Hegel at " Seyn und Nichts " ('^ Secret," p. 57). The process of Being passing into Nothing is Becoming. Stirling gives as the formal definition of Origin, that " Being is seen to beingate Nothing " ; and of Decease, that " Nothing is seen to nothingate Being." ("The Secret of Hegel," p. 437.) Both Origin and Decease belong to the sphere of Becoming — and Being and Nothing blent are " beent distinction, Daseyn, Entity or aughtness, sublunariness, mortal state." Expressed in another way. Becoming the process, lying between Origin and Decease, is " sisted into Become/' But what has become is determinate, or it con- tains at once Reality and Negation, the union of which is Something. The latter is Stirling's " concrete singu- lar," the individual existent thing that is yet a thought- universal.
Stirling continues his analysis of this Something. **The Something, in its self-reference, excludes the
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manifold or variety. This variety, then, is an other to the original unity — and thus in its very notion Something of itself alters itself, others itself. Something is the negation of its own determinateness, which latter is to it relatively other." " Physical Nature is the other of Spirit; its nature, then is a mere relativity in which, not an inherent quality, hut a mere outer relation is expressed. Spirit is the true Something, and Nature is what it is only as opposed to Spirit. The quality of Nature then, isolated and viewed apart, is just that it is the other as other — is that which exists externally to its own self (in space, time, etc.)." ** What a thing is for other belongs to its In-Itself, to its genuine intrinsic worth. This considera- tion points to the true nature of the Kantian and common Thing-in-itself. To attempt to predicate what a thing-in- itself is, at the same time that all predicates (Being for other) are to be excluded from it, is simply the self- stultification of utter thoughtlessness." (" Secret of Hegel," p. 438) . Stirling, with Hegel, seemed to define the thing-in-itself as its sollen, its devoir, its is-to-be. ( *' Secret of Hegel," pp. 259 and 400.) The object has a meaning, a purpose, i.e. what it shall achieve in its relation with other objects. Man's sollen or devoir or is-to-be is thought. But Vernunft or Reason means '* what is taken together and trans," which again is ''the concrete All and the resuming One, or simply the living Totality that is." In this light then, '' Man is the thinking totality of all that is, or of the Universe." (" Secret of Hegel," p. 400.)
Stirling gives one rather technical summary of the Logik which may be quoted. {'' Secret of Hegel," p. 501.) " In the Concrete we see always a Becoming — it never is. But in spite of the Becoming, there is a Become, a Here-Being, There-Being, mortal state. This has Reality; also Negation; it is so Something. As its Reality against its Negation, it is Something in itself; as its Negation against its Reality, it is Something for other. Something for other identified with what it is in itself is Qualifica- tion. But Qualification is Talification, and both coalesce
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in Limit. In its Limit, Something is ended and endahle; i.e. it is Finite. But its end, the Urns of .the finite, is the Infinite; and that is the One into which all variety is reflected." The true Infinite, Hegel said, was by and for itself, i.e. Being for self. The end of all things then, both of Nature and Man, is the evolution of Self- Consciousness — the working out of Divine Thought.
From the time of his first German studies to the end of his life, Stirling found Hegel and the ante-Hegelians (this was the light in which the four great German philosophers appeared to him) all-sufficing and all-com- pelling. Had he, and not Edward Caird, won the chair of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow in 1866, academic work might have changed the bias of his mind. But his last philosophical work like his first was set on Hegel and Hegelian ideas. In "What is Thought?" (1900), he writes, " To philosophize through the Ego is not to pre- sume to measure the infinitude of God. . . ."
'* There can no Supreme Being be but that must say to Himself / : I am that I am.
" Man again, it is said, is made * after the likeness ' of God : * a man is the image and glory of God.'
" It is the very heart of the Christian Religion that the Infinite God, become Finite, is a Man.
" And man is 7. Even by the privilege of having been made like unto God, Man is /.
" It is that that he has of God in him. . . .
** Hegel lived — indeed we may say it — in God and to God.
" I am that I am — I am that I am — I am that I am.
" That to Hegel was all."
Of Stirling's intermediate works the most important were his " Analysis of Sir W. Hamilton " (published 1865), the translation and annotations of Schwegler's ** History of Philosophy " (published 1867), " As Regards Protoplasm " (delivered as a lecture and then published in 1869), "Text-book to Kant" (published in 1881), and " Darwinianism " (published 1894). The first, third and
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fifth of these may be grouped together, as affording sub- jects for Stirling's attack.
Stirling regarded Hamilton as a pseudo-philosopher. The viewpoint of his " Analysis " is well-illustrated in the " Secret" (p. 436), where the question of subjective idealism is being discussed. " To remove one finity, that of the antithesis of subject and object, does not remove the other innumerable unreconciled or unresolved finities which attach still to the matter (or object), whatever be its true relation of identity at bottom to the form (or subject). The reader may here see the greater thinker and the lesser. To Hegel the relation of subject and object is — as regards the true business in hand — but the veriest particle; to Sir William Hamilton this relation is the whole, totum et rotundum, and he fills the whole world with clamor about the Cosmothetic Idealist, the Presentative Realist, etc., as if the mode in which the outward is regarded as connected with the inward alone constituted Philosophy, and as if the distinguishing with Greek predicates of all such modes, actual or possible, were Philosophising ! The nature of the necessity which Hegel sees is indicated here; he would begin with the acknowledged first finity, and proceeding resolvingly through the whole series, at length wind all up together into the one Infinite, the Absolute Spirit. What a vast difference there lies between this gigantic enterprise and the single question. Is the object I, or is it another than IF or rather how shall we name in Greek the different answers?"
In "As Regards Protoplasm," Stirling combated Huxley on his own physiological ground. Huxley had maintained " that there is one kind of matter common to all living beings," named by him Protoplasm, and that " all vital and intellectual functions are the properties of the molecular disposition and changes of the protoplasm of which the various animals and vegetables consist." Stirling pointed out that the community which Huxley wished to establish between higher and lower forms of life, by his magic naming of Protoplasm, was only
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imaginary. For "there is nerve-protoplasm, muscle- protoplasm, bone-protoplasm, and protoplasm of all the other tissues, no one of which but produces its own kind, and is uninter change able with the rest." Further, " Each seed feeds its own kind. The protoplasm of the gnat will no more grow into the fly than it will grow into an elephant. ... In short, it is quite evident that the word modification, if it would conceal, is powerless to withdraw, the difference; which difference, moreover, is one of kind and not of degree." As regards the vital and intellectual functions, Stirling showed that, though these co-exist with protoplasm, they are not explained by protoplasm. " Life, then, is no affair of chemical and physical structure, and must find its explanation in some- thing else. . . . Water, in fact, when formed from hydrogen and oxygen, is, in a certain way, and in relation to them, no new product; it has still, like them, only chemical and physical qualities; it is still, as they are, inorganic. So far as kind of power is concerned, they are still on the same level. But not so protoplasm, where, with preservation of the chemical and physical likeness, there is the addition of the unlikeness of life, of organization, and of ideas. . . . it is wof mere molecular complication that we have any longer before us, and the qualities of the derivative are essentially and absolutely different from the qualities of the primitive. ... As the differences of ice and steam from water lay not in the hydrogen and oxygen, but in the heat, so the differ- ence of living from dead protoplasm lies not in the carbon, the hydrogen, the oxygen, and the nitrogen, but in the vital organization."
Stirling's criticism of Darwin need not be repeated here, as it is identical with the viewpoint of most educated people to-day, on the question of natural origins. It is interesting to note that Kelvin was among the thinkers who joined with Stirling in pronouncing Darwin's leading theory unscientific. " Evolution," he declared, " would not in the least degree explain the great mystery of nature and creation. If all things originated in a
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single germ, then that germ contained in it all the marvels of creation — physical, intellectual, and spiritual — to be afterwards developed. It was impossible that atoms of dead matter should come together so as to make life." C Life of Lord Kelvin," by S. P. Thompson.)
The view of Kant developed in the " Text Book," has already been indicated in connection with Stirling's work on Hegel. His Schwegler is notable chiefly for its anno- tations. Commenting on the Sophists, Stirling insisted at length on the distinction between subjectivity and objectivity. Here he is simply defending once more the universal against the particular, the existence of objective truth as against mere subjective seeming. He held that men should rid themselves of all intellectual bias and subjective opinion, and at the same time subordinate their individual feelings and self-will to objective Will — the Universal.
The final value of Stirling's work is difficult to estimate. He has one undisputed glory, and that is the triumph of the pioneer. How much Green and other English Hegelians owe to him it is impossible to tell. But of his originality, his truth to fact, his power — how are we to judge? Were Stirling asked, he would simply answer, " I have absorbed Hegel, and I will show the way for others to do the same." Hegel's own countrymen seemed to confirm such a modest statement, when they elected him Foreign Member of the Philosophical Society of Berlin. It would appear then that Stirling's worth as a thinker really rests upon Hegel's claims to greatness. Those who admire Hegel read Stirling — taking pleasure or umbrage doubtless at his picturesque, jerky, eloquent style, but concentrating nevertheless on Hegelian ideas and the Hegelian system. The substance of the latter has already been given, with the stamp of Stirling's fervent faith in it as an explanation of the universe, man and God. All one can say is that it is magnificent — a philosophy that is also a creed, a reasoning that is yet concrete life. Someone has noted that in children who later developed genius, there has been seen the disposition to try to grasp
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the infinite, to strive to imagine endless time, boundless space — to catch at eternal being. Here is a man with the child-genius mind — no mystic, perfectly alive to the reality and beauty of Nature — yet reaching into a vaster world where the real things of this one drop away. Religion gives the common man this vision — for Hegel and his followers it is always present, both to mind and heart.
Thomas Hill Green was born in 1836, sixteen years later than Stirling, and he died in 1882, seventeen years earlier. In spite of.his short life his name is well known, for he was the founder of the so-called Neo-Hegelian school. He was educated at Rugby and Oxford, and spent the greater part of his life in the latter place, being elected fellow at Balliol in 1862, lay tutor in 1867, and Whyte professor of moral philosophy in the university in 1878. Though reserved in temperament he exerted a great influence over the minds of those with whom he came in contact, and he differed from the majority of academic thinkers in his practical interest in, and conduct of, public affairs. He served on the municipal council of Oxford for a number of years, and did excellent work on the national committee in connection with secondary education. His principal work, the " Prolegomena to Ethics," was published after his death, under the editor- ship of Professor Nettleship (1883). But the ideas con- tained in it had already been imparted to the students of the previous decade at least, and partly indicated to the reading public in his *' Introduction to Hume's Treatise on Human Nature" (1874).
Green's great interest seems to have been the analysis of human motives and the establishment of moral stand- ards. Convinced of the inadequacy of the Utilitarian system, he was led to attack its psychological basis. This was readily traced to Hume. It was with a criticism of Hume then that Green commenced his work. Hume had pictured the mind as *'the passive receptacle of natural impressions." To this Green opposed an exposition of Kant's statement that ** the understanding makes nature.'*
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Green went on to a characteristic argument for the free and purposive character of the intellect. In the Prolego- mena he wrote, " Our conclusion must be that there is really a single subject or agent, which desires in all the desires of a man, and thinks in all his thoughts, but that the action of this subject as thinking — thinking specu- latively or understanding, as well as thinking practically — is involved in all its desires, and that its action as desiring is involved in all its thoughts." (" Prolegomena," 5th ed., p. 154.) Green insists then upon the reality of a unified, active principle in man. Human experience is distin- guished by " the unity of self-consciousness." This self- consciousness is distinct from that other aspect of experi- ence which Green describes as " an order of events in time, consisting in modifications of our sensibility." (" Prolegomena," p. 63.) He considers that the errors of empirical thinkers, from Hume down to Spencer and Lewes, are due to their confounding such an order of sensible modifications with the consciousness of that order. Against Lewes he says that the unity of con- sciousness is alike the condition, of a " succession of neural tremors," and of " a differentiation of feeling." Of Spencer's psychoplasm he remarks that it cannot con- stitute experience, for in the first place it is only part of the conditions for the sequence of impressions, and secondly, if it be taken as the medium in which the cosmos arises, it is other than the neural processes men- tioned as necessary to experience.
Human consciousness exhibits two parallel activities, the one yielding nature and the sciences of nature, the other yielding the moral life. To express it otherwise, man has a speculative reason and a practical reason. Green's advance upon Kant would seem to lie first in his relating of these two activities. Where Kant had simply asserted the existence of the two functions of reason, and made a separate description and analysis of their working. Green points out the common principle under- lying them. Man as a thinking being and as a moral agent is exercising the same power, i.e., that of
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self-determination. The object may be presented apart from human volition. But it is the self-conscious principle in man which constitutes the object for him, and determines the experience or action consequent upon the presentation of that object.
Green dissents then from the notion which vitiates the theory of knowledge held by Locke and his school. That is the assumption of " an object affecting the senses " and ** a mind " as independent existences, each contributing so much to knowledge (the how much being settled according to the bias of the individual thinker). To the influence of this notion Green attributes much of Kant's inconsistency. Logically, Kant's object would have consisted, as Green's did, in a complex of relations. Without the perceiving subject there could be no relation. Nature is simply a " system of sensible events or objects as inter-related." (Works, 2nd edit.. Vol. II, p. 92.) The mistake should not be made of considering the object-matter of knowledge as independent of knowledge. " The nature, to which the operations of intelligence are confined, is itself the work of intelligence, and the insoluble problems which nature presents to the under- standing are the understanding's own making. ... It is through the holding together by intelligence of times, the addition of spaces, that there arise the infinite series of time and space which seem to baffle intelligence." (Works, 2nd edit.. Vol. II, p. 89.) It is thus by a law of its own nature that reason seeks to impress its own unity upon the manifold of experience. '' The same self- consciousness which arrests successive sensations as facts to be attended to finds itself baffled and thwarted so long as the facts remain an unconnected manifold. That it should bring them into relation to each other is the con- dition of its finding itself at home in them, of its making them its own." (" Prolegomena," p. 149.) Thought is im- pelled from narrow to broader views of related objects, approaching ever nearer to complete consciousness of the cosmos. Though prevented from attaining this goal by the conditions under which the manifold is presented
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to consciousness, the individual should not fall into scepticism. For consciousness is the only reality, and man, by every exercise of his thought, continually gains a clearer consciousness, — of self, and of the world by relation to which he realizes his own personality. Perfect knowledge is unattainable for the finite man ; but it is an ideal towards which he is impelled by his character as a conscious being.
It is through the exercise of the speculative reason that the object is constituted in its relations to the con- scious self. So the practical reason, by imposing upon natural wants the character of self-consciousness, changes them from animal appetites into human desires. Green defines desire as consciousness of a wanted object, or consciousness of certain self-satisfaction to be attained. The self-conscious principle, which is implied in the presentation of self-satisfaction as an object, is not a natural event or series of natural events. For first, desire for an object always precedes and conditions the fulfil- ment of that object. Further, the idea of self-satisfaction varies with the character of the desiring subject. Thus Green describes the moral life as evolved from primitive animal wants. When man takes these up into his personal consciousness, affects and is affected by them, there supervenes upon mere natural events a new experience which is not natural, or knowable as such. The emphasis here laid upon the part which self-consciousness plays in the moral life, as well as in the acquisition of knowledge, is taken by Green directly from German idealism. But the development of personality which he traces from this principle, is in greater accordance with the facts than the account given by Kant. For Green does not discredit feeling as an element in the moral life. Rather he shows that in our feelings we think, and from vicious as well as from virtuous action may the working of reason as con- stitutive of motive be proved.
Green's account of the development of moral character in man resembles that of Spencer, in its historical aspect. He finds the satisfaction of immediate animal wants in
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savage races, being replaced by the desire for and attain- ment of a more permanent and lasting good. This primi- tive exercise of reason is followed by a desired extension of the range to which that good is to be extended. From the early identification of the good of the family with that of the self, Green traces the advance to an idea of common good which shall include all mankind. Through- out his argument, Green differs from his opponents in his derivation of the moral motive. Human desire is for an object that shall satisfy the self, and not for pleasure. So moral motive aims at human perfection — the free exercise of all the capacities with which man has been endowed; not simply at the prolongation of animal life, or the attainment of a sum of pleasures. Green looks to ethics for an increasing of the moral incentive — an uplift- ing of the moral ideal, rather than to the setting up of a clear criterion by which the immediate effects of an action are to be judged. He condemns Utilitarianism for the pleasure-pain standard which it offers, but praises it for its emphasis upon the duty of working for others. " Every one to count for one, and no one for more than one." From the standpoint of state reform, this motto has been valuable. From the individual standpoint, it forms a healthy corrective to the pleasure-seeking ideal. Green concedes that Utilitarianism may be a working creed for the man who by nature or training has attained culture, self-control and a broad unselfishness. But for humanity. Utilitarian morality is inadequate. It justifies the voluptuary and discredits self-sacrifice. Yet its noblest leaders repudiate their own system by their unselfish labor for social reform.
Green's own moral ideal, i.e., human perfection, has been criticized for its indefiniteness. His answer is an appeal to history. The Greek nation worked out a clear and lofty conception of man's destiny, and the Founder of Christianity widened its scope by substituting mankind for the members of an aristocratic state. Everywhere, increasing clearness of man's perfect end is won by the development of institutions, and reflection upon those
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institutions and the habits they maintain. Green antici- pates the objection as to the incompatibility of classic and Christian ideals. He says that the Christian who works for the Universal Kingdom attains a fulness of spiritual life, which quite compensates for the sacrifice of certain activities which the members of a Greek state enjoyed. Further, the body of mankind whom he benefits attain a greater self-realization through his efforts, and so the promotion of the common good is achieved.
The moral ideal which Green set forth in his teaching, he followed closely in his practice. With all his appre- ciation of the value of institutions, he was a political radical. He thought that in history, " the result being developed is the reality." (Works, 2nd edit., Vol. HI, p. 225.) So he urged continual striving towards the attainment of perfection for his fellow-countrymen and for mankind. The progress that has been made should not be under-valued. Political action should not be sudden or ill-considered. But the constant aim of the leaders of the nation should be, the removal of those obstructions which prevent the exercise of physical, mental and spiritual activity on the part of the citizens. Green was keenly interested then in all questions con- nected with education, with the health and general wel- fare of the lower classes, with the exercise of government control over land-ownership. But he dissented from socialistic ideas — from that attitude which emphasized the rights, rather than the duties, of man. He thought that the principle of laissez-faire should be followed, unless state intervention was needed to set men free to make the most and the best of themselves. His ideal for the people for whom he worked was never happiness, but individual character. Even were disease and ignor- ance utterly swept away, there would still be the need of the moral initiative, the " divine discontent " which should urge the individual to a more complete and intense Hfe. This the political reformer can never give. It comes by revelation, — from Nature, from art, from other person- alities who are higher in the scale of self-realization, from
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the Eternal Consciousness Who unites all spirits in Himself.
The most general accusation brought against Green is that he is a mystic. If this charge means the recog- nition of the invisible, though not less real, things in life, then it is well-founded. Green maintains with regard to Nature that it is no inert, Hfeless body of matter, but a manifestation of real Being. " The real world is essen- tially a spiritual world, which forms one inter-related whole because related throughout to a single subject." (Works, 2nd edit., Vol. Ill, p. 145.) The part played by Nature in poetic and religious experience would be easily accounted for by Green. The cosmos only has meaning when in relation to the conscious self. Green's specu- lative and practical reason, moreover, are both pictured as the activity of a spiritual entity. Man is distinguished from the animals and the inanimate creation by his quality of self-consciousness. He differentiates himself from Nature, and actively moulds his experience according to a definite end. His capacity for self-determination and self-realization is doubtless a hidden, mysterious thing, not to be accounted for as a natural phenomenon ; but it is none the less real.
The most difficult point in Green's system for the critic is the part assigned by him to the Divine Reality, God, the Eternal Consciousness. God's working may be seen in Nature's spiritual principle. The intellectual activity and the moral strivings of man are signs of His Presence. Also the vague ideal of perfection towards which human effort moves, implies a clear and perfect realization of all good in the Eternal Consciousness. These quasi-Pantheistic views are undoubtedly difficult to reconcile with Green's valuable assertion of the rights of personality. It may be asked what account can be given of the will to do evil. There is the question of the indi- vidual, who by deliberate vice and self-deterioration, seems to cut himself off from ''that far-off divine event to which the whole creation moves." There is the seeming anni- hilation of all virtue, if the good is simply performed
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on the initiative of the All- Pervading Consciousness. Green may have felt these difficulties insoluble, but it is not hard to imagine his practical answer to such puzzles. He would have said that all we have to do in this life is to live by the light we are given, and ever seek to make that light clearer and stronger, for ourselves and for others, by using its direction. Such an answer does not denote pessimism, for Green looks to a boundless time during which the light shall grow ever brighter and those who live by it ever more numerous.
A comment by Green on Hegel indicates the influence which, with early Christian teaching, must have deter- mined his religious views. " That there is one spiritual self-conscious being, of which all that is real is the activity or expression, that we are related to this spiritual being, not merely as parts of the world which is its expression, but as partakers in some inchoate measure of the self-consciousness through which it at once con- stitutes and distinguishes itself from that world; that this participation is the source of morality and religion; this we take to be the vital truth which Hegel had to teach." (Works, 2nd edit., Vol. HI, p. 146.) And this was the truth which Green together with Hutchison Stirling imparted to the English people.
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CHAPTER X
THE CAIRDS, BRADI.EY AND BOSANQUET
Dean Stanley said that the greatest single sermon of the nineteenth century was one preached before Queen Victoria at Crathie, Scotland, in 1855. The subject of this sermon was " The Religion of Common Life," and the preacher John Caird. The latter was a young Scot of the age of thirty-five, who had graduated from Glasgow and had since devoted himself to parish work. Doubtless his wide reading at the University had added to his power, but he possessed a moral force and virile eloquence that made him felt as a man and a "minister to jmen, rather than as a scholar. In 1858, a volume of his sermons was published ; in i860, he took his D.D. degree from Glasgow. Two years later he accepted the appoint- ment of Professor of Divinity at Glasgow, and in 1873, he became Principal of that University. He is chiefly known to students of literature by two works — the *' Introduction to a Philosophy of Religion " (lectures delivered in 1878-1879, and published in 1880), and his exposition of " Spinoza " (published in 1888). There is also a volume entitled " Fundamental Ideas of Christi- anity," which was published posthumously in iqcx) with a memoir by Edward Caird.
The great interest for our subject of John Caird's life and work, is that here again is seen an adherent of Hegel. Like Green he was predisposed by religious tradition and training to a spiritual conception of the world, and he turned the Hegelian philosophy to a practical use in his pulpit-presentment of Christianity. The first preacher in Scotland thus to connect and reconcile philosophy and theology was Thomas Chalmers (b. 1780-d. 1847), who
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had paved the way for Caird by turning public distrust of philosophy into a more open-minded mood. Caird regarded religion as the consummation of philosophy, and philosophy as the handmaid of religion. He thought that Hegel was only translating the Christian faith into philosophical terms, when he worked out his Absolute Idealism. He maintained that as human consciousness is the key to ex- perience, so the Divine Consciousness is the central fact of the mental and physical world. Caird's preaching was thus inspired by a new confidence in the truths of revela- tion, as against the assaults of science and criticism which had begun to be made against orthodoxy in his day. For half a century he exerted a profound influence, first through his sermons and afterwards in a more academic way.
Dr. Caird's chief philosophical work follows out the line of historical study which Hutchison Stirling had begun. An English exposition of Hegel naturally led to a study of earlier thinkers, and a search for the origin and genesis of Hegel's ideas. The " Spinoza " is thus an attempt to bring out the Hegelianism latent in its subject. It is interesting to examine Caird's conclusions, and to see how closely they resemble remarks of Stirling along a similar line. Caird says on page 295 : " The relation of imagination to reason is simply the relation, in modem language, of consciousness to self-consciousness." " It is only by the presentation to itself of an .external world, i.e. of a world conceived under the forms of externality — that mind or intelligence can, by the relating or reclaiming of that world to itself, become conscious of its own latent content. Thought, in other words, is not a resting identity, but a process, a life, of which the very essence is ceaseless activity, or movement from unity to differ- ence, and from difference to unity." Of Spinoza's system, more particularly, Caird brings out two aspects. ** At the outset, in one word, we seem to have a panthe- istic unity in which nature and man, all the manifold existences of the finite world, are swallowed up; at the close, an infinite self-conscious mind, in which all finite
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thought and being find their reality and expression." Caird, of course, thinks the latter the truer Spinozism, which is fulfilled in Hegel.
Two or three quotations from the end of the " Spinoza " are particularly significant — the first as show- ing Caird's interpretation of the Christian doctrine of self-sacrifice, and all as illustrating his connection with the Neo-Hegelian School. " We can discern in his (i.e. Spinoza's) teaching an approximation to the idea of a negation which is only a step to a higher affirmation — in other words, of that self-negation or self-renunciation which is the condition of self-realisation in the intellec- tual, the moral, and the religious life" (p. 30). "All philosophy must rest on the presupposition of the ultimate unity of knowing and being — on the principle, in other words, that there is, in the intelligible universe no abso- lute or irreconcilable division, no element which in its hard, irreducible independence is incapable of being embraced in the intelligible totality or system of things " (p. 309). "Without a world of objects in time and space, without other kindred intelligences, without society and history, without the ever-moving mirror of the external world, consciousness could never exist, mind could never awaken from the slumber of unconsciousness and become aware of itself. But it is also of the very nature of mind in all this endless objectivity to maintain itself. The self that thinks is never borne away from and lost to itself and its own oneness in the objects of its thought. It is the one constant in their ever-changing succession, the indivisible unity whose presence to them reclaims them from chaos. But further, it not only maintains but realizes itself in and through the objects it contemplates. They are if.? own objects. . . . Knowl- edge is a revelation, not simply of the world to the knowing mind, but of the observing mind to itself. Those unchangeable relations which we call laws of nature are nothing foreign to thought ; they are rational or intelligible relations, discoveries to the intelligence of a realm that is its own, of which in the very act of apprehending them
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it comes into possession. . . . Consciousness — through the medium of externality, realises itself or becomes self- consciousness" (p. 311).
It has been noted that the change efifected in British thought by Hegelian studies, is illustrated by the differ- ence between the 8th and 9th editions of the Encyclo- paedia Britannica. The first, which was pubHshed in 1857, contained a treatise on metaphysics by Dean Mansel, who identified his subject with psychology. The latter, published in 1883, contained an article on the same subject, which inclined to the view that, side by side with psychology and logic, there exists a science of being in general. The writer who thus reverted to the old Aristotelian field of the yLtra <f>v(nKa was Edward Caird (b. 1835-d. 1908), who passing from Glasgow went to Balliol, Oxford, as Snell Exhibitioner. In 1864, he became fellow and tutor at Merton College, and in 1866 was successful in his candidature for the professorship of moral philosophy at his Alma Mater. It is inter- esting to note that an unsuccessful candidate for that office was Hutchison StirHng, who after his defeat resolved to abandon any idea of academic work. He con- tinued his labors in the field of literature, while Edward Caird doubtless was able to formulate in lectures, the ideas which were later seen to carry on Stirling's German researches. His first published work was " The Philos- ophy of Kant" (1878), followed by a book on Hegel in 1883. His most important work is " The Critical Philos- ophy of Kant" (2 vols.), published in 1889. He has written numerous essays on literature and religion in addition to his philosophical work, the most impor- tant production of this kind being his " Evolution of Religion," (2 vols., 1893) The Gifford Lectures delivered at Glasgow in 1900-1901, and 1901-1902, have been published as '* The Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers" (2 vols.), and in 1907, the inaugural addresses which he gave during his Mastership at Balliol were published under the title of "Lay Sermons and Addresses." Though Caird's work
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on Kant is what placed his name among English phil- osophers, the last named and more popular publications have produced a more wide-spread effect. Analysis and criticism of the great German thinkers form part, it is true, of the " historic pabulum " of which Stirling spoke, — but application of German idealism to the problems of life means a step beyond. Whether that step be a for- ward or a backward one the critic of conduct alone may decide.
It has been refreshingly said that there is one more difficult modern work than Kant's Critique of Pure Reason — and that is Caird's exposition of Kant. The opening chapters are rather delusive — in pronouncing, that is, brief and keen judgment upon Kant's European predecessors and Kant's general position. Caird under- stood thoroughly the various influences that made Kant's work the consummation of eighteenth century thought, and the key to successive developments, and his com- ments in this connection are valuable. " The last word cannot be said of anything except in the light of the relation of all things to each other and to the mind that knows them, and the thought that neglects this ultimate relativity must in the long run narrow and externalise our view of anything" (Vol. I, p. 48). Caird noted, however, that the eighteenth century task of examining the parts as distinct from the whole was a necessary one in the development of mind, for the old intuitive view of the whole and the infinite had overlooked parts of the problem. The more comprehensive view of the nine- teenth century was valuable because the eighteenth century had accomplished its work. Here is a saner estimate than could be given by a critic like Coleridge, at the time of the first reaction against eighteenth cen- tury thought. At the same time credit must be given to Caird, for his nice criticism has undoubtedly helped to form our present-day opinion, with regard to pre-Kantian and Kantian systems.
It is when Caird's view contracts to a particular examination of the Critique, that the puzzle of things
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Kant said and did not say seems inextricable. Caird commences by stating in various ways the problem which Kant started to solve, and the question which he suc- ceeded in answering. First Kant tried to discover the conditions of an a priori knowledge of sensible objects which we are assumed to possess (i.e. in mathematics), in order to determine the possibiHty of a similar knowl- edge of super-sensible objects. Then instead of explain- ing the conditions of an a priori knowledge which is assumed to exist, Kant was reduced to proving that it does exist. Finally this question was abandoned, and Kant undertook to explain the possibility of knowledge or experience at all. Caird allowed that Kant's explana- tion was infinitely in advance of Locke and his followers, in showing that perception without conception is blind. But he regarded the complement of this statement as false, for that "conception without perception is empty " is a pleonasm. Caird followed Hegel in main- taining that perception is implicit conception, and that in the original unity of experience thought or consciousness is the one outstanding reality.
One of Caird's most significant criticisms of Kant is concerned with the distinction between the analytic and synthetic judgments. Kant said that analytic judgment deals with what is already determined as an idea of the mind, and so already united with the " I think " of con- sciousness, while synthetic judgment unites a certain matter of perception to self-consciousness, or a per- ceived matter not yet thought to a perceived matter already thought. Caird maintained on the contrary that all judgments are synthetic in the making, and analytic when made. He said that judgment is analytic so far as it expresses an identity, but the act of judgment develops an identity to a new difference which it at once expresses and overcomes. Caird pointed out that in the second edition of the Critique Kant practically surrendered his old dis- tinction, when he defined judgment as the action of the understanding whereby a manifold of given ideals (per- ceived or conceived) is brought under an apperception.
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Yet while seeming to see that judgment must always start from a synthesis, Kant sometimes reverted to the view of it which the formal logicians took, i.e., as the expression of the relation of mere ideas in our own minds. This view of the judgment empties it of all mean- ing, reducing it to an assertion of identity. Caird held, however, that Kant's final emphasis lay upon the defini- tion of knowledge as judgment. For judgment implies the determination of perception by conception through the agency of the imagination, which combines the per- ceived manifold into an image and at the same time schematizes the categories.
Caird was not satisfied with Kant's treatment of the " unity of apperception." To him the unity of the self was much more than a negative and abstract principle, and he had a corresponding faith in the underlying unity of human consciousness and the natural world. In this connection he writes, " Kant never fully expressed the idea of an organic unity between the elements of the intellectual life and the intelligible world, yet his great achievement is to have called the attention of philosophy to it. He had an imperfect conception of the organic unity of the intelligence, and made the return of con- sciousness upon itself merely negative." (Vol. I, p. 399.) To Caird the regress upon the unity of self-consciousness is really a progress, and the consciousness of the prin- ciple of unity seems to add something to the principle. He thought that Kant had stopped short of the proper conclusion, as a result of confusing two inquiries. In his transcendental regress he was simply explaining experience, the process of consciousness in which per- ception and conception both play a part. But he was hampered by the assumptions of psychology, which takes for granted the existence of the independent factors of mind and matter and uses sensation as its starting point. Caird regarded the latter as an impossible basis for philosophical inquiry, for sensation as such excludes the thinking self. He said that a true transcendental regress would show that common experience is more than it
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knows, for if it is simply what it thinks, it cannot belong to a conscious self (Cf. Vol. I, p. 484). Had Kant fol- lowed his own line a little further, he would have seen the necessity of recognizing that objects cannot merely be given as such. Objects only become objects for us, when the data of sense are combined by necessary laws into one context of experience, and so united with the consciousness of self (Cf. Vol. I, p. 517). Caird objected to a system which left the presentation of the manifold of sense as a mere accident ; he held that " the modal principles must be regarded as expressing the organic unity of objects with each other and the intelligence " (Vol. I, p. 602). Apart from the consciousness of objects, consciousness of self would be impossible; apart from the conscious self there would be no known world. The obvious reason for these two facts is that Nature and Man are one, and Caird concludes with Hegel that both are expressions of, and sharers in, the Divine Conscious- ness or Absolute Spirit.
Caird's work on Hegel does not add a great deal to Hutchison Stirling's interpretation, but his application of German ideas is interesting and original. The Christian doctrine of sacrifice is shown to have a philosophical counterpart, beginning with Plato and culminating in Hegel. Plato, Caird wrote, was the first to grasp the idea of a renunciation which should be not merely nega- tive and abstract. " Plato is also the main source of that idealism which is the best corrective of mysticism, the idealism which seeks not merely to get away from the temporal and finite, but to make them intelligible ; not to escape from immediate experience into an ideal world in comparison with which it is a shadow and a dream, but to find the ideal in the world of experience itself, underlying it, and giving a new meaning to all its phenomena." (Evol. of Theol., Vol. I, pp. 59, 60.) Caird thought that the Death of Christ was the perfect expres- sion of this renunciation principle, for in giving over His body to death. He set the example of " dying to live." *' He who turns that which most men receive passively
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as a fate inflicted on them by nature, into a supreme act of will, gives a kind of universal value to the individual life he thus sacrifices." (Evol. of Rehg., Vol. II, p. 192.) Here Caird made answer to the puzzle that troubled Tennyson — how often individual human effort seems cut off from fulfilment in the world-war for natural exist- ence. ** Such men as Buddha, Socrates, and Luther, whose manhood and age are the fulfilment of an idea conceived in youth, and who treat their whole life, and even it may be their death, as the day in which the moral work of art is realized, can be seen truly only when faith- fulness unto death has given as it were the last touch to their work." (Evol. of Relig., Vol. II, p. 227.)
Thus Caird would have said that side by side with the natural evolution in which the individual organism may be lost, there is a spiritual evolution. Here there is no failure or death, for the very recognition of an ideal world has an effect which lives on in others long after the human body has crumbled into dust. " 'Tis not what Man Does which exalts him, but what Man Would Do." And further, Caird said, the spiritual world is not a static world any more than the natural one. Man's powers are growing powers, and if he looks to his end and the promise of his endowment he is in the 'way of developing all that is in him. -The finite and natural should not be despised as evil, for they may become the matter in which the infinite and spiritual take shape. Evil for the Chris- tian lies in the fact, that the natural in man often refuses to acknowledge the spiritual as its presupposition and limit. Evil for the HegeHan means the abstraction and isolation of either subject or object from concrete reality.
A word may be said of Caird's Lay Sermons, for these link his work closely with the Green tradition at Oxford, and illustrate his connection with Bradley, whose ethical teaching is referred to below. Caird's philo- sophical and religious idealism made him an optimist, without blinding him to the incompleteness and occasional tragedy of human life. He felt that the greatest need and the greatest work of our modern English thought was
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the development of faith — a faith reasonable and prac- tical, which means that, "whatever labors or sacrifices they may undergo in the service of humanity, men are co-workers with God, ministers of a cause which in the end must triumph, because it is the cause of God." (Lay Sermons, p. 310.) For Caird believed in the gradual raising of the ideal in the consciousness of men, with a corresponding growth in the Kingdom of God in this present world. " We are far enough from the realisation of such a heaven upon earth, but it is something that we have come to want it, and to refuse to regard anything else as satisfactory. We all of us want it, the best men amongst us are striving for it, and it may almost be said that, in proportion to their goodness, is their belief in * its possibility.'" (Lay Sermons, p. 70.)
Side by side with the historical and critical study of German ideas in Britain, there was a further develop- ment of the Neo-Hegelian movement which T. H. Green had initiated. The two men who followed Green in developing Hegelian doctrine along independent lines, were F. H. Bradley (b. 1846), and Bernard Bosanquet (b. 1848). The phase of Anglo-Hegehanism which they represent must be clearly distinguished from earlier English idealism, in that they had come under a later and saner German influence than their predecessors. To understand this fact, it is necessary first to glance at philosophical developments in Germany after Hegel's death.
When the fervor of enthusiasm roused by idealistic speculation had died down, several important elements in the intellectual life of Germany emerged. First, the application by Strauss of Hegelian dialectic to Chris- tianity in his '' Life of Jesus " (1835), was the precursor of many similar works. This Higher Criticism, together with the setting forth of Feuerbach's religion of Humanity, led to a widespread scepticism throughout Germany, in the place of a more or less settled orthodoxy. Then the results of scientific investigation began to exert their own influence. Although, as was noted above,
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scientific concepts attracted the popular mind in England sooner than in Germany, there were certain great Germans working at specific scientific problems from 1835 o"» who later furnished their own contribution to European discoveries and who stimulated scientific thought in England just as Englishmen did in Germany. These men worked quietly and in the face of opposition ( for the pseudo-scientists of Hegelian tradition were still trying to evolve fact from concept), but their results were remarkable. The name of Johannes Miiller stands at the head of the movement — his great interest being physi- ology. His famous text-book was published between 1833 and 1840, and in it Miiller brought the results of physics and of human and comparative anatomy to bear on psychological problems. Following his work, the activity of difiFerent pupils of his in their several spheres should be noted — Briicke in physiology, Du Bois Rey- mond in physiology and electricity, W. E. Weber in electricity, E. H. Weber in psycho-physics, and the great Helmholtz in these and other lines of investi- gation. These men abandoned the one preconception which Miiller had retained, that of the working of a vital force in Nature, and the result of their efiforts was the discovery and arrangement of a vast wealth of new knowledge about the physical world and about human and animal life, which in time attracted the attention of the scientific world of Europe. (It should be noted that side by side with the acknowledgment of German scien- tific discoveries in England, there came a knowledge of the work of Darwin and Spencer in Germany. This was the beginning of a new interest in science generally, among the German people.) The new knowledge amassed by German investigators led on the one hand to a tendency to mechanistic theories of life, but prepared on the other for a correction of that tendency. For the thoroughgoing use of the empirical method was bound to result in further discoveries, and to produce new interpre- tations, of facts. As a proof of this we have the life and work of Hermann Lotze (b. 1817-d. t88i), whose
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achievement is now recognized as the most significant in modern Germany, after the systems of the Kant to Hegel group. He exemplifies the truth that physiology (indeed almost any department of natural fact), if studied in the spirit of sincere investigation, may be revealed as the ally and not the enemy of a spiritual outlook.
Lotze has been called the modern Kant. Just as Kant's scientific convictions prevented him from promulgating any abstract idealism, so Lotze's training as a medical doctor helped him to keep a firm grip on empirical fact and individual reality. Lotze combined, with his physio- logical researches, a keen interest in philosophical questions, and in 1842 was made extraordinary professor of philosophy in his own university of Leipsic. From there he was called in 1844 to take the chair of philosophy at Gottingen. He spent the years till his death in teach- ing and writing, and his work has gradually won the appreciation it deserves. His fame as a philosopher rests chiefly on the " Metaphysik " (1844), the *' Logik " (1843), the " Medicinische Psychologic" (1852), the " Microcosmus" (3 vols., 1856-64), and the " System der Philosophic " (2 vols., 1874-79). The last two have been translated into English, the " Microcosmus " in 1885, by a daughter of Sir Wm. Hamilton and E. E. Constance Jones (of Cambridge), and the " System," in 1885, by a variety of writers, including T. H. Green, Bradley and Bosanquet.
The determining factor in Lotze's philosophy is his ethical viewpoint. Thus his psychology starts with a statement of the existence of the soul, which he sub- stantiates by emphasizing the unity and free activity of consciousness. The latter point he acknowledges cannot be proved, but its reality is established for him by the witness of ethical experience. It is interesting to note that present day psychology as represented by Dr. Ward still regards ''the nature of subject activity" as one of the fundamental psychological problems.
Lotze's most original doctrine both in metaphysics and logic is the importance of emphasizing the meaning
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or value of Things and Thought. He acknowledged the right of science to a mechanical view of Nature, but thought that the latter should be absorbed into the con- ception of a teleological order. " How universal," he writes, "but at the same time how subordinate is the part which mechanism plays in nature." For human ideals of Truth, Goodness and Beauty point to a World of Worths or Values, and man's moral and emotional nature demand an objective reality for this world. Scientific knowledge with its clearness and definiteness represents only a piece of reality. The truly real is that which embraces the meaning of the world as well as its related dements, and the worth of the individual as well as his appearance and actuality. Lotze regarded the existence of conscious personality as the key to the truly real, for in the individual consciousness the " many " of the world of experience is combined into " one." Thus for him the Absolute or truly Real is the highest analogous form of a Conscious Personality.
The most striking difference between Hegelian and Lotzian concepts is the different emphasis laid by them upon thought. To Hegel thought was everything. By thought man apprehends the world — by thought God con- structed it. Therefore all things conform to thought and thought is all. Lotze on the other hand felt that thought had its own legitimate sphere of examining appearances and tracing connections and elaborating laws of phenomena, but beyond this thought could not go. He pointed to a more immediate experience, a richer, fuller and more intimate way of grasping reality. It is the influence of this latter point of view, that accounts for the difference between the work of Bradley and Bosan- quet, and the work of such a man as Dr. Stirling.
Bradley's first work, *' Ethical Studies," was published in 1876. Its preface acknowledges that the ideas brought forward are not new, but states that " the fashion to take no account of views which are now more than half a century old " has seemed to preclude the possibility of a solution of ethical problems in England. Bradley frankly
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attacks traditional Utilitarianism and substitutes as his ethical banner, " My station and its duties." This standard has two sources — ^the Anglican Catechism and Hegel's philosophy of right. It has weak points, doubt- less, as tending to barrenness of individual effort, and as offering sometimes as little practical guidance as Kant's " Duty for Duty's Sake." But it would seem to combine greater psychological accuracy than was shown in the Utilitarian pleasure-motive, with a sounder social theory than was inherent in Philosophical Radicalism. In con- nection with the first point, Bradley's criticism of Sidg- wick is illuminating. He holds that Sidgwick advanced beyond his school in saying (after Butler) that pleasure is not man's only end. But this concession really betrays hedonism. On the other hand, Sidgwick was wrong in maintaining that the pleasure of others should be the objective end. Bradley's social theory is, as has been indicated, adapted from Hegel. It empha- ^ sizes what Edward Caird called " the soHdarity of man- kind," and points to natural human relations as the moral content in which the good will works. Rights and duties, Bradley points out, go together, and duties are in fact preliminary to rights. It has already been noted in con- nection with Green that such an emphasis upon social responsibility means a virtual agreement with the finest y/ form of Utilitarianism. Neither side of the controversy recognized it as they wrote, but belief in the dignity of man lay at the root both of Mill's work and the work of Green or Bradley. True happiness the right of the down- trodden was preached by the Utilitarian ; what man owes to the community was the text of the Neo-Hegelians. The first doctrine only becomes vicious when preached to the ignorant ; the second when it is used to protect from criticism a narrow and absolute government.
Bradley's ethical theory is influenced, though in a different way from Spencer's, by the evolutionary idea. He expresses his belief in a theory of evolution, which sees human nature developed in its essence. All morality is and must be " relative," Bradley says, because the
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essence of realization is evolution through stages, and hence existence is some one stage which is not final. On the other hand, all morality is " absolute " because in every stage the essence of man is realized, however im- perfectly. It will be seen thai Bradley comes close to Green in this doctrine of human realization. For besides putting forth the motto " My Station and its Duties," Bradley emphasized a second root for the moral content. This is the will for ideal good, which works towards perfection of the social self and perfection of the non- social self. The sphere we were born into and the exigencies of life more or less control our " doing." But the inner principle of activity, reflective consciousness, the centre of personal interest, whatever it be called — controls our *' being." First we seem to see in a person or persons the type of what is excellent; then by the teaching and tradition of our own and other countries and times we are given a content which we find realized in the lives of individuals; lastly we detach from both what is personal and imperfect, and construct our ideal. This process, Bradley holds, is essentially human. For man is not man at all unless social, but man is not much above the beasts unless more than social.
Bradley published his " Principles of Logic " in 1883, and his " Appearance and Reality " in 1893. The dis- tinctive characteristic of the first work, as against earlier British writings on logic, is the desire to treat of the deeper sense or meaning of words and terms, instead of being occupied with their use in the jugglings of syllo- gistic reasoning. Closely allied to this is the refusal to treat of single ideas and concepts as distinct units of thought. Lotze's influence along these two lines might be traced in detail. Bradley followed his German master in emphasizing the fact that judgments are the important factors in knowledge and in thought; for single ideas most often detach themselves into clearness, from an experienced synthesis. The connection between Bradley's description of the judgment and Caird's main criticism of Kant need not be pointed out.
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The " Appearance and Reality " is the work which made Bradley famous, for it ran through four editions in ten years. At the same time it has provoked such criticism among philosophers, that the final acceptance of its doctrine is questionable. The very title suggests the difficulties inherent in any positing of a noumenon as against a phenomenon, and Bradley has suffered like Kant, for seeming to assume a reality beyond experience. As a matter of fact, Bradley states that appearance is a part of reality, and that error has resulted from using the term appearance in a dogmatic way. That is, phenomenon is an abstraction, and noumenon too, — and both are the creations of thought. Here is the point which Bradley took from Lotze, and expanded to the extent of his *' degrees of reality " system. Thought is essentially relational, and since relations do not express reality or existence, thought can never reach reality. The clue to the nature of Reality should rather be sought in the unity of immediate feeling. And on the analogy of feeling an all-embracing Absolute must be assumed, which is co-ordinate with and yet greater than individual experi- ence. Bradley's negative result is therefore the state- ment, that knowledge is never identical with reality-— the discursive process never restores the oneness of imme- diate feeling. His positive doctrine maintains that reality is that perfect unity in variety which thought seeks to become — for knowledge implies reality as at once trans- cending and completing itself. Knowledge could reach the unity of the real, only by being blended with the other elements of experience, feeling and will. But the general inference from knowledge, and the constant wit- ness of intuition and feeling, estabHsh a sound belief in an Absolute Experience which embraces and gives mean- ing to the universe and man.
Two extracts will illustrate the strength and weakness alike, of Bradley's metaphysical position. As against the intellectualism of Hegel that is undoubtedly a wise view, which includes in the truly Real more than mere thought. At the same time there is a dangerous likeness to the
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"Infinite Blank" ideal of Neo-Platonism in Bradley's Absolute. At the close of the Logic he writes, *' It may come from a failure in my metaphysics, or from a weak- ness of the flesh which continues to blind me, but the notion that existence could be the same as understanding strikes as cold and ghost-like as the dreariest materialism. That the glory of this world in the end is appearance leaves the world more glorious, if we feel it is a show of some fuller splendour; but the sensuous curtain is a deception and a cheat, if it hides some colorless move- ment of atoms, some spectral woof of impalpable abstrac- tions, or unearthly ballet of bloodless categories. Though dragged to such conclusions we cannot embrace them. Our principles may be true, but they are not reality. They no more make that Whole which commands our devotion, than some shredded dissection of human tatters is that warm and breathing beauty of flesh which our hearts found delightful." (" Principles of Logic," p. 533.) In "Appearance and Reality" (p. 552), Bradley gives his final definition of Reality. '* Reality is one Experi- ence, self-pervading and superior to mere relations. Its character is the opposite of that fabled extreme which is barely mechanical, and it is, in the end, the sole perfect realisation of spirit. We may fairly close this work then by insisting that Reality is spiritual. There is a great saying of Hegel's, a saying too well known, and one which, without some explanation, I should not like to endorse. But I will end with something not very different, something perhaps more certainly the essential message of Hegel. Outside of spirit there is not and cannot be, any reality, and, the more that anything is spiritual, so much the more is it veritably real."
Professor Bosanquet has followed the Neo-Hegelian tradition in several ways. He was first an Oxford man, holding a fellowship at Balliol after graduation. Then his academic and literary works have not been confined to philosophy, but include history, sociology, political economy and aesthetic. His practical success in . these departments may be conjectured from the fact that he
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held first the professorship of modern literature and history at University College, Liverpool (1881), and afterwards the chairs of English language and literature (1886), and of poetry (1901), at Oxford. Finally, he is not a Hegelian in the sense of adopting the Hegelian system in its entirety. He rather uses Hegelian ideas to substantiate his own broader view in logic, psychology and metaphysics, which subjects he treats in the spirit of Lotze.
Bosanquet's most important works are the " Logic " (2 vols., 1888), the " History of Aesthetic " (1902), and the "Philosophical Theory of the State" (1899). Less imposing, but almost as significant, are his " Psychology of the Moral Self " (1897), and the two series of Gifford Lectures for 191 1 and 1912. The titles of the latter indi- cate the same Lotzian influence, as had appeared in his first work — i.e., " The Principle of Individuality and Value," and " The Value and Destiny of the Individual." Bosanquet has thus made current in English literature that conception of a Kingdom of Worths, which was such a valuable element in Lotze's system. More important for the history of philosophical thought is his original treatment of logic, as inspired by Lotze. He will probably be remembered for this after his " Theory of the State " has been relegated to the class of all political transcripts of Hegel, and when his psychology has been merged in the general modern movement, of which Dr. Ward was the first great exponent.
Bosanquet defines his purpose in the Logic as "the unprejudiced study of judgment and inference through- out the varied forms in which the evolution may be traced." (Vol. I, p. i.) Though this logical study does not claim to be metaphysic, it implies a metaphysic, inasmuch as thought is " a living function " and all objective thought has existential reference. Bosanquet exposes at the outset the error of Subjective IdeaHsm, in propounding the dilemma, " How do we get from mind to reality, from the subjective to the objective?" He points out that " knowledge is within consciousness
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though it may refer outside it." ("Essentials of Logic," publ. 1895.) Through individual presentations, human consciousness becomes aware of something that is not wholly in any presentation. This knowledge may be called the *' development of the objective," or the " mental construction of reality." For knowledge exists in the form of affirmations about reality, i.e., judgments. Judgment means being distinctly aware of reality, and in it can be distinguished the element of perception, and the interpretative construction or analytic synthesis which is by the judgment identified with it. " In our waking life, all thought is judgment, every idea is referred to reality, and in being so referred, is ultimately referred to reality." (''Essentials of Logic," p. 73.)
Bosanquet's metaphysic of knowledge is plain from the stress he lays upon the perceptive judgment. This he says is the fundamental judgment, while the ultimate and complete judgment would be the whole of Reality predicated of itself. It is on this point that Bosanquet meets with most criticism, as consenting finally to a passive theory of experience, and presenting no more definite doctrine of reality than the conception of Com- plete Ground. It is a question however whether philosophy, strictly speaking, can ever go beyond this. The pragmatic idea and the dynamic viewpoint have the same character as Hegel's thought-principle, — all alike are a personal expression of the one thing worth while in experience. Bosanquet is inchned with Hegel to sell all he has and follow spirit, though he never formally com- mits himself to an Absolute. He is content merely to exhibit the activity of thought in its explication of experi- ence, but insists that from its lowest impersonal judgment to inference, the mind is discovering and bearing witness to a system. That this system is a spiritual one, a thought and thinking system, Bosanquet has no doubt; but he leaves all dogmatising about it to religion. His personal convictions are rarely expressed more definitely than in the short passage with which we conclude. "If you think the whole universe is mechanical or brute matter,
181
then we can understand your trying to keep a little mystic shrine within the individual soul, which may be sacred from intrusion and different from everything else — a monad without windows. But if you are accustomed to take the whole as spiritual, and to find that the more you look at it as a whole, the more spiritual it is, then you do not need to play these little tricks in order to get a last refuge from freedom by shutting out the universe." ("Psychology of the Moral Self," pp. 9, 10.)
182
THE CONCLUSION
13
CONCLUSION
r A writer has said, " The stages of English philosophy are steps in the discovery of what is involved in the principle that experience is the basis and ultimate criterion of truth." (T. M. Forsyth, in "English Philosophy," London, 1910.) If " British thought " be substituted for " English philosophy," the period of development from i < T82crtoTB90 may be characterized broadly as an illustra- tion of thelruth of this statement. First in their pursuit of Locke's declared aim (to examine critically the ideas gained from experience rather than to waste speculation upon the transcendent and supernatural), British writers from the time of James Mill on, by their persistent and fruitful psychological study, have succeeded in building up a more and more complete picture of the workings of the human mind. In ethical criticism also they have con- /5" tributed a content for moral concepts, where earlier writers had emphasized chiefly, the abstract form which is to be the guide in morals^ifen political theory British writers have inclined for the most part to the practical and experiential, endeavoring to bring home the good » ^ which is the end of government to the living, laboring individual — here again testing theory by its application in experience. |/And in the sphere of science is seen a peculiar proof of the British appreciation of. the significance of experience. For by faithful examination of facts and untiring experiment in the realm of the actual, English scientists have reached conclusions such as to reverse the opinion of the educated world, in regard to certain great truths about Nature.*^ Lastly in the dis- trust of metaphysics first sounded by Locke and echoing throughout our period, may be found a final proof of the conviction that experience alone is a worthy and fruitful field of investigation.
185
In spite of many positive excellences, certain defects in the native British way of thinking may be pointed out. Side by side with an increasing keenness of observation and introspection in the sphere of psychology, there may be observed a tendency to regard the genetic view of mind as the proper basis for an estimate of knowledge. Following upon this in several cases is the adoption of subjective idealism, or even of scepticism, as a philosophi- cal outlook. Ethics, it has been shown, is frequently reduced to a self -regarding science with no other than a subjective foundation, and theories of government tend to give an individualistic account of man and a mechanical origin for the state. In the sphere of science, the con- tinuous practice of analysis leads to a disregard of the synthetic and fully concrete viewpoint, and in the import- ance of examining the obvious content and matter, the operation and significance of the implicit form are apt to be forgotten. The study of science has also effected at different times an exaltation of the intellect, at the ex- pense of the emotions and the imagination, with the result of discrediting for the time the realms of art and religion. Lastly, the denial to metaphysics of any legiti- mate basis or starting-point, is found to overlook the operation in experience oij0ht ancient reXos in the shape of meaning or value.
Various elements in German thought have helped to supply the deficiencies noted above. Kant's Critique of Pure Reason substituted a sounder theory of knowledge, for the genetic account of thought which resulted from the work of Locke. His Critique of Practical Reason furnished an objective basis for ethics, in the law-making and law-obeying capacity of man, while his Critique of Judgment rehabilitated the claims of art and all imagin- ative work to a real significance. By his emphasis upon intuition, Schelling<assisted in the latter task, while Fichte corroborated Kant's view of knowledge as active and synthetic. Hegel helped to break down the fixed dis- tinctions which had been accepted by science as ultimate, and substituted, for that examination of parts which had
i86
absorbed many British thinkers, a view of the whole of experience. Hegel also corrected the political theory which had prevailed for some time in England, by his sound doctrine of the social nature and needs of man, and of the state as a natural growth from these. Finally, Lotze emphasized meaning or worth as the most signifi- cant concept in knowledge and the true key to experience — from which arises consequently a new philosophy.
To speak briefly, where British thought has empha- sized matter and the particular, German thought has shown the importance of form and the universal. Both have contributed to the modern viewpoint — of regarding knowledge and experience, as well as physical life and society, as best interpreted by the conception of an organic whole. Each part and element has its separate place and work, and may be studied and analyzed by itself. But the final significance of both part and whole is only reached, when the peculiar character and relations of the unified organism have been recognized and con- sidered. Regarded in this way experience is a reality — a unified whole ; and knowledge is the developing explica- tion of experience, which tends to be more and more complete. Though the revelation may not reach com- pleteness within ages, the fa^t of the constant operation of ideal forms, and of the presence of spiritual values in our interpretation of experience, would seem to contra- dict finally the possibility of a mechanical basis for reality. It is thus the conviction of many philosophers and scientists of to-day which Prof. J. S. Haldane echoes, when he says at the conclusion of his *' Mechanism, Life and Personality," — " This world, with all that lies within it, is a spiritual world."
187
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192
INDEX
Absolute, The, 25, 29, 91, 178, 181.
Association of Ideas, The, 36, 50, 52, 101, 102, 103.
Bain, Alex., 101, 125, 129, 130, 131.
Bentham, J., 31-35, 52, 63.
Berkeley, 2, 10.
Bosanquet, B., 172, 179-182.
Bradley, F. H., 172, 175-179.
Browning, 50, 80, 81.
Byron, 47, 85.
Caird, Edward, 151, 166-172. Caird, John, 163-165.
Carlyle, Thos., 45, 47, 63, 68-77, 78, 82, 85, 110, 111. Categorical Imperative, The, 19, 67, 73, 91. Categories, The, 14, 16, 22, 23, 25, 26, 145, 146. Coleridge, S. T., 46-62, 63, 64, 78, 85, 110. Conditioned, Philosophy of the, 90, 91, 95. Consciousness, 86, 93, 95, 133, 134, 158, 165. 174. Cousin, Victor. 86, 90.
Darwin, Charles. 117. 119-121. 123, 153. Darwin, Erasmus, 49. 52, 118. Dialectic, 26, 27, 30. Diderot, 6, 7, 9.
Eliot, George, 135, 137. Emerson, R. W., 77-80. Experience, 1, 2, 13, 14, 15, 17, 21, 25, 38, 52, 89. 169, 185, 187.
Feeling, 2, Z7, 52, 56, 57, 59, 60, 61, 62, 65, 102, 113, 132, 133, 136.
Ferrier, J. F., 91-99.
Fichte, J. G., 20-24, 72, 74, 75, 76, 77, 98, 186.
Froude, J. A., 63, 66.
Goethe, 45, 69, 70, 110, 130. Green, T. H.. 139, 155-162.
Hamilton, Sir W., 47, 85-91, 129, 152.
Hegel, 25-30, 96, 97, 98, 99, 139, 143, 144, 145, 148, 151, 152, 154,
162, 163, 175, 181, 187. Helvetius, 6, 7, 8, 9. Hume, 2, 3, 14, 155. Huxley, T. H., 123-125, 140, 141, 152.
Ideas of the reason, 2, 17, 18, 54.
Ideas as the source of knowledge, 2, 38, 52.
Imagination, The, 16, 29, 50, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 80, 82.
193
Judgment, The, 3, 16, 20, 58, 59, IZ, 86, 89, 104, 168, 169, 181.
Kant, 12-20, 46, 51, 67, 68, 71, 12, 73, 83, 90, 97, 107, 108, 144. 145, 148, 157, 167, 168, 174.
Latency, Mental, 88, 89, 101.
Lewes, G. H., 125, 129, 131-135.
Liberalism, 40, 11.
Locke, 1, 2, 4, 5, 10.
Lotze, Hermann, 173-175, 178, 187.
Mill, James, 35-41, 52.
Mill, J. S., 41, 46, 47, 67, 89, 100-114, 129.
Newman, J. H., 63, 64-67. Novalis, 106.
Perception, Theory of, 15, 16, 87, 90, 93, 94, 97, 147, 168. Plato, 11, 86, 108, 129, 170.
Reason, The, 17, 18, 19, 52, 54, 55, 71. Reid, Thos., 3, 4, 89. 90, 92. Relativity, Law of, 87, 88, 100. Rousseau, 7, 8, 40. Ruskin, John, 81-84.
SchelHng, 24, 25, 51, 71, 186. Self, The. 38. 105. Self-consciousness, 21, 22, 156, 157. Spencer, Herbert, 125-130. State, The, 24, 29, 58, 11. Stirling, J. H., 138, 141-155. Strauss, 83, 172.
Tennyson, 140, 171.
Thing-in-itself, The, 15, 97, 104, 146, 150.
Understanding, The, 16, 53. Unity of Apperception, The, 21, 53, 97, 169. Universal, The, 98, 99, 145, 154, 187. Utilitarianism, 32, 33, 34, 41, 107, 159, 176.
Voltaire, 5, 8.
Wallace, A. R., 122.
Ward, W. G., 47, 63, 67, 68.
Will, The, 52, 53, 54, 62, 72, 74, 16, 98, 106, 112, 133.
Wordsworth, 48, 64, 78.
194
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