The development of British thought from 1820 to 1890, with special reference to German influences

Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive

in 2007 witii funding from

IVIicrosoft Corporation

littp://www.archive.org/details/developmentofbriOOwaddricli

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.

• • k • •

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

vu

SECTION I
INTRODUCTORY

» • 3 o • .

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.

6

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.

8

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

10

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

II

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

12

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

13

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

14

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

15

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

i6

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

17

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

i8

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

19

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

20

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.

21

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

22

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

23

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

25

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

26

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.

27

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

28

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

29

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.

30

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

31

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.

32

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

33

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,

34

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

35

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

36

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,

38

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

40

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.

41

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

45

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.

46

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

47

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

48

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

49

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

SO

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

SI

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

52

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

53

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,

54

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

55

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

56

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

58

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

59

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

60

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.

62

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

63

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

64

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

6s

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

66

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

67

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

68

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

69

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

70

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

71

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

73

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,

74

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

75

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

76

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,

77

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

78

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

79

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,

80

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

8i

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

82

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

83

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.")

84

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

8s

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

86

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

87

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

88

" 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

89

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

90

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

91

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

92

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 —

93 .

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

94

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

95

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

96

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

97

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

98

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.

99

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

100

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

lOI

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

102

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

103

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,

104

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

105

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

106

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

107

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

io8

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

109

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

no

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

III

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

112

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

113

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.

114

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,

117

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

118

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,

119

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

120

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

121

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

122

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

123

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

124

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

125

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

126

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

127

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.

128

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

129

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,

130

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

131

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

132

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

133

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.

134

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,

135

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.

136

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.

137

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

138

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

139

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

140

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

141

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,

142

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

143

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

144

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

145

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

146

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

147

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."

148

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

149

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

150

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

11

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

152

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

153

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

154

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.'*

155

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

156

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

157

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

158

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

159

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

160

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

161

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.

162

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

163

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

164

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

165

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

166

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

167

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.

i68

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

169

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

170

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

171

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,

172

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

173

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

174

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

175

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

176

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.

177

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

178

"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

179

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

180

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

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

Adamson, Robert.

" On the Philosophy of Kant." Edinburgh, 1879.

"Fichte." Edinburgh and London, 1881.
Aliotta.

"The Idealistic Reaction Against Science." London, 1914.
Baillie, J. B.

"The Origin and Significance of Hegel's Logic." London,
1901.

Bentham, Jeremy.

" Principles of Morals and Legislation." London, 1879.
Bosanquet, B.

" Logic." (2 vols.) Oxford, 1888.

" A History of Aesthetic." London, 1892.

" The Psychology of the Moral Self." London, 1897.

" Philosophical Theory of the State." London, 1899.

" Eissentials of Logic." London, 1906.

Bradley, F. H.

" Ethical Studies." London, 1876.

" Principles of Logic." London, 1883.

"Appearance and Reality." London, 1893.

Brandes, G.

" Main Currents in Nineteenth Century Literature." (6 vols.)
London, 1901-5.
Browning, O.

" Memories of Sixty Years." London, 1910.

Caird, Edward.

"Hegel." Edinburgh, 1886.

"The Critical Philosophy of Immanuel Kant." (2 vols.)

Glasgow, 1889.
" The Evolution of Religion." (2 vols.) Glasgow, 1891.

Caird, John.

" Spinoza." Edinburgh, 1888.

" An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion." Glasgow,
1891.
Carlyle, Thomas.

"Reminiscences." (2 vols.) London, 1881.

" Critical and Miscellaneous Essays." (3 vols.) Edmburgh

Edition. « ,. .

"Thomas Carlyle's Works." (17 vols.) Ashburton Edition.

189

Coleridge, S. T.

"Works." (7 vols.) New York, 1884.
"Aids to Reflection." London, 1904.
"Biographia Epistolaris." (2 vols.) London, 1911.
"Biographia Literaria." Oxford, 1917.
Cousin, Victor.

"Course of the History of Modern Philosophy." (Trans.
2 vols.) New York, 1862.
Croce, B.

" What is Living and What is Dead of the Philosophy of
Hegel." (Trans.) London, 1915.

Darwin, Charles.

"Origin of Species." (2 vols.) London, 1897.

" Descent of Man." London, 1871.
Dicey, A. V.

" The Law of the Constitution." London, 1886.
Emerson, R. W.

"Essays." (2 vols.) London, 1883.

Erdmann, J. E.

" A History of Philosophy." (Trans., 3 vols.) London, 1890.

Ferrier, J. F.

" Institutes of Metaphysic." Edinburgh and London, 1875.
" Philosophical Remains." Edinburgh and London, 1883.

Forsyth, T. M.

" English Philosophy." London, 1910.
Froude, J. A.

" The Oxford Counter-Reformation." (In Vol. IV of " Short
Studies on Great Subjects," London, 1888-1890).
Green, T. H.

" Prolegomena to Ethics." - Oxford, 1906.

"Works." (3 vols.) London, 1890.

Hamilton, Sir Wm.

" Lectures on Metaphysics and Logic." Boston, 1859.

" Discussions on Philosophy and Literature," New York, 1861.

" Philosophy of Sir Wm. Hamilton." New York, 1873.

Hegel.

"The Logic of Hegel." (Trans.) Oxford, 1892.
"Hegel's Philosophy of Mind." (Trans.) Oxford, 1894.

Hoffding, H.

"A History of Modern Philosophy." (Trans., 2 vols.) Lon-
don, 1900.
Hume, David.

"A Treatise on Human Nature." (2 vols.) London, 1890.
" An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding." Chicago,
1902.
Jones, Sir H.

"The Philosophy of Lotze." New York, 1895.

190

Kant, I.

''Critique of Pure Reason." (Trans., 2 vols.) London, 1881
Critique of Aesthetic Judgment." (Trans.) London, 1914
Lewes, G. H.

"Problems of Life and Mind.". (5 vols.) Boston, 1874-80

Life of Goethe." Leipzig, 1882.
"The Biographical History of Philosophy." (2 vols.) New

Locke, John.

"Essay Concerning Human Understanding." (2 vols.)
Oxford, 1894. ^

Lotze, H.

" Microcosmus." (Trans., 2 vols.) Edinburgh, 1888.
MacCunn, J.

" Six Radical Thinkers." London, 1910.
McTaggart, J. M. E.

" Studies in the Hegelian Dialectic." Cambridge, 1896.
" Studies in Hegelian Cosmology." Cambridge, 1907.
Merz, J. T.

"A History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Cen-
tury." (4 vols.) Edinburgh, 1896-1914.
Mill, James.

"An Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind."
(2 vols.) London, 1878.
Mill, J. S.

" Utilitarianism." London, 1871.

" A System of Logic." New York, 1874.

"An Examination of Sir Wm. Hamilton's Philosophy."

Boston, 1908.
"Autobiography." London, 1908.

" Dissertations and Discussions." The New Universal Library
edition.
Morley, John.

" Diderot and the Encyclopaedists." London, 1886.
Newman, J. H.

" Apologia pro Vita Sua." Everyman Edition.
Paulsen, F.

"Immanuel Kant." (Trans.) New York, 1902.
Pringle-Pattison, A. Seth.

"Hegelianism and Personality." Edinburgh and London,
1887.
Ribot, T. A.

"English Psychology." New York, 1874.
Reid, Thomas.

"Works." (2 vols.) Edited by Sir Wm. Hamilton. Edin-
burgh, 1880.
Ritchie, D. G.

" Darwin and Hegel." London, 1883.

191

Santayana, G.

"Reason in Art." (Volume IV of "The Life of Reason.")
London, 1906.

Seth, J.

"A Study in Ethical Principles." New York, 1911.
Spencer, H.

" Data of Ethics." London and Edinburgh, 1879.

"Principles of Ethics." (2 vols.) London and Edinburgh,
1897 and 1900.

Stephen, Leslie.

"Studies of a Biographer." (4 vols.) London, 1898-1902.
Stirling, Amelia H.

"James Hutchison Stirling, His Life and Work." London,

1912.
Stirling, J. H.

"Text-Book to Kant." Edinburgh, 1881.

" The Secret of Hegel." Edinburgh and London, 1898.
Sturt, H.

" Idola Theatri." London, 1906.
Tulloch, John.

" Modern Theories in Philosophy and Religion." Edinburgh
and London, 1884.
Wallace, W.

" Prolegomena to the Study of Hegel's Philosophy." Oxford,
1894.
Ward, Wilfrid.

"William George Ward and the Oxford Movement." Lon-
don, 1890.
Webb, T. E.

" The Veil of Isis." Dublin, 1885.

Williams, C. M.

" Evolutional Ethics." New York, 1893.

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

v--

14 DAY USE

RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED
LOAN DEPT.

This book is due on the last date stamped below, or

on the date to which renewed.

Renewed books are subject to immediate recall.

^30^pr58^^

2jMaf'feSGP

REC-i

t_,.-'

2G'"i9a3

30Mar'59Dr

RECD LP

ftPR23'65-4PM

26f^ay'60MJ

REC'D LD

it..

"^^^28 i960

26%'6iLF

RZC'D

bc^

i«Ay^^

9Gf

LD 21A-50m-8,'57
(C8481sl0)476B

General Library

University of California

Berkeley